Most of us start being asked about ourdream jobsfrom a very young age. Kids are encouraged to become doctors, professional athletes, artists and even the president! But have you ever taken time to consider what yournightmarejob would be?Redditors have recently beendiscussingdifficult professions that the vast majority of people would not want to have. From working at a wastewater treatment facility to cleaning up gruesome crime scenes, we’ve gathered some of the most mentally and physically taxing jobs down below. Be sure to upvote the ones that make you appreciate your owncareer, and remember to thank the people who do these jobs so that the rest of us don’t have to!This post may includeaffiliate links.
Most of us start being asked about ourdream jobsfrom a very young age. Kids are encouraged to become doctors, professional athletes, artists and even the president! But have you ever taken time to consider what yournightmarejob would be?
Redditors have recently beendiscussingdifficult professions that the vast majority of people would not want to have. From working at a wastewater treatment facility to cleaning up gruesome crime scenes, we’ve gathered some of the most mentally and physically taxing jobs down below. Be sure to upvote the ones that make you appreciate your owncareer, and remember to thank the people who do these jobs so that the rest of us don’t have to!
This post may includeaffiliate links.
I do hospital removals of the deceased, home removals, transport for the medical examiners office, organ donation, to and from the airport , transports of all kinds, even supply anatomical donated cadavers to numerous universities and many are long distance out of state and I have to physically move these individuals myself in most cases so I see lots of stuff that most people cannot handle. I admit that it does have an effect on my psyche though cuz you can’t unsee the horrible things that we encounter and there’s a very high turnover in staff but somebody has to do it. It’s one of those things that people don’t want to acknowledge even though it’s our reality. We will all one day be laying on that cold steel cooling table awaiting transport to our final destinatin and I can only hope that someone like myself that will give me the dignity that I deserve when that time comes just like I do for those who go before me.
The special agents that review horrific footage of child abuse, CP and other nasty stuff so they can testify in court to put the criminal away.
A family friend works for the military as someone who identifies bodies. As in if a group of soldiers gets blown up or something, all the salvageable body parts get boxed up and sent to her and she matches the hands to arms to torsos etc to make sure each individual can be properly sent home for burial or cremation.
Work in a hospital. I saw the same lady with the same rolling luggage a number of times over the years and thought it was kind of weird. Turns out she was the one who took the newborns who didn’t survive to funeral homes/morgues. Now anytime I see rolling luggage at work I wonder if there is a fetus in there.
SANE nurses (Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner) see some of the most awful things imaginable in the ED. I’d think it’s even difficult for the volunteer victim advocates who are there with the patients through the whole process. It requires special training and a fortitude I don’t possess.
There are companies that specialize in cleaning up horrific crime scenes.Legally, that is. They’re hired after law enforcement has investigated.
In Japan, there is so much loneliness amongst the population that there are companies that let you hire a fake family or a fake spouse for a day. Even rent a girlfriend/boyfriend.
My brother is a last responder, he brings bodies to the medical examiner/funeral homes. Some of the stories he tells make me wonder how that poor kid sleeps at night.Bluevettes:I know two people who work at funeral homes and part of their job is to retrieve the bodies. They both have PTSD and some pretty messed up stories.
I work in a chemical preservation plant in an industrial estate. Right next door is a state run industrial laundry that services several regional hospitals, 2-3 semi loads of laundry in and 2-3 semi loads out every day. They employ two women to go thru all the laundry as it comes in to check for removed limbs, fecal matter, jewelry etc. Not too many day’s they don’t find something.They have to check the laundry because it could clog/damage the machines.
I’ve got a friend that processes transports both full cadavers and body parts for medical labs. Like when someone donates their body to science. Not really messed up, someone has to do it but I’ll never forget the day he told my dad he couldn’t stay at our house too long because he had 4 feet in the car. And my dad’s response was, “4 feet of what?”.
My sister had a friend who works in the government. His job is to try and infiltrate fertilizer plants and get to the main control computer. If he makes it all the way to it and it’s able to do something that will explode the plant or at least start something that might make it explode he will stop everything just shy of doing it. Then he informs the plant supervisors and Security that they just f****d up really bad. He has succeeded in dozens of plants. Just goes to show how easily an attack could be.
Training cadaver dogs, you have to keep human body parts in a freezer with you and defrost them to do tracking sessions and then refreeze until it’s too deteriorated to use so you turn it in and get a new body part. Could be a nose could be a torso.
At some beef slaughter houses there is a guy that shoots cows in the head with a pneumatic gun all day as they come to him on a big a*s conveyor. I worked at one and the guy that did it there was killing over 2 thousand cows a day, 5 days a week. 5 days of vacation a year.
Collecting samples for breeders. As in livestock basically help the horses and bulls to later use for in vitro.
My dad works at a waste water treatment plant. Last week he got covered in raw sewage up to his neck.
There’s a whole job that’s solely decapitating heads of bodies donated to science so plastic surgeons or surgeons can practice on a real person.
The janitor who has to clean the video booths in the sex shops in Times Square.
Mortuary affairs unit of the US military.They go through the personal effects of the deceased to scrub everything illicit before it gets sent back to the family. According to my Army buddy who was in that unit… That typically means removing all history of affairs prior to the spouse seeing anything. Or removing active combat imagery or combat trophies.Basically they clean everything up to make sure there’s no hurt reputations.
I don’t know if this qualifies as “messed up” but I worked on cell phone towers for 6 years. Most people are scared of heights and it’s very physically demanding. Most people are too scared to do it and don’t think about it. However without these hard working people none of our phones would work.
Recycling plant. There are sorting machines that work on weight etc but they still need people to stand at the conveyors. Dirty nappies, for example, weigh a very similar amount to glass bottles. As do fish heads. And dildos.The smell is the same as a rubbish tip and you get covered in a fine dust of it. It’s deafeningly loud in there with all the machinery. You get motion sickness from staring at the conveyor belts and then looking at something stationary.People throw some incredibly f****d up s**t in the recycling. Our bin trucks have cameras to hopefully help catch people doing the wrong thing and after a few shifts there I wished they would implement a punishment - first offence: tour the plant, see how it works; second offence: work a shift.Pay was good though.
There are companies that come put caskets back in the ground after hurricanes.
I’m a greensperson in the film industry. I’m responsible for building and maintaining the plants and trees on a set.
People at the pound who put down unwanted and unclaimed animals all day, every day. I would k*ll myself.
I used to work for an audiologist. I did all the jobs he didn’t want to do.I trimmed the hair from men’s ears so that hearing aids would fit snugly again.I took apart hearing aids and cleaned wax, dead skin and bugs out of them.I cleaned and sanitized the ears before he started an exam.
Cleaning out foreclosed homes for banks. People were very enthusiastic until they had to clean up rooms of dead animals or had squatters traps nearly give them whatever they stuck on the end of a needle/knife. Toilets literally overfilled like an ice cream cone never helped anyone stay over two weeks. I left after several years.
Those that worked for that company that recently got found out that their AI product was just a bunch of cheap labour bought in India I believe. Their job was being an AI.
My brother-in-law is a commercial diver. Urchins, sea cucumber, gooey ducks that kind of thing.Occasionally the City where he lives hires him to dive in the s**t pits at the sept plants. It’s dry suits, full face masks and you can’t see much more than a foot in front of you. Huge money and throws the suit away after it’s done.He says there is a lot of corn down there.
I did a project years ago for a guy. The project we built was this weird little building with a giant oven in it. He cremated all the animals that got put to sleep at local shelters and vets.
I saw a job listing ones to cremate dogs. It said, “Must be able to lift dogs weighing 100 pounds. Must be able to withstand temperature of 100 degrees. Must be able to handle the emotional responsibility of being around dead dogs. $12/hour.”.
Not unknown, but a lot of people don’t know what it’s like to be a mental health tech. I got stories from the absurd to heart wrenching, everything in between and more.The one I use to gross people out is about the guy who had to be on 1:1 observation to keep him from eating his own st. He would literally run from his staff at inopportune times to do it and thought it was funny if they got in trouble for it. I remember when he first came in I watched as he told the staff about his favorite st recipes and how he fed them to his kids.
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I read about a job a while ago - I think it had something to do with approving or denying inappropriate claims on social media sites. The things normal people would have to see and look at were utterly disgusting and heartbreaking and they weren’t given any preparation for it.
Potty jockey ,the guys that pick up clean and deliver portable outhouses.
CNA in nursing homes.
Any animal slaughter plant has a person or a position where people rotate through in a day that are the kill person. This means slitting the animals throat, putting a bolt in the head etc. there are some plants that have machines that do it now but someone still needs to sit and watch and make sure none get missed.For all that, it’s still just over minimum wage.
I knew a girl who finished her degree in animal sciences and had two job offers:1. was working with primates at a wildlife refugethe other was working for the state euthanizing animals.The second job was a dollar more an hour. She took that one.
Coroner. Every county in the US of A has at least one. And some cities have one or two. Or a few dozen.
My dad was a master flavorist. He made artificial flavors for candy, beverages and lots of other things. He made a LOT of money during his career.
My husband does pest control. It is extremely grueling work. Most people do not last. They run him ragged during the on season. I feel like most people don’t realize how hard it is.
Chasing pigeons from the runway at airports.
I worked at on a Turkey farm. There were kill days and cut days. On kill days you were covered in blood and poop. New people would come in look around and walk back out. Didn’t bother me.
The blood collector in the slaughterhouse. i had an upset stomach for a few months just after job-shadowing it.
I work in human dissection for a university, preparing cadaveric specimens for educational use.
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Septic tank cleaner. They have these large augers to go in and loosen up years worth of semi-viscous st. They then need to pump the st into a tank. And also ensure all the pipes are clear.
I used to work contracted security for a large car factory, one of the Big three manufacturers. The janitorial service was also contracted out. A large part of rhe factory consisted of tunnels that ran the length under all the machines. These tunnels were dark, smelled, filled with chemicals of all sorts, and had a conveyor belt that would catch the scrap metal. The poor people that worked the janitorial service would have to spend hours down in these tunnels each shift collecting the scrap metal. I remember having to go down in those tunnels once a month to check the one fire extinguisher they had placed there and seeing them working in those conditions, covered in oil and breathing in all the fumes, it reminded me of the pics of coal miners from the early 1900s.
Sexing chicks on an egg farm. The males get tossed out and are chopped up.
I think a lot of people know this job, but I rarely hear people talk about it. Its the people that clean toilets in clubs, and only that. I’ve seen it in Greece, and here in Indonesia too. I always try to respect them as best as possible, but man it must suck to clean up everything drunk people leave behind and mostly not even get thanked for it.
Who cleans up roadkill? And what is it like? I imagine it’s not that hard once you are used to it. But I mean is it a specific job or just a duty of some other job? I’ve never really thought much about it before.Archi_balding:Well, yesterday we sent a guy to collect the bits of a cow that went under a train. In the middle of the night. So this guy’s job I guess.
I once visited one of my grade school friends at home, and I commented on the baseball cap her dad was wearing. It had a Pink Panther cartoon character,He worked for Owens Corning, which uses the character as a logo/mascot. They had a program to monitor odors around their plant, and they’d go out and collect air samples periodically and in response to neighborhood complaints.My friend’s dad’s job was to smell these air samples and advise if any of them had objectionable odors.
Fluffer. The person to help p*rn actors stay hard.
Antiperspirant/deodorant tester aka armpit sniffer.
Elephant stimulator. Gotta get the stock to inseminate the mother elephant, somehow.
Just came across a job posting looking for a salesman to show up to houses currently/recently on fire and try to get the reconstruction job. Imagine going up to a family who lost everything they own, and you start pitching an estimate for reconstruction? Wild.
My machine shop teachers first job was cleaning s**t tanks on ships.
Grenade spotter, someone needs to know where to send the bomb techs if it doesnt cook, know a guy who looked too long and lost an eye.
In ancient times, there were poop collectors in the streets that were selling the goods to leather craftsmen, to treat the leather 🫣.
The guy cleaning the milk separator in a dairy. It is so nasty, and I don’t gag easy, but the smell opening that thing up for cleaning about made me chunk.
High rise window cleaning.
Companies that mass clean hospital/hotel linens. Very dangerous job.
Sucking out the porta pottys.
During Covid I learned there are people collecting and testing sewage water.
Gynecologist sounds like a great job but in reality i’m assuming a lot of times people are coming in because something is wrong down there so a good portion of your job is probably seeing some really foul things that could possibly happen to your privates.
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