There are few people who don't complain, even sometimes, about his or her job. It's too stressful. It's boring. It's not what the college years prepared them to do. The boss is a jerk.The backstabbing, smelly co-worker is also the office party planner.
The list is endless.
The most recent issue of Mental Floss (and if you don't get this magazine, you should), ran a feature on history's most disgusting jobs. In it, author A.J. Jacobs reminds us that there were folks who earned a buck or two for being what was called a soil man, "who schlepped excrement from privies to the edge of town."Jacobs, referencing Tony Robinson's book, The Worst Jobs in History, also reminds us to be happy that our jobs probably do not involve plucking corpses or cleaning the hind sides of royalty.
Before Northborough Fire Chief David Durgin was in charge of a whole fire squad, years ago, he had to put up with quite the "smelly and disgusting" duty, too.
Durgin, and other notables in town, shared with Patch some of the employment "opportunities" that led them to where they are today.
Durgin bagged groceries, stocked shelves and cleaned the meat room at a supermarket. He calls this his first "real job."
"Once a week we would have to unload the tractor trailer that, on Tuesday nights, brought in the store stock for the entire week," said Durgin, who added that the unloading time started after school and would continue until 11 p.m.
"I always felt lucky to have a part time job," he said. "All jobs always have some less than desirable part, but it went with the job when you signed on and you knew it ... most of the time."
Durgin also changed tires at the Ford dealership, unloaded fertilizer and cut pipe at a hardware store, and flushed out septic tanks at state parks.
"The fire crew had this honor [of flushing out septic tanks] because we had the fire trucks with the water," said Durgin. "Helping the state park crews with trash removal after a holiday was a nasty and smelly job. The meat room cleaning at the supermarket was interesting ..."
Leslie Rutan, Board of Selectmen member, recalls her first job, which earned the title "shoe picker" at Kinney Shoe Warehouse, where she'd fill shoe orders by finding the shoes, filling the box and throwing it on the conveyor belt. At least this did not require touching any strange feet.
Another selectmen member, Jeff Amberson, shared with us his fishy history, and we mean that literally. His said his toughest job was working on a sword fishing boat, a position he landed right out of college (he didn't want a "real job" right away). As part of a crew of four, he was up at the crack of dawn to haul back the long line, clean the catch and ice them down.
Growing up on the Cape, he spent a lot of time on boats and around fishermen, so it wasn't a stretch. When a friend who worked on a boat called Sea Fever got him the job, he took it.
"We would try and harpoon fish for several hours during the middle of the day, then set the line back out late in the afternoon, said Amberson. "Then we'd have a couple hours watching during the night, and do it all over again the next day. We would go out for between a week to ten days at a time. Depending where the fish were, we might be 150 miles or more offshore."
It was hard work at dangerous times, he said, and "not something I would want my kids to do."
Amberson, before "settling down," also worked in a fish market, pounded nails and bartended. "The most fun was bartending," he said, "though it didn't exactly pay the bills."
Pastor of Rice Memorial Baptist Church, Stephen Georgeson, counts his first "adult job" as a security guard at Bordon Chemical in Leominster. There, he'd make the rounds on weekends, sitting in a 5x5 shack while not making those rounds. "Although I didn't mind it, as I was young," said Georgeson, "it was my first and worst job."
What was your worst job? What was your first job? Are they one in the same? Share with us in the comments section below. It'll make us all feel better ... even you.