THE WORST JOB I EVER HAD... MS HARVEY “Working in an ice-cream factory, putting lids on the cartons as they were filled. It was cold, repetitive and mind numbing! I worked there for eight weeks as a summer job while at university and was stuck inside a freezer missing the beautiful summer days!” MS BLOCHARD “A laundry cleaner in a retirement home – lots of stains and smells! I did have some nice talks with the elderly residents when I returned their laundry.” MS SANDBROOK “A part-time job in a newsagent’s. It was terrible because I had to wake up at 5 a.m. to pack the newspaper delivery bags. Once none of them came and I had to deliver all three bags. I was very annoyed! Every Wednesday a woman came in who would look at all the magazines while grinding her teeth really loudly. She never bought a magazine!” MR CAMPBELL “Working in credit control chasing invoices. It was only for one summer but it was really tedious!” MS GERRARD “Working in a motorway service-station café. It was very hard work and the permanent staff were vile to all the temporary student workers. Dropping a tray of knives and forks in front of 300 Manchester United fans was a very embarrassing moment!” MR DUCK “McDonalds. Boring, hot, smelly and very hard work. Every night the kitchen and equipment had to be thoroughly cleaned with boiling hot water jets – scalded your skin, dried it out and was difficult and exhausting. The only reward – your wages and a food allowance each shift.” MS BROWN “A cleaner. Most of it was good as I liked nosing into buildings I wouldn’t usually get access to. I cleaned the offices in the Rotunda before it was converted into apartments. Great 360-degree view! Spinning around on the floor polisher because I was too small to control it was very funny, but cleaning urinals was a low point!” MR MCCARRON “Working in the pottery industry cleaning all the silt from the floors with hosepipes. The next day it would all be back . . . and the next day . . . and the next day! A very repetitive job!” MR DUBAY “I once worked at a homeware shop called ‘Design’. This is the place where homeware went to die!” DR TEPE “Working in an office alphabetising filing. I was put in room after room that looked as if an earthquake had hit and then told to sort it out. It was mind numbing and seemingly had no impact!” MS HARTT “In the summer after my A Levels I worked in a factory packaging Christmas products for companies like M&S. It was in a run-down building and the production line had no real mechanisation at all, just a line of workers doing a job and passing the product on to the next person to do the next part of the packaging process. It was very boring and repetitive but if you lost concentration then you messed up the line! The worst bit was the calendar sets which came with a cream-coloured pen. The pens were all marked with black stains and we had to use methylated spirits to clean thousands of them.” 53