So there I was, a 19-year-old student spending my summer working in the quality control department of a clothing manufacture. And I hated it. I hated the work, I hated my colleagues, and I hated the waking up at 6am in order to get there.
But the worst was to come.
All day there had been rumours flying around the factory. One of the lorry drivers bringing a load of jeans from Poland had discovered three illegal immigrants huddling in the back of his truck. The police had been called and the poor unfortunate souls had been carted off to await repatriotation.
It’s a long way from Poland to England, and the toilet facilities in the back of trucks are sparse at best. So the stowaways had been opening up the individually wrapped pairs of jeans, doing their business in them, and then sealing them back up.
Now if were up to me they would have thrown away every box that had been tampered with and just claimed on the insurance. But unfortunately it wasn’t up to me, it was up to the management who thought that it would be a much better idea to get some poor sap to open each and every packet and find out if it had been urinated or defecated in.
Guess who was that sap.
Now I’m not a stranger to the more unpleasant fluids in life. I’m a parent and I’m a nurse and I’ve wiped plenty of bottoms on both sides of the generation gap. But I’ve never had to do anything quite so stomach churning as search through that pile of plastic bags.
And that, ladies and gentelmen, was the worst job I ever had. What was yours?
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In July of this year I shall be walking 78 miles in 6 days in aid of the Joseph Salmon Trust, a charity founded by my close friends in memorial to their son Joseph who died aged 3 in April of 2005. Please look here for further details and consider sponsoring me. Thank you.
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Wow. I’ve got nothing on that. Strange jobs, yes (at a nuclear power plant for one), but nothing that would inspire as much hatred of coming to work in the morning as what you just described.
Please tell me the summer was over soon after that experience?
ugh.
I don’t know who’s gonna top that. I really don’t. Wow. Just wow.
Kathy’s last blog post..I Can See Clearly Now
I have artificially inseminated our Hereford cows every July for almost 30 years! But I think your experience inspecting those packages tops even that!
That is truly gross, BUT I might be able to top it. Like you, I have seen my share of fluids ejected from people, when I was an Emergency Medical Technician, but at least we are doing something for the greater good, so what if someone projectile vomits on my face. I’ve also worked as a housekeeper in a hospital including the operating rooms and morgue.
BUT, way back in 83, my first year in college, I was an engineering student and the first job that I had related to engineering was I had to work with a company that had to do a study on the sewage system on a town near Boston. So, every morning, we had to pop open manhole covers. Usually, all we had to do was stick a meter down into the pipe and record what direction the crap flowed. But occasionally we had to go down inside the sewer and determine why it was not flowing. We would find all sorts of goodies during these expeditions, from dead animals to years worth of feminine hygiene products. The funniest part is that we also had to record the busiest times of the day, which we determined to be immediately after the opening monologue to the Johnny Carson show. We would stand there, watching for the monologue to be over in someone’s living room window. Then we would measure the impact on the system after an en masse flush.
Thanks for bringing those memories “flooding” back!
Dan Leone’s last blog post..Being A Parent Without Being Apparent
OmG! So nasty. That is serious ‘crap’ going on there. I had a job in construction that was nasty as well. Foremen of a drywall company. Apprently, many sheetrockers like to crap in buckets and leave them in the homes for foremens to find and dispose of. In the summer these buckets, also filled with pee, would begin to stink and although covered you knew which one had the nastiness in it.
I remember one time I threw one in a dumpster and it somehow popped open and the contents sprayed me…it was so nasty a dude standing next to me threw up. Not kidding.
I suppose as a nurse I’ve had my fair share of disgusting fluids on or near my person, so much so that you kind of get used to it. The worst experience I had would have to be one evening after a code blue had gone bad. It was a tiny hospital and support staff was negligible, so after preparing the dearly departed I was charged with the task of delivering him to the hospital morgue, basically a locked cooler garage type shed in the back of the hospital on the other side of the parking lot. It was tiny. I delivered the package and as I was backing out tripped and fell into a wall of plastic formaldehyde filled buckets. I was soaked. Worst part would be that each one of those buckets contained at least one but no less that three body parts. I spent the better part of 2 hours tossing tissues into random buckets and trying to clean up my mess. Never told administration. The phrase that kept running on endless replay loop in my head was—Well then whose brain did you get? Abby something. Oh yes, Abby Normal.
Bad night.
Ed (zoesdad)’s last blog post..You’ve made me proud…..
I’m just here to change my Wbit.
Your job was gross.
Whit’s last blog post..We Partied Like It Was His Birthday
Eeew…you’ve got the lurgy.
Your job was rubbish.
Did you get any free jeans?
Sam’s last blog post..A Self Portrait(s)
Nothing I have ever done in life is as nasty as that.
And I have two kids – so that’s sayin’ something.
Miss Britt’s last blog post..Why This Zoo Hater Is Now An Official Annual Member
Seriously, were you just laughing your nuts off yesterday at our pathetic attempts to pre-empt you rworst job ever story?
Bec’s last blog post..Little Friends
Daaaaaamn. I can’t even begin to compete with that. The worst I ever had was the first year I worked at a summer camp, I was assigned to wash dishes all day long, day after day, in the hot kitchen. But we managed to have fun when we cleaned the floor by setting up goals at either end and playing hockey with brooms and a bar of soap.
Holmes’s last blog post..Thanks all around
I’ve led a charmed life, I guess. The worst job I ever had was selling popcorn at Disneyland. It’s tough standing in the Happiest Place On Earth, forced to inhale delicious popcorn fumes, while visiting with foreigners in mouse-ear hats.
I don’t like using Americanisms when I wouldn’t normally, but that was GROSS DUDE.
I’ve not had gross, but I’ve had boring, picking baby weeds out of forestry tree beds for an entire Summer.
You’ve nodded off just reading about it…
Xbox4NappyRash’s last blog post..Tit-less Monday
My worst job was planting pine tree seedlings for a summer. It sounds like a noble cause, but in reality it sucks ass. After the first day. During the first day. On the first tree. I didn’t like it.
Jeff’s last blog post..Marmite VS Vegemite – The Taste Test Challenge!
my worst job was recording the serial numbers on light bulbs. And counting the light bulbs while staring at them. Probably was not as bad as what you had to do.
Nina’s last blog post..10 minutes or less
On my first day working in a movie theater in high school, some dumbass decided to smear his poo all over the bathroom stall walls. Since I was the newbie, I got to clean it.
Then I scooped popcorn and served drinks. Ew.
Kristina’s last blog post..The difference between Obama and McCain
Hah !
Thats nothing.
I was once head scorer for the Leeds Cricket team.
You people don’t know the meaning of the word “boredom”
Gary’s last blog post..Goodbye, goodbye, we’re leaving you goodbye…
I can’t compete with a lot of stories…
I clean toilets….but that’s as far as it gets.
@ Gary..I guess it equels cricket? *hides for cricket fans*
Arjan’s last blog post..Megabattle: Nids vs Iron Warriors
Jenk -I think I quit the week after. God knows why I didn’t quit that very afternoon.
CamiKaos – Indeed.
Kathy – I had a friend who worked with people with sever learning difficulties. One of his clients had a habit of eating his own feces and then vomiting it over the care staff.
His story beats mine by quite a large margin.
Lise M – I once saw a rubber cow on a farm that they used for the purposes of collecting the bull sperm. It amused me greatly.
Dan Leone – Yep, I think you have me beat too.
Joe – For my money you beat me too.
Ed – Bad night indeed.
Whit – Keep your Wbit to yourself in future.
Nat – Fortunately it isn’t the “dreaded” variety.
Sam – As far as I can remember they were all women’s jeans. I should have brought some home for you though.
Miss Britt – Come now, you work for Avitable. Surely that has to mean something.
Bec – There’s a couple of people commenting here that have me beat.
Holmes – I once applied to work at an American summer camp, but pulled out at the last moment. One of my few regrets.
Phil – I dunno, I’ve heard that that mouse can get pretty frisky after hours.
Xbox4NappyRash – Zzzzzzzz.
Jeff – Back breaking too i should imagine.
Nina – So, exactly how many Ninas did you discover it took to screw in a lightbulb?
Kristina – Ewww. It makes you wonder why we agreed to do it and didn’t quit on the spot.
Gary – You have my abject sympathies.
Arjan – Perhaps you need to smear some poo around yourself, just so you can get a few good war stories.