Education & Work What's the hardest job you've ever done?

Those shops where you go to hire videos...places like "Video-Ezy", or "Blockbuster", etc in those days it was VHS videos.

In the '80's they often combined them into the local supermarkets in smaller towns.

 

Gosh...looking back, there's been so many!

Cleaning Sani Bins...we were subcontractors & had a 'toilet' run where we changed soaps, air freshners & sani bins.
Door to door sales.....short term, this was part-time to supplement income. I don't recall making much money.
Debt Collector....the worst was rocking up to serve papers on some idiot & they tried to throw a park bench at me.
Telemarketer....both me & hubby were quite good at this
Avon...going house to house with catalogs, with the babies in a pram
Tupperware
Cleaning jewellery....standing outside of a jeweler with a small workstation, calling out to the people as they walked past "would you like your ring cleaned". You can imagine the comments I got all day long.
Reno'ing houses, where there's a nasty cockroach infestation, and having them drop from the ceiling all over you.
Temping as a bookkeeper. One job was just ticking off numbers from a large ledger, day in, day out. I'd be so bored that I'd fall asleep at the desk. That was worse than ANY of the other ones just for the sheer tedium.
Mother of two teenage girls... @Lil Skater

 

Retirement.

Dead end job.
On call, 7 days/week, 24 hours/day.
Long shifts.
Irregular shift start and shift end times with typically no prior notice.
Pay is based on a lump sum, not how many hours you put in.
Unclear/no delineation between work time and personal time.
The waiting list is quite long and everyone wants to take your position.
No personalised job description.
No formal training provided.
No external performance reviews (you have to do your own).
Expected to entertain on a regular basis including going out to lunch/dinner, playing golf, attending sporting events, etc.
Can be called upon to travel intrastate, interstate or even international, at short notice.
Have to pay for travel expenses yourself.
Expected to take your spouse/partner with you when travelling.
For some reason, it is not covered by Workers Comp - don't get injured on the job.
All the advertising portrays it as a glamorous role - take it from me, it is very stressful (you need a lot of downtime, social time, holidays, etc to handle the immense pressure).
Once you accept the job, it is very hard to leave it and find another (doesn't look good on your resume).

I trust you get the picture. I have been in my current role for 7 years and I can't see any way out.

Before applying, make sure you have the right physical attributes, the right mental capacity, the right financial resources, etc to take on the role. Otherwise, it will be a wasted opportunity.

In spite of all of the above, I totally love what I am doing and I am NOT going to give it up for anyone .

 

Two of the hardest jobs I have had have been mentally tough and not physically tough and both involved selling products I didn't believe in.

First one I was a studio manager for a photographic company and the end product was poor quality and expensive. Some of the sales techniques I was told to use and have to make my staff use were downright wrong and potentially illegal. I'm surprised I lasted about 18 months. The company ended up going bust.

Second was selling an insurance product. It was expensive but seemed ok for what it was. Not great, but ok. I was not the best but better than average sales person and did that for about 8 months until I overheard a conversation from the campaign director that the claim to payout ratio was less than 1% for this particular product. For some people this wasn't a particularly cheap product and could get much better suited products for less then to find out pretty much everyone who made a claim had it denied ruined it for me. After finding that out I barely made any sales because I felt horrible selling this product to people. My boss liked me and I was a good worker so I was moved into a compliance role which was much better suited for me and did that for a couple of years before moving on with the same company.

 

For me it was a milk mans offsider in Kingswood in my teens. I had the job of lugging the metal baskets with a dozen bottles up the many flights of stairs to all the walk up apartments. And of course you'd get the occasional tenant who'd want a carton of cream too so you'd run back down and get that and then tenant #2 would ask something similar so got pretty fit doing that!

Most mind numbing job was working on a line with an air riveter assembling filing cabinets, lasted 3 months at that!

 

Working under low set houses where you have no room to move and a big water rat or snake comes out of nowhere--or on roofs in a hot queensland 45 degree summer and you slip on your own sweat and hope you grap the gutter on the waydown and dreaming about when i no longer have to work 9--5 and 5--9..

 

Shovelling chook **** in school holidays. Dusty when dry and heavy when wet.

Digging trenches in pure sand dunes near Hillarys, WA. The Freo Dr would blow all the sand back in the trenches each evening and had to clean them out again each day. One shovel full out, two more would roll back in.

Rural Fencing contractor. More digging.....

I'm still digging but not as much, keeps me out of the gym.

 

I have three contenders:

1. Fishmonger (my first job): used to have to fillet, gut and cutlet dozens of fresh fish for customers! Sorry for my parents who had to pick me up after work... (the stench!)
   
   
2. Mystery shopper: I've mystery shopped many businesses, including Virgin (free flights!)
   
   But the hardest....
   
   
3. Cold Call (Telephone) Opinion Polling: I used to work at a market research company during my uni days. They paid well and, since I was good at my job (I can be very persuasive, plus have a warm 'radio voice') they used to roster me on the hardest jobs...
   
   The hardest of all was a ~40 min telephone survey where I had survey women over the age of 40 about their incontinence. The cold call numbers where completely random so in the first 30 seconds of speaking I had to:
   1: Ask them about their age
   2: Ask them if they experienced incontinence
   3: Convince them to stay on the phone for over 40 mins while I asked increasingly personal questions (there was no incentive for them!)

 

And you can see why lots of people won't answer land line phones anymore.

 

I did that too, but I loved it. I didn't do the Virgin ones. My favourite was Star City, where I got free meals (at the Astral) and free shows, and accommodation.

I mostly worked it like a full time job, during the years the family was training for World Championships. We spent over $36k on skating in one year....and I was a stay at home mum....so the money & freebies was great at that time.

There is a forum, where everyone announces the release of the jobs & I would schedule large runs of jobs, then come home & input the data. Unlike most of the shoppers, who would just do a few local jobs for fun, or pocket change, I was highly motivated, and where I had a choice of items to be bought, would only buy things that I'd normally have to buy anyway.

Another one that I liked was the Coles jobs. Really easy tick & flick. They didn't pay much, but I could do a run of 20 of them a day, and they set down three items that you had to buy. A deli item, a cleaning item, and one thing of your choice. Women would get one job & do their whole shop for the week, but not me! I had it down to a fine art. I'd take an esky for the deli where I'd get just a couple of slices of meat & chose the lowest cost cleaning item that I could find & stockpiled it. I've STILL got shampoo & liquid soap left.....and that was over 10 years ago.

From memory, those jobs paid $18 each, so 20 of them in day worked out @ $360, but only $5 was taxable income.

 

You R a clever girl...