What is the toughest job you ever had?

[Iron Woode]

What is the toughest job you ever had?

trying to get those inept storm-troopers to find the droids they were looking for.

 

[MrSquished]

Did restaurant work in hectic places from bussing tables at a busy Jersey diner at 15 years old to running food and waiting tables in a busy Manhattan restaurant at 21 years old that were intense. I mean you were going nonstop. When I was a backwaiter in one popular SoHo seafood joint, where David Lee Roth would often come for oysters, the kitchen was a shit show every night. I mean a war zone for those cooks. The head chef/owner was running the show and handing me the food to finish with the occasional garnish and wipe the plate and it was a madhouse, he was constantly berating us to the point he ran out of swears to use, he started inventing cuss words. After it slowed down, we'd all just be friendly to each other again.

But the hardest work was a couple days on the jackhammer and other various construction duties for this guy my buddy knew. After the first day of jackhammering I couldn't close my hands much that night.

 

[BudAshes]

What is the toughest job you ever had?

trying to get those inept storm-troopers to find the droids they were looking for.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Cleaning the back wall of the shooting range would be a pretty big job at a storm trooper training base too. At least you never need to change the targets so there's that.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Boiler cleaning. No sooner did schools let out for summer break in New England than the schools all called to have the boilers cleaned. Now in the NE they don't know what centralized cooling is so imagine the nice summer heat 80's-90's outside and the boilers still not quite cooled off enough yet but the job needs to get done so you opener her up and make the fat lady sign while wearing a OSHA approved industrial respirator and sweating every part of your body off and then at the end of the day walking out like mascara was running down your face in a bad Frank Zappa impersonator. I knew I drank about a gallon of water a day minimum just to stay hydrated and then the soot would get into the skin pores and cause all kinds of grief.

I did that job for about a month and quit. The owners understood, laughed, etc., because he had a high turnover of laborers. I don't know which was worse, being the guy working the giant size pipe cleaner brush or holding the five inch diameter vacuum hose at the other end.

 

[Muadib]

Loading trucks for UPS in the summer. I lasted 2 weeks then quit.

 

[brianmanahan]

I did that job for about a month and quit. The owners understood, laughed, etc., because he had a high turnover of laborers. I don't know which was worse, being the guy working the giant size pipe cleaner brush or holding the five inch diameter vacuum hose at the other end.

lol, a guy that i worked with lasted a single day as a boiler cleaner

decided to start working as a bank teller the day after

 

[Fritzo]

My current one. I'm literally figuring out mission critical stuff I've never seen before in my life on a daily basis. Kinda feel like this is what James Bond goes through

 

[cytg111]

physically hardest at a warehouse pulling and lifting heavy a* packages, mattresses, furniture etc. Man my body was busted after a shift.

psychological hardest : tech support. That s* takes a piece of your soul.

Both jobs were to supplement "education ubi" while studying.

 

[Red Squirrel]

My current one. I'm literally figuring out mission critical stuff I've never seen before in my life on a daily basis. Kinda feel like this is what James Bond goes through

There's a rule of thumb for that, the more mission critical something is, the older and more proprietary it is and the company that made it folded at least 15 years ago. If you find a Windows NT4 machine in a hospital, it's probably VERY important.

 

[cytg111]

My current one. I'm literally figuring out mission critical stuff I've never seen before in my life on a daily basis. Kinda feel like this is what James Bond goes through

What stuff you in man?

 

[Zeze]

My current one. I'm literally figuring out mission critical stuff I've never seen before in my life on a daily basis. Kinda feel like this is what James Bond goes through

Hang in there, bud.

In time, you'll back in wonder.

 

[Fritzo]

What stuff you in man?

What stuff you in man?

I work for an IT firm, and I'm the onsite-guy. I'll walk into a lab for one of our clients and someone will run up "This microbial thermo scanner isn't connecting to the file server, and our samples will be ruined in 10 minutes unless you can get it going again"

Then I'm all


Our clients literally think I can fix anything with buttons or a screen on it. I've had to fix docket systems for the courts, traffic cameras, robot welders, water jet saws. industrial robots, centrifuges, ceramic ovens, and slews of things I can't even remember anymore. I was recently at a microbiological lab client and had to fix an NX-2 Noxilizer than ran on an embedded copy of Windows XP on a proprietary motherboard. Do you know what a NX-2 Noxilizer does? NEITHER DO I. But I was able to look at the motherboard and determine the BIOS battery had died, causing it to fail a POST test and therefore it wouldn't start. I worked with an engineer from Japan to find a way to virtualize the Windows XP instance and get a COM connection to the PLC modules the machine uses. The company almost forked over $75000 for a new machine!

I run into crap like that at least one a week...getting too old to be flying by the seat of my pants like that

 

[Red Squirrel]

I remember having something like that happen with an MRI machine. Patient was on it, and the machine stopped mid scan. Then everyone from the DI department freaking out at me "The server is down!". I'm like "what server?" "The server! We need it! You're IT, figure it out!"

Turns out this "server" was an old P3 Dell Optiplex box running under a desk in a room that oversees the MRI room. It was basically responsible for ingesting the MRI data as it was doing a scan. The UPS it was plugged into died. We used to find these servers every now and then, and since we did not even know they existed we had no backups or anything... every time I ran across something like this it was like "great, another time bomb". Most of these things ran Windows NT4 or SCO Unix or something along those lines. Very proprietary. I look back and I'm so glad I quit that place, there was just too much stress because of that kind of BS. Not to mention the IT manager was an asshole.

The cool thing about working there is getting to see lot of technology that most people don't get to see, but it's always under a very stressful situation, so it kind of loses the coolness factor. I remember going in the boiler room once, it was freaking awesome in there and would have loved to be able to hang out and have the maintenance guy show me around, but I was there because something was down and it had to be fixed NOW so it kind of loses the fun aspect.

 

[Fritzo]

I remember having something like that happen with an MRI machine. Patient was on it, and the machine stopped mid scan. Then everyone from the DI department freaking out at me "The server is down!". I'm like "what server?" "The server! We need it! You're IT, figure it out!"

Turns out this "server" was an old P3 Dell Optiplex box running under a desk in a room that oversees the MRI room. It was basically responsible for ingesting the MRI data as it was doing a scan. The UPS it was plugged into died. We used to find these servers every now and then, and since we did not even know they existed we had no backups or anything... every time I ran across something like this it was like "great, another time bomb". Most of these things ran Windows NT4 or SCO Unix or something along those lines. Very proprietary. I look back and I'm so glad I quit that place, there was just too much stress because of that kind of BS. Not to mention the IT manager was an asshole.

The cool thing about working there is getting to see lot of technology that most people don't get to see, but it's always under a very stressful situation, so it kind of loses the coolness factor. I remember going in the boiler room once, it was freaking awesome in there and would have loved to be able to hang out and have the maintenance guy show me around, but I was there because something was down and it had to be fixed NOW so it kind of loses the fun aspect.

You know what I'm talkin' about Willis

These things make for great stories and bad ulcers. Our company owner's philosophy is "be kind and empathetic- do everything you can to help." That's nice and all, but one of these days we're going to break something and be liable for it.

 

[JEDIYoda]

it was my understanding that this annual came with a lifetime guarantee

why would they call it an annual if it doesn't come back every year?

I am told its a lifetime guaranteed membership to old`s basement......

 

[Meghan54]

Toughest? Probably the years spent as an RN in ICU's/ER. Having to deal with minutes-old premature infant dying in your hands, spending 3/4 of your 8 hr. shift cleaning up the tidal wave of digested bowel that erupted every hour from the patient's butt like clockwork....stench so bad that I ran through every person in the ICU to assist me (and I was the only one not to upchuck during/after the hourly cleaning routine), etc., etc., etc.

Physically tough? Sometimes it was the military, but I did spend 6 mos. after I got out of the military packing fire brick in boxes and stacking said boxes onto pallets. Was waiting for 1) acceptance into a nursing program and 2) awaiting it to start. So, father got me this gig at his place of employment (he was a mech. engineer for Babcock & Wilcox in Augusta, GA--he was the "fixer" engineer at this point in his life). Wasn't the easiest thing I'd ever done...but outside the sheer physical labor of the job, nursing was much tougher overall.

 

[Sonikku]

> working in consulting/contracting
> estimate we can finish a project in 18 months
> salesman tells client we can do it 9 months
> client chooses us
> six-figure bonus for salesman
> 80 hour weeks for everyone else with no OT pay or bonus

after a year of that, i kind of wish i would wreck on the way to work just so i had an excuse not to go

3 hour traffic backups felt amazing because i could just sit and listen to the radio and think about nothing

I think that in a brief message board post, you just about summed up America and its decline in a nutshell.

 

[mztykal]

My current one...everyday is a new set of surprises someone else was supposed to deal with years ago and buried. Constant fire drills and zero flexibility. All while being told in a non direct way that you’re retarded and terrible at your job due to non controllable items that someone at corporate thought was a great idea...but still trying to tread water.

 

[brianmanahan]

I think that in a brief message board post, you just about summed up America and its decline in a nutshell.

eh, i think america has always been like that

had slaves for the first couple hundred years

then kids and adults working in sweatshops for decades

things have gotten better compared to that at least

 

[ch33zw1z]

Food Service - toughest physical job I've had, combined with customer service makes for a pretty stressful job.

 

[Fritzo]

Toughest? Probably the years spent as an RN in ICU's/ER. Having to deal with minutes-old premature infant dying in your hands, spending 3/4 of your 8 hr. shift cleaning up the tidal wave of digested bowel that erupted every hour from the patient's butt like clockwork....stench so bad that I ran through every person in the ICU to assist me (and I was the only one not to upchuck during/after the hourly cleaning routine), etc., etc., etc.

Physically tough? Sometimes it was the military, but I did spend 6 mos. after I got out of the military packing fire brick in boxes and stacking said boxes onto pallets. Was waiting for 1) acceptance into a nursing program and 2) awaiting it to start. So, father got me this gig at his place of employment (he was a mech. engineer for Babcock & Wilcox in Augusta, GA--he was the "fixer" engineer at this point in his life). Wasn't the easiest thing I'd ever done...but outside the sheer physical labor of the job, nursing was much tougher overall.

Yeah, that medical stuff is mentally draining. I feel for you there. I studied to be a radiographer for 2 years, stayed with it one year, but after dozens of elderly people unable to hold barium enemas, having to stick my fingers in bullet holes while an ER doc got bleeding under control, taking mammograms on women with boobs so big we needed three platforms, dealing with kids that had every object known to man stuck in their sinus cavities...no way I was sticking with that job for $11/hr (this was the early 90s). Kept working as a chef for a while then moved to IT and been here ever since.

 

[JEDIYoda]

I have heard rumors that the toughest job in the world is cleaning Old`s basement......many have tried and none have returned to tell the story...