Mostwanted

I did a stint with a plumber. We were called out to clean out drains at a chinease buffet restraunt. They must have shoved everything including parts of the kitchen sink into the drain. Needless to say, the line had failed and we had to R&R the lines. The smell was so horrible, I am reminded of it every time I eat chinease food. I actually caght some sort of virus and was sick for a week after. Also, we cleaned out the drains in a morgue once. I must say it was very clean and smelled like hospitol in there, but I did see some little red speckels under the drain grate. Made me wonder.

kelley15

When I was just out of high school I worked at a gas station in Mcallen Texas. It was about 9 miles from the Mexican border. Me and a friend closed at midnite. We would get alot of highschool kids coming back home from partying in Reynosa Mexico. We would then clean the restrooms. You could not imagine the things we would find.
I am a process operator now. I rack out 4160 volt motors all the time. also blowdown product then nitrogen purge equipment. It is very safe to work on this stuff if you follow proper lock tag and try procedure. Pressuring up gets critical because if air is trapped in piping or vessells you can have decomposition that can lead to explosions. I have seen paint melt an bubble off but no explosions.

Mexstan

For the FIRST week????? What happened for the rest of the month? Don't tell us you got used to the "smell".

4doogie

the worst job i had was when i had to load a truck with horse manure. normally not a bad job, but when you are given a bobcat to do a loaders job bad things happen. 105 outside and the pile is about 30ft tall. wasn’t so bad at first but when the wind starts blowing and you get to about the middle of the pile its about 120 inside the cage of the bobcat. i also leaned very fast to keep my mouth closed after learning the hard way. at the end of the day i was covered in horse manure/wood chips soaked in pee. man you bet i smelled like the morning sun.

zulusafari

Ammonia from that fermenting mess isn't much fun either!

welder27

"For the FIRST week????? What happened for the rest of the month? Don't tell us you got used to the "smell"."

Yup, sadly enough, I got used to it.

And about plumbers...they have quite the hazardous job. You really gotta watch what you're doing and where you are because of hepatitis, HIV, E. coli, etc. I knew a civil service worker on the Air Force base who got hepatitis C from working in the base hospital and he was just an electrician who was working around the plumbers! What a bad disease! He would be so tired and feel like crap every day he came to work because of it. Nasty!

doodah

Well, bein the farm boy that I am, I got 2 for ya'll... 1st one is our hog barns are old open sides with15 seperate pens running at a slight slope,- so every thing that runs runs south into a cement turd and slop pit about 6 ft deep on the deep end and ground level on other end, so you can drive into it with skidloader to get the solids to put in the slinger spreader, the other end gets pumped out in the honey wagon. THIS IS WHER IT GETS NASTY!! one day the stirator-the thing that stirs it up and sucks the slop up into the honeywagon broke its proppeller! well guess whos got to hop in the 6ft of pure stank and bend over to try to retrieve it!! Lets just say it wasn't my dad!! That was over 1 year ago and I still feel wierd! #2 also being on the farm with cattle and hogs, your gonna have dead critters, well here we also stockpile our manure when we can't spread it on the fields- we also make compost piles, for those who do not Know- that is a pile of manure, dead animals,straw, cornstalks ground feed, or whatever else you find to bury the dead! well every so often , to have the full effect you have to stir the pile or-STIR UP THE FIRE! if you know what I mean!with a skidloader and that is the most horific smell ever!! and I have smelt alot of stuff, also have a nieghbor who thinks he has to have the local egg plant haul all their egg shells out in his field in a stockpile, but yet he has nothing to load them or spread them with -so who does he call? the friendly nieghbor of coarce! that smell is right upthere with the rotting animal compost piles top that!!

4doogie

those skidloaders just have no place in any compost related arias, at the end of the day your legs and back hert and you smell like you rolled in stuff that makes ya go blllaaaa somebodies gota do it

chris

Cummnzpowr

heh..try delivering armoirs, sleeper-sofas, AND Piano's up and down multiple flights of stairs in apartment buildings and offices in San Francisco everyday... talk about a bad back and knees

RATTLINRAM

While I was still in high school, my friend's dad had a "Jack of all trades/handyman/General Contracting" business,,, (basically,,,, we will do it for the right price) At 16/17 yrs old,,,,, we cleaned up after a fella took his head off with a 12 gauge while sitting in bed (no smell,,,,,, just a big mess!),,,,,,,,, then a while later,,,,, we had to empty out an apartment where an elderly lady had died of a heart attack and fell in between the fridge and the wall. She wasn't found till the neighbors complained of the smell a week later! (seems as how everyone had AC except her) (very sad situation) After graduation from school, I worked for the city at the city cemetery digging graves and even dug one guy up and moved him to the other end of the park so his wife's second husband could be buried beside him and still leaves room for her when it was her turn. The funny thing was that none of the burials bothered me until I had to dig a small grave by hand and then a car from the funeral home pulled up and a fella got out carrying a little white silk covered box no bigger than a shoe-box. With nobody else in attendance, I placed it in the ground and covered it up. The funeral home guy left after the first shovel of dirt and I finished the job alone. I ended up just sitting there till after quitting time till it was almost dark, hoping that someone would come,,,,,,, but they never did. (Very, very, sad.) Transferred from the cemetery to the landfill running heavy equipment up in the garbage piles. After a while,,,,,, I got used to the smell enough that I would sit on the 955 loader and eat my lunch!
These are the only jobs that I didn't find much enjoyment in.

DeaconWayne

Back in summer of '80 I had left the Air Force and took a job working truck tires in San Antonio, TX. Got a call about 1:30 one morning to find a stolen meat delivery truck and repair 4 of it's 6 tires (they had been shot by the stealee). Found the truck on the very south side of San Antonio. It had been left at the side of the road in the ditch about 10 feet from a dog that had died maybe a week earlier.

Another job that I never enjoyed, but did it because that's what I was 'trained to do', was 20 years as an administrative specialist/technician with the Air Force. I'm an outside kinda guy. Give me a hammer and a couple nails and a 2x4 and I'll build you a house, or a couple sockets and wrenches and I'll rebuild your whole car - but PLEASE don't stick me in an enclosed office.

DW

sherod

Worst for me I guess is back when my family was farming, we raised shorthorn/angus cross. Dads hands and arms were too big so guess who got to use the Gigli saw when necessary. If you raise stock, you'll know what I mean.

Second worse when I agreed to help remodel a bathroom. Had to totally remove everything from the dirt up. Wosrt part of that deal was the 5-6 feet of raw sewage pooled up under the joists. Five gallon buckets do NOT make the job any more pleasent. (Finally found the septic tank UNDER the slab in the latest addition to that house.)

Ed

Jeff in TD

I occasionally do death investigations. Once in a while, you get one that starts out "haven't seen the neighbor in a couple of weeks" in the middle summer... There is something about the smell of a dead person that has always been worse than a rotting animal or sewage, at least for me.

I've also gone to some autopsies. The thing people talk about- ending up on a stainless steel table with a drain at the end is really a myth. (It’s not really a drain, more of an industrial strength garbage disposal kind of thing).

Also, things are more low-tech than I expected, like using a big knitting needle to show a bullet path.

The pathologists really have a tough job, and seem to use humor to cope. I’ve heard of them having maggot races to see who buys lunch.

Still, the only part that really bothers me is having to be the bearer of a death notification.

I've had quite a few unpleasant tasks, but this is what popped into my mind.

4doogie

i think you got the badest of them all jeff in td, its got to be hard to tell someone you dont know someone just died. the look on thier face , i would rather smell bad than have to tell someone the mother of all there life who birth raised fed ..... them just got killed by a drunk or something like that.

chris

dodgeman01

I have done a few jobs that were hard or that I did not care for a whole lot. I farm so along with the smell you also get the enjoyment of pulling dead calves and other fun stuff like that.
My worst job that I can think of was working for a powerplant. what was so bad about it was that we were working in a coal shaft with a 4 or 5 foot whide belt that brought the coal from different towers where it was crushed and then sent into other mills. we sholved the loose coal that fell to the ground.no air covered in dust and safty equipment was pretty bad but the worst was working right next to the bolier where temps were above 100 degrees and the coal dust was so thing your resperator was solid black with in an hour or so. everytime I walked out from work I looked like crap and was covered wih black dust. all for 7 bucks an hour and many times working 10 hours a day.
DM01