Thread: Most difficult job you ever had?

Mental Health Counselor at an Adolescent Psychiatric facility. Never knew when a riot was going to happen, or you were going to get hit with a chair, or assaulted. I was bit, punched, scratched, had my knee taken out. Also, some of the stories I'd hear were pretty terrible. Even worse than that, most of the staff were incompetent, would not "have your back", and did some illegal things to some of the patients. Almost any stereotypical horror you can imagine, either I saw or happened during my time working there.

Originally Posted by Viktyr Korimir

I've never been able to hold a job for more than a couple months at a time. I've worked a lot of jobs... but I've never had a job that was worse than being unemployed.

I've had a couple jobs which were worse than being unemployed, and I quit them each time.

Sometimes the paycheck doesn't justify the bull****. When the boss is a dick every single moment, when his favorets are also jerks, when the job itself is less than rewarding, and you have no recourse. I've quite those jobs and relyed on my savings to cover me until I found something else.

Tolorating a healthy level of usual bull**** is one thing, but just sometimes the pay doesn't justify the dipressive spiral you bring home to your family.

Oh, I've had jobs that were bad enough that I left as soon as I found something better. And I've left quite a few jobs involuntarily after having given someone a much-needed attitude adjustment. But I've only ever quit one job because I just couldn't continue working there-- and they were already planning on firing me.

Psychologically?

My last job.

My boss was a crazy, perverted drunk who was constantly threatening people. My sorta-boss (his girlfriend, hardly there) was an emotionally sadistic woman who neglected her kids (often by leaving them at the office pretty much unsupervised - in one case leaving her 2-year-old there while she had the flu and was vomiting).

I've never worked anyplace with such low morale and such a constant aroma of fear. And I've worked some **** jobs. It's impossible to describe how terrible the atmosphere was. Everyone was being used against each other and manipulated and emotionally abused.

One day, this crazy boss decided to ship out a batch of product that was obviously not right. The smell of it was making the people who prepared it feel sick. It was a consumable, and turned out it was making some of our customers sick too.

I whistleblew, anonymously. And I kept working there after I'd done so for about a month. Simultaneously, I was being harassed and threatened by a former employee. That was the most tense month of employment in my life. Honestly, it's one of those rare cases where I think being unemployed would have been better. I'd come home at the end of the day and just want to collapse - not from physical effort (my job was pretty cushy) but from being psychologically drained. I'd go out to catch my bus there in the morning and, like clockwork, have a mild panic attack while I stood at the stop. Every day. For a month.

Physically, I've worked, but never done anything truly back-breaking. I have injuries that don't really allow that - and I'm small. But I've pulled back-to-back 10-hour shifts in a hot room for weeks on end, going all the way through the holiday season. Every second or third shift I had 6-9 hours to pass out and that was it. Couldn't even remember my own name half the time.

Originally Posted by CaptainCourtesy

Mental Health Counselor at an Adolescent Psychiatric facility. Never knew when a riot was going to happen, or you were going to get hit with a chair, or assaulted. I was bit, punched, scratched, had my knee taken out. Also, some of the stories I'd hear were pretty terrible. Even worse than that, most of the staff were incompetent, would not "have your back", and did some illegal things to some of the patients. Almost any stereotypical horror you can imagine, either I saw or happened during my time working there.

I was looking into an internship at a place like that and when I did some research into what it was like working in such a place, the people I talked to had basically the same story.

Trying to work with sick people in an enviroment where language barriers and vast cultural differences made an already difficult situation so much harder. To say it was mentally, physically and emotionally draining would be an understatement. There was also initially very little support/post country de-briefing when i got home.

Originally Posted by Captain America

That's what my big brother does now. But at least he's not interrogating Hadji's in Iraq anymore. So I suppose that's a step up.

My prayers for his sanity. As a man he is spared the worst investigations - intra-familial sexual abuse with female victims. Incest families are the most crazy, volatile, unpredictable families of all because of the intense mind-set the whole family must hold to live with and keep secret on-going incest. Often the entire family (including the victim) will physically attack the investigators when this is exposed.

Originally Posted by CaptainCourtesy

Mental Health Counselor at an Adolescent Psychiatric facility. Never knew when a riot was going to happen, or you were going to get hit with a chair, or assaulted. I was bit, punched, scratched, had my knee taken out. Also, some of the stories I'd hear were pretty terrible. Even worse than that, most of the staff were incompetent, would not "have your back", and did some illegal things to some of the patients. Almost any stereotypical horror you can imagine, either I saw or happened during my time working there.

I worked in mental health for a while - both teens and adult.

The physical stuff from teens toward counselors was pretty rough but I was young then and was blessed with a lot of understanding of what was causing the outburst and patience.

I was fortunate to be working in a private setting that took abuse of patients by staff very seriously. The floor supervisors worked on the floor with us so it was exceedingly difficult to abuse patients without them finding out. If they saw or found out about abuse, we were all interviewed and if the other staff collaborated the info, the abuser was gone. The job paid a bit more than hospital and public mental health so we always had people willing to fill the positions.

Physically was working at a lumber mill and doing hard shovelling and cleanup work for 12hrs/day 6days/week

Mentally, the job I have now, being responsible for a computer system that affects 470 or so people, even minor changes can have profound and unintended effects.

Emotionally: managing a movie theater. . . seems so freaking stupid to say it but everyone's a dick when it comes to snacks and entertainment. Bums always trying to sneak in, employees always pecking out of the cash drawer and snack shack, people always complaining and picking fights when something wasn't perfect, late nights, old equipment that always broke down and pissed off movie-goers, parents who bring their kids to R rated movies that they shouldn't be seeing, children trying to sneak in, kids playing pranks, punks in the bathrooms causing problems . . . on and on.

Doing such a job was suppose to be simple, "all you have to do is . . . " But it turned into quite a challenge because I kept having to control myeslf, keep my mouth shut, be poliet, be nice. I managed other retail businesses and none of them were that difficult for me to do every day. When people come into shop they WANT to be left alone and usually don't cause trouble. When people go to be entertained they get unhappy quite quickly and WANT to bitch to you about it.

All I wanted to do sometimes was flip out at people and tell them to **** off. In fact: I did - twice - and then I quit.

Now physically: that's my DIY job here at the house . . . I've done everything from dig up and repair broken sewer lines under the house to crawling in the attic over snakeskins and dead mice just to get a room remodeled. . . I'm buff and not necessarily in a good way

Another tough job was on a fishing trawler. I started as an apprentice baiter. After a couple of seasons I worked my way up to master baiter.