Worst duty you've ever been given? [LONG]

[MMATM]

What's the worst duty you've ever been given? This can be anything from cleaning up excrement (human or otherwise) to unloading an entire truck by yourself. Bonus points if the job given was COMPLETELY not your responsibility. Here's my entry:

Working until recently in a café which specialized in baked goods (notably bagels) we had a couple walk-in ovens. These ovens were rarely (read: never) cleaned out properly. When the owner decided to expand, he first had to clean out everything so that it could be moved and would look nice and new. Enter my worst job ever.
The walk-in ovens are kept at around 450 degrees, even when not in use, until the end of the day. This saves a lot of time warming them up. My shift was the last of the day, but the ovens were still on (though it was dead in the store) so that we could cook our turkeys for slicing the next day (very good sandwiches are the result).
/Backstory

D: Owner/head baker
M: Coworker
Me: Yours truly

D: Mark, why don't you and M clean out the ovens?
Me: Sure. M, have the others keep an eye on the store, I'm going to turn off the ovens.
Once in the back, I switched off both ovens and opened the doors so that they would cool off enough to clean.
D: Here you go. *Hands razor blades (no handles or anything) to Me and M* Scrape down the walls and the front windows with these, and then wipe them with wet paper towels.
M: *Aside to Me* This is going to suck.
Me: Agreed. Let's get it over with.
We each took an oven and proceeded to scrape the windows of the doors first (they were outside the oven proper, though we were both starting to sweat from the 300+ degree air getting blown over us by the oven fans and we both burnt ourselves using heat-conducting metal razorblades on the hot oven doors).
M (coming over to me): Mark, did you just see D?
Me: No, what?
M: Wait, he's coming over.
D comes over to my oven and turns it back on, setting the dial to 450 degrees.
Me: *Aside to M* What the f**k?
M: I know. I just turned mine off. Let's see if he notices.
D walked right past M's oven and into the office.
M (going back to oven): Good thing he didn't touch it or I'd have said f**k this.
Me: No kidding. *Switches own oven back off*
This went on for about an hour as we scraped the sides of the oven. D would come by and switch them back up to 450 degrees, M and I would turn them off as soon as he left, and we eventually finished scraping ~6 years' worth of crap off of the ovens' interiors.
D: Ok now boys, I need you to put newspaper on the floors and spray down the walls with this. *hands spraybottle to M* It smells pretty bad, so you have to be quick. Spray it and then close the door of the oven.
D leaves to go home as M hands me the spraybottle. It reads:
"EXTREMELY CORROSIVE. AVOID CONTACT WITH SKIN AND EYES."
Me: D didn't give us gloves, did he?
M: No, why?
Me: Look at this. *shows bottle*
M: Oh, f**k that. I'm going home, I should've been gone twenty minutes ago.
M leaves as I grab a heavy-duty rubber glove from one of the cleaning guys.
Me (to other coworkers who are still watching store): Stand back, guys. I don't think this stuff is very friendly.
*spritz*
Me: Ack!
Everyone within 20 feet: OH GOD WHAT IS THAT?
Long story short, I slammed the oven door closed (blistering the glove) and refused to spray that stuff anywhere else. Customers coming in to look at our breads and pastries for the rest of the day (all of about an hour and a half) noticed the smell and some asked about it. That oven was not used to cook turkey, for obvious reasons.
Me? I was sent on break to clean up and rinse out my eyes, which were watering pretty badly, having been exposed to what was, essentially, pure acid (with lovely orangey scent, according to the bottle).

This tops both the time I was instructed to hang ceiling tiles and the time a coworker and I had to empty out our old refrigerator and freezer and move everything into the new ones 15 yards away... but I think I've mentioned those before. (Nutella anyone?)

Sorry it's long, but you were warned.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Cleaning up puke and poop is always fun (not), especially when it's been sprayed in every direction imaginable. On a related note, some people really need to lay off the corn.

One time, one of my not-so-bright coworkers was called to open up an entertaniment center and retrieve a part a customer needed replaced, because hers was all scratched up. Later on, after the co-worker had left, the customer came back. She had been given the wrong part, and all the other parts of the entertainment center had been tossed into the compactor (which is against policy, but the manager didn't want to putz around with retaping the box and sending it to the key reciever as defective). So instead of opening up a new box, manager had me JUMP INTO THE FREAKIN' COMPACTOR to go retrieve the correct part. It was a hot day and the garbage was particularly ripe, and for the rest of the day I smelled like a goddamn dumpster.

Another job that was thurst upon me and totally not my responsibility--fixing the floor scrubber. One of the many bad things about our cleaning contractors is that none of the workers know how to fix the equipment when it breaks, and the guy who used to do maintenance wants nothing to do with it because he got kicked to the curb and wound up in recieving. So I had to spend an hour and a half trying to figure out what was wrong, and cobble together the parts necessary to fix it. And then the damn thing broke again a few days later

[NightAngel]

For a brief amount of time I had a job filling lead acid batteries with acid. The machine was damaged and sprayed a nice mist of Sulfuric Acid on me every time I used the injectors. I had a ton of protective gear yet, on several occasions the acid managed to get into my eyes and on my skin anyway. I complained many times but it did no good and finally I quit. The job sucked (factory work-bleh) and I just wanted money for my kid's Christmas anyway.

Other than that anything that has to do with excrement, urine or vomit.

Blood and wounds of any kind doesn't bother me though. Go figure.

[ISellCars]

Yuck, just thinking of this makes me want to hurl.

Back when I was a young lad, my very first job was.. heck, I don't even think I had a title, I just worked. It was a deli/bakery/pizzeria/liquor store kinda deal going on back in Michigan. I was only 15-16 at the time, and I worked in the back. I'd do things like bake pizzas, clean dishes, do bottle returns, trash, mop the floors, etc...

One day I was told by my boss to clean the dumpster in the back. It was this big plastic rolly dumpster... I went back there, it had MAGGOTS all along the bottom.

I quit. Seriously, I just up and quit. Told the boss to do it himself. There was nooooo way.

[ArenaBoy]

Three tales consisting of gross, dangerous, and dangerous.

Gross story: In the summer of 2005, we had two events in a row at the party venue. The 1st event was an all out rock show which I had worked and there was partying all over the place. When everyone left, it looked like the aftermath of a combination tornado and the equivalent of rain only with trash. The next day it was a very light show and we got on our breaks quite early, we had a 6 hour break that night and I got selected to help with trash duty. In the 30 minutes to the hour that it took to pick up the trash, I found 9 or 10 condoms in one section of the lot and I swear some of them still had baby batter on them. I also had the luck of picking up some thongs and it turned out one of them had poop in it. I found bottles of piss everywhere, and leftover beer bottles. To this day, I am under the firm belief that arena and entertainment venue parking lots are one of the most disgusting places on the planet.

Dangerous Part 1: This was back in late 2005, I had the unfortunate duty of being picked out to pick up the roads. The Whiskeyclone arena is right next to a very busy mainroad with a speed limit of 55 MPH. Imagine picking up cones in a turnaround lane with cars going right next to you about a good 3 feet away from you. After almost being run over too many times, I started signing myself up for chains, my preferred spot for egress.

Dangerous Part 2: I've posted this a few times but it's worth retelling. This occured in August of 2006 at the party venue. We had a light show and I chose to work at the West VIP exit. Midway through our break, my idiot frat boy supervisor purposely switched me to his spot so he could go up to MSU and get wasted the next day, reasonig being that if he left earlier he could wake up earlier. First off, it wasn't my responsibility and I wasn't trained at that spot and second he isn't allowed to switch people. When the MIC found out about frat boy's idiocy, he ripped him a new one and thankfully, someone else took my supposed spot.

[Becks]

I found 9 or 10 condoms in one section of the lot and I swear some of them still had baby batter on them.

"Baby batter." I'll have to use that one!!!!!!!!

[booger]

One day, my boss sent me out to pull weeds. With my annoying little sis who also worked there. In 90 degree weather. Near a bee's nest. That was not a fun day. Luckily, boss let us drink as much water as we needed, and nobody got stung.

Totally not my job, considering I was a cashier/grill cook.

[protege]

Camp had *many* jobs that sucked. The most memorable, was being asked to clean out the dumpsters at the Cub Scout area. We were all like "where's the safety gear?" since there were all sorts of nasties in there. We weren't about to get infected with that crap. In fact, one of the guys actually told the director (nicknamed Dragon Lady, for fairly obvious reasons!) that unless we got the proper gear, we weren't doing it...and if she made us do it, OSHA was finding out about it. The look on her face was and we didn't have to do it.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

One day, my boss sent me out to pull weeds. With my annoying little sis who also worked there. In 90 degree weather. Near a bee's nest. That was not a fun day. Luckily, boss let us drink as much water as we needed, and nobody got stung.

Totally not my job, considering I was a cashier/grill cook.

I've had to do the same thing at work, just because the city didn't think our parking lot was purty enough.

Therefore, we had to put in three concrete islands and plant things in them. EVery so often last summer I had to go weed the damn things.

And most of the weeds were of the prickly-leaf category. Ouchie.

[Tria]

"Baby batter." I'll have to use that one!!!!!!!!

I still like "knuckle children."

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I still like "knuckle children."

I'm more partial to "special sauce" myself.

[NightAngel]

While this detour is so very educational- please steer the car back onto the main road.

[MystyGlyttyr]

Guarding the locker room at the first indies wrestling show I went to, while it had a couple of interesting moments (one of the Cowboys from Hell chasing two teenagers across the street and into the woods comes to mind), mostly I sat on a stool behind a black velvet curtain in 95+ degree heat while gangster wannabes wandered by and tried to intimidate me. Fortunately, I had a spray bottle filled with ice water that discouraged the little hoodlums without my having to stand up.

"I'M GOIN IN DAER!!"

*spritz spritz* "No. No."

What should have been a crap duty at the candy store, which was spotting the other worker who was wearing the Jelly Belly mascot costume, actually turned out to be pretty fun, since everytime some little snot came over to start harrassing her, I got to plow them flat.

[tollbaby]

"I'M GOIN IN DAER!!"

*spritz spritz* "No. No."

Somehow, not even knowing what you look like, I can so totally see you treating full-grown men like misbehaving cats *snicker*

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

This job actually didn't go to me, but I would've been next in line for it.

My store thought it would be "cute" to have somebody dress up in an Easter Bunny costume for Easter and hand out candy to children.

The job went to the one backroom guy with less seniority than myself.

The costume was ridiculous. Think Ralphie's pink nightmare. I felt sorry for that poor sap.