Miranda Kriha

I don’t think taxidermy would be a very swell job, quite crappy, actually.
In the most basic sense, you are creating dead animal manikins for people to hang on their wall, to use as their living room center piece, or stuff in their hair.
Evidently, you never know how weird things can get.

Sara Smits

My parents used to be in charge of the Bellevue Swim Club annual fireworks stand fundraiser every summer. Every family had to contribute at least eight hours of work at the stand and of course ours always ended up picking up the slack. As a result of people “buying out” their hours for a hundred dollars, there were always empty shifts we invariably had to fill. Being the head honcho’s daughter pretty much immediately volunteered me for the job.

As you know, Nebraska’s June and July weather can be deliriously hot. When you’re unloading an unventilated trailer full of fireworks that had been in storage, it is unbearable. The storage trailer has been lying in the middle of the blazing heat for hours and turns into an oven you have to walk around in. The temperature in that storage trailer would regularly be upwards of 120 degrees. Once the fireworks were in the storefront trailer, it was only slightly better. Fans can really only do so much when it’s 100 degrees outside. It was like a giant car sitting in the sun with the windows rolled up.

In addition to working the stand during the day, there were times when I stayed on to do overnight watches. Camping out in a trailer isn’t so fun when you’re watching out for people trying to rob you. Not to mention BORING.

All in all, it was a crappy job helping my parents out over the summer. To top it off, I got paid in fireworks–and not the cool kinds either. It was always cheap crackling chickens or smoke bombs or sparklers. Yep, that always made me feel rewarded for my efforts. Not.

Probably the worst job I have ever had was when I worked at a local advertising agency where I had to help review summer internship applications. We would receive a crazy number of applications from students wanting to intern at our agency, and they put me in charge of “reviewing” them. By reviewing I mean throwing the majority of the applications away because I didn’t feel like reading that much. To make it tolerable, I actually played a little game where I would place a bunch of the applications on the wall and throw darts at them, whichever ones I hit were the ones we would interview. It was a huge crappy waste of time.

Jennifer Fisher

The summer after my first year in college, I agreed to babysit for my cousins. Little did I know, two extra kids would be thrown into the deal. This meant that I was dealing with 6 kids by myself, five of which were in diapers and two of those were around 4 months old.

One day in particular left me absolutely a mess. The two youngest babies always screamed for their bottle at the exact same time as the twins (1 year olds) were begging for food also. The 7 year old was not much help and didn’t always listen to me. Then there was a two-year old boy that can only be described as a wild child who liked to run away from me and refused to wear pants.

The most interesting day was when the twin boys got out because the two year old opened the door while I was changing one of the younger babies. They were running around in their backyard, but I was able to find them just before they crossed the street. Later that day, I noticed a mountain lion in the backyard…yes, a mountain lion.

Evidently the neighbors had a pet deer which attracted the mountain lion. The 7 year old was in tears and scared to death, and I had to call the humane society. Nobody believed me at first, but they eventually found it.

Most STRESSFUL summer ever!

Joe Kruger

No one is ever happy to see you. NO ONE. There’s no congratulations for doing your job. You’re never going to get a pat on the back for doing your job. No thumbs-up for you.

If someone sees you performing your duties correctly, you’re probably going to get berating for the next five minutes and then given the finger as the person drives off. Hoo-ray.

Paige Miller

If an ideal day at the job includes inflicting excruciting pain on people, watching customers cry and getting paid to do so (and most likely receviving a tip, as well), then bikini waxing would be a perfect fit for you.

Minela

This customer had a car and a temper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lB1F1Km6oo&feature=related

Lauren Case

I’ll just pray that this man has short-term memory loss and selflessly offered to do tackle degrading task to spare those around him. Even the shadiest characters I know would refuse this job offer.