same here dude.

Did a couple years as a welder in my father's fabrication yard and also doing marine repair on boats and barges that should have been condemned they were so old and in such bad condition. chip away so much rust on half inch plate, you could see daylight thru the steel. daily nose bleeds, coughing up black slime. cut a bit of rusted steel, puke a bit and cut some more. standing in water up to your knees and getting shocked everytime you have to change rods. soaking your shoes in a bucket of water to cool them down or burning them with a torch trying to warm your feet in the winter. actually fried an egg on the steel one time just to see if it could be done. Had to wash my hair with gasoline to get the compound H grease after spraying the inside of a barge. puking at 2am from welding galvanized steel. and the flashes from welding close to other welders. Many times working 45-50 hrs with no sleep getting a job done to have it sit in the yard for 2 weeks after repair. I still have scars from burns and grinder bites. By the time you dragged your lead and tools 15-20ft into a fuel tank or barge over the plates and pipes.. your light bulb would blow and nothing but absolute total darkness. had to strike an arc every few minutes just to get back out. if you didn't pass out from the heat first. don't miss that job

Bollinger Ship Yard?

My early jobs were ok, it was my "adult jobs" I had issues with. I had a job in 1988-89, fellowship...geez, to this day I can't even stand thinking about the gal I worked for. Nurse, total moron, we agreed on only one thing...we couldn't agree. I moved on after a year. Now, 2nd worst job, 19 years later, another moron, except it won't be "just a year"! Gack, she's a total moron also...I thrill my wife every night with another story on what the moron has done today. Gack! Good news, bad news. In August she takes her boss's job and a new hot shot comes in. So many stories, so little time....with any luck, I'll get promoted and move on...

I worked in a dirt factory.

seriously.. we scraped the top soil off of the ground, ground it up, added some more stuff too it and bagged it.

Hyponex top soil

Physically the worst job: dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. Not near as bad as some other things listed here. My hands became white, flaky masses of skin.

Emotionally the worst job: college painter. I was made the "manager" of the crew--with no experience. My boss had undersold all of his jobs (and the amount of time we were given to do a job was based on the dollar amount of the job). He rode my ass to no end--but he had screwed me from the outset by underselling. I was his scapegoat and too inexperienced to know better. To make matters worse, I had a friend on my crew that decided he didn't actually have to work because he was my friend. He taught the other guys to slack off. As if work wasn't bad enough, my father's bi-polar disorder really flared up that summer and I was getting ridden hard at home (after working 16-18 hour days). It was that summer that I decided never, ever to live under my parents roof again, and also to be financially independent of my parents (my father was constantly threatening to cut me off in college--I called his bluff and bankrolled the remainder of my education with student loans). I got internships my remaining summers in college and never looked back.

Never really had a bad job. Some were not so good, but I took something good away from every job I ever had.

Geez I thought I had one untill I read Johnco and Moses'

Now I'll say, "...I've never had a really horrible job"

Hey Chris, that dishwashing job of mine was at Traverso's...

Production line machine shop. Kerosene sprayers in your face all day, deburring parts with your fingers, standing in one spot for hours on end, clearing the chuck of metal shavings, all for $6/hr.

Convenience store assistant manager - I was between jobs and saw an ad for management trainee. When I found out the blind ad was for a convenience store chain I said, "No thanks, but I will consider a corporate position." I was told there were plenty of corporate slots, but the only way to get them was to start in the stores. I fell for it.

Work started at 6:00 a.m. Every can of soda, every can of beer, every pack of cigarettes had to be counted at every shift change... mostly to make sure our coworkers weren't taking them. Once or twice a week we got deliveries at 3:00 a.m. As manager, I had to check in the order. If someone drove off we gas we got an earful about what we could have done to stop it. They kept cases of soda outside... then got pissed off at us if they went away.

The final straw came when I got a call that a register came up $100 short. There was a 60 something lady and a young soldiers wife on duty. The area manager said I had to fire one as a sign to the rest of the crew that stealing wouldn't be tolerated. I argued that I had no idea who did it. The area manager said it didn't matter. Just pick one and fire her. He said I had to get the "Attitude for success," or I wasn't going to advance. He left me to think it over. After the next shift came on I sent an e-mail to everyone in management who I could think of, that if randomly firing people was required for success I had no future there. I dropped my keys in the safe and never went back.

I remember those days. I washed dishes (pots, silver, glasses, etc.) at a local Cracker Barrel for nearly a year. I bought my first car, a '76 MG Midget with the money I made though. I learned that the restaurant business wasn't for me. I also built shipping crates for a year. This taught me that I didn't want to work outside year 'round either.

Dishwasher, $2.65 / hour.

I was 15 and planning to receive my driver's license at 16, I needed money to buy my first car. Couldn't legally work at 15 so I doctored up a birth certificate copy to get the job.

Hated the job, but stuck it out till I saved $300. That was enough to buy a running beater car in '79. Bought a '67 Lemans 2 weeks before my 16th birthday.

Funny, that would be the equivalent of buying a '95 today for the inflation-adjusted $300.

Today that beater lemans would probably sell for stupid money.

as an experience network geek, got hired to go work in Dublin for Compaq, for remote management of big customer networks
the salary was "ok" wasn't loooking for big bucks, just wanted new scenery, the cost of living presented seemd doable

when i arrived, they stuffed me in a training room with a snotnose brat who couldn't tell the difference between a voltage regulator and a cache memory module ( i ended up teaching him )

and the cost of living , didn't work out with the salary ( they had projected the rent in terms of getting a house with 3 or 4 others, housing in Dublin is terribly expensive), own rental came to about 3/4ths of my salary

after 2 days of BS in that training room , i just claimed an empty desk ,and started taking whatever came my way...
and instead of "networking problems" , it turned out to be callers with
"i have a new cellphone and i need a carkit in my company car"

anything of any difficulty was deemed a security risk for our outfit
and had to be routed to the local IT geeks from the customer

the wan links would go down every other day, resulting in us faxing everything and then afterwards doing manual input in the helpdesk system...

2 weeks down the line, they stuffed a rather disfunctional polish old dude in my 2 month company appartement

3rd week, 9/11 occured, which did make me feel very isolated
the polish dude was sitting around the place cracking cheapo beers, while shouting at the TV about doomsday... swell

4th week was pay day, relocation fee + 1st month salary
as i got my 2 checks, asked the team lead , can i go across to the bank to deposit these? , sure

went across, cashed them both in for what they were worth
went back to the office, called airport, booked first flight out

took one last call " hello , this is XXX helpdesk, how may i disconnect you" and i hung up

cab, to the appartement
wait here, i'll be right back
30 minutes later , i was at the airport, 2 hours after that, was back in Belgium....

2 weeks after that , recruter calls, "would you consider working for xxx" ( software company in which i was pretty speciallized) , in NL??

yeah sure, show me the money

still work there, 3 times the pay from Dublin , cheaper housing
don't need boat or plane to go back to Belgium for a weekend
it's not perfect, but a hellofalot better then that retarted Helldesk

Know exactly what you mean. Did the same thing but for two months...

Two "worst jobs" for me...

One was like NC, did hot tarring of roofs during the summer. Absolutely a crappy job, especially when you got the hot tar on your skin, where it burned until you could scrape it off.

Second was my first airport job. Was the airport lacky and did everything. Towards the end of summer, the supervisor came by and said that it was time to change out the sand on the water filtration areas. A circle over 50 feet in diameter and filled with sand.

All that crap that goes down the sink and potty went into this processor and they changed the sand every few months. I got to shovel it out, all 4 feet deep and 50 feet around, by hand. The smell was wonderful and there were remnants of everything still in the sand. Working in rubber chest waders in the summer topped off the whole experience. Took two weeks of shoveling it up into a dump truck.

Went to college the next year. Worked very hard as I did not want to shovel anything for a living...

Worst (lacky) job:
(College days) Stockboy/sales for a shoe store.
I was the Al Bundy for the little kids department.

On the other hand it was also quite inspiring. It made me realize that I had to do whatever possible to get ahead.