I worked for a few (okay, okay, several) years in fast food. And really, I enjoyed it. It was not a bad job. If it didn't pay so piss-poor, who knows? I might still be working there. God forbid.
But there used to be a guy who would come to the restaurant a couple of times a year. We called him "the etcher". Because his job was to come in at night just before we closed. He would spend the night cleaning the grout in the tile floors with muriatic acid. Which will eat your flesh down to the bone in a heartbeat if you are not careful.
And I always thought that had to be the worst job ever. You're there, all by yourself, in a closed restaurant, in the middle of the night, using highly corrosive stuff to clean several hundred square feet of tile grout. And then you move on to another restaurant and do the exact same thing the next night. And the next.
So I got to thinking about what my "worst job ever" was, and I have to say it was working for my Dad when I was right out of high school. He owned a machine shop named, I shit you not - Progressive Tool. Hahahahahahaha!
I started out at the bottom, in the deburring room. Basically, deburring involves taking a more-or-less flat piece of metal which had lots of holes punched in it and was usually about the size of your hand or a little bigger, and using a grinding wheel to take the sharp edges off. It took a while to get the hang of it, but once you did, it was absolutely mindless work.
And here's the thing: You would get in a new order, and you'd grind the first piece, and each piece took a set amount of time - maybe fifteen seconds, maybe five minutes, depending upon the complexity of the part. And each order would be for thousands of the exact same part. You could sit there for weeks doing the exact same thing, over and over and over again, for eight hours a day. And at the end of the day, you would have tiny little metal shavings in your clothes, in your hair, in your nose ....... you get the picture.
And the people in the deburring room had worked there for years. The woman who trained me, Doris, worked there basically her entire adult life. I have no idea how she stayed sane. I lasted just a few months before I couldn't take it anymore and quit. (Sorry, Dad.)
I know that there are worse jobs than that, but that's my personal "worst job ever". What's yours?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
It's so perfect that her name was Doris.
I worked at Phil's Chicken House for a few years. It sucked. Your clothes, hair and skin would be infused with chicken grease.
I cleaned the deep fryers and did deep sink at a cafeteria for about six months. Wet, covered with grease and other people's food -- yuck.
I also sold blood stain remover and shoes at a nursing uniform store. It's like being a bartender (everybody's got a sob story) without the tips.
The worst one, though, I think, was doing day labor on local truck farms and greenhouses. The farmers bitch about giving you a dime a quart for strawberries, greenhouses are hot as hell in July, and there's nothing itchier than picking tomatoes eight hours a day.
Muriatic acid works good on tile grout? Who knew!? Where can I get me some?
Ex - you worked at Phil's? I've heard horror stories about the kitchen there.
Bridgett - please forgive me, but I burst out laughing at "I also sold blood stain remover ...."
And Kerri, try Walmart. (Kidding!)
Post a Comment