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Mad Cyril

The Fresh Prince of Belfairs⭐⭐
Joined
Oct 29, 2003
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What is the worst job you have ever had?

After dropping out of university for a couple of years I managed to spend 18 months working at a sponge factory in Rochford. I had various duties, most of which involved unloading huge sponge blocks from lorries, collecting packaged sponges, J cloths and scouring pads from the factory floor and loading them into other lorries.

I used to hide notes in the packaged sponges saying "Help - I am being held prisoner in a sponge factory" (and the occasional 'adult' playing card) but help never arrived.

Sometimes the factory that made huge rolls of J cloth material from raw viscose fibre was short staffed and I would have to lend a hand. In order to reduce the static build up the temperature and humidity were kept extremely high and eveyone just worked in football shorts.

There were no perks whatsoever, two weeks holiday a year and the pay was crap.

I have also held the following jobs over the years before graduating and settling into my current career:

Various paper rounds.
Mushroom picker.
Trapper at clay pigeon shoot.
Kitchen porter at Hotel Renouf
Kitchen assistant at Nazareth House.
Laminator of Argos catalogues.
Credit card data entry at RBS.
Pot collector at a Manchester nightclub.
Barman at the Crookend Billet.
 
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I've had a lot. Night-shift cleaning in a hospital, dressed in a contamination suit and scrubbing blood off the operating theatre floors at 4am. That would be up there.

Honourable mentions to data entry in a legal firm, three days of chugging on Oxford Street, two days of beauty therapy sales on Oxford Street and that ugly three month period as a black binbag salesman. Then there's the frozen food factory in the summer of '97 and Chicago's in Chelmsford, that was ugly.

Far and away in the lead however is McDonalds. I worked there for a year when I was 17 and it was the most miserable experience of my life. 2.80 an hour, sociopathic customers trying to clamber over the counter at you, staffed by ******* and managed by sociopaths. I don't say this lightly, but McDonalds and the way they do things, the way they treat people, the way they operate. It is exactly how Nazi Germany started.

With worse uniforms, naturally.
 
couple of youngsters i know worked at mcdonalds.some of the stories they told regarding the food was rather awful.

hence why i dont buy the muck.
 
Cue Derek & Clive afficiando's and Jayne Mansfield's assorted crustaceans,


too right mate........................the stories are sick.


my advice...........................NEVER EVER COMPLAIN rgarding food,because the staff will seek revenge.
 
Far and away in the lead however is McDonalds. I worked there for a year when I was 17 and it was the most miserable experience of my life. 2.80 an hour, sociopathic customers trying to clamber over the counter at you, staffed by ******* and managed by sociopaths. I don't say this lightly, but McDonalds and the way they do things, the way they treat people, the way they operate. It is exactly how Nazi Germany started.

Same here. I worked in the one on Southend High Street for a year around 1987. The management were scum, and the rest weren't much better. I only put up with it because it paid for my holiday that summer.

I also had a job at a loss adjusters for a week one summer when I was a student. I spent the entire week putting details of peoples' summer holidays into their computer system. I have never been so bored in my life. They asked me to stay a second week because I was so good (blimey, all I was doing was data input!) but I turned them down saying I needed to get on with some studying. What a crock! I couldn't spend one more minute in that godforsaken hellhole, even though the money was actually quite good for a student.

The funny thing was that the couple that owned the business kept going on about how brilliant they were because in just over a year they had built this business up from scratch, and now employed 3 people! The next summer when I drove past, they had closed down!
 
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aged 18 worked lining kilns 7 day weeks 12 hours per day.

the guys told me if i ever had the chance to put my name down for working in the "chains" this section was at the furnace end of the kiln with around 200 hundred heavy chains which smashed the clinker,however the crap which never got smashed formed into large concrete type balls,we had to smash these forms whilst being constantly whacked by the chains.
 
I worked in a company in Ockendon for a few months and it was like something out of the 1970's. Managers and office staff in one door, workers in another. I had to wear shirt/tie despite that I never saw anyone from the general public, had to in absolute silence with only an old bloke who was a year from retirement and had the charisma of a dishcloth. Not to mention my boss treating me like I was 12 (I was in my early 30's).
Looking any anything not vaguely work related on t'web was a definite sin and the casual racism was unbelievable - this despite the fact they knew (at the time) I was in a mixed relationship and they often dealt with Indian clients.

I often have nightmares that I'm back there!

I pray that they go under in this credit crunch.
 
I was doing some fruit picking in Bundaburg, Australia, earning absolute pittance for a full days hard graft. There was some Thai lad there called Ferrari who was actually stuck there. He had been in Bundaberg for 2 years and couldn't earn enough money to get afford a bus ride out!!!! Oh, and I ony lasted a week when I realised I wasn't going to earn a penny. It was quite simply slave labour.
 
I worked in a company in Ockendon for a few months and it was like something out of the 1970's. Managers and office staff in one door, workers in another. I had to wear shirt/tie despite that I never saw anyone from the general public, had to in absolute silence with only an old bloke who was a year from retirement and had the charisma of a dishcloth. Not to mention my boss treating me like I was 12 (I was in my early 30's).Looking any anything not vaguely work related on t'web was a definite sin and the casual racism was unbelievable - this despite the fact they knew (at the time) I was in a mixed relationship and they often dealt with Indian clients.

I often have nightmares that I'm back there!

I pray that they go under in this credit crunch.


So it really was in the 70's then ;)
 
Various paper rounds.
Mushroom picker.
Trapper at clay pigeon shoot.
Kitchen porter at Hotel Renouf
Kitchen assistant at Nazareth House.
Laminator of Argos catalogues.
Credit card data entry at RBS.
Pot collector at a Manchester nightclub.
Barman at the Crookend Billet.

I've done that too. Absurdly early starts, followed by 8 hours of mindnumbing boredom checking that the laminations were nice and smooth. Quality control i suppose, frequently nodded off only to miss a load of pages going past on the conveyer belt.

Also...
Driller of holes in handles at a factory at Rayleigh Weir.
A certain crap bicycle company that used to be near Kent Elms on the A127
 
What is the worst job you have ever had?

After dropping out of university for a couple of years I managed to spend 18 months working at a sponge factory in Rochford. I had various duties, most of which involved unloading huge sponge blocks from lorries, collecting packaged sponges, J cloths and scouring pads from the factory floor and loading them into other lorries.

I used to hide notes in the packaged sponges saying "Help - I am being held prisoner in a sponge factory" (and the occasional 'adult' playing card) but help never arrived.

Sometimes the factory that made huge rolls of J cloth material from raw viscose fibre was short staffed and I would have to lend a hand. In order to reduce the static build up the temperature and humidity were kept extremely high and eveyone just worked in football shorts.

There were no perks whatsoever, two weeks holiday a year and the pay was crap.

I worked at EGL in Shoebury doing the same thing ****ing ****hole! What company did you work for?
 
Whilst in Norfolk after a redundancy, i worked in an abattoir for about 3 months at the business end of the procedure.
 
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