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Nastiest job you've ever had?

wipalawipala Member Posts: 11,067
edited April 2002 in General Discussion
Was a flagman for a crop duster. I got so much herbicides and other chemicals sprayed on me that when I was sweating I would clear a room with the odor. Probably took 10 or 12 years off of my life
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Comments

  • MercuryMercury Member Posts: 7,830 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Easy one......scooped hog manure for a few weeks one summer. Ugh.......ever been in a sow barn when it is 100 degrees? No air on, as the sows had been moved. Yea gods.

    Merc

    NO! You may not have my guns! Now go crawl back into your hole!
  • William81William81 Member Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I worked in a water treatment plant for part of a summer during college. I had to put on the EPA suit and clean the filters a couple of times....
  • the loveable rat...the loveable rat... Member Posts: 969 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    i've done so many nasty things...but mostly unpaid- so i'll have to describe instead the hardest job:
    we stupidly bid on a job to rehab an architecht's new loft office(never let that happen again) which required demo of terra cotta 15" bricks, removing plaster/metal lath ceiling, removal of 2000sq' of vinyl adhesive flooring....kid swung a sledge- knocked down terra cotta wall on himself(bump the size of apricot on his head and concussion/stitches). easy part of job done. removal of 20' drop ceiling required 2 guys scarrily in upper crawlspace alternately sawing w/ masonry blade/sawzall plaster/metal into 4' squares that then dropped "harmlessly" 20' to the rubble pile below...100 degree heat outside= 120 (at least!) up in crawlspace. you'd be up there for 5 minutes before it looked like you were in a wet t-shirt contest(not a pretty sight), which turned to mud w/ the incredible amount of plaster dust. took a f@#kin' week. removal of floor needed 40 gallons of jasco[size=1}tm[/size=1],which was highly toxic, vaporous fluid we spread out beneath floor scrubber machine like janitors use. sorta worked- to reveal tar/asphalt based gunk under adhesive layer. more solvents...more scrubbing...i feel sick just describing it again...

    "let not your work smack of the trowel, nor your words cause a blow from one either..."
  • sodbustersodbuster Member Posts: 2,305 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I worked in a total confinement hog operation years ago. After we would wean the
    pigs and move the sows out we would set up sprinklers to soak the room overnight. Then the next morning I had to powerspray every spec of hog **** off of all the surfaces. Then disenfect the room for the new batch coming in. It took 4 to 5 hours to clean the room,,,I learned quickly to keep my mouth shut!!!


    It's not the number of your stars that count,,it's the size of your moon.
  • He DogHe Dog Member Posts: 51,593 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Well, I have mucked out stalls and stys a fair amount and it is not really pleasant. I think the worst was working with a veterinarian in a dairy barn. Concrete floor with about 3 liquid inchs of the bucolic by product of ruminate fermentation. One of the cows paniced and fell on her side. I was on that side. Even with my clothes off I turned the bath water green ...

    to moo is bovin huh?



    Edited by - He Dog on 04/15/2002 16:36:08
  • KnifecollectorKnifecollector Member Posts: 3,267 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I'm a plumber so I get to see some nasty stuff once in a while. One time I had to repair a broken sewer line inside a bomb shelter. Raw sewage had been spilling over in there for several weeks. Had to wade several inches of raw sewage dragging a drop cord carring a sawzall and some fittings and glue. Pretty nasty but I don't mind working in it. Had the same thing happen under a trailer once. Had to crawl through it. I spread lime underneath to absorb some water and smell. I had that stuff caked 2" thick all over me. That was as nasty as I have ever been in my life.
  • niklasalniklasal Member Posts: 776 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Mine was working for a Plasma collection center. All day the bottom of the barrel of society would come in and donate blood so they can have beer money.

    I was the guy that stuck the needles in their veins. It was a 16gauge needle (about as thick as a pen refill) and sometimes when you pierced the vein, their blood pressure would cause it to spray all over our face sheilds.

    It wasn't that bad, just MINDLESS. Set up machine, stick patients, take down machine, set up machine, stick patients..... For 10 hours a day. I swore I lost part of my sanity on that job.

    NIKLASAL@hotmail.com
  • airborneairborne Member Posts: 1,728 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    wiping "*" holes, in the keg house, at Schlitz brewery, during my college days. Only good thing about the job was the pay and free beer.

    B - BreatheR - RelaxA - AimS - SightS - Squeeze
  • whiteclouderwhiteclouder Member Posts: 10,574 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Manually thinning sugar beets. Unimaginable.

    Clouder..
  • PelicanPelican Member Posts: 1,061 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    See my post under most fun job

    The Almighty Himself Entrusted the Future of All Living Creatures to a Wooden Boat.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -"Audemus jura nostra defendere"
  • Wild TurkeyWild Turkey Member Posts: 2,425 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    My dad put me on John Deere 4520 with a 9 foot chisel plow one morning. It was in the corner of a half-section (one-half mile wide by one mile long) and I went to the far corner. There had been no rain on the place since it was chisled the year before and it was covered with 18 inch clods.

    So at 4 mph I was bumping and bounceing across the dusty Texas plains for 12-14 hours a day. After a week he put someone else on that tractor -- said I was coming out of my tree. No wonder -- hadn't seen anyone but him and mom at breakfast and supper.

    I've had nastier jobs (cleaning out degreasing tanks) but none that came closer to driving me out of my mind.

    Wild Turkey"if your only tool is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail"
  • He DogHe Dog Member Posts: 51,593 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Clouder, in my college days I worked summers for Ag Research. I would sometimes get assigned to the Field Crops Department, and spent some time two weeks (45hr weeks) counting weeds. Man I dreamed about it at night. Also rouged wheat, so I can imagine thinning beets! What is important is that you survived it and it no doubt built character...No, I think I will leave it right there.
  • FUBARFUBAR Member Posts: 175 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Cleaning out Hog manure pits to pour concrete. I was using a skid loader with bucket, manure about 3/4 of the way up the tires. The skidloader died (gas line came off) waded out of the manure pit at mid-thigh level. NASTY!

    Guns! Guns! Guns!
  • turboturbo Member Posts: 820 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I wouldn't say this job I had was nastiy, but then again, it was interesting.

    A few months outa high school, I got a job, while waiting to finish up welding classes, for certification, I got a job stuffing Kotex into the aircleaners of 671 Detroit Diesel engines, this shop used to overhaul for the Navy on WWII landing craft.

    Every Friday after lunch I'd get a few checks from the boss, and I would go shopping to the neighborhood grocery stores and buy all they had on the display shelves, you don't think people noticed when I came up to the checkout stand with all those boxes of the XX supers.

    When asked what was up, I responded by saying, I was caring for an acquaintences lady elephant friend, while he was out to sea.

    They just laughed..

    "The great object is that every man.... everyone who is able may have a gun." Patrick Henry
  • gunpaqgunpaq Member Posts: 4,607 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Cleaning and relining pulp mixing vats and drainage canals in an old paper mill with a super XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX toxic coating. Had to wear space suits all the time in 100+ degrees. Nasty because it was some damn dangerous - a little exposed skin for a second meant a trip to the hospital or grave yard. And to think I gave up my teaching job of 10 years to do that line of work. Big, big bucks, lots of danger and little job satisfaction.

    Pack slow, fall stable, pull high, hit dead center.
  • RembrandtRembrandt Member Posts: 4,486 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Mercury, we use to raise around 5000 feeder pigs, my Dad refered to the odor as the "smell of money".....

    The worst job I ever had was tearing off a pitch tar roof on a school one hot summer...we'd taken our shirts off and got that pitch dust on our skin....it's like the worst sunburn you ever had. Then we put on a new hot asphalt roof and tons of gravel...all in 100 degree heat.
  • hunter280manhunter280man Member Posts: 705
    edited November -1
    Well lets see; hmmm Ive done the beet thinning since I was about 7 to 9 years old, thats when we got a new planter.
    I've washed out the hog pens on a comercial farm. I've even scooped the manuer from ground level siloes.
    The worse was crawling under a Dow Chemical rental/hospitality house in july with a broken sewage pipe. We did the lime and the builge pump things. Still had to crawl in with tyvek suites, roughly six inches of the good stuff in places with only about 20 inches of head room. Yes I crawled for about 2hrs, and yes I minded, alot!
    Once it was cleaned up the plumber fixed the pipe!

    Though I was born to royalty, I was snatched at birth, so treat me as the noble I am!!!
  • Jungle JimJungle Jim Member Posts: 264
    edited November -1
    Wipala,

    I also worked as a flag man for a cropduster in Bakersfield, California a couple of days; it was terrible ! I came home smelling like rotten onions, my shoes smelled so bad that I left them outside for a month. They still smelled, so I threw them out.

    Don't remember why I took that job -

    Jim

    "De Oppresso Liber"
  • TOOLS1TOOLS1 Member Posts: 6,133
    edited November -1
    Worst for me was being an employe.
  • PupPup Member Posts: 217 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Wow....and I thought working in a slaughterhouse for 18 years was bad!! Some of you guys definately have my sympathys. Wild Turkey....that 4520's a hell of a tractor ain't it? We've got a '69 model in the machine shed.

    Politicians, like diapers, should be changed often and for the same reason.
  • boogerbooger Member Posts: 1,459 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    I thought I had a few tough ones but none like some of ya'lls. My worst was cleaning up after the county fair left the fairgrounds. There would be anything imaginable left behind plus the usual fair crud like puke, old food, etc.

    Them ducks is wary.
  • 22WRF22WRF Member Posts: 3,385
    edited November -1
    Mucking cargo tanks on a USN Fleet Oiler

    I Refuse to be a VictimGrumpy old man
  • UNIVERSITY50UNIVERSITY50 Member Posts: 1,705 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    ran a "HONEYDIPPER" for three summers in a rv park. pulled behind a ford 8n tractor to the parked rvs and sucked off their holding tanks. we had to fix the plugged suction hose all the time at the splice. also ran the trash pick up every night. i smelled like a pit toilet/dumpster all summer long. could not wash that smell off for anything!!
  • wipalawipala Member Posts: 11,067
    edited November -1
    Well sound like we have all had some nasty jobs. Iv'e not had the pleasure of the hog experience , but asphalt roofing , plumbing breaks ,remodeling and stripping adhesive off floors I have done. I was also an LEO for 2 years. Worked as a floor tech for a contracting company for 14 years (ended up Special Projects Supervisor for the last 5 years there) I know what it's like to wear tyvek suit and a respirator for 8 to 12 hours. We worked around caustic chemical explosive and poisonous gas and in cleaning out boilers They take one out of sevice and we'd go in descale it in respirators and protective suits while the other boilers were blazing away. AND I still hated the crop dusting flagmans job the most. An entire summer walking broken country in 90-100 degree heat. dragging a 20" pole with a maniac flying 10 " off the ground spraying toxic chemicals on you.
    This wasn't crops this was cattle country and we were spraying for ticks and other nasties. Besides I couldn't get within 5" of a girl with out her turning green from the odor.
  • smokey1smokey1 Member Posts: 76 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Granted, working around human waste is nasty. But it won't get you killed.(Unless you chew your fingernails of course.)

    You haven't worked nasty until you have worked in a refinery, paper-mill, pharmaceutical plant, or other industrial site where that cloud floating towards you is not just smelling like a fart, but is looking to kill you.
  • n/an/a Member Posts: 168,427
    edited November -1
    Logger. Hard work ok. Boss was a real a**h*l*

    Present career worst was supervising Traffic Accident Investigations Unit. Saw to many things i'd rather not have seen.

    "We become what we habitually do. If we act rightly, we become upright men. If we habitually act wrongly, or weakly, we become weak and corrupt" - *ARISTOTLE*

    **Like Grandad used to say--"It'll feel better when it quits hurtin"
  • texshootertexshooter Member Posts: 1,002 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Live in a small town, Not many jobs for kids. Worked in a butcher market in high school and college. Big pay in 1969...$1.00 hr.

    Cut up dead cows and pigs. Worst part was skinning and deveining cow livers. Nasty crap up to your elbows.

    Guys, this was a real good incentive to stay in college.
  • wipalawipala Member Posts: 11,067
    edited November -1
    Hats off to IT496 What got me out of LE was working a multiple fatality wreck where I knew every one of the people killed.Word of advise don't be a cop in your home town. All the scummies you went to school with want a free pass and when you do have to deal with tragedy you will probably know them.
  • jocko007jocko007 Member Posts: 81 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Burning shitters in Viet Nam. Did it once, swore I'd volunteer for anything but that. 1969-1971

    Clifford A. Reed
  • v35v35 Member Posts: 12,710 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Wife made me take a live skunk out of a leghold trap set for woodchucks.
  • k.stanonikk.stanonik Member Posts: 2,109 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    At the young age of 13 shoveling dog **** on the week ends, in the early 90's a E.M.T, those stiffs get pretty nasty after a few days in the heat of summer.
  • woodsrunnerwoodsrunner Member Posts: 5,378 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Worked a few years during high school cleaning a dairy barn. But that was nothing, Picking rocks on the same farm was alot worse. I think there were enough to build a small city.

    Worked for a manufacturer of sewage pumps part of my duties was the service dept. It's amazing what people flush down thier toilet.

    After the dairy, I got a job tailing a sawmill, the mill was built on a real swampy spot. The owner had a big contract for quartersawn oak. You picked up one of those boards and sank up to your knees. Still that job wasn't too bad. Still to this day I love the smell of sawdust. Saturday morning were my favorite day, half day cleaning everything. I would much rather shovel sawdust than S*it!

    The all time worse thing I ever had to do was cleaning grease traps in the army. There is nothing worse than rancid animal fat. I hated k.p. duty.

    Woods

    How big a boy are ya?
  • 101AIRBORNE101AIRBORNE Member Posts: 1,252 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Jocko,

    You and I should receive an award for burning the xxxx from the crappers in Vietnam. Those one half 55 gallon drums were really bad.
    Remember when you poured the jp4 in and let it go? Bad. I was there the same time frame as you. Difficult to get your men involved unless
    you participated. Really did stink. What oufit were you attached to?
    Take Care, Steve smhco@juno.com
  • ElbestaElbesta Member Posts: 334 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    jocko007, I'll bet you used diesel fuel, the key is to use JP-4 jet fuel. Much faster, burns hotter, don't have to stir as much.
  • pickenuppickenup Member Posts: 22,844 ✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Mine wasn't so bad after reading what some of you have done. Bucking hay in the field in the fall (100+ heat) was no fun, got covered with hay and pollen, itched like H*LL. A friend's eyes got so swelled up, they literaly swelled shut, and he had to be led back home. It was a good excuse to go for a swim in the river after work though.
  • SCREWEDUPSCREWEDUP Member Posts: 60 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    I"AM DOING IT NOW , I"AM A MALE NURSE FORMLY AN ARMY MEDIC. I WORK AT THE V.A. HOSPITAL LONG TERM CARE UNIT. BEEN HERE FOR 12 YEARS NOW. YOU CAN ONLY IMAGINE WHAT I"VE SEEN.THE WORST IS C-DIFF. IT"S A FUNGAL INFECTION INTHE BOWEL RESULTING IN FREQUENT, LARGE, LIQUID, GREEN, FOUL SMELLING STOOL. ENOUGHT SAID.

    STEPHEN R BROOKINS
  • Ms. BeastMs. Beast Member Posts: 496 ✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    screwedup: I also work with some people with c-diff......you are right, it is nasty and I hate dealing with it!
  • offerorofferor Member Posts: 8,625 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Worst job I ever had was driving an ice cream truck one summer. They had those little flat-nose vehicles that looked like old converted US mail vehicles. When you filled the radiator, rust poured out.

    Anyway, the engine was under a metal box right next to the driver and the vehicles had no air conditioning, and those engines always seemed to overheat. The temperature was ridiculous in there, way over a hundred degrees. You drove around all day sweating with the summer sun beating down and getting cooked by that engine housing and brought home less than $20 profit on a good day.

    The 2nd Amendment is about security, not hunting. Long live the gun shows, and reasonable access to FFLs. Join the NRA -- I'm a Life Member.
  • wrinkledmemberwrinkledmember Member Posts: 6 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Cutting cedar fence posts in the lava flows. We did it in January when there was lots of snow for the sleds. I was only ten or so but I'll never forget it. Sled would freeze to the ground and the horses would have an awful time getting it loose. This would have been during the depression. Only work dad could find.

    I'm just old
  • CaptBlackDawgCaptBlackDawg Member Posts: 38 ✭✭
    edited November -1
    Babysittin that young lad Bullzeye as he carries thy bucket and performs his other menial tasks onboard.. Har Har Har
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