Who Has The Worst Job Here at DU?

We come from all walks of life. Some of us have great jobs, some of us have awful jobs, some of us are unemployed, retired, or just plain independently wealthy. Remember to share.

One summer, I had to clean out empty plastic tubes that were previously populated with laboratory rats. Needless to say, it was very messy, especially for $5.00 an hour.

I saw an old Popular Science magazine that listed the Top 10 bad jobs in the science field. Here is a sample:

1. Flatus Odor Judge: Odor judges are common in the research labs of mouthwash companies, where the halitosis-inflicted blow great gusts
of breath in their faces to test product efficacy. But Minneapolis gastroenterologist Michael Levitt recently took the job to another level-or, rather, to the other end. Levitt paid two brave souls to indulge repeatedly in the odors of other people's farts. (Levitt refuses to divulge the remuneration, but it would seem safe to characterize it thusly: Not enough.) Sixteen healthy subjects volunteered to eat pinto beans and insert small plastic collection tubes into their anuses (worst-job runners-up, to be sure). After each "episode of flatulence," Levitt syringed the gas into a discrete container, rigorously maintaining fart integrity. The odor judges then sat down with at least 100 samples, opened the caps one at a time, and inhaled robustly. As their faces writhed in agony, they rated just how noxious the smell was. The samples were also chemically analyzed, and-eureka!-Levitt determined definitively the most malodorous component of the human flatus: hydrogen sulfide.

2. Dysentery Stool-Sample Analyzer: In the early '80s, Virginia Tech profs Tracy Wilkins and David Lyerly studied the diarrhea-causing
microbe Clostridium difficile in sample after sample after sample of loose stool from the disease's victims. They became such crack dysentery docs that they launched a company, Techlab, dedicated to making stool-analysis kits. Today, Techlab employs 40 people, 19 of whom spend their working hours opening sloppy stool canisters and analyzing their contents in order to test the effectiveness of the company's kits. You'd have to have a pretty good sense of humor, right? Well, fortunately, they do. The Techlab Web site sells T-shirts with cartoons on the front (two flies hover over two blobs of dung; one says to the other, "Pardon me, is this stool taken?") and the company motto on the back: "Techlab: #1 in the #2 Business!"

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2003-09/worst-jobs-science-2003

Well...can any of you beat THOSE jobs?

there is no contest ---

Most of my own to date have tended towards "tedious" rather than "soul-destroying," so I'm pretty fortunate. (Well, sort of, being currently unemployed.)

He has to deal with asshole like me, does he not? :evilgrin:

one hot august day, i had to put on chest-high 'waders', like fishermen wear, and be lowered into a 40-ft. deep aeration tank, where raw sewage is aerated by something akin to a giant blender. we were rebuilding the 'blender' part of the aeration tanks.
the tank i was being lowered into had been pumped out, but there was still 4-6 ft. of thick raw sewage in the tank, with a LARGE pump in the center. a large ridge of stiffer sewage surronding the center of the tank was keeping the runnier sewage from getting to the pump in the center. wearing my waders, and armed with a shovel, i had to keep digging trenches in the ridge of more solid sewage to allow the runnier stuff to flow to the pump.

top that.

No pity here. Some of us would love to have a job. Even a bad job is a bit of an improvement over no job.

An income is an improvement over no income. Incomes and jobs are not the same thing.

Let's keep that straight, this is still the Land of The Dollar.

And being occupied by a bad job might prevent you from later getting a good job (or other income).

if one is unemployd and needs to be self-supporting.

Apparently you're not in that place. Consider yourself lucky. But don't think you're bulletproof.

Thanks.

Unlike the two 50+ year old women coversing at an adjoining resturant table over the weekend. They both think they are bulletproof and that their jobs are safe. One works in a one doctor medical office - and the doctor has already tried to bring in another MD to buy out the practice so he can retire. Doc could just close the place up - and a new MD might not have staff loyalties. The other woamn has been working long overtime hours for several months now preparing documents for account closings. When those accounts go away so does the work they required. Duh. I'd be sweating bullets if I were them given the present state of our economy.

Papa Johns Delivery driver. minimum wage, 150+ pizza miles on a car the barely runs every night. No respect from anyone. Hey pizza boy got some free pizza for me? Go to the gas station and the attendant says, where is my pizza? Go through a drive through and the person asks "where my pizza". Friday night driving with the windows down jeep full of kids pull up next to you, the kid in passenger seat says, Hey pizza boy got any free pizza? Right before he flicks his lit cigarette into your open window. Or getting empty beer cans thrown at when delivering to the local college campus. ( lenoir Rhyne College to be exact, fucking cock suckers ) Or how about making runs to the local hospital where the self richous nurses treat you like shit and never tip, walking through the hospital knowing that you haven't been to see a doctor in 10+ years, and that you are one ailment away from financial ruin. Worst part about about hospital runs is that the doctors and nurses expect massive deals and coupons when they order, like we are suposed to give them special treatment. Do they have coupons or sales? Fuck no. Do they have 2-4-1 x-rays? how about half price physicals on Wednesdays? Refer a friend get half off your next visit? No, No, and hell no.
An added benefit is that pizza people get robbed often. I have been driving for 8 years and have been robbed three times, once at gun point, once by a group of thugs, and once I got smacked on the back of the head and knocked out cold by my own maglight. For minimum wage, and no benefits. And especially no respect. And if you have more then your 20 dollar "bank" on you when you get robbed, well thats your fault and it's coming out of your check. Along with any medical bills you might incur if you cannot pass a drug test. Speaking of drug tests, their is no pre employment drug screen, they know better. However they do have pre wage raise drug tests, fuckers know that the vast majority of pizza people use drugs. So they actively hire potheads knowing that they will never have to pay them more than minimum wage.


Well thats the end of my rant feel free to talk shit about my lack of english skills, my inability to use spell check, or my complete failure at punctuation. Remember I deliver pizza, so as anyone can tell you Im not very smart.
So feel free to talk as much shit about this post as you like, I work again tomorrow. I will conceder the lashing I get from the grammar police a warm up.

oh one other thing, tip the pizza less the two dollars and you might as well tell him to go fuck himself, it would be nicer.
According to Dominos, the average tip given to a pizza person was two dollars, in 1985.

If it helps any, I never tip less than five bucks, ten if the weather is really hot or it's raining (on hot days, he gets a tall, chilled, sweet iced-tea to take with him). And during football games when the guys are over, we all chip in for the tip, and the guy ALWAYS has a goofy grin on his face when he gets it.

We're not all schmucks. :)

Dilevered pizza is twenty bucks for me. It's usually a thirteen dollar pizza and I hand the man a twenty. I had to dilever meds to various nursing homes for a while. It put 250 miles on my car every night over mountains in the snow, and the company was never able to explain how they calculated my mileage reimbursement. Their business model was designed around desperate people.

Twenty thousand particularly fluffy neopagans. It was painful.

:rofl:

They don't get paid yet they certainly have a JOB, a very difficult job and if they are doing it right, they have pissed off some while earning praise from others!

I supervise twentysomething twentysomethings...

Maybe there are worse jobs in the world, but after spending a week in my shoes one morning, you may be hard pressed to think of any.

Every 'dude' has a garage band that will be "bigger than The Beatles" one of these days. Every girl is going to be a successful poet one of these days-- who knew that good poetry demands you dot every "i" with little hearts...?

"Dude-- come out to the show this weekend! We're gonna cover Freebird, but we're gonna do it Ska!!!"

"LanternWaste? Would you read my new sonnet? It's about how I want to kill myself if I'm separated from my boyfriend for more than three hours at a stretch. It's much happier than my last one..."


There is a hell. There really is.

and find those sorts of behaviors to be kind of touchingly funny. If they actually invite you to hear their bands, that's a pretty serious compliment to you. (You must secretly like them beneath your pretend-bitterness.)

I've had a few bad jobs. None of them hold a candle to the poster up above who had to wade in semi-liquid shit though.

"You must secretly like them beneath your pretend-bitterness"

Rats. Am I that transparent?

Do remember those two old guys from The Muppets-- the ones who sat in the balcony and jeered at whatever was happening? That's how I try to come across at the office-- but they see through it almost as quickly as you did, and know precisely how to play me and which buttons of mine to push to get the day off or leave early when they put their minds to it. :)

Yet still-- today's youth is something I find I can only take in small doses-- overloads of it leave me thoroughly exhausted and completely confused. :crazy:


On edit-- very cool homepage! I just spent twenty minutes there, and know what my surfing will be tomorrow at lunch. Bats-- who knew...? :P

I picture you as the gruff marshmallow, Lou Grant figure.

Thanks for the nice words about the webpage, it's not my personal page, but that of a bat conservatory at Cranbrook in Metro Detroit. I just happen to like bats and support bat conservation efforts.

:shrug:

Why does a herd of cats need supervision? :evilgrin:

Heck, I imagine even 60 year old need Supervisors. But in the interest of full disclosure, I'm actually their Manager, but supervisor sounded less stuffy. But now that I say it 'Supervisor' a few times, it sounds just as stuffy. :P

I was thinking of it in more of a baby-sitting capacity....but, then again, maybe I wasn't too far off. ;)

Not fun.

Tearing a 60-year old tin roof off of a working brick factory - right above the kilns. Fiberglass and asbestos flying in the air, getting in your clothes and itching like mad.

And to top it off, if you stepped in the wrong place, your foot went right through the thin metal, slicing your leg.

AND, I was working for my father.

I was never so happy to be going to university in the fall.

try and top it.

http://www.noob.us/miscellaneous/worst-job-in-the-world-nsfw/

Always working for da man, with little or no appreciation.