It’s a great day to be an accountant, looking forward to my 3 meetings today. Today’s question(s). What is the most boring job you’ve ever had? What is the most exciting job you’ve ever had? P.S. Yes Stucky, I can ask 2 f-ing questions if I want.
Question of the Day, Oct 6
Most boring: Washing dishes, .90c per hour back in 1976.
Most exciting: Installing seawalls in Lake Michigan back in 1970’s. Nothing like using water pumps to jet a hole in the sand while you wrestle a 12′ tall 6×6 post with waves trying to knock you down, to this day I don’t know why wearing waders was required, they filled with water immediately anyway.
If your foot slipped into the hole your partner was jetting the sand would encase your foot like it was cement.
WORST JOB EVER: Working in a clothing store at the local Mall in high school. Hours and hours of standing around watching size 16 middle age women trying to wear size 4 teeny bopper outfits. Even working at Jack in the Box was better because at least there was a sammich at the end of the shift there.
BEST JOB EVER: Getting up at 4 am to have my Dad drive me and my bike to the local horse stable to start grooming the horses, feeding/watering them and cleaning out the stalls. Good, solid, necessary work you could see the immediate and tangible benefit of and it was by my own hand.
MOST USEFUL JOB EVER (although I didn’t think so at the time): Transcribed oral history of early California almond farmers one summer, using an IBM Selectric typewriter, a cassette player and foot pedals. Learned to type like a demon while listening and thinking and moving several body parts. Best preparation for electronic medical records in modern medical practice you could hope for.
Actually, I’ve done so many weird and bizarre jobs in my life to help pay my way it was hard to narrow it down to these three.
There, I did 3, so there Stucky, heh.
Most exciting? Paratrooper. C’mon, lots of down time and hurry up and wait, but when someone hands you live grenades and they decide you’re not getting a reserve because you won’t be jumping high enough for it to matter if there’s a malfunction and it’s dark when the doors open except for green tracers coming up at the plane, how’s that not exciting?
Worst job? Paratrooper. You know what C-rations taste like after you’ve eaten your 50th box? You ever have to work for a month at hard physical labor and not be able to take a shower or change any item of clothing beyond skivvies and socks and then only once or twice? And have people scowl at you and berate you the whole time because it’s “good training”?
Most satisfying, worthwhile and rewarding thing I’ve ever done? Hardscrabble farming, hands down.
Boring: Financial analyst for military maintenance depot where I was “babysitting” a database that tracked costs for routine and non-routine repair of 6 different airframes and numerous missile systems. I was supposed to make sure the automatic update occurred on time each day and notify IT if it did not. I had reports to run weekly and monthly that were to be sent to various offices. I gave classes to folks who wanted to learn to use the database tools.
Exciting…. raising chickens here in the hills and planning for goats next spring.
Most boring? Standing in front of an injection-molding machine making 5-gallon buckets;
—1) press button to close door
—2) (wait about 45 seconds while machine does its thing)
—3) press button to open door.
—4) remove bucket, stack it right next to me.
—5) repeat for 8 motherfucking hours.
The factory was noisy, my area smelt of noxious plastic fumes, there was no air conditioning, and my “work area” was no greater than 25 square feet. MIND NUMBINGLY BORING!!
.
Best job ever? Writing original articles for you STMs! The pay sucks … but its a BLAST!!
Most boring job was working for an ice cream manufacturer. It was 1951 and I was 18. My job was to agitate the ice cream in a large vat. For 9 and 10 hours a day I would pull on what looked like ski poles and sort of drag the ice cream back and forth to prevent it from freezing. It was quite a workout and I looked forward to my lunch break, but it gave me the opportunity to do a lot of thinking.
Most exciting was for a memorable moment when I worked for a crematory in 1952. I was 19 and did some janitorial work. One evening a body came in and the instructions were to cremate the body with no service and no mourners. Cremations were not my duties but it turned out I was the only person available to do this. I had to open the coffin and look in on the man to see if he was the right person. He was Sergius M. Trufanoff and he matched the one prescribed for cremation. What turned out to be exciting was when I saw the newspapers the next day. Trufanoff as well as his pal Rasputin were known as Mad Monks of Russia. Because Trufanoff was so hated by the Bolsheviks he had to escape to America in 1921. Reading this and more made this job exciting. And to think I was the last person on earth to see him dead.
As an engineer / software developer the worst jobs I’ve had was being an employee. Big, undefined, fuzzy projects – you just sit there 75% of the time and get nothing accomplished. The older guy’s would sometimes fall asleep at their desks – looking like they were reading the spec. It took me about 10 years to get out that military / industrial complex.
The best was being self employed – started a software company, I could use my skills in designing systems, and getting them sold on a national level. Was never bored.
I did a lot of construction work and it was usually hard labor in the hot sun. The most enjoyable job was as a strikebreaker switchman and then trainman for the Florida East Coast because most of the time I was riding in the engine or caboose and enjoying the countryside or peoples backyards. It was a little dangerous and someone shot at me so you had to be careful. The pay was great and I would have become an engineer if I hadn’t had a low draft number and the Army wanted to draft me. I applied to FSU and was given a scholarship, graduated in 1969 and was happily teaching HS math when I was drafted by the Army. The military is not my cup of tea for many reasons; only about 10% of GI’s make it a career. In 1978, the Democrats eliminated the Civil Service Exam and thereafter I was repeatedly not hired or passed over for promotions by inferiors; that unconstitutional Leftist gender and race nepotism has been holding the cream down and destroying our once great Meritocracy. No job is really enjoyable when supervisors have a stupid liberal agenda.
Most exciting, rock climbing instructor
Most boring, rock climbing instructor
Climbing was exciting, teaching some wannabe not to kill himself was boring as fuck
Best and worst jobs for me were the same job – right now, owning my own small consulting firm. It should be the best job ever – working for myself, making good money, easy work, nice people, interesting field. But t’s also the worst – because despite all that, I fell like the sword of Damocles is hanging over my head in the form of pending economic drama. I can’t imagine doing any long-term business planning and I feel like everything I’m doing is bullshit since it ignores the pain that everyone (including my clients) are going to be feeling in the coming years.
Most Boring/Worst- Cooking tires on line in Curing Department at Michelin Tire plant. Quit that because was sitting in break room one day and co-worker proudly told me that this workplace had highest rate of Cancer in Nova Scotia. And that was saying something……..
Most Exciting- haven’t had that job yet. My wife wants to go all Hard Scrabble and get into farming. I’m 50 years old and although healthy not sure if guy my age can do it.
We sat on shore in Lismore N.S. yesterday and I think she has me convinced……
We’ll see!
Most boring- Cold calling for the Special Olympics. My apologies to Buffalo, NY for calling during dinner time. I didn’t work there very long once I was told I was to pitch a sales to grieving family members “Would you like to make a final donation in honor of your deceased family member?”. Pretty shitty thing to require an employee to do.
Most exciting- I wouldn’t describe any job as “exciting”.
Most boring – Working for my old man at his print shop as a kid.
Most exciting – Entering the IUOE (international union of operating engineers) apprenticeship and then going on to operate heavy equipment and learning to repair the machines for 15 years while working in CA.
Most boring – My first job, putting printer ribbons in boxes while nobody around habla Ingles, much less has anything interesting to say (I’m not a futbol! fan). Did my best at the job, but had to leave the company after I got the biggest raise on the floor after three months, and made the mistake of talking about it.
Most exciting – playing blackjack for a living. Doubling down on a soft 20 with a 5 showing and $1000 on the table, just because the math says it’s the right thing to do, does get the heart rate up. Lots of beautiful women in skimpy clothing is also nothing to complain about.
Most rewarding – Dad
Most boring…. affixing price tags on 34,000 toothpaste boxes for a drug store. $3.25 an hour
Best job…… Chinese food driver for a local restaurant. Drove a company car, Volkswagon Beetle, bright yellow, standard, and went through at least 5 clutches a year!! Tips were $75 a night back in ’72
Most Stable…….. Telephone man for 35 years.
Done lots of types of jobs in my 47-year work history, from my first job as a dishwasher at a country club where I nearly sliced my finger off to executive positions in Information Technology. But when I lived in Oregon and worked for the National Forest Service one summer as a field technician, my job was to survey the backcountry and inventory water, timber, and geologic resources. Each day I’d take a small NFS pickup truck to a different are of the forest (which included hundreds of acres of designated wilderness areas), park, and walk trails. Spectacular scenery, so each day was something to look forward to. I was probably stalked by a mountain lion a few times and didn’t know it.
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Forgot the most exciting part of that Forest Service job. We all had to take 4 days of forest fire training, and on the last day they would set fires and broke us up into teams to locate and suppress the fires. Fighting a forest fire is the most intense 30-60 minutes you can imagine–you get dehydrated in just a few minutes, the heat is obviously incredible, and the danger lift-threatening.
“life threatening”
Most boring – purchasing agent (“assistant buyer”) for a major oil company. A few lively days, but mostly was a big paper mill; getting in paper requisitions and choosing vendors for RFQ, wait for bids to return, evaluate and sometimes send bids to the field for approval, wait for approval to return or award business, sign purchase orders, deal with purchase orders that went bad (wrong material shipped, shipping damage, claims, warranty claims). No one really liked us except some of the foreign locations who depended on us to get what they needed. The top managers were The Emperor and Darth Vader prototypes. Transferred out when the opportunity arrived.
Most exciting – several, when things went south. Fought fires in an oil refinery when I was an operator during strike duty; you haven’t lived until you’re fought fires when everything around you is full of some kind of oil! Designed and built chemical facilities as a process / project engineer in a small company; variety is really nice, never the same project twice. Right now a consultant, doing process design mainly with other duties as needed to pay the bills; some slow days, but the busy ones are great!
Most boring…..working in management for Roadway Express in the late 70s and early 80s….good money at the time, but like I told my wife at the time; I’d work for half as much just to be happy.
Most exciting….probably working as a deckhand and First Mate on towboats moving barges on the Tennessee, Ohio, and Upper and Lower Mississippi Rivers back in the mid 70s. Exciting, dangerous and hard physical work, making tows up and making 600 foot locks with a 1200 foot long tow.
Boring: Factory assembly line work. The factory made the custom sheaths that slipped over bic lighters. They were a big seller in the 70’s. I can’t believe I worked there making those stupid things for 5 months.
Exciting: Long distance truck driving. There were long periods of boredom, but it had it’s moments. It’s especially exciting crossing the western mountain ranges in the winter.
Never had a boring job that lasted more than a week. I always liked working. Best job was bartending in a really nice club at the pier 66 hotel in Ft. Lauderdale. I was young and silly and single and that was the life for me. Big cash money, sleeping late, full benefits and lots of interesting people.
Starslacker…I’m envious…
boring long days installing guard rails 12/14 hours per day, seeing those rails lying on the ground for a few miles was like a chain gang. farming the most exciting, routine yet every day different, seeing your efforts over time was most rewarding.
The beautiful blonde has referred to my re-engineering efforts as ‘nigger rigging’. I take exception to that. Jerry-rigging, or jury-rigging as some idiots mistakenly call it, is bypassing a safety feature while attempting to make something fit where it doesn’t go. My buddy Dallas showed me how a bit of downtime in the lab can be used to experiment with minor processes, insignificant improvements that get no recognition.
The most fun I ever had working around a problem was the time we were taking ID pics for students at UTEP. We were using a modified Polaroid camera to print 4 pics at a time during registration. I had caught on that if I raised the camera to a certain height, I did not need to use the light we were supposed to aim at the student’s earlobe. When the flash broke, somebody asked me and I took over. I took pics so fast that the rest of the crew asked me to slow down because they were getting backed up cooking the ID cards.
Another time, my buddy Lee asked me to do chow hall duty for him and I negotiated the use of a pickup truck for the day. Ordinarily, the GI’s lined up around temporary chow hall. I memorixed change for small bills and taught myself on the spot to read numbers quickly and record them. I was doing so good, one soldier said, Hmph, evidently they don’t even notice the number (of his meal orders) I told him, I did, and I sounded off his number for him. Fuckers don’t appreciate good help.
Best job I ever had – founder / owner of concrete foundation company on Cape Cod during the 1980’s home building boom. Made personal income north of 100K per year – had so much fun it never felt like the extremely hard physical work that it was. S & L crises and the home building boom turned bust put an end to this fun – turned into a nightmare.
Worst job ever – I’ve never had a worst or a ‘most’ boring job. The “most boring job” I’ve never had was when I had no job / work at all.