The scariest job you ever had?

[bbhaag]

Haha right on man just keep telling yourself that. I'm sure your cubicle is so much better. Oh wait maybe your a baller with his own office but it don't matter because when the weekend comes I still have to listen to guys like you and your wife argue back and forth in front of me about the dumbest shit imaginable.

Then when either you or her isn't happy with the choice you made or lets face it you both spent the last week fighting about your shitty choice, you shitheads storm back in and demand satisfaction.

 

[BoomerD]

Well I may be a shit head but what I said is true. You are living in a nightmare that is being a fully formed adult having to take shit from the general public.

IIRC, he and his family own a nursery/garden center. Not exactly traditional retail.

 

[BoomerD]

Haha right on man just keep telling yourself that. I'm sure your cubicle is so much better. Oh wait maybe your a baller with his own office but it don't matter because when the weekend comes I still have to listen to guys like you and your wife argue back and forth in front of me about the dumbest shit imaginable.

Then when either you or her isn't happy with the choice you made or lets face it you both spent the last week fighting about your shitty choice, you shitheads storm back in and demand satisfaction.

or when, in spite of your best advice, they choose a plant (or group of plants) that are totally wrong for the area...and they come back whining and crying about how the plants are doing poorly.

 

[bbhaag]

IIRC, he and his family own a nursery/garden center. Not exactly traditional retail.

WTF are you talking about when you say "Not exactly traditional retail"? I'd like to know what exactly is "traditional retail" versus whatever else you're talking about. Please tell me what this nontraditional retail you speak of is because I'd really like to know how it works.

 

[skyking]

Typical retail does deal with live things that die, for one example

 

[bbhaag]

Typical retail does deal with live things that die, for one example

Oh really? Like Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Ace Hardware, Menards, Amazon or a lot of other retailers that sell "live things". Is that what you and Boomer mean by "traditional or typical retail" that they don't sell live things? Because I can tell you that if that is the line you draw then you're wrong.

 

[brianmanahan]

WTF are you talking about when you say "Not exactly traditional retail"? I'd like to know what exactly is "traditional retail" versus whatever else you're talking about. Please tell me what this nontraditional retail you speak of is because I'd really like to know how it works.

it sounds like running a store has made you hate the world lol

and perhaps rightfully so, the world sucks

i don't think i've ever been to a greenhouse before. i did try to grow some plants one time but i killed them all. (not just the men plants, but the women and children plants too)

 

[BoomerD]

WTF are you talking about when you say "Not exactly traditional retail"? I'd like to know what exactly is "traditional retail" versus whatever else you're talking about. Please tell me what this nontraditional retail you speak of is because I'd really like to know how it works.

By not "traditional retail," I mean, not working in some kind of department store, best buy, Home Depot, etc. Yes, you sell directly to consumers, and in that respect, it IS retail, just slightly different. I'm NOT dissing what you do...not in the slightest...the garden center folks usually know far more about the products they sell than just about any other kind of "retail" sales.

 

[bbhaag]

Yeah us simple garden center folks know exactly what you mean Boomer. I'm just glad I had someone like you, Budsashes, and Skyking to explain it to me otherwise I wouldn't have known what "traditional retail" is versus what I do or the fact that I'm living a nightmare.


I hate to quote myself but here we go again....

You're already one of them you just haven't realized it yet.

 

[BudAshes]

Yeah us simple garden center folks know exactly what you mean Boomer. I'm just glad I had someone like you, Budsashes, and Skyking to explain it to me otherwise I wouldn't have known what "traditional retail" is versus what I do or the fact that I'm living a nightmare.


I hate to quote myself but here we go again....

I grew up in the nursery business. I know exactly what you are dealing with. The things people want to return are insane, and the ideas people have of how growing plants should work is incomprehensible.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Not at a high danger level. Younger me worked in a warehouse doing overnight truck loading or unloading.
Standing policy was if we went five days without an ambulance showing up we would all get free pizza or sandwiches or some sort of meal until an ambulance showed up again.
In about 10 months of working there we got ONE pizza.....
During the holiday season they would pay an ambulance company to wait for someone to get the inevitable cut to the arm, hand or leg. Big place had to be around 200 people working in there at night. All cutting open boxes or bags or clot bags or whatever. Then all the other random dangers, fell off back of a truck or toe crushed or whatever.
To this day I am amazed how often people got cuts and I am typically super careful with box openers because of it.
Probably didn’t help that 1/4 the work force was drunk at any given time. I look back at the problem as a management failure. They should have coached and removed those who were not capable of doing the work safely.

 

[zinfamous]

hmm, well sounds like everyone is equally bitter with their "real retail" and "not-real retail" and "soulless cube monkey corporate gig" existences, so can't you guys all just get along with your shared misery?

 

[Paratus]

While I’ve had some harrowing stories during my career none were a physical danger to me The only time I felt in imminent danger of bodily harm was working as a line cook at a casual Italian restaurant one summer.

On the day in question the manager told the new guy he needed to clean the fryers out before we opened. Normally this meant draining the oil into a vat, filling the fryer with water and cleaner, scrubbing it, draining the water and refilling with fresh oil. For some reason the new guy simply turned the heat on and warmed them up.

45 minutes later the boss comes into the kitchen and gets pissed when he sees the they fryers weren’t cleaned. He told the guy to drain and clean them.

I was over stocking the grill when I heard them and came this close to asking the manager if maybe for safety’s sake we should wait to clean them until tomorrow since they were already hot. But I was just a dumb teen and the boss was pissed so I didn’t.

New guy, who was now pissed after being chewed out went and got the vat. He put it in front of the fryer, opened the valve and drained the now 400F oil into the vat. Next he filled up the 5 gallon bucket with water and dumped it into the fryer.

Except he forgot to close the valve. So the water ran right through the fryer and into the vat of oil.

Some of you may recall from high school physics that water is more dense than oil and will sink to the bottom, that water boils at 212F, and that boiling water creates pressure if not adequately vented.

So the water sank in the oil to bottom of the vat while quickly absorbing enough heat to boil. The viscosity of the oil on top contained the pressure for a moment until it blew, sending steam, boiling water and hot oil all over the kitchen. The water still in the vat continued to vigorously boil sloshing more hot oil onto the kitchen floor.


With visions of a stay in the burn unit I ran.

Amazingly no one was burned. New guy had poured the water from the side so the fryer blocked the worse of the eruption. The boss however was livid.

We had to dump flour on the floor to soak up the oil. I spent most the day sliding back and forth on the greasy floor.

For some reason new guy was no longer on the schedule the following week...

 

[Muse]

Don't know what to say. Had a lot of jobs, almost died once when my tractor went off a cliff. But other than that it wasn't a scary job. Damn doctor who they sent me to wrote in the report that I fell off the tractor or some shit, lied about the fact that the thing went over a cliff 10 minutes after my boss showed me how to drive the thing. Sleaze ball doctor wanted to make sure I couldn't sue the company. I've never sued anyone. Never claimed disability or any shit like that. In fact I've never had a paid vacation day. My last full time job, they let me go without warning and I insisted they pay me for unused vacation time, which I got.

My first job was scary enough. My cousin got me the job, I was 16 or something and it was usher in a movie theater. First day was OK, I guess, but next day on the job the boss says I was supposed to come in on a sooner day. I'm like, shit, if he'd told me to come in on Tuesday, I would have. WTF, you don't forget something like that on your FIRST JOB! I didn't say that, I never got the chance, he just fired me and that was that. Great introduction to the horror show that is capitalism.

 

[Muse]

That's pretty ballsy.

:biggrin:

About like a lot of power line and construction high rise workers, I can do heights, but makes me nervous.

I'm better with heights than I was as a youngster. But I don't do anything wild and wooly. I mean, I get up on my roof of my 2 story house and think nothing of it, but it's only because I've done it some many times. Seems like 100. You do stuff like that enough and you learn to trust yourself, but only if you develop really good habits and know you won't make a mistake. I go up ladders too, but am thoughtful and careful. My brother's wife's father died when she was around 16-18 or something. Fell off a ladder.

 

[Muse]

I asked scariest not most cowardly.

You don't have to like military and cops. But you should realize that is tough work. There's nothing easy about it and it can be very scary. It's understandable to be afraid of cops, I think they're scary and I pretty much avoid cops. Think about that! Being a cop you have to deal with the fact that most people fear you and get uptight just seeing you. That's a heavy burden to bare. And check yourself. Really cowardly people don't become cops or become soldiers.

 

[Muse]

I got a 98 and that puts me in the 98th percentile of people that take the ASVAB... which is to say people that are mostly high school age, or at least their expertise level is. Nobody with any sense pays for college and then joins the military.

Wow, amazed how many of the posts in this thread are about the military. I never was, so most of it goes by me like the wind. Have no idea what ASVAB is and I'm not gonna do a search.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah no doubt about it being a cop is a scary job. In fact being a GOOD cop is probably even more scary. I've heard stories from people who wanted to genuinely be good cops, but when you have coworkers who have other things in mind they will work against you if you try to be a good guy. For example at a crime scene such as a break and enter they will take money from the scene and then threaten you "don't you say anything or I kill your family". What are you even suppose to do about that? Nothing. You are a good cop, all your coworkers are bad cops, you have no power there. Who are you going to call, the police? You ARE the police. You either join them in their corruption to be on their side, be sure to never tell on them and hope they believe it when someone finds out they did something bad that it did not come from you, or quit the force and get another job so that you and your family are not constantly at risk. Sadly this is exactly why there is so much corruption in policing. The ones who want to try to fix it get pushed out eventually.

 

[Muse]

I worked as a letter carrier for a year in the post office.

Was attacked by several dogs, pepper spray and running to the mail truck saved me. Chow Chows and Rottweilers were the worst!

Here's something most people don't consider though... newbies get the worst, poorest neighborhoods to deliver. I thought I was going to get robbed, but never happened. Instead, I nearly got into fights with people who don't get their unemployment or welfare checks that day. They would try to grab my mailbag or block me from leaving apartment complex. Of course, I reported it to the supervisor. I'm assuming they talk to the landlord of that building and/or report incident to the police.

In any case, I finally left to work in a safer environment, a nice office job. The worst I deal with there are lazy and stupid coworkers, but at least there's no crazy people or animals are attacking me.

When I finally got my degree, I was just super poor and took a 3 month temporary job in the federal building in San Francisco in the Office of Workman's Compensation Programs. It was clerical in the extreme and IIRC (this was 1976, the bicentennial) all I did was process federal workers' claims for compensation due to whatever. Seemed that by far the most common claim was postal workers being attacked by dogs! It's obviously the main bad thing that happens to them. Never heard of them being attacked because they didn't bring an expected check! That's bizarre! People really are insane, a lot of them. I took a 3 month extension on that 3 month job in the federal government. They wanted to keep me but I hated it. I don't count it as quitting, because it wasn't a permanent job to begin with, but I refused to do it permanently. If I had, I suppose I would have gone up the pay scale at a glacial pace and eventually gotten a pension. But it was incredibly boring, there was zero sense of romance or adventure. Nothing to be proud of, no challenge. No way to get goose bumps. I dreamed of working in the private sector where maybe something exciting would happen. I was kind of naïve, actually. Reading those forms, there were a handful that were interesting (the accounts of injuries and how they happened), one or two were hair raising and very very memorable, but I've forgotten them long ago!

 

[Muse]

Scary, but also exciting (8 years in service).

I was a loader, driver, and finally a gunner.

I got an arcom for having top gun..

You got any hearing left?

 

[Muse]

In Jr High I used to work a couple hours on Sundays sitting in the little huts that launch clay pigeons for skeet shooting.

You'd cram yourself into this pit with a big mechanical arm that pivoted back and forth with another arm on it with a giant as spring that would launch the pigeons. Back outside behind the pit was the shooting line with a guy that had a remote trigger to launch the bird.

They'd fire off like 25 pigeons straight and you had around 5 seconds between birds to get it on this moving arm. If the pigeon shattered (and that happened at least a dozen times a day) it'd explode in a pile of pieces in the hut and you'd still have to reload the machine fast enough for them to fire off another one immediately. You'd hear the shot bouncing off the top of the hut, the plastic wad that kept the pellets in place would fly far enough to land on the hut and you'd hear that.

It was not fun at all. I only got bit by the machine once and left my hand swollen for a couple days. But if you weren't careful I'm sure it would break every bone in your hand if you were in the wrong spot at the wrong time.

All that for $50, a candy bar and a can of pop for 2 hours of insanity.

:/

Americans have guns on the brain. My apologies.

 

[Muse]

some poster on this board got owned by hot tar, similar situation IIRC. concern warranted.

Yup, the most infamous post I've seen here, I'm sure some people can link it, real life story of a horrendous accident on the job and its horrible aftermath.

 

[Muse]

Pumping gas in New Jersey.

I remember pumping gas for a carful of thugs. After I was done the driver handed me a $20 bill.

Thug: I don't see any black presidents on that bill.
Me: Ahh... I guess not.

Thug: What the f*ck you say white boy.
Me: Nothing

I then heard a loud click. I figure it was a gun. Then a bunch of laughing.

Thug: I should kill you now.
Me: Ehh... I done sorry. I done sorry.

I then ran as fast as I could.

Guns, man. They are a big part of what makes America scary.

 

[Muse]

Fresh out of high school I had a chance to train in industrial electronics.
Electronics, as one of my loves.
Signed up for a trade school course in the field, to see if electronics was what I really wanted to do for a living.
Which it turned out not to be the case.
As a hobby, fine. As a living, no thanks. Took all the fun out of my hobby.

But while attending the course, we had the chance to pick five industrial electronic related businesses to work onsite or on the job training, for one week each pick.

For one pick I chose to work in a hospital.
So naturally, the current hospital project was re-wiring and updating the hospital morgue.
Yes, for one full week I got to work in the morgue with the hospital technicians.
Blood everywhere, autopsy tables covered with blood, and jars of body parts.
Tons of large glass jars on shelves containing all mention of body parts.
And a large chalk board in the room listing body organs and their weight from the last autopsy.
Heart = 3#'s. Brain = 5#'s. Liver = 6 #'s. Good grief....

Luckily, no autopsies were actually conducted while we were working in the room(s).
We were only to work in rooms where no live autopsy was currently conducted.
But that experience? A real-life horror story.
And I swore, those eyes in the jars on the shelves were following me.

Remind me sometime to also tell the time we were making a horror film and needed a coffin. And were given one the hard way.

Working in a morgue! That would have to be order of magnitude more ghoulish than a mortuary, where the body's already in a casket. Being a mortician or coroner. How sunny a disposition could you have?

 

[Muse]

ok the drama is too much for me guys

i'm out

Crime does not pay!