Nastiest paid Jobs

[HIPO]

Lets hear about your nastiest paid jobs! I'm dumb enough to have had some beauties........

[HIPO]

As a young lad would get some casual work unloading "green skins". Freshly harvested sheep skins would arrive on a Semi. Climb up & on the stinking skins to fling them off by hand, all while having maggots flying off into your clothing, shoes etc..... skins would then be hung on racks to dry off..... this place was in a suburban area too!

[blueoval]

A number of years ago (roughly early 2000s) a couple of my mates signed up to get paid to clean housing used for regional outback communities. They had to disinfect one particular house which had fecal matter on every wall. This required hazmat suits, specialized masks and industrial grade cleaner and equipment plus a high pressure gurney. They got paid 2k just for that one house which took them 1 entire day to clean.

[aussiblue]

Westply plywood assembly line in Victoria Park circa 1968; place a hardboard layer down, grab the gooey noxious floppy sticky layer that came out between two rollers and move it through the air so that it held its rectangular shape and place it carefully on the board, place another board on top them pass the lot on as quickly as possible so the line wasn't held up. The glue made you eyes and nose run and it required a lot of fast paced concentration. It was mind destroying dangerous and unhealthy job so I threw in in after the first week; I would have done so earlier but a mate's father thought he was doing me a favour getting the job for me. I was supervised by WAFL Perth football hard man Mal Atwell.

An only slightly later version of this: https://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b2052108_3 (no; that's not me but it's same machine and "safe: working platform) but they had me doing it solo. I guess the positive was it really gave me a very big incentive to enrol in night school to do my leaving and matriculation and later UWA so I could get a much better job. it also earned me the ongoing respect and acceptance of the youth from the rougher side of town as many were also employed there. They always gave me a friendly greeting when I ran into them again years later.

[uranium_death]

Originally Posted by HIPO

As a young lad would get some casual work unloading "green skins". Freshly harvested sheep skins would arrive on a Semi. Climb up & on the stinking skins to fling them off by hand, all while having maggots flying off into your clothing, shoes etc..... skins would then be hung on racks to dry off..... this place was in a suburban area too!

My old man did this at William Angliss in Footscray back in the 60s.
Was at Footscray Tech earning his engineering diploma. During his holiday breaks, he'd go work there. Told me that his first day was the hardest - the smell was horrendous, but you get used to it fairly quickly. He did it for 2-3 years.

He began full time work around 1965 at the Board of Works. He told me that when he started work at the B.O.W, he actually earned less as a draining engineer than he did at William Angliss.

[Interceptor]

Originally Posted by blueoval

A number of years ago (roughly early 2000s) a couple of my mates signed up to get paid to clean housing used for regional outback communities. They had to disinfect one particular house which had fecal matter on every wall. This required hazmat suits, specialized masks and industrial grade cleaner and equipment plus a high pressure gurney. They got paid 2k just for that one house which took them 1 entire day to clean.

Mid 2000's the company I was working for had to do some work at a government housing residence of a similar caliber, floor was a couple of feet off the ground, but literally every square inch of the ground under the house was covered in dirty nappies and rubbish, that bad that you could smell it halfway to the fence.

Boss rang whoever he had to and told them they needed to get cleaners in then told us to get off site.

We didnt go back for that job.

I cant say I've had any "nasty" jobs, had some that were regularly physically exhausting with long hours, a couple of companies that have left a very sour taste in my mouth, but thankfully nothing that would be considered nasty.

[290GTP]

I spent 5 years working in my dad's tannery at Botany. Mostly, it was pretty dirty work, but 2 jobs there standout the most.

First one was cleaning out the sullage pit by hand. A stinky miserable job that had to be done to try & keep the wastewater as clean as possible.

The second was worse. Business wise we thought it would be a good move to capitalize on the growing Japanese obsession with kangaroo scrotums. We would purchase the scrotes from the nearby petfood co-op, de-ball them and de-hair them on new custom-made machinery, then tan them & sell them to our local souvenir manufacturers.

We only did this for a month or two. We sold everything we could produce but none of us could stomach the process any longer. I remember one set of balls being launched out of the machine & smacking the opposite wall of the factory 12 mtrs away. Yuck!

[Interceptor]

Originally Posted by 290GTP

I remember one set of balls being launched out of the machine & smacking the opposite wall of the factory 12 mtrs away. Yuck!

Be glad they didnt hit you!

[DFB FGXR6]

Originally Posted by blueoval

A number of years ago (roughly early 2000s) a couple of my mates signed up to get paid to clean housing used for regional outback communities. They had to disinfect one particular house which had fecal matter on every wall. This required hazmat suits, specialized masks and industrial grade cleaner and equipment plus a high pressure gurney. They got paid 2k just for that one house which took them 1 entire day to clean.

Ha ha, it only took three posts for fecal matter to be enter the discussion.

[Itsme]

I had a stint in abattoirs, it is an eye opener, lasted only a week, you have to be special doing that job

[BENT_8]

When I left my first job and went working for some cereal farmers, they'd bought a working dairy and a hundred head of fresian cows ready to calve.
One morning we found a cow struggling with a breached calf.
Ended up elbows deep in the poor girl turning the calf. As mum was so tired from the experience we put her in the loading run and slipped some timbers under her to keep her standing, slipped a rope over the calves hooves and pull it out with the old lever action fencing strainer.

Its pretty messy.

[BENT_8]

Originally Posted by HIPO

As a young lad would get some casual work unloading "green skins". Freshly harvested sheep skins would arrive on a Semi. Climb up & on the stinking skins to fling them off by hand, all while having maggots flying off into your clothing, shoes etc..... skins would then be hung on racks to dry off..... this place was in a suburban area too!

Wingfield?

I still remember the disgusting smell on Cormack Rd back in the early 80's.
Dad said it was sheep skins.
Dont know if theres any truth to it but I recall being told they burnt carcasses in the power station by the Grand Junction rd rail bridge .

[aussiblue]

I found another State Library picture of "favourite" glue roller machine https://purl.slwa.wa.gov.au/slwa_b2052108_5

Obviously taken in the 1950's before they realised that having an assembly line would be more efficient. And looking at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF5LVBW1vl8 in the same era in Canada they were obviously very behind in terms of the technology used elsewhere. At 3:25 they use a similar gluing roller system but used several lighter strips rather than a single large glue coated sheet and a hydraulic lift to move the assembled sheets on. Ditto in this UK factory at 1:20.

However, this "modern " Chinese factory in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0E7crKp5cU still seems to be using the old Wesply approach. The opening shot shows that gluing machine equivalent, albeit they are making/handling much smaller sheets than we were. At least unlike I was, everyone in these videos appears to at least have been provided with rubber gloves.

[aussiblue]

Ended up elbows deep in the poor girl turning the calf. As mum was so tired from the experience we put her in the loading run and slipped some timbers under her to keep her standing, slipped a rope over the calves hooves and pull it out with the old lever action fencing strainer.

Its pretty messy.

Yes being brought up on dairy farm and then having long skinny arms I always got allocated that task. But none of it paid though. And probably not my worst unpaid job either.

[b0son]

Nastiest job at my workplace, one I thankfully never had to do, was crushing resin. We'd receive the resin in 1kg blocks (3-500kg in total), and it needed to go through a fitzmill with dry ice to powderise it, so it could then be used later on in production. Horrible job, huge amount of dust, and even with dust masks/goggles/disposable overalls, you still ended up with dust all over you.

An ex-employee, unhappy at being let go, dobbed us into WorkCover over this job (which he never had to do). Inspector came out, saw the equipment, got his head around the process and PPE involved, then asked how often we were doing it. Every day? Once a week? No, once a year. Pfft, as you were! Non issue in his eyes.

[Tonz]

When Keating was PM and we had his banana republic economic policy, work was hard to come by.
I last 1 shift on this job.... was picked up at 7.30pm drove to Westfield Marion got into all sorts of protective clothing, walkjed through the shopping centre and up into the roof cavity about Maccas and started cleaning the fay from their air vents above the fryers.

We (team of 4) repeated this 4 times and finished at a Hungry Jacks somewhere around 6am. I spent 30 minutes under the shower disposed of my 'overalls PET? clothing and my own clothing. refused to go back.
Centrelink asked me 48 hours later why I quit so I took my bag of 'clothing' as proof the rubbish truck hadnt collected it

[Trevor 57]

In the '70's I worked for a rubbish removalist, we had to clean out a hookers house - it was "interesting"

As a kid on Phillip Island I worked during the school holidays for a bloke who had to garbage contract and he also emptied 'night pans' and pumped septics. I remember driving his rigid truck around one of the Islands many estates, he came out with a night pan and the a.r.s.e. fell out of it and it went all over him

[BENT_8]

Originally Posted by Tonz

When Keating was PM and we had his banana republic economic policy, work was hard to come by.
I last 1 shift on this job.... was picked up at 7.30pm drove to Westfield Marion got into all sorts of protective clothing, walkjed through the shopping centre and up into the roof cavity about Maccas and started cleaning the fay from their air vents above the fryers.

We (team of 4) repeated this 4 times and finished at a Hungry Jacks somewhere around 6am. I spent 30 minutes under the shower disposed of my 'overalls PET? clothing and my own clothing. refused to go back.
Centrelink asked me 48 hours later why I quit so I took my bag of 'clothing' as proof the rubbish truck hadnt collected it

Go into most if not all of those takeaways and you'd think they're still looking for a replacement for ya Tonz.
Putrid smell of fat in those places these days.

[HIPO]

Originally Posted by BENT_8

Wingfield?

I still remember the disgusting smell on Cormack Rd back in the early 80's.
Dad said it was sheep skins.
Dont know if theres any truth to it but I recall being told they burnt carcasses in the power station by the Grand Junction rd rail bridge .

I remember that one well! Suburb name escapes me, but was just a block or so South of where Port & Old Port Rds meet.

Would not surprise me if they burnt carcasses there!

A K or 2 East of that Cormack Rd place was a fair bit of open grassy fields. Was in there one morning with my bestie XOS Bull Terrier getting a feed of Mushrooms.
Ready to leave & he jumps into the back seat. I'm over whelmed by a putrid stink to the point of dry reaching. So he's covered with some dead slime & i drove home (Outer Harbour), head out the window dry reaching........

[LG17]

My brother in law had a spa business in Sydney in the 80s.
Sold them, installed them, serviced them.
From time to time he would call me to lend a hand, sometimes just delivering them and other times installing and cleaning them.
Trevor's post above reminded me about this.
We had to clean and service 3 spas in Balmain which were in a brothel.
I still shake my head when I think about it as it was the most disgusting job I've ever had to do. We were asked if we wanted to work the bill off and simultaneously answered no, cash only thanks.

[HIPO]

Was working at ICI Osbourne S.A., where they produced Soda products.Later became Penrice Soda.
They had some multi story towers, that they called Ammonia Pots, if i remember correctly.
Part of their maintenance was to be emptied for cleaning.
They contained a steam broiled, Saline - Ammonia liquid. Once emptied covers where pulled at various levels.
My job that day was to get in & using an air powered chisel, remove the about 1" thick crust from the walls. It came off easy enough & had trapped liquid flowing down from behind.
You had to be completely suited up & wearing a face-mask, hooked up to air!
Was a bit like Hookah diving, having air lines going to bottles outside, that where monitored by a partner.
Any mistakes in there, where you take a gulp of "air" without the mask, would apparently collapse your lungs.
Lots of injuries at that place, including unfortunately, One of the lower covers being taken off the above "pots", before properly emptied.... going from my above description, i'll leave it up to your imagination on the outcome............ RIP.

[danzvtil]

I have 2 stories.
Had an urgent call from my childcare centre. We have a problem with the rubbish company, they haven’t emptied our bins all week (in summer), get here now with your trailer and take it all to the dump, the parents can smell it from the carpark.
Garbage bags full of nappies, cooking in the heat all week, I gloved up, masked up, goggled up. Inside the bags, what was solid was now liquid, hoisted one bag over the trailer cage, caught it and tore it open. What appeared to be 10 thousand maggots flew out, landing on the ground still wriggling.
Story 2.
Wife of baller customer calls. We have a problem, you know the garage that is storing our furniture while the house gets rebuilt? It also contains a double freezer. This freezer contains a pig and goat from hubbys last hunting trip, the circuit breaker tripped upto 2 months ago, the whole lot is flyblown.
Now I actually smelt this 2 months ago while on-site, but thought it was part of the rodent problem. I discussed with her that the freezer will never be cleaned out sufficiently, I pushed it out from the wall, taped the doors shut with duct tape, and laid it on its back in the trailer.
Get to the dump, explained the whole thing, needed special permission to put it in the general waste, I had an audience from a distance, placing bets whether it would bust open when pushed out of the trailer.
It took several weeks of sanitising and deodorising the garage floor using various acids.

[MITCHAY]

I'm lucky to have rode a desk most of my working life, but before all of that I worked as a drycleaner and well you can imagine how that could get dirty and nasty.

But what most won't know is a procedure called "raking the mud". You pump the drycleaning fluid into a still and it boils off, ready to clean again.

What is left the next morning looks like all the shit that come out of the clothes in bulk. I was fortunate that I never spilled a bucket raking it thank ****

One of the worst days I had was when one filter got clogged and I ended up flooding the shop with drycleaning fulid (which even at that time was $$$) and had to clean all that shit up. I approached it all wrong but that machine was ****ed anyway

We also did photo processing at the same place and cleaning the racks in the machine sucked **** too. Canberra folks will know the franchise

[Tonz]

Originally Posted by BENT_8

Go into most if not all of those takeaways and you'd think they're still looking for a replacement for ya Tonz.
Putrid smell of fat in those places these days.

I can drink Mc coffee at a desperate push, but never eaten anything from a fast food outfit since. local KFC when the wind blows a certain direction still makes me gag.
I could tell another about when we owned a pet crematorium here and a Rotweiller/great dane that died 24 hours before we were notified 500K away on a warm 42* summer day.... but Ill spare the grizzly

[five 7]

Originally Posted by Tonz

I can drink Mc coffee at a desperate push, but never eaten anything from a fast food outfit since. local KFC when the wind blows a certain direction still makes me gag.
I could tell another about when we owned a pet crematorium here and a Rotweiller/great dane that died 24 hours before we were notified 500K away on a warm 42* summer day.... but Ill spare the grizzly

My smal work empire backs on to a pet food facility in West Auckland Tuesday is horse day. There was a brief period in time when elephant was on the menu.....

[mondeomatureguy]

Hi Guys,
After my divorce i quite my job of 7 years and took a month off. I was a professional Driver and i got a job thru an agency just for a week or two to take Easter Eggs to Canberra from a place in Western Sydney.

This guy who owned the truck was very rude. I dont like rude people never have. I turned up at 7am The eggs were loaded on the truck as it was refrigerated and i took a walk around the truck noticing two tyres were bald.

I told this bloke this truck is an accident waiting to happen, he said I dont give a stuff what you think your job is too drive the truck. I checked the water and oil and put in 3 litres of oil and off i go on my way to Canberra and it was quite a warm day also.

I find it funny because i live in Goulburn but thats were the truck broke down near the Big Merino. I phoned the Company and talked to the Bloke and he said He will phone the Mechanic and this was about 10.30 in the morning. I waited till 1pm and phoned back saying when is the Mechanic coming? his response was, I havent phoned him yet stop calling me.

I told him i will give him till 3pm if nobody turns up i will leave the keys under the Sunvisor and return by train to Sydney. I phoned once more at 3pm and all i got on the phone was Iam sick of you truck driver from Agencys who the hell think you are telling me what to do.

I said see ya and by the way your Easter Eggs are starting to melt. I did leave the Truck at Goulburn and did catch a train back to Sydney and i never worked for an Agency ever again. He was a very nastie bloke who owned that truck and i did warn him.

[HIPO]

I cleaned the "grease trap" at Aus.Posts CDC in Adelaide several times, which was unpleasant. Preferred loitering on the roof at sunrise,having a smoke whilst raising the flag.

[Citroënbender]

I’ve been physically ill from some traps and “ripe” older sewers, obviously ingested enough bacteria that a few hours later it’s going on at both ends.

[HIPO]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

I’ve been physically ill from some traps and “ripe” older sewers, obviously ingested enough bacteria that a few hours later it’s going on at both ends.

Haha! worst bug i picked up was from, the Aboriginal Child H.U. in Alice Springs. Same as your reaction but almost fainting, holding on to the cistern with severe leg shaking. Guess that leads to another story............