What Is The Hardest Job You Have Ever Held?

same job i once had, except it was on the "dry foods" section. during summer the whole place turned into an oven. during winter, a freezer. sucked hardcore.

I find it funny that people are listing manual labor jobs as the hardest jobs they ever had. Having worked both manual labor jobs and corporate jobs, I can assure you corporate jobs are MUCH harder. People working manual labor and sweating a bit have it easy. Hell, they are being paid to work out. Big fucking deal. Try multitasking multiple projects at once that involve millions in dollars, and at the same time being responsible for managing 100s of lower tier workers under you, and knowing if they fuck up, its your ass. Thats TRUE hard work.

Very few people want to be that responsible.

Very true...Very few people want to be that responsible. That statement alone should show people why corporate executives are paid so well. Its because very few people have the skills or the responsibility to do those jobs.

yea ive done annoying manual labor but it definitly wasnt the hardest. the nasties or most boring ok but not the hardest.

as a kid i packed patato chips. like 12 small baggs in one big box. 8 hours a day. following the rythem of the machine. wasnt hard tho. a robot could do that

(did that for 3 days. lol, yes after both of those jobs i realised i had to find real work, wich i now have)

Working the 11:pm to 7:am shift at a Nursing Home.

The DNR ward.

Some of the shit I've had to do was fucking ridiculous!

The most physical was standing for 8-10 hrs/day packing firelogs into boxes. My whole body was so sore that it would lock up at night and I couldn't fucking move! I think I pulled and strained every muscle I had in my arms, shoulders, back and wrists and even my fingers. You stood with a box open in front of you, slapped together 3 firelogs as they came down the line, slid them off and they were supposed fall into the box and line up perfectly. Didn't happen a lot of times.You get those logs straight in the box, and reach up and grabbed three more and pack them. Then you had to fold the flaps and push it onto the conveyor belt underneath your workstation., and you did this for all day until quitting time or unless the line stopped. Or you got breaks. You stayed bent over at half mast let's say and that is hell on your back,too. then you wonder why you were so damn sore? Try picking up some of those boxes and they weighed easily 45 pounds or more sometimes. That job was absolute shit. It was cold, there was no heat in the place, and if the line went down, you had to jump right up and grab a broom and start sweeping.

It was fucking slave labor! They had a revolving door there because they either fired you or people would just quit. I got sent home because some stupid chick lied on me. Never found out what I supposedly did to get sent home but I have told everyone I know, Don't go work there!

To the guy that said manual labor jobs aren't hard like corporate jobs - you obviously never worked real manual labor job. Construction (Commercial, any monkey can call themselves a home remodeler) takes brains to run, and is ball busting manual labor to perform. And it's not like working out.

You work out at the gym and do 3 sets of 10, before you take a water break, move on to the next muscle group, etc.

I'd like to see any one of you "genius" corporate men figure out how to form a spiral staircase. You couldn't do it. And when the truck shows up with the crete, there is no water break. You don't stop til it is done. That is, if your form doesn't blow out from the concrete pressure. Which your prints NEVER show you how to build, only the dimensions (which almost always are not all there or are wrong)of the final product.

I know lots of corporate job men that go to the gym multiple days a week. When they are 60 they are in good shape. I know LOTS of commercial carpenters, concrete finishes, floor coverers, etc. that are busted up by the time they are 50 unless they were running work as a Foreman or Superintendent.

You don't know the meaning of hard work. You have zero concept of it. And you envision manual labor as all being easy on the mind. You layout floors that are 200,000 sq. feet and get every single thing down to the T off of a set of prints (which are NEVER correct).

I worked as a consultant. I left it to go back to construction with the intent of starting my own business. I can honestly say when I have 3 projects going at once, it is 100 times harder than dealing with 5 clients in a day.

In may late teens I got a job making micro-film copies of corporate documents. 8 hours sitting at a camera table with a pile of "to be copied" on one side, and a pile of "already copied" on the other.

1000 copies per hour was the minimum.

Pick up a paper and lay it in the screen with your left.
Hit the button.
Grab that paper with your right, and replace with one from your left. Repeat ad nauseam. And whatever you do... Don't get your hand in the picture!

Anyway, your brain goes into a trance or something. After 8 hours, I would walk away in a fog. Even hard to drive after that.
I've worked harder and longer, but those few months in my teens were the absolute worst. Torturous.

The worst gig I had was being an emergency ward admitting clerk in an inner city hospital. It was almost impossible to sleep after every shift.

But I've had factory jobs that weren't much better than being a Roman galley slave.

I'm retired now ... but it seems like things aren't much different. Working at things you hate just sucks; always did and always will.

No wonder lottery ticket sales never go down.

He definitely hasn't been on many, if any roofing jobs.

Tear-off, packing shingles, blisters, isn't like fuckin workin out.My lower back isn't in any better shape than when I first got on a roof over ten years ago.

Radiology Department Head


over CT, MRI, etc

and lots of whiners

LOL, Yeah we hated you guys.
Always figured your job was easier because you all wore shorts and wife beaters.

Hardest job - U S Postal Service, slave civil service. No, I wouldn't go back unless starving. Besides, I've heard they're constructing torture rooms in every P.O. now.

Farm irrigation
I'd do it again if I could be young again to do it and it paid better.

Best shape of my life after that.

I worked for eBay at their corporate customer service centers.

Total nightmare.

Answering phone, billing issues, seller questions all the while typing and answering questions on ''líve chat.''

It was hell.

Two computer screens and 12 computer programs.

I thought I was going to die.

Working from home as a book keeper also wife and mother of teenage boys. Shit never ends =/

Roofing in the Hi-Desert of California. You can't drink enough water. It was about 140 degrees up on those roofs. Never again.

Addictions counselor in a methadone clinic.

It's a pretty hostile environment - being called out in the clinic reception office, threats to vandalize my car, and two death threats.

No, I wouldn't go back.

Roofer. I'm still blue collar, but you couldn't pay me enough to go back to that god awful trade. Try doing it in 118f heat, I assure you it's way above that on the roof. Came home every day with burns on my arms from the asphalt.

Delivering 4x12 sheets of drywall sheetrock. Had to carry two sheets at once, Sometime we had to park several hundred yards from the houses because the yards were muddy from new construction. All the old timers made you run wiyh it. Paid min wage and some days we only got 4 or 5 hours in. Some loads were 200 to 300 sheets. I was used to hard work but this was insane. Lasted two weeks and said to hell wiyh this shit. Hardest i ever worked and the least i ever made at a job.

Hardest physical labor I ever did was commercial roofing one summer. That will make you old, quick.

Hardest emotional task, having foster kids and watching the state send them back to their loser parents, knowing they would be abused again. I quit when they threatened me with contempt of court for calling the social worker a stupid @#$#@

Most stressful, chemical plant engineer. 24/7 responsibility, if the plant went down or the product coming out was out of spec, we lost 70k dollars an HOUR. Pressure was ridiculous. Did 3 years and left.

Meh...I was the guy who said manual labor jobs are not hard. I have worked a family farm. I have worked construction, hell, Ive even worked on an oil rig. I spent 7 years serving my country....and none of those things were nearly as hard as being an executive of a major corporation. Sorry, sweating isnt really working hard. Like I said, its a free workout. Hell, I run triathlons and train for them all year long. And working out like that doesnt even compare to the pressure of intense corporate work.

Having done plenty of both, I can say without a doubt that corporate work takes more of a toll on you. I could go back to roofing if I absolutely had to, but not 1 in 1000 roofers could do my job. I'm a chem engineer with my own business. If I make a mistake designing a plant, tens of millions of dollars are wasted, and a LOT of people die.

PS I'm very skilled with my hands and I actually HAVE designed and built a spiral staircase. My friend had an old cabin he needed to replace the roof on (trusses and all, water got in), so he decided to add a second story. Because of the small size of the cabin, he didn't want to add a regular staircase and take up a bunch of room. I designed, welded and installed a sweet staircase for him. Not all of us corporate types are helpless in the real world. My dad was a pipefitter and muscle car fanatic. I can rebuild an engine just as well as I can schmooze the Board of Directors for a contract.

working in hospice facility

very sad, all day , everyday

Beat me to it. Nothing like flying 18 hours to Asia to do a presentation for a potential multi-million dollar contract, getting food poisoning, flying home sick as a dog, resting one night, and flying straight back to Europe because a company is losing a half million dollars a DAY because of a problem with their plant. Oh, and YOU are the only one that can fix it. No pressure....I've laid block in 95 degree heat in Mexico as a volunteer missionary, and it's cake compared to my day job.

I will definitely grant you that one on the corporate pressures, but please don't even try to equate training for a triathlon with labor. You're doing that at your leisure, you don't do it for 10 hours a day, six days a week. You have the luxury of taking a break from it if you overtrain, getting hurt at labor may mean getting evicted, so you just keep going until you drop dead.

Your exercise isn't even close to the beating your body takes working with your hands. Believe me, I will hop over to the white collar at the first opportunity, stress and all.

Yeah no shit bro, because it's volunteer. You aren't being pushed to your limit, no volunteer is. You also don't have pressures of wondering if you're going to afford to eat tomorrow or keep the lights on if you fuck up, because corporate professionals have the luxury of something called savings. I'm not discrediting the pressure of your career, but you're belittling the pressures of what is a very shit life. Try it on for size if you dare.

Pouring blood/plasma samples at National Health Labs third shift.

The test tubes of blood were arranged in a certain order, with a group of twenty or more in each sponge. I had to put them into a centrifuge and get the plasma to the top, then keep them in the same order as I placed them back in the holes in the sponges.

Checking the computer screen, I then had to pop off the lids without breaking the tubes and pour samples for different tests. Many of the tubes were from AIDS and other similar patients.

If I finished early, then I had time to pour samples of pregnant women's piss from plastic containers, and also spinal fluid samples.

Lunch was always interesting there. Hardly anyone ever had an appetite.

The lab was right next to a water treatment plant. If the wind was blowing just right, the shit fumes came directly into the fresh air return.

The lady who did the job before me contracted a nasty case of hepatitis after one of the test tubes broke. I was a newlywed and couldn't afford to quit the job for quite some time.

Thanks for reminding me.