What kind of miserable jobs have you had in the past?

Loading packages in the UPS trucks.

If you like working from 3 A.M - 9 A.M (12 A.M - 9 A.M during Xmas) doing the same repetitive, physically laborious, soul-crushing task of looking at a package and deciding which truck it should go into, then by all means, go to work at UPS.

Although, in defense of that job, I never had to deal with customers, there was no traffic on the way to the job, I had medical benefits (I was a part-time worker), and I got paid around $12/hr at the time I quit.

My first job was at McDonald's. The classic high school job. I got to work at the second "drive-thru" window. The one where you get your food. I saw the ugliest and pettiest side of humanity. Fat people driving up wearing grease-stained tank tops and boxer shorts, outraged parents angry because their child didn't get the Happy Meal toy they wanted, and much more.

I only lasted for about three months before I left to work stock crew at Cost Plus World Market. After the Golden Arches, I wanted as little customer interaction as possible. I took a job unloading delivery trucks from 4AM - 12PM. It was pretty nice. I was so tired that I literally forgot the first half of my shift and I'd get off work at noon thinking I had only worked a half day. It was pretty lame going to bed at 7PM though...

I thought washing and cleaning dishes for like minimum wage was bad; this just took it to a whole other level. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you were getting paid $1.50 per hour? If so, isn't this illegal?

Thanks for sharing this man. I hope you don't have to go through this again.

Wow... you were writing articles for 10 cents each?

Good few years back I worked in a very large smelly factory, the particular part I worked in was a long windowless shed. It was populated by grey skinned old men who had worked 12 shifts for too long, they were all ready for the knackers yard (their words)

To cut a long story short at one end of the production line were large steel bobbins with about 300m of steel wire on them, by the time that the wire had been pulled through the line it was coated in brass. The wire was pulled through the line via an oven, a molten lead bath (which was hot as hell), an acid bath and through several baths containing cyanide and brass bars that had a current passed through it to attract the brass onto the steel wire.

Every bit of equipment was ages old, for example the rubber gloves to use when you had your hands in the acid bath all leaked, your hands would come out a lovely shade of blue. The facemasks were absolutely minging after you had been sweating like a pig over the cyanide baths.

A line went down one day and I spent most of the shift over the molten lead bath, it had a covering of graphite dust to try and keep down the heat down. That night I had prickly heat and spent the night either in a cold bath or sat on the edge of the bed with an insane itching on the verge of tears.

The worst part of the job was when a bobbin ran out and we had to replace that with another bobbin to keep the line running, to do this we had to form a loop in the new bobbin and catch the end of the old bobbin as it ran out.

So the new bobbin would now be joined to the end of the old bobbin and an announcement would be made over the tannoy to tell the guys at the other end a knot was on its' way down.

That miserable little knot would try and catch and snag in about 100 places and when this happened a huge tangle would form down the line that when it got to the other end would be like fighting with a giant squid!

One of us would attempt to grab the wire behind the tangle and try to keep it moving (so that the whole line did'nt go down and ALL the wires from the 30 bobbins would need to be manually threaded along the line, through the lead,acid and cyanide. Lovely!

I lasted 12 month's and escaped!

I even worked in the UPS warehouse, but that got scrapped because working all night left me a zombie during the day. But let me tell you, that is HARD work in a UPS warehouse!

And I'm definitely not the best team player, lol. So I feel ya. Good luck with the break out, you can do it!

The most miserable job I have had was when I was 16, many years ago now, and it was working in a turkey factory. One of the jobs was when the live turkeys came in, you had to catch them and then hang them on hooks, Ive still got a big bite mark on my arm from one particular bird.

I worked at Sunglass Hut for a few months. Compared to the other crap jobs it was a breath of fresh air. I could spend my time writing my stories and screenplays and I got paid for it! No more backbreaking labor.