Archived from the Tools In Action forum (Around The House). This thread is read-only.
I know there is a wealth of knowledge/experience here…and I know we’ve all seen some stuff.
The question is, what is the toughest/worst/grossest/hardest job or project you’ve encountered?
The hardest I’ve ever worked was one spring/summer I worked for a guy who did foundations. I carried forms all day long….8′ x 4′ steel/wood forms, soaked with water, and coated in some kind of grease to let the concrete break away from the form when removing them….that was the hardest I’ve ever worked.
I used to work for the County Highway Department, and had to pick up dead animals…we had a composting pile that needed to be maintained….STANK!!!! OMG!!!
I just recently had to clean out my Koi pond at my house for the first time. This is my first Spring in the house…so, this will be yearly maintenance….the short story is I should have been on Dirty Jobs…and I fell a couple of times in the slimey, algae covered pond liner…stunk like a swamp…but got the job done.
Again, the question is, what is the toughest/worst/grossest/hardest job or project you’ve encountered?
Nothing that crazy or dirty I helped a friend clean up a flooded out house it sucked but it wasn’t insanely dirty. Just normal demo for the most part except some of it was really wet. He only got about 8 inches on water in his house so it wasn’t too bad but enough to to require a ton of work.
I was an on call firefighter/emt for five years. At 5′-7″ and 150lbs I was voluntold for a lot of confined spaces, sewers, attics and things of that nature. I had to pull out a lot of… things… my size or larger that stunk and we’re slippery and gross. It was a rough five years but I am a better man for it.
When I was a kid my first job was on a neighbors ranch. Out of all the shit shoveling, cleaning stock trailers was the grossest. If any of you live near a dairy farm or stockyard then concentrate that odor.
Most physically tough was logging. Running the yarder on downhill skidding was the most stressful.
Not the job itself but the client. This guy and everyone in the household got under my skin and because money talks you have to deal with it but I swear if I had worked another day I would have made the news. This guy always had some stupid comment and every conversation just went south. Then was all the extra stuff I did that wasn’t in the agreement he expected free. I installed flooring but he decided to save some money and prep the floors for me to just lay the flooring and there was just a bunch of nails on the walls here and there. It wasn’t that much but enough to be annoying, that and they left a good amount of trim on the wall. When I confronted the guy over the phone about it he was all furious at me and said he was going to storm home to do it so to please the customer I did it for him. One work day it rained and he left a bag of thinset out and he told his buddy that they should deduct it from my pay, they were just joking but I wasn’t in the mood, I told him I’ve done so many freebies it would make up for it, not that the ruined bag of thinset was my fault then he replies “nothing is free in life” I almost lost it.
Yea Javier that guy was a super Douch bag. One thing in life is you should never work with a person that will nickel and dime your work its just not worth the hassle. The only problem is it sucks that you might have to turn down a job if its been slow that’s really hard to justify.
I would have walked away but I had several days worth of work and hadn’t been paid a cent yet so I really would have lost out. If could do it over again I wouldn’t. I’m an easy going guy and positive overall but I don’t think I ever hated coming in to work the next day like that job. I was putting in laminate in that job and in some places the floor was seriously uneven so I had the guy have his people patch up the uneven spots but the guy that did it didn’t take his time and left plenty of bumps and bulges. He used thinset for the patch and I told him the crappy work wasn’t going to cut it. He got his guy to sand it down a bit, it was still moist but like all slackers thought his work was supreme after a couple of minutes of sanding. The floor was still that badly uneven and had I laid the laminate down it would have cracked for sure eventually and guess who would be to blame, me ofcourse so I took it upon my self to sand down the bumps and make it even. I argued with them a bit before I did it myself as it was a losing battle. They thought the flexy nature of the laminate would compensate for the uneven floor but even after the guy patched it it was still bad only because he did a poor job. I almost felt like laying the floor down and punish them for their own stupidity but in the end it would come back to me.
I have a business friend who works as a mortician. Now let me tell….I’ve helped him out a couple of times…..that is NOT an easy job! Physically and mentally and gastronomically tough!
As a DJ, I can appreciate people trying to nickel/dime scenario….never fun….like DR said….very rarely worth it unless there is no other option, which sometimes you have to pay rent!!!
Chris….yikes!!!! I hope he paid well, and that is one job I’ve always questioned…but, that’s life…
When I was 14 I got my first job as a blueberry rake-er, the humid Maine weather made it a sweat fest! when I took set my socks off half an hour later they were stiff due to all the perspiration that collected.
Javier wrote:
Not the job itself but the client. This guy and everyone in the household got under my skin and because money talks you have to deal with it but I swear if I had worked another day I would have made the news. This guy always had some stupid comment and every conversation just went south. Then was all the extra stuff I did that wasn’t in the agreement he expected free. I installed flooring but he decided to save some money and prep the floors for me to just lay the flooring and there was just a bunch of nails on the walls here and there. It wasn’t that much but enough to be annoying, that and they left a good amount of trim on the wall. When I confronted the guy over the phone about it he was all furious at me and said he was going to storm home to do it so to please the customer I did it for him. One work day it rained and he left a bag of thinset out and he told his buddy that they should deduct it from my pay, they were just joking but I wasn’t in the mood, I told him I’ve done so many freebies it would make up for it, not that the ruined bag of thinset was my fault then he replies “nothing is free in life” I almost lost it.
Working with difficult people is worse then physical labor because you have to calm and collective…I recently quit my second job at Home Depot because I was so sick of working with the new difficult managers. So I feel for you Javier!
My first job in the laborer’s Union was pretty shitty. I was helping on a Safeway scaffold build way up in a power generating unit and being a kid and brand new, my job was to fetch components.
Lots of 16′ scaffold boards. They loved me. I got the list right every time, was slow enough to keep work at a casual pace, but fast enough to keep the Foreman off everyone’s ass.
Then the elevator went out. I’m 6′ 165 lbs….now. Back then I was around 140, neither if which make me a big hulk of a guy. Fucking sucked man. Dragging those big bastards up 150-200′ worth of stairs was a killer.
Probably the toughest job I’ve ever had is being married. Unlike some folks who just walk away, I actually want to work at it and not be a quitter.
TylerDama wrote:
When I was 14 I got my first job as a blueberry rake-er, the humid Maine weather made it a sweat fest! when I took set my socks off half an hour later they were stiff due to all the perspiration that collected.
Tyler, where in Maine did you love? I’m from Southern Maine amongst other States.
I have only been in the electrical trade for about a year now, I’m currently doing a job in DC about 2 hours south from my shop and 3 hours from my house. Its in downtown DC and we are running 1″ 2″ and 2.5″ Rigid conduits up 8 stories through a shaft, across a roof, and down the side of the building 50 feet, then over to another attached building across it, up 25 feet on another building and to a shelter we built for the cell site. We have to repel down on the buildings or use a swing stage scaffold. Now, to make things even better, its on 3 different properties, all of which have pending lawsuits against each other. We also have to carry up all pipe because the day the crane came for materials the pipe was not delivered, and the elevators are too small for the pipe. So each day we start out making a couple trips carrying hundreds of pounds each of rigid pipe up 8 flights. Not very fun. When its raining you can imagine what we do all day (25 trips up those damn stair sets.) Each one of those pipes is 55 pounds and 10 feet long btw.
ChrisK1970 wrote:
Tyler, where in Maine did you love? I’m from Southern Maine amongst other States.
I was in the Bangor area so not too far, how far south were you?
I’m in Rochester NH now which borders Lebanon and Berwick Maine. Wells is about twenty five minutes from my house and Portland is an hour from my house. I love Bangor and Maine in general but when I retire in five I probably won’t move there, the taxes are horrendous. I pay out the nose for land tax in NH but Maine has many more taxes including income tax (which they will hit my pension on, sales and county and….)
I work at an institution for troubled youth. This one particular day this young lady decided to bite the inside of her mouth so badly that she started to bleed profusely. She then continued to spit the blood from her mouth all over the walls and floor! It looked like someone had been brutally murdered. Non of the other staff was willing to tackle the clean up job so……..boom I volunteered. Definitely the grossest thing I have seen.
My hardest job was roofing did that for about 2yrs and then got a job working custodial at a hospital now that job was crazy I worked in Emergency room the craziest place and it was sad man I would c people come in and have a conversation with them while I would be sweeping/mopping lobby and then hear a code blue and 2hrs later I would be helping security who were always short staffed take these peoples body that iwas just talking to earlier in the day down to the morgue… It took me awhile before I got used to that….
Maybe the worst job was 2 years ago for a nautical company in need of concrete blocks (160 blocks,1 block 20 ton)for build “the giant iron thing” who lift the “costa concordia” Here in Italy.whith American safety watcher always asking us to wear safety clothes (anti cut anti fire anti everything…),helmet(with nothing upstairs us),gloves,eye protection and all with 43 degrees.every day not less of 3 blocks or everything go to shit…a bad summer for me and my 4 buddy but we did it…
some crazy stories in here
yea some very crazy stories…..plus working with douch bag people sucks!!
tascher1 wrote:
I work at an institution for troubled youth. This one particular day this young lady decided to bite the inside of her mouth so badly that she started to bleed profusely. She then continued to spit the blood from her mouth all over the walls and floor! It looked like someone had been brutally murdered. Non of the other staff was willing to tackle the clean up job so……..boom I volunteered. Definitely the grossest thing I have seen.
I would have noped out like the rest of those people.
claudio wrote:
Maybe the worst job was 2 years ago for a nautical company in need of concrete blocks (160 blocks,1 block 20 ton)for build “the giant iron thing” who lift the “costa concordia” Here in Italy.whith American safety watcher always asking us to wear safety clothes (anti cut anti fire anti everything…),helmet(with nothing upstairs us),gloves,eye protection and all with 43 degrees.every day not less of 3 blocks or everything go to shit…a bad summer for me and my 4 buddy but we did it…
Between OSHA and Lawsuits big American contractors go overboard with the safety regulations. It’s pretty crazy you worked on that huge Costa Concordia project. When I saw them raise the ship is was pretty crazy to see. It makes me sick how much money was wasted though on that whole deal. Just because the Captain wanted to show off.
Our 2000(more or less)tons of concrete blocks all together seems big like a shit of a dog near the nasty big iron thing built on it by the holy(love them…)iron workers!!
It’s crazy what steel workers do. I have seen them build a few smaller buildings. I can even imagine building things like skyscrapers.
Havn’t been in the trade long enough to work around a lot of steel workers but I hear that they are some of the craziest/toughest guys on most job sites.
Work update….So I got a work order in today from one of the case managers from a program at the residential treatment facility that I work at. She said that this particular youth reported a strong smell coming from the heat register. They assumed that a mouse had found its way inside of the unit. Upon further examination, I removed the cover and discovered that this particular youth decided to use his heat register as a urinal!!! There was a huge pool of yellow piss sitting inside of the radiator causing the whole hallway to reek!!
After donning some gloves and a bit of bleach the problem was taken care of.
Heat + Urine = worst smell ever!
Tascher that sucks man I know the smell its suks!!
A friend of mine had a cat that would piss in his toaster while he was at work, key word in the story; HAD a cat.
Lol!
Last summer I got my first job (i’m 16) pulling wrenches for a school bus fleet that has 600 units, one of the worst jobs was replacing mufflers, I had to shimmy under the bus (I didn’t own a creeper at the time Big Mistake) and then fight with the bolts to get them off and then beat the living crap out of it with a hammer to slide it off the turbo pipe and then beat it the other way off the exhaust the whole time laying on my back sporting 45 pounds (a third of my weight) of muffler on my knee caps, getting covered in carbon deposits and then having to hold the new one for 15 minutes trying to shimmy it it the pipes and then finger-painting muffler cement on the ends and clamping them on, one day I had to do 2 in a row. I came out so dirty you could grease an axle with my face.
Sam…everyone has 1 or two jobs in their life that you come away saying “man I cant imagine doing this for the rest of my life” Mine was shortly after graduating college. I was expediting commercial and residential construction permits all across the country. After sitting behind a desk for a year trying to navigate through all of the governmental red tape and bs that is permitting I quit. All to become a maintenance dude for a DCFS organization. They pay sucks but man I love my work. Find an occupation that you enjoy and you will be the richest man on earth. (besides finding Jesus of course)
I actually loved the job (except upper management) made the best of it and invested in some tools to help with mufflers, I would work at another heavy duty shop in a heart beat, and will probably pursue it as a career.
But yes the reason mechanics need huge tool chest is because there is always a tool that shortens the time to do a job, or makes it so that there is less grunt work.
sam when I first started at the shop I bought a mac rolling tool box with and thought that was all I was gonna need and now almost 7yrs later I have a big boy box from snap on with most of my mechanic tools/gadgets a med size rolling tool box with my air tools and now we turned my mac cart into the bondo/sandpaper cart and im just a body repair and painter there lol!! love my job though 😉
I need to go through my tool box in my garage it is full of stuff that needs to be tossed or moved around.
About 2 months ago we had a job at a abandoned psychiatric hospital in southeast DC (The Ghetto). Upon arriving in the neighborhood bordering the abandoned campus there was a man laying in the street bleeding with a ambulance just arriving on scene. Then we continued onward to find the job site and this sign, now we didn’t know this job was at a abandoned building, OR a abandoned mental hospital either.
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So after seeing that sign and being able to make out the majority of “psychiatric hospital” we got a little bit nervous….
Just a little bit of history of the saint elizabeths hospital… It was known as “The government hospital for the Insane” and opened its doors in 1855, it even had a civil war battle fought on the campus grounds with both union and confederates buried in shallow graves. It was eventually shut down due to horrible living conditions and overcrowding.
Our job was to remove the antennas, coax, and any other equipment on the roof of the building from a cell phone carrier which you can see in these pictures.
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The first day it was just us four electricians, we had to find a route to the roof and establish a way of removing the equipment. Shortly after arriving we noticed all sorts of drug paraphernalia around with other litter and homeless people walking from the surrounding woods into the building. (Not particularly what you want to see before going in) What we found out is that that building acts as a shelter for anyone who is desperate. Crackheads, drug dealers, and thugs. Then our escort arrived and he gave us the rundown of what he was going to do. He told us he was just here to cut the lock on the door and leave, he refused to come in after us or guide us in the building. He also told us “Take this new lock with you otherwise they’ll lock this door and come in from another entrance to rob and kill ya’ll” Once again another great thing to hear before going into a abandoned building infested with desperate crackheads… Then we went in the basement armed with headlamps and any heavy objects we had on the truck. (Pipe bender, Spud Wrench, and Big screwdriver) After stumbling around in the pitch black basement for a half hour we found a stairwell and started walking up. What was really sketchy is that on every floor there was some time of sign of who “ran” that floor like a jacket, or a tag on the door, etc. Finally we got to the top floor, and after exploring found a ladder that seemed safe enough to make the 30 ft climb to the roof. After we did a couple hours of work we noticed a white truck pull up by the woods, and 5 guys popped out of a hatch that leads to the underground tunnels that connect the campus. They pulled rolls and rolls of feeder cable probably 4/0 – 500 kcmil gauge. Well over a couple thousand in scrap copper.
Heres some pics from the first day:
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The next day we had around 10 guys on the site to help finish the work. And we found a interesting room…
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This is a room filled with rocks that are sorted by shape, color, and size. They are carried up 7 stories from ground level, washed in buckets filled with rain water, and put out to dry in window sills before being sorted onto these light fixtures. Also written all over the room is the word “Brahma” which is a hindu god… And a couple of these sweet tv glass shanks!
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Thats about all I can say or care to type out.
Reply with any questions and Ill answer them as best I can.
Jordan all I can say is ……WTF!! Lol be safe out there man that’s creepy….
maybe haunted 😀
Bigmikez wrote:
Jordan all I can say is ……WTF!! Lol be safe out there man that’s creepy….
You’re telling me, It was one scary ass couple days, but now I got some crazy ass story for the rest of my life. haha
That’s all they do in Detroit is look buildings for scrap metal. A few times karma caught up with them and the building collapsed or they hit a live wire and cooked themselves. It’s really bad that’s why any work in Detroit isn’t done with copper plumbing anymore they use pex because it has no scrap value. The only thing is electrical I wouldn’t want a home with aluminum wiring its just too dangerous to mess around with so copper is the only option for that. They would probably still take the aluminum wire anyways. They strip aluminum doors, siding and trim off houses too. Its freaking another world down there. I hope you got paid well on that job Jordan at least. I think I would rather climb a cell tower than crawl through that building. I’m not a heights kind of guy either. I will say I handled a bucket lift better than my friend he got super freaked out when we got pretty high. I think for me its more ladders I don’t like doing the transitioning from a ladder to a roof and vice versa and any edges with out railings kinda freaks me out.
DR99 wrote:
That’s all they do in Detroit is look buildings for scrap metal. A few times karma caught up with them and the building collapsed or they hit a live wire and cooked themselves. It’s really bad that’s why any work in Detroit isn’t done with copper plumbing anymore they use pex because it has no scrap value. The only thing is electrical I wouldn’t want a home with aluminum wiring its just too dangerous to mess around with so copper is the only option for that. They would probably still take the aluminum wire anyways. They strip aluminum doors, siding and trim off houses too. Its freaking another world down there. I hope you got paid well on that job Jordan at least. I think I would rather climb a cell tower than crawl through that building. I’m not a heights kind of guy either. I will say I handled a bucket lift better than my friend he got super freaked out when we got pretty high. I think for me its more ladders I don’t like doing the transitioning from a ladder to a roof and vice versa and any edges with out railings kinda freaks me out.
Ha paid well, not in the cell industry haha. But I like the variety of work, never a dull moment. For sure I am better off than most other 18 year olds right now either working in McDonalds or acquiring college debt.
Yeah the rumor we heard was any scrap they find they take down to the tunnels to strip or stash, then find a buddy with a vehicle and when its all ready they pick a spot to load it up and drive off. The buildings we were in were stripped from feeders all the way down to 18ga control wiring. In the basement you could see 6″ rigid pipes that they cut with a hacksaw to try and get the feeders out. Desperate people do crazy stuff.
And like I’ve said, I used to be absolutely petrified of heights, but once you get up there the first time and have both hands working and you feel the harness cradle you its a big step. Once you trust the harness its a different world!
Cell Tower Documentary:
Jordan, will your employer allow you to carry? I know it is a scary concept but when working in sketchy areas with tweakers around you might want to make sure you are safe as possible. (had a friend that was attack while working in an abandoned warehouse)
No we are not allowed to carry any weapon Company policy prohibits that… But our project manager did show up (has a 12 ga in his truck) but he wouldn’t go in the building haha. Besides a gun wouldn’t have helped but the biggest worry was someone with a needle or knife that has something on it. Doesn’t matter if u kill the dude if he pops outta the dark and gets one stab with a aids needle. We definetly could have had that happening. We had one guy walk up behind us and tell the last guy in the group that he almost killed us. FUCKING crazyTylerDama wrote:
Jordan, will your employer allow you to carry? I know it is a scary concept but when working in sketchy areas with tweakers around you might want to make sure you are safe as possible. (had a friend that was attack while working in an abandoned warehouse)
I also forget to mention in the first post that they had literally booby traps when opening doors. First a light fixture would fall down in the doorway and then there was broken glass all over the doorway. There is a video from inside that two guys took where u can see them falling. I’ll try to get it.
Wow man those were some very serious crack heads…
ya they are no jokes – really have to watch your back when you go in those buildings.
I’m a registered nurse and I have cleaned up all kinds of things u can image that come out of the human body. But I think my worse job was cleaning out gutters on my house that may have been missed for a couple of years prior to me purchasing home. Had to get in there with my hands
Wow the dirty gutters made a registered nurse take a moment thats something!!
I second that DR, chad I’ve seen first hand what u guys have to clean and smell……
U get use to that stuff. Gutters that have not been cleaned in years, on top of the fact that I hate heights especially on a ladder. Well u get the picture.