Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What crappy no future jobs have you done, to keep food on the table?

Other than High School jobs, like busboy or grocery cashier, I've been pretty fortunate. I did a very short stint installing fences in El Paso. After that it was 40 years of union electrical construction in NYC, straight to retirement..

Never home, so I quit the oilfield and I had a wife and 2 kids at home. Took a job in maintenance at a chicken plant. No one went hungry and it kept the bills paid but that's about all. Took a year and a half to find a decent job, but I got out of there as quick as I could.

Gee and people wonder why those of us who have busted our azzes to get where we are today and to get what we have tend to be conservatives and despise the welfare gimme-dat crowd! Just look at this thread and the horrible jobs many of us have done just to remain self sufficient!

Bro, that's a good deadend job on a hot day in SoCal. Mud off tires, gravel off the sides of dumptrucks. A little overspray every vehicle. Bam! and a paycheck for keeping cool all day.

I worked in a metal foundry,had a big hammer machine that knocked the ceramic off the freshly poured metal parts,machine was loud,had rubber mats wired all around it.was like working in a cave.had to stop every hour to shovel up the ceramic pieces into giant carts and push them up a ramp to be re used.
Was hot,loud and dirty,but,i was alone all day,as long as i was working ,nobody bothered me,but it was minimum wage,i left as soon as i could.

I have to say, not that bad. I've worked hard, but the jobs we not all that bad.

Worked as a janitors helper at a elementary school one semester while in college (nasty job). Then worked stocking groceries at night in a major supermarket. Married and one kid at the time....Graduated with a EE degree and things got better.

Weeded, and picked produce, shoveled s h i t, emptied garbage, cleaned houses, moved furniture, remodeled basements and homes, hauled and stacked firewood, cleaned chimneys, mowed lawns and shoveled a LOT of snow. Thank God I moved out at 19, everything was easy after that.

Farmed and ranched.

Had to work steadily while in college in order to remain a student, and all summers - and when first married and with children as a teacher needed to work summers as well. Ditch digging, carpenter helper, cleaning petroleum lines/tanks/cracking units, automobile assembly line, various oil refinery tasks, driving school bus, tutoring in math and sciences, college plumbing crew, machine shop assistant, news stand in evenings, paper box factory night worker., checking crops and selling pesticides/fertilizer/farm equipment, running a crew picking melons in AZ, repairing music instruments, mobile service vehicle tune-ups, janitorial services, night watchman, Readers Digest Book Return crew, IBM bodily electric testing, baby sitting, running a TP rolling machine at Scott Paper, lawn and tree work, night shift at mental hospital, any extra music jobs that came along including teaching myself to play tuba to get hired to play in the orchestra for a production of The Pirates of Penzance at Sleepy Hollow School. There were others - a little more selective these days.

Rough carpentry and landscaping. Junior guy on both crews. Honest work, At least it kept me going to college.

Old70

Cottage cheese factory and hubcap factory were probably the worst.
Even when I worked in the utility business the pay was great but some of the jobs sucked. Everybody should be a meter reader for a year. It will make you appreciate your next job.
I also had no-future jobs that were great. Planted trees with my Uncle for several years. Lots of times hungover. Back-breaking work in all kinds of weather but we had a great time.

What was bad about being a meter reader ? From the outside it looks like a cake job.

Paul..... what exactly does a Readers Digest Book Return crew, do?

Inquiring minds want to know.

I worked 11p-7a on a big drilling rig in the Anadarko Oil Basin in Oklahoma about 40 years ago. 7 days a week. No days off. It was crazy. Well over 600 rigs goin’ in Oklahoma at that time. OSHA who...?
I got tired of that schit, I went to college and got my BSN.

Asbestos abatement, insulation installer, house painter, raspberry picker.

I’ve enjoyed working these 50 years, very proud I’ve never taken a dime of Government money, except SS, but I earned that.

Was slave labor as a child. Hoed a lot of rows of cotton, hauled and stacked countless bales of hay, and stretched miles and miles of barbed wire fence. And never got payed a dime! 🤠

Payed my way through College delivering newspapers in the AM, delivering pizzas at night, and mowing lawns in the afternoon. All at the same time.

A&M...?