Going to blow most miscers minds with this one, but one of my first jobs was actually selling encyclopedias door to door. No lie. It was actually before the days of CD Roms and when people purchased actual books to have in their homes. Yes, I'm that old.

We would get dropped off in the morning in a suburb and expected to knock on doors and try to get into homes with a half hour sales pitch. A set of books was 2k, which made it totally impossible to sell, never mind I was walking around in the summer in a shirt and tie to look "professional". I worked there for two months and sold two sets in that time. All commission by the way, so all day you were walking around for free trying to make money.

The only asset to the job was it made me completely bulletproof talking to anybody and I could strike up a conversation in a moment and be totally comfortable. Otherwise the job was a total waste of time.

What kind of work do you do now?

I've done door to door stuff. Got bitched out a lot, understandably. brb bother people at dinner time.

My dad made me work in my uncle's factory for the summer making boxes when I was 16. Most of the other employees spoke Spanish and I didn't. It was an hour away and my shift started at 7am. I worked the cutter with a guy named Martin, and he knew enough English to help me not get my arm cut off. I did it for the whole summer and it got way over 100 degrees in there with fans but no A/C. With 2 weeks left of the summer my uncle told me I could stop coming in. They were trying to teach me a lesson and get me to break. One of the senior guys had his son work there the previous summer and after the first 3 weeks he refused to go back in. They had bet with my dad whether I would last shorter or longer than him.

Everything has its pros and cons. I've only had 4 different jobs. 1 in IT helpdesk for university, then 3 jobs amongst 2 companies post-college.

Although the IT helpdesk job obviously paid the worst ($9/hr, eventually $10/hr), it was USUALLY very chill. The coworkers were funny, played video games, DnD, card games all the time. They made the experience enjoyable. The pay was probably the worst thing about it, the second was picking up a phone having NO CLUE what awaited you, and everyone calling IT is usually stressed out, impatient, and/or confused AF.

I'd say my first job out of college was the worst. The reason is simply the lack of employee benefits/compensation, compared to the stress is caused. We were salaried, but had many many many times where we had to work overtime. To grow in the company you had to actually stand in front of the company's VPs and other upper management, and give a presentation to them to sell why you deserve to get promoted, on top of fulfilling a daunting list of requirements beforehand (including getting certifications outside of work, prove positive business impact during customer-facing situations even though it's an IT job and we were all nervous AF in high pressure social situations). And btw, you can fulfill all the requirements and still be denied promotion if you're not charismatic and clever during the presentation, also this presentation has a segment where the upper leadership grills you with unanticipated technical questions. If you don't get promoted, you don't get a pay bump, there's no annual pay raises. They only offer 1.5% 401k match, and vestment periods was FIVE PHARKING YEARS. Although I left before it happened, this company would NOT let anyone work from home during COVID, but eventually caved due to mandates, and they were also the first company I've heard of to force everyone back to the office while COVID was still a hot topic. Lots of toxicity in that, but the coworkers were fun at least, and to survive you HAD to be on top of things and learn a lot, so I did, it was a good job to kickstart my career, but I'd never do it again. It's really meant for anyone super young out of college that just wants their foot into the industry and to make a decent (at the time) salary. I heard they haven't changed salary numbers for new hires despite all the inflation and increased CoL, so RIP.

I also once worked in a number of different manufacturing factories like that, making boxes, presswood furniture, fireplaces and chimneys, metal parts, etc. As you said, 40C+ degrees in the summer, no A/C, basically dying next to the machines. I also once did asphalting on the streets and in the summer we had a thermometer on the back of our truck and it would easily hit 50C sometimes. Sweat literally pouring, heat stroke imminent.