My Worst Job

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TRyan
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My Worst Job

Post by TRyan »

Worked in a freezer as a "picker" for a frozen food distributor. But these guys beat me hands-down ...

http://www.bcentral.com/articles/isyn/d ... n&LID=3800

It is a job that is not only dirty and smelly, but also can be dangerous. Gases that can build up in sewage lines could, unfiltered, kill a man with two breaths, says Luis Sanchez, a department employee who says he nearly lost his life that way.
"Buy Low Sell High"
WiseNLucky
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Post by WiseNLucky »

None of mine were that bad!

Boy, I can't really decide which was my worst.

In the 1970s I worked for minimum wage at Long John Silvers (I still love their food, artery clogging and all). In those days, you worked free style with the grease. It was in a big vat and you had to drop the food in by hand. You had to get really close to the surface, partially submerge the food, and then let go. If there was any rotation on the food as you let go, you got splashed with hot grease. If you tried to avoid that by letting the food go too far from the surface, you got a really BIG splash. All of us working there had oozing burn sores up and down our hands and arms.

I left that job for a higher paying one as a buffer at a brass manufacturing facility. I thought it would involve floors and a big machine when I took the job. It did involve a big machine which stood still with large hard cotton pads spinning in a perpendicular motion at 3500 rpm. You put on gloves, grabbed a piece of brass, and stuck it into the spinning pads. If you let go (usually against your will), the machine would toss the piece of brass down or back and away from you. Since there were 20 other people in the same room doing the same thing, this put their lives at risk. So a hood was placed over the spinning pads. That meant that when a piece of brass was ripped out of your hands, it would travel around the wheel and get thrown right back at you hard enough to impale you. So we wore chest armor to take the piercing force of the blow and ended up only with bruises. I stayed with that job through several broken fingers (from the machine ripping the piece out of your hands) until one of the pieces of brass missed the hood, bounced off the concrete floor, came up under my armor and hit me in the nuts. I still have that piece of brass in my closet at home.

My next job was in the Texas oilfields. I walked miles each day in the West-Texas desert picking up long pieces of steel pipe and throwing them over a 5-foot fence. Two people did that with 110 lb. steel pipe lengths. One day, the owner called out on the truck radio and asked if anyone knew how to do bookkeeping. I reported back that I knew how to balance a checkbook. It turned out I was the most qualified candidate. The bookkeeper had gotten the books out of balance, couldn't find the problem, and quit. It took me three days but I found the problem. (Wanderer -- manual double-entry system. She had booked both sides of an entry as debits. Not knowing double-entry accounting, I didn't know to cut the out of balance amount in half and look for that number. Still, I eventually found it). My employer was so impressed they enrolled me in an entry level accounting class. I took well to college and eventually became a CPA.

Interesting side note -- I later married the oil company owner's daughter. That company was their first in a string of several bankruptcies that ended up with them now living in my house. I shudder to think about how they went from millionaires to hanger's on. A valuable lesson for me.
WiseNLucky

I just wish everyone could step back and get less car and less house then they want, and realize they don't NEED more. -- NeuroFool
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BenSolar
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Post by BenSolar »

Thank you for the vivid post, W&L! Had me chuckling.
In the 1970s I worked for minimum wage at Long John Silvers In those days, you worked free style with the grease. ... All of us working there had oozing burn sores up and down our hands and arms.


EWWW! That is one gnarly image of the food prep industry that will stick in my mind for a while. I guess my worst job was also in fast food: waiting tables at Pizza Hut. Some of the chores I've taken on as a landlord have been even worse, though. But as a whole I prefer landlording.
I left that job for a higher paying one as a buffer at a brass manufacturing facility. ... until one of the pieces of brass missed the hood, bounced off the concrete floor, came up under my armor and hit me in the nuts. I still have that piece of brass in my closet at home.


OUCH!!! :shock:New meaning for the term "brass balls". :lol:
"Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for." - Epicurus
WiseNLucky
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Post by WiseNLucky »

New meaning for the term "brass balls".


Yeah, it actually has a dent in the shape of one of my balls (it was travelling that fast when it hit me). Pain fades with time but I still remember . . .
WiseNLucky

I just wish everyone could step back and get less car and less house then they want, and realize they don't NEED more. -- NeuroFool
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ataloss
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Post by ataloss »

Thanks wnl and tryan, this makes the dilbertesque things I deal with seem rather minor :wink:
Have fun.

Ataloss
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karma
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Post by karma »

Well, it wasn't a worst job, because I had an excellent supervisor, but I bet you "guys" never had to fit a lady with a 58" bust for a bra. And, no, you wouldn't have wanted to. :lol:
karma
WiseNLucky
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Post by WiseNLucky »

And, no, you wouldn't have wanted to.


Thanks for the wonderful mind-picture. :shock:
WiseNLucky

I just wish everyone could step back and get less car and less house then they want, and realize they don't NEED more. -- NeuroFool
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