Amanda Olson

The wrong job may not be a fun one, but I think it will lead you to the right one. Make the most of it, and I guarantee you will learn something from it that will benefit you in the future.

Deidre Birkholt

Secretly I’ve always wanted to work the Taco Bell drive-tru for one weekend night just to experience it. I can only imagine the stories they have of intoxicated customers trying to order fourth meal. I think I could only handle it for one night though. Not only are you working in a fast-food restaurant and it’s super late, but you have to try and be nice to belligerent fools. I feel bad with all the stuff they have to put up with. While I haven’t actually experienced this fun, it seems like quite a crappy job if you ask me.

Dave Woods

Quick on your feet? You’re going to need to be in the fast-paced life of a pool locker room janitor. If you don’t like the title of Janitor, you can change it to something like “Facilitator,” or “Concierge.” We just want you to be sure you know what you are getting yourself into from the beginning. Applicants will need to be flexible, as you will be required to mop around hundreds of children’s feet as they go back and forth from the locker room to the outside, bringing back in the dirt you just mopped off. A clean bill of health and strong heart will also be required, as applicants will be working with toxic chemicals. Chlorine is not only the most deadly chemical on the planet, it is now your best friend. Straight from the tanks under the pool to the locker room floor, this versatile chemical can be used to clean anything. Once your eyes stop watering from the irritation, you will see just how clean this chemical really gets everything. But that’s not all, you will also get to clean out the “Magic Boxes” in the women’s locker room stalls. You never know what you will find in there!

Jess Zellinger

A typical caricature of the worst possible job is something like pushing a button over and over again for eight hours while you stare at a computer screen. And that’s exactly what I did for one summer. My task was to scan through an interminable number of pages of HTML code, searching for question marks, exclamation points, or quotation marks, and then delete them. Search, delete. Search, delete. Ctrl + F, backspace. Ctrl + F, backspace. Head, keyboard.

I’d like to put a positive spin on this—to say that my diligent work ethic and unparalleled command of button-pressing soon led to my promotion to an upper-management position where -I- got to select the arcane tasks for my minions to complete (replace every third asterisk with your favorite Wingdings character!)—but sadly my sole legacy resides in the form of a butt-shaped crater in my ergonomic desk chair. And perhaps a medical bill for carpal tunnel in ten years. Yeah, they’ll be hearing from me.

Alyse Borkan

I spent my years in high school perfecting the art of stuffing bears. Not only did the machines in the store blow cotton into my mouth, hair, eyes, and nose at full speed on multiple occasions, but I also got spit on, thrown up on, and spilled on.

Occasionally, I had to stand at the front of the store and hold a leash with a stuffed dog attached to the other end. I’d rather have been a Wal-Mart greeter.

Highlight of my job: the twice a year when I got to dress up in the bear mascot and roam around the mall in a puddle of sweat while having a constant asthma attack. On days I didn’t wear the costume, I almost wish I did seeing as the uniform was just as bad — a denim button up shirt, khakis pants, a red apron, and sneakers. The department that designed that uniform needs to watch What Not to Wear.

Nicole Ostertag

Swim Instructor. Sounds great, right? You get to teach little kids how to not drown in the water and get a tan outside all day. That part was not too bad.

The part where I left every day with scratch marks from the ones who freak out from trying to float on their back? I guess that was kind of annoying.

While the job was rewarding and the people I worked with were great, there was one thing I never could really get over when it came to my job.

That absolute worst part was that at least every other week, we would have an “accident” in the pool. Some non-suspecting swim instructor like myself would be demonstrating front crawl and come out of the water to see a lovely brown surprise floating next to him or her. Sure accidents happen, but working at a public pool for swim lessons meant that they happened A LOT. It also meant that I was right there in the water with them. WORSE YET, after they scooped the un-welcomed piece of excrement out of the pool, they would add a little extra chlorine and have us KEEP SWIMMING/TEACHING IN THE SAME SPOT! Talk about gross.

Ashely Wall

Megan Carroll

The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I got a temp job filing old credit card histories for a pretty big company. They had just moved into a fancy new office building and needed to sort through everything they’d been avoiding for years. So I spent two weeks straight, eight hours per day, doing nothing but filing papers.

The only furnishings in the room I worked in were four or five long cardboard tables covered in 26 boxes, one for each letter of the alphabet. There weren’t even any chairs. When I’d close my eyes to sleep at night, visions of files would appear on the back of my eyelids. I’d wake up in the morning only to realize that I’d literally dreamed about filing.

Thankfully, the job only lasted two weeks and I was able to escape before my transformation into a lifeless filing droid was complete.

Your job must be crappy if you take it to the crapper. What’s more bold than taking an expensive machine into a public bathroom? It’s that type of commitment that probably earns you the right to wear cheap sandals all day long.

Emily Bayliss

Odor judges are quite common in labs that research mouthwash and test it by gusts of bad breath. However, this just takes it too far. A Minneapolis gastroenterologist paid people to endure others’ farts. Sixteen people volunteered to eat pinto beans and proceed with any feelings of flatulence. After each “episode of flatulence,” The odor judges then sat down with at least 100 samples and they rated just how bad the smell was. The samples were also chemically analyzed. Be glad you don’t have this crappy job when your friend lets one go and has control of the window locks.