64 Of The Worst Jobs Ever, As Shared By People On The Internet

"Under water welder. The pays great but the mortality rate is 40x higher than anything, look up 'Delta P' its a horrific thing to think that can happen suddenly without warning."

"Air Traffic Control.

I’ve heard it’s the most stressful job in the world. Surpassing even top-level government jobs such as the presidency.

Mad props to those workers."

"911 Dispatchers: High burnout rate, often dealing with stressful situations over the phone.

I believe that one said the burnout rate is 100%. Like after 3-4 years, 100% of 911 dispatchers will change careers. Not sure if that’s accurate. He also said every 911 dispatcher is on some form of anti anxiety/depressant.

One said she dealt with a lot of guilt as a lady called her about her ex boyfriend with a restraining order breaking in. Despite telling her to get into a closet and sending the police as quick as she could, she got to listen to the panicked cries of the woman followed by gunshots, which killed her."

"Dancing Bear.

I was a waiter at a kids restaurant, which had a bear as its mascot. The new guy had to "be the bear" on their first day, which meant putting on a massive bear costume over our waiter's uniform, including a huge fur head that you could barely see out of. You were then led around the place to wave at the parents and play with the kids, once per hour. If you spoke you were fired, as some of these kids were return customers who would recognise a waiter's voice.

Wanting to impress my boss, I really hammed it up. I danced, I gestured, I goofed around, I sat on a mother's lap, I ruffled a father's hair while he growled "get off me or I'll stab you". The boss loved it so much that he made me be the bear every day I worked there.

Which would be great, except it was August, and so hot that the restaurant's aircon broke. The bear suit hadn't been washed in the history of the restaurant, so served as a memorial to the sweat of a hundred fallen waiters. Little kids would run headfirst at the bear and headbutt my testicles with depressing regularity. And all it earned me was the disgust of my wait team, who thought I was "goofing off work" by being the bear, since it was clearly easier than carrying two plates of reheated lasagna across the room and refilling drinks."

"Internship at a public relations firm in college. Was promised agency experience, writing opportunities, and valuable experience.

Turns out what they actually meant was "sitting in a room for 8 hours cold-calling CEOs from an outdated call list and trying to trick them into a sales presentation."

Might I add, about a month into the job they hired a new intern manager, who was the epitome of Massachusetts trash. Drove to work every day from the Cape on his Harley (2+ hours one way), lauded his degree from Bunker Hill Community College, chainsmoked, and DJ'ed on the side at trash north shore nightclubs. He insisted on sitting in the room with us, for 8 hours to check if we were actually making calls, all while berating us for being poor employees and cheap labor.

On my last day of the internship, he called me into his office and told me "the only reason you are still here is because we didn't have to pay you. You'll never be successful like me. You're not cut out for the business world, if I were you, I would drop out and try to find a trade you'll succeed in."

Even as a 19-year old, I knew an idiot when I saw one. I looked him square in the eye and said "you can go f*ck yourself" and walked out with the other interns. He then wrote a letter of complaint to my school to try and have my internship credit revoked, but luckily my advisor knew the situation and cut him out.

Dan the DJ, if you're reading this, I want you to know I took your advice and did my best to never become you."

"500's at a Toys R Us. Essentially what our job description entailed was to manage big ticket items out back, unload trucks of inventory and put it away, etc. Even though that is the description, we used to call it 500's because you would do all 500 other possible jobs in the store. They would have us cover for cash, work the floor, clean like a janitor, straighten up the products on the shelves, answer phone calls, the list goes on. It was such a tiring job that by the end of a longer shift you would just want to collapse."

"My first job as a legal secretary. I worked for a blow-hard, rude, obnoxious, disgusting lawyer. (Yeah, I know... insert lawyer jokes here.) It was a small-town, three-lawyer firm with a six-person support staff. The owner of the firm would regularly lose his cool, scream at and berate the staff, and fire people in a tyrannical rage for next to nothing. I worked there about two years and saw no less than 20 people get fired by this guy.

The support staff stuck together and was mostly a good group of people (well...except for the woman who broke into her ex's girlfriend's house and disemboweled her with a tent stake, but that's a whole 'nother story). I finally fell victim to this guy's rage when I couldn't find the address to deliver a package...which I was doing as a favor to his personal secretary because she was having a near-breakdown trying to meet a deadline before he left on a business trip.

Sued the bastard for unemployment, he fought it tooth and nail, and I won."

"I had to pick tomatoes. It was so hot in the greenhouses and the wasps were everywhere. Seriously, do wasps bring anything to the table or are they useless, angry d*cks?"

"Call center work. People are orders of magnitude more likely to verbally assault you over the phone than in person. And at the time, my social anxiety and depression were undiagnosed and untreated.

I eventually had a nervous breakdown and quit."

"Ugh, I did Cutco knives back in 2008/2009. I really needed the money and ya, it was the worst. At our meetings, we had people claiming they put down a down payment on a house and how easy it was to sell. Um ya sure buddy. Now this is in 2008 when the economy tanked and they wanted us to push the $3000 sets. No one I knew could afford that

It felt like a cult and I still feel bad for doing meetings with family members."

toddylady wrote:
"The people that have to clean up crime scenes/places people have died."

Commenter No. 2 replied:
"I almost got a job doing that. $16/hr with terrible benefits.(no health insurance) Was told the worst case they had 3 months earlier was when a morbidly obese work from home computer programmer died in his home and wasn't discovered for 5 months. They needed shovels to get him out. Every window was covered in flies and he had leaked into the subflooring so that had to be replaced as well. They did restoration too."

Cunnilingus_Academy wrote:
"I've seen clips of people diving in raw sewage without any equipment to clear blockages in developing countries."

thesneakersnake replied:
"In that case the P in Delta P stands for poop."

"Coroner staff: You’re getting death from all angles but you also have to deal with murders, suicides, disasters, etc."

"I actually didn't take the job, but it would have been the worst by far. I applied for a position in an industrial bakery as a "Sanitation Technician." As advertised, the job would entail disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling equipment, but when I showed up for my "interview" (really an informal orientation) the nice lady told me I would actually be standing at one end of a conveyor belt and given one simple task: To pick up trays of bread coming off the conveyor belt, rotate them 90 degrees, and place them on a different conveyor belt, for the entire duration of my 12-hour overnight shift.

It would've nearly doubled my pay, but I just could not do it. I put my little hat back on and went back to rolling burritos. Even in the darkest, most horrible open-to-close days of my time at the burrito restaurant, I would console myself with the thought of that job and how much worse things could be."

"Worked at a call center in the 2012 election, basically my job was to call people and try to get them to vote for Obama. During dinner time. In Kansas."

"I worked at a Culver's 3-4 years ago. So many sh*tty things but here are a few of the worst.

We had a senior discount. There was TONS of old people particularly between 12-2pm. It was insanely busy. If you forgot to add their senior discount (even if they didn't ask for it) you'd get yelled at and berated over literally 30 cents.

We had basket meals and snack pack meals. Baskets were larger meals and obviously more expensive. People would constantly order baskets, give me their money, and then AFTER I had cashed them out they would get pissed that I put in the basket because that was "too much to eat." Then I would have to refund them and get a manager and all of that. So they were pissed they had to wait on top of everything else.

I was also in high school and had to get up early, and my sh*tty manager would force me to stay until 11 when I was only scheduled until 10. She would talk sh*t about me to the other high schoolers saying how lazy I was because I wouldn't stay and help, even though I had to go home and do homework, plus showering and getting ready for school the next day. One time, one of the idiot high school boys mopped with a dirty mop and she told me to re-mop the floor while the kid was still standing there. She actually expected me to do it when he was the one who f*cked up.

Anyways sorry for the giant wall. I just really f*cking hated that job."

"Checking abandoned houses in Detroit for occupancy and condition. During the worst of the recent recession."

Commenter No. 1 wrote:
"Investigating cartel activity. There's a lot of f*cked up sh*t that is connected to the cartel."

CaminoFan replied:
"That career seems like a one way ticket to being burned alive and recorded. Or worse."

"People who dive into sunken ships to recover dead bodies."

"I worked at a slaughterhouse for a little while. They killed steers there but got pork shipped in. The hams came in a gigantic cardboard vat, probably 5' wide and 4' deep. They were heavily waxed on the inside to make them waterproof and had steel banding running around the outside kind of like an old keg or barrel. Once we fished out most of the hams and trimmed them there was always a couple feet of blood at the bottom. As the new guy it was my job to dangle over the edge with a meat hook in one hand fishing for the remaining hams and scraps. Usually it was about an hour in shoulder deep blood with your face next to the surface."