My family owned a moving company while I was growing up. Nothing worse than loading a trailer of household furniture on a summer day. If it was 90 degrees outside it was 120 inside the trailer. I don't know how many burns I got from touching the top of the metal trailer while loading. The other bad thing about it was not all of the families we moved were the cleanest if you know what I'm saying.

Working in the freezer for Kahns. And then coming home to smell like smoked meat that would not go away. I think my toes are still thawing after 20 years.

 

Did you ever punch the bologna like Rocky??

Working in the freezer for Kahns. And then coming home to smell like smoked meat that would not go away. I think my toes are still thawing after 20 years.

 

I know that smell. It's one you definitely don't forget. When did you work there?

Working in tobacco. Hated pulling plants. Housing wasn't too bad, but hot and sticky. Scattering the sticks was the worst, I am not a real strong person, so I couldn't carry many at a time....had to make lots of trips while fighting off the heat, sweat, weeds, bees and tabacco worms.

 

Farm work. Agree with those that have listed tobacco. The thing I couldn't get over with working tobacco, was that we were doing the work exactly the same way it was done since the beginning of time. The task of chopping down plant by plant and then putting each plant on a stick by hand seemed so archaic to me. For sure a job I will never do again.

 

Agree on the farm work. I never had it as a proper paid job, but I was always the "friend with the strong back" who was asked to give a hand. I'd take the tobacco over baling hay - I always ended up with UNREAL blisters on my hands with hay.

 

Several....loading hay bales onto a trailer. I found out I'm allergic to hay. Pretty much anything to do with tobacco, but the worst parts were suckering it and stripping it. And lastly, picking cucumbers for my uncles. They used to sell them to Paramount. I can't decide which is worst. But I figure any combination of the above are what led me to find a job not related to working in fields. :lol:

 

You guys left out sewing the plant beds before the last frost. One year we set out the entire tobacco base with a hand setter. That was a real joy.

 

We had a pickle base one year, too. The work was such and the reward for it so little, that even my father, who never met a job he couldn't work, decided to drop it the next year.

 

Ringing, castrating, and butchering the hogs, dehorning and doctoring cattle, planting, harvesting, and shelling feed corn, maintaining fences, clearing pasture land, and on, and on....

 

We made our own fence posts, too. I hated working with the creosote. Cleaning the barns in the summer was the worst thing I can remember.

 

I actually didn't mind working the hay, though I enjoyed none of it. God bless those that do. Farming is a noble way of life, but not for me. When I left for Morehead, I never looked back.

Picking Tomatoes and working in Tobacco. I hated suckering tobacco.

 

Also one summer I was working for my brother in law in his hog operation. I had to catch 30-40 pound pigs with one hand and give them a shot with the other. It was not fun.

Picking cotton as a 10 year old, got paid a $1.00, you got the weight of your bag. It was a rip off I worked hard.

 

18 year old working Louisville Downs horse stalls cleaning them out. 90 degrees, yep didn't last long. Got moved to selling programs and met Dan Issel. And that was a fun thing.

I had a lot of random, manual labor type jobs when I was younger, from working in tobacco, construction, landscaping, to loading trucks in warehouses. Absolutely, by far, the worst jobs I've ever had have been working inside (in air conditioning!) doing what I imagine hell is like: retail customer service. It's a small wonder I didn't turn into a misanthrope. :lol:

I'm with you. I worked in tobacco and construction for the majority of my youth. But by far my worst job was selling cellphones. Didn't like it one bit and I'd agree on it being a good comparison for hell.

I've had some dandies:

 

Spent a month building boats from scratch. I've still got the old Les Expos cap I wore that summer that is still caked with fiberglass and resin and other chemicals that probably are germinating as a small tumor inside of me. I won't wear the cap anymore; never got my last paycheck.

 

Spent a summer working at a skid (wooden pallets) factory -- the summer before leaving for college. They didn't turn me loose with the nail guns, sadly, but I operated various types of dangerous saws with no training whatsoever, for a whopping $3.35 an hour. Nearly chopped off a finger; also made my first real death threat to a person.

 

Worked a year and a half in the kitchen at a restaurant in the mall at BG called Garfield's. Valuable experience and life lessons, but it was hot, dirty work. Thought it was interesting when, on my first day, I noticed it required six people to carry one bag of trash out to the dumpster.

 

Worked at a brand-new factory in my hometown the year after my freshman year in college. It was like a class reunion. They turned us loose on expensive towmotors with expensive Telxon inventory equipment with no training whatsoever. I watched one of those machines fly out of my buddy's towmotor as he rounded a corner particularly fast, then get drilled by another buddy who was coming from the other direction. I got going too fast in one of them and drilled the base of a seven-story shelving unit, bending one of the support beams several inches. They actually hired me back a few summers later.

 

Used a weed-eater for 8 hours daily during the 1987 summer clearing hillsides at Pier 99 in Gallatin County. It was the cicada summer, so the strange little beasts spent the whole day clinging to me out of lust for the sound of the weed-eater, creeping me out to no end.

 

I spent three days selling junk toys and such door-to-door at businesses in Lexington, Barbourville and Stanton. Pure hell.

 

Tobacco, hay, digging potatoes, picking corn, etc., etc.

I cleaned Riverbend Music Center the summer b/n my junior and senior year in high school. Anyone here ever cleaned 9 huge bathrooms after major concerts??? I can't unsee a lot of what was witnessed the "mornings after." Those memories haunt my dreams to this day.

Working on a farm tobacco and hay and yes I too was allergic to hay. I was paid a whopping .50 cents and hour back in 1966 a young 14 year old kid. JD

You guys left out sewing the plant beds before the last frost. One year we set out the entire tobacco base with a hand setter. That was a real joy.

 

We had a pickle base one year, too. The work was such and the reward for it so little, that even my father, who never met a job he couldn't work, decided to drop it the next year.

 

Ringing, castrating, and butchering the hogs, dehorning and doctoring cattle, planting, harvesting, and shelling feed corn, maintaining fences, clearing pasture land, and on, and on....

 

We made our own fence posts, too. I hated working with the creosote. Cleaning the barns in the summer was the worst thing I can remember.

 

I actually didn't mind working the hay, though I enjoyed none of it. God bless those that do. Farming is a noble way of life, but not for me. When I left for Morehead, I never looked back.

 

What I remember of killing hogs was frying sausage until the wee hours of the morning. We would pack the sausage in jars, pour the hot grease over it and then turn the jars upside down so they would seal.

 

The one thing I did enjoy about raising tobacco was the burning of the tobacco beds so the weeds would grow. We would carry wood for hours and spread on the beds while dad watched them. Mom would wrap potatoes in foil and bake them in the hot coals. We would then roast hot dogs to eat with them. This was the closest thing I had of "going out to eat" while I was growing up.

Did you ever punch the bologna like Rocky??

 

I never punched it but may "bopped it a few times"

I know that smell. It's one you definitely don't forget. When did you work there?

 

It was not for very long back in 92 or 93.

I've had some dandies:

 

Spent a month building boats from scratch. I've still got the old Les Expos cap I wore that summer that is still caked with fiberglass and resin and other chemicals that probably are germinating as a small tumor inside of me. I won't wear the cap anymore; never got my last paycheck.

 

Spent a summer working at a skid (wooden pallets) factory -- the summer before leaving for college. They didn't turn me loose with the nail guns, sadly, but I operated various types of dangerous saws with no training whatsoever, for a whopping $3.35 an hour. Nearly chopped off a finger; also made my first real death threat to a person.

 

Worked a year and a half in the kitchen at a restaurant in the mall at BG called Garfield's. Valuable experience and life lessons, but it was hot, dirty work. Thought it was interesting when, on my first day, I noticed it required six people to carry one bag of trash out to the dumpster.

 

Worked at a brand-new factory in my hometown the year after my freshman year in college. It was like a class reunion. They turned us loose on expensive towmotors with expensive Telxon inventory equipment with no training whatsoever. I watched one of those machines fly out of my buddy's towmotor as he rounded a corner particularly fast, then get drilled by another buddy who was coming from the other direction. I got going too fast in one of them and drilled the base of a seven-story shelving unit, bending one of the support beams several inches. They actually hired me back a few summers later.

 

Used a weed-eater for 8 hours daily during the 1987 summer clearing hillsides at Pier 99 in Gallatin County. It was the cicada summer, so the strange little beasts spent the whole day clinging to me out of lust for the sound of the weed-eater, creeping me out to no end.

 

I spent three days selling junk toys and such door-to-door at businesses in Lexington, Barbourville and Stanton. Pure hell.

 

Tobacco, hay, digging potatoes, picking corn, etc., etc.

 

I had that job too. My uncle owned a pallet place.

OK...it wasn't a paying gig, but I thought of another one:

 

One year in South Louisville the sewers backed up into everyone's basement. In our particular house, it backed up almost to the first floor. My mom always canned/froze food during the summer to get us through the winter. Well, we had to remove EVERYTHING from the basement, scrub the walls, floor and every single item that was salvageable with bleach water, followed by that super-concentrated Lysol. Everything we removed that could be saved was taken to the backyard to be scrubbed with the same. I sat in the sun for 2 weeks that summer...my job was to scrub all the canning jars and freezer containers and their lids. I had a terrible sunburn, raw hands, and to this day I can't stand the smell of a bandaid...that's what the Lysol smells like.