Worst jobs

[SeaCat]

What is the worst job you can think of ever having to do?

I can think of a lot of them, but this one is the one that takes the cake.

By Monica Medel
Wed Dec 20, 8:15 AM ET



MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Julio Cesar Cu wanted to be an oceanographer but instead he swims through foul-smelling sewage in underground tunnels where the occasional dead body bobs beside excrement and car parts.

Paid just $400 a month to de-clog the miles of sewage tunnels running beneath the Mexican capital, diver Cu comes across the nastiest of flotsam.

"The oddest have been dead animals, animal heads, dead people," he said. "Unfortunately a lot of bodies end up here."

Cu's job is to prevent blockages in tunnels of up to 20-feet (6-meter) wide that could cause sewage to flood onto city streets. "Once, we fished out car parts which I think would have fit together to make a whole car," he said.

It is so dark down amid the cold liquid waste of some 18 million inhabitants that Cu and his three fellow divers cannot see and have to feel their way along the tunnel walls.

Dressed in a thick red wetsuit, Cu pulls debris out with his hands or unblocks tunnels with a stick.

The divers receive air through a tube connected to the surface and are attached to a safety harness to stop them being swept away, as happened to one colleague 21 years ago who died in a torrent of filthy water while clearing a blockage.

One of 10 brothers from a poor family, Cu did not have enough money to finance studies to become an oceanographer. He began diving at 18 and soon became a scuba instructor.

He later took a job clearing debris out of the aging Mexico City sewers, and has been immersed in the brown stuff ever since.

"I like diving as a sport. As a job I like it even more," he said. "I do a job that benefits a lot of people."

He and his team inspect the deepest 103-mile (166-km) section of the sewers, through which 9,200 gallons (35,000 liters) of liquid pour ever second.

Some of the city's sewers are open, allowing debris to fall in, or be dumped.

At the end of each shift, the divers scrub their wetsuits with detergent, removing the stink of urine and rotten waste.

Cat

 

[TE999]

It's pretty tough to beat a poop swimmer (ugh!), but some other jobs come to mind.

Crab Fishing (highly dangerous, but the pay is good).

Manure Inspector (checking for the E-coli levels before it becomes fertilizer--Hello! Taco Bell!).

Guano Miner ( being phased out, but still...).

Bull Semen Extractor (on the other hand--hah!--this might appeal to some folks).

The 'Dirty Jobs' TV program on TLC shows some nasty stuff. Cleaning out sewage treatment plants, making charcoal and the like.

Makes me glad I was another drone in an office job.

Peace.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Press Secretary for G.W. Bush ranks right up there, but I just have this thing about principles.

 

[starrkers]

Gut shoveller at the abattoir ranks pretty high for me.

 

[cumallday]

I once worked as a jack-of-all-trades at a hotel. Sometimes I'd help the girls clean the rooms. One day I grabbed a garbage pail that looked as though it only had a tissue inside it and tried to dump it into the large garbage bag pinned to the girl's cart. Wouldn't you know it, but a condom full of jizz lie behind it and slowly oozed it's way out of the pail, hanging briefly by a slimy trail of spent man-goo before dropping into the bag.

One of the girls also had a story about finding bed sheets completely covered in shit.

I have a friend who's a nurse and was transporting a corpse down the elevator when the deceased moaned all of a sudden. It turns out the person was indeed dead, but a human cadaver will expel gas even after it has died. Creepy!

 

[SeaCat]

LOLOL

I've worked in Hotels. I've seen what guests have left behind. (Shocking)

I worked in a Slaughterhouse for two seasons.

I worked in E.M.S. for over five years in a large city.

I was a volunteer Firfighter for many years.

I work in a hospital.

I have dealt with many things, most of them the kind that would turn a normal persons stomach.

A diver in a sewer system is one of those things I would have to think about long and hard.

The guy who recently retired from the job of cleaning the grates and tanks in the Sewer Treatment Plant on Cape Cod was recently interviewed. It turns out he had made a fortune from the things he found. He had a 1 gallon Mason Jar sitting on the table filled with Gems from rings and such he had found in the tanks. His job may not have been glamourous, but he paid for two nice houses from it.

Cat

 

[Jagged]

I have done EMS and fire service and even several jobs within a major hospital....there are a lot of nasty things to do out there but you do them because if the job exists it should be done right.

 

[human_male]

It's not what you do it's who you work with.

 

[oggbashan]

Some mining jobs are really bad particularly in the Third World.

Child miners in South America, coal miners in Siberia and China have a very high mortality, injury and illness ratio. Life expectancy is very short.

The UK's deep sea fishermen still die too often for inadequate pay and in appalling conditions.

In some parts of Iraq and Afghanistan, some jobs are almost certain to be fatal - locally recruited policemen and soldiers, hairdressers, music vendors and in particularly in Afghanistan - teachers.

Shit diving can be survived. Teaching women and girls in Afghanistan probably will be fatal within weeks/months of starting yet women still try.

Og

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

I went through a slaughter house once. The worst job there was the guy who living in a little room in the basement, up to his waist in cow guts. His job was to turn them inside out and wash them before they were sent off to be made into ???

And Good Morning, Human, you little cutie

 

[R. Richard]

Swimming through a sewer might just be the worst job. However, I know of at least the second worst job.

People would hide in New York City stores and then wander through the stores after closing, stealing high ticket items and putting them in fancy cloth shopping sacks, also stolen. The stores hired a guy who trained attack dogs. The guy then trained some burglar sniffing dogs. The burglar sniffing dogs worked so well the the NYC stores quit having people hide in them. Then there started to be trouble with the burglar sniffing dogs. The dogs moped around, got into fights and threatened the handler. A doggie psychiatrist was brought in and diagnosed the problem. The burglar sniffing dogs were trained to detect bruglars. They were doing their very best, but they just weren't finding burglars. The dogs were worried about losing their food dish and such. The solution was simple. They put a guy in a padded suit and he would hide in an NYC store. The burglar sniffing dogs would find him. About once a week was enough. They didn't have a lot of volunteers for the job.