I worked for a while as a preloader. It was pretty fast paced (4 car pull) but honestly wasn't too bad and I liked the fact that when I punched out, I was done. No emails, phone calls, or even thinking about work until I punched in the next morning. Groundhog Day effect was probably the worst part. Start the shift with the cages packed with packages, and spend the whole shift slowly emptying them, then get back in the next morning and they're completely stuffed again.

So were you just an unloader then? That's what I wanted when I went there, but got stuck loading - and the worst part (for me) was, again, the fact that they expected some neat walls being made like a 3D Tetris expert - while the supervisors come around and bitch endlessly about how sloppy you are...as the nonstop avalanche continues endlessly.

Worked at rent a center. Obviously you get to see a side of humanity you had no idea existed.

hated the bosses too. Super high pressure. So you got it from both the customers and the higher ups. sucked.

A packaging company through a temp agency in my teens just because the owner was the biggest slave driving kunt I've ever met in my life.

Refilling used toner cartridges was pretty bad too but at least the owner was cool there.

Preloader - loading delivery trucks ("package cars"). Basically these color coded 3 level cages (mine was top green) travel around an oval track. At the far end are guys taking packages off a belt and putting them in the correct cage while you're taking them out and loading them in the correct spot on the correct car. The cages are jammed full when you start and you spend the entire shift trying to empty them while the chargers continue to load them up. At the end of your shift all of your cages are empty and when you get in the next morning they're packed full and it all starts over again.

We can talk about the jobs themselves, or the employers, it's usually the employer more than the job.

I guess the worst job was a moving company. I think I was the only non-felon working there. Probably the only one with a HS diploma. It was back breaking and joint crushing manual labor for BS pay. Working with a bunch of ex-cons. The employer and their practices were absolute BS too.

From what I've seen even the most back breaking job can be tolerable if your boss+coworkers treat you with respect.

On the other hand a great job with awful boss+coworkers can be soul sucking.

Graveyard stock crew at Lowe's.

Wake up a 2 30 am, on the clock by 4am. Shift done at 12pm.

Just fking awful.

Bridge painter/ laborer.
I was paid $6 hr to slap toxic paint onto the Tappan Zee Bridge and carry heavy gas tanks on a thin catwalk under the bridge to the welding crew.


Summers of 89 and 90.

In high school I was a dishwasher and line cook at a buffet place that also served steaks, working maybe 15 hours a week. Mind numbing. We weren't allowed to play music to pass the time. Regardless of their position adults who worked there were absolutely joyless.

Transporting fish oil bottles in a van. It was a 3 hour drive. It was awful as the van and I would smell like fish for sometimes afterwards.

When I was in high school, a friend of the family bought a small neighborhood grocery store. He hired me to help him clean the place before he reopened it. I got into some things that made me gag.

Busboy, moved my parents' friends entire house full of boxes during 100 degree weather, medical assistant after college with 0 training at an urgent care that had on site CT and MRI. So we saw super sick patients and it was staffed by 3 ER docs, one was a complete sociopath and evil as ****. The other **** job was publix supermarket as a bag boy pushing like 500 carts at a time from the parking lots inside during the peak heat in summer. Was brutal and awful for $6.25 an hr.

1st job out of college.....Manager of a loan & tax service branch.

Made loans of $160 (yes....$160) up to about $10k....stupid high interest rates, just having to deal with low life's, liars, degenerates all day.......we also had to do our own collections......which started with calls and after they got 1 month behind we had to go to their house and knock on their door.

Was such a chit company to work for....we would be pushed to do everything we could to get every applicant approved, even if I knew that fukker wasnt going to pay it back, just to up our loan balance for the month....... then the next month my district manager would give me chit about making "bad loans" and in the same sentence tell me that I needed to get my loan balance up before month end. We were only allowed to loan to people who lived less than like 15 miles from the branch (and these branches are in just about every town, sometimes multiple under different names that they can legally operate), so it kind of limited our clientele.

Worked there for 2 years then quit after they sent me to a branch in a real chit town.....branch was deep in the red and had been since it opened. I was there for 2 months before I started getting chit about how bad the branch was doing and was put on a performance plan.....it's like they completely ignored the fact that the branch had been losing money for 3 years before I walked in. Had a sit down with my DM and he said something like "hey man, I get it....if you dont want to be here we dont want you here" and I said "great, consider this my 2 week notice"......he said "that's not what I meant, we want you to want to be here, we can work through this and get you back on top".....I said "Im better than this man, Im not going to put up with this anymore"