What was your "Dirtiest Job"

[Gary_Miller]

My current job Farrier(Horseshoer), you don't get any dirtier than the bottom of a horses hoof.

 

But I would not give up working for myself no matter how dirty the job.(This message has been edited by Gary_Miller)

[moxieman]

Mine are no where near as bad as some mentioned.

 

Skeptic, I wonder if we worked the same restaurant, except I never got a fungus infection. Or maybe a lot of restaurants out there are scary in the back end.

 

I spent two years on/off as a "route jumper" for a local bread company. Basically, an extra helper for whichever bread delivery person needed extra help that day. So, I got to see a LOT of nasty restaurant backrooms, never mind fast food--that company had the Whooper-bun contract at the time. You had best watch your step at Burger King or you'll slip and find yourself on your back. And the plastic bags attracted tons of dust due to the static. By the end of the day you had dirt ground into every pore and into your work clothes.

[Hal_Crawford]

Working as a helper on a construction job I had to clean up two bathroom sinks that had been used to wash paint brushes. Lots of paint slop--really strong solvent--no ventilation. Went home with my head spinning after the first bathroom. Got a splitting headache from the second. It is a miracle that I still have two brain cells to rub together.

[Eagle92]

I've been fortunate in that the dirtiest job I ever had was summer camp staff. Cleaning up vandalized bathrooms and "dumpster dancing," i.e. placing plywood on top of the garbage and jumping on it to compact the garbage b/c the council is too cheap to have the dumpster emptied more often. Luckily I never had to get into the biohazard gear and go inside the spetic tank like one ranger did at a camp I worked at.

[MarkF]

It's a toss up between the summer I worked a trap shoot competition (for two weeks, by the end of the day I was covered in a fine black clay soot from the clay pigeons as well as powder residue from all the shooting) and cleaning out my fireplace trap a few weeks ago. Ugh, what a mess. 10 years worth of ash accumulation, my son and I were filthy when we were finished.

[click23]

In high school I worked as a tour guide in a commercially operated cave, those wild tours could get pretty dirty especally in the spring after all of the rain. We had a guide that one stepped in some mud with one leg went up to about his thigh, and it was like quick sand. He had to be pulled out, the leg of his pants ripped off and he lost his shoe and sock in that stuff.

 

I washed my wild tour clothes at home one, then the next load of moms white came out red for the red clay we have here that was still in the washer. After that I would take them to the car wash and pressure wash them when they started to get smelling bad.

 

The nastiest thing I have ever had to do was in college I worked at a grocery store. Someone decided to smear #2 all over the womens restroom, somehow I got volunteered into cleaning it up by the store manager, he was a SM and I joined his troop as an ASM I think he thought I was the only one that would do the clean up job.

[Eagle92]

just be glad it wasn't a used feminine hygiene product smeared all over. I've dealt with both situations.

[eisely]

The nastiest job I ever had was one semester as a college student working as a short order grill cook. The guy in the shift ahead of me always left a mess so I had to clean up not just after myself but after him too. I was covered in grease and showered and shampooed every night after I got home.

 

The most physically demanding was one Sunday "bucking bales" at a nickel per 75 lb bale of hay. This guy had a truck and would pick up hay from a farmer's field and move it to a barn somewhere and store it. I was on the crew that walked behind the truck and picked up the bales and threw them up onto the truck bed. Fortunately I was young and fit and up to the job, but I would not want to do it again.

[Adam S]

Paramedic - Jersey City, New Jersey

[JMHawkins]

I suspect Gunny has me beat, but my worst was Garbage Man one summer. This was back in the day before hydraulic lifts. I rode on, more like clung to, the back of the truck while Maniac Mike the driver sped along the road trying to shake me loose (branches that overhung the road were a particular favorite of his)*. He'd stop at a house and I'd jump off, grab the cans, dump them into the back of the truck, then try to get the cans back and the lids on in time to jump back on the truck before the maniac sped off again.

 

But that was the fun part of the job. The dirty part was back at the yard. Someone (as in the new guy - me) had to steam clean the insides of the trucks and the bins we'd rent out. Most of them were just moderately bad, but there was this one campground that rented a big dumpster from us. It was near a popular sport-fishing port, and the fishermen would come back to their campground, clean their fish, and throw the guts into the dumpster where they would bake for a few days in the August sun. Then one of the guys would take a truck down, grab the bin, dump it, and bring it back to the yard for me to climb in and steam clean.

 

* - yes, for real.(This message has been edited by JMHawkins)