And like any good wife, I'm sure she immediately volunteered.

_

sugar cane field worker

Holy http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...s/pukeface.gif

I take back every mean thing I've ever said about the Chef/cooking industry.

As a little boy I had a summer holiday job as a chit shoveler.

I really did. New Zealand had a big industry in sheep's wool, and even the pooy bits around the sheep's bum had enough wool in it to make it worthwhile crushing it to get the wool out. But it had to be dried in the sun and shoveled around to dry all sides.

Lot of “Dirty Jobs” disgusting sort of stuff here... you guys have my admiration.
On the psychologically-tough spectrum, laying people off sucks. Not some jerkoff who basically begged you to let them go (although they never see it that way), but honest-to-God good people who may very well be the single bread winner and benefits holder of a family. Whether it’s a downturn, a takeover, or an off-shoring event, having to inform these sort of folks that they are losing their job is awful- and it stays with you.

Coal mining, lime pits, installing radio antennas, children's psych ward, prison guard, military scout. Nah.
I could do underwater welding though.

Personal staff to an Admiral. I yearned daily to get back to Afghanistan, Iraq, or Horn of Africa in order to be happier.

When my dad was offered a promotion to full bird but moved to the Pentagon, he said thanks but no thanks. He retired instead. He said he was not going to be a coffee making butler to some general. A full bird colonel is just a gofer at the pentagon, and you have to live in that area. No way he was doing that.

Rodbuster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNvgOO53q7M

Erector:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-8RrnsvFzA&t=50s

I work in the construction industry. The above are two different flavors of Iron Worker. You don't want to pick a fight with one of these guys. If a bench clearing brawl erupted on a large construction site, the last man standing might be a 180-lb Iron Worker.

similar/related, but less well known in the first world is sulphur "mining" and salt "mining" from salt water.

I've seen some articles and videos on third world folks mining sulphur from geothermal/volcanic active areas. The air is poisonous and the ground is caustic/acidic, and many of the folks barely have clothes and shoes much less PPE.

Similar for the folks that get salt from sea water. I've seen pics of them working manually in shorts and shirts, so the salt dries and cuts their hands and feet.

In India where the caste system has been outlawed for years, the low caste manually go into the sewers to unclog, and all of the photos that I've seen show them basically in a loin cloth to do it.

I once spoke to a guy that had been stationed in the same place that my family lived for a while.

He then regaled me with stories of how he got and kept cushy jobs where he didn't really have to do anything. I think he was a driver for a ranking officer.

I wasn't in the military, but it made me a little sick. But there are positions for warm bodies, I guess someone has to fill those positions.

I've had many "bad" jobs over the years.
The worst times were the couple of weeks (cumulative in lifetime) when I did not have a job.

Hard labor? It's good for you. Builds muscle and character.

Cleaning porta-potties?
Pays good, no one to tell you how to do your job and certainly no one trying to backstab you to steal your job. And you can hold your head high knowing you earned your way through life instead of being a parasite.

I've worked in a couple sewage treatment plants doing upgrades/revamps when I was a millwright. While disgusting at first, it was honest work and it paid my bills and provided for my family.

I worked in photography all my life, and only photography since I was 14. Many time with new trainee employees as we were struggling with production of some complex photo like a 4x12 foot photographic print for a TV set or convention display. I would tell the new guy "just think thousands of people all across the country are commuting home in a hurry to go play in their darkrooms. We do for a living what they do for a hobby" and most replied, let's get their butt in here to help.

Working in 100% total pitch black for hours at a time gets old. I spent a couple hours every day in absolute total darkness. I can tell you the crawling under a 64 inch wide photographic paper processor to fix a slow leak on a processor tank full of the bleach-fix sucks big time. I did it many times over the years. Or working and repairing the processors at all all sucked. I don't miss that part at all. Digital is a million times easier.

but, but...

...the good ol' days!

There were indeed good times back then. More good than not, by a lot. I worked at a business that was about a million dollars invested in a 5,000 square foot custom built building and 12 employees. We had a lot of state of the art stuff, and did great work. Most all of it can be replaced with just one person, one high end digital full frame sensor, Photoshop and a 60 inch printer and done better, faster and cheaper.

Attorney in the Army JAG Corps

They are light years ahead of United Airlines

Seriously. Look at the first link I posted. Rodbusters basically do work that is like tying your shoes all day long. Only with wire and rebar.

I know a guy who spent a week jackhammering a ceiling. let that sink in.

I've always ben industrious. I mowed lawns during jr high; that sort of thing. I've had 100's of jobs. My dad taught me how to get one and it worked every time. All I had to do was go back 2 maybe 3 times and I'd get hired.

When I was 13, 14, and 15, I went to my grandmother's farm for 2 weeks starting the day after school was out. My granddad died one year before I was born so my grandmother ran a 360 acre farm alone. She grew potatoes and cotton mostly.

Those 2 weeks were potato digging season and she had her own railroad siding as well as a processing and sacking shed. It was metal and the Bakersfield heat was usually around 100º midday in June. I had to get up at 5am and start filling water jugs for the workers with ice and water. After the line got up and running at 6:30am my job was to keep checking the conveyor belt under the main floor where the potatoes were washed, graded and sacked. The culls (sliced by the digger or rotten) got thrown down the holes in the floor to that conveyor and loaded into a huge hopper to be trucked out to an airfield to dry for livestock food.

Nothing wasted on a farm.

If that conveyor got stuck, potatoes spilled out everywhere under the shed. There was about 6' of headroom and chains and gears whirring like crazy. If the potatoes started pilling up because I didn't check often enough, I shoveled them back up on the belt. Now, if you've smelled rotten potatoes in 100º heat, you know what kind of job that was.

She paid me the same as the labor on the floor, about $1.25.hr. Thing is, they ran that line 10 hours a day six days a week for 2 weeks until all were dug. Do the math and I took home $250 bucks all said and done. I bought my first go kart with that money. I bought my first car, a '57 Corvette with some of that money.

She died at age 58, 3 days before my 16th birthday, so that was the end of that. Never worked on a farm since and that is something I might have missed out on.

There was so much more to a farm than rotten potatoes and I enjoyed so much of it as a youngster. If you can imagine driving a D2 Caterpillar at 14, you know what I mean.

That's a pretty bad one, it also can be dangerous.

A friends son in law is in the business. One Saturday, he was greeting the neighbors, having a couple of beers, and told them what line of work he was in. One guy called him a sick effer. Things escalated to argument and he went home, across the street. One of the aforementioned neighbors knocked on his door later in the evening, and brandished a pistol in his waist band. He said don't pull that gun mister, but he did. It misfired, and the son in law fired 5 well placed bullets. Some went through the man into the neighbors home. Another clean up on his front porch.

The article isn't exactly as I was told, but close enough.

https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/man-shot-to-death-near-elgin