Okay, so in one of my MANY, MANY ridiculous conversations about my life,  the subject of “worst job ever” came up.  Now, I know I should probably be ashamed of my answer to this question, but for some reason, I take some perverse pride in having, at one time, performed what is arguably the world’s worst (or most stupid) job EVER.   (It’s probably for the same reason that I took such  pride in teaching my daughters that cotton candy came from the dryer…but I’m no psychologist.  Now that I think about it, is their upbringing why my daughters are now majoring in Psycholgy and Social worK?!?!?!?  Hmmmmmm.  )

Regardless of the reason, I decided to share this with you and I can almost GUARANTEE that what I’m about to share with you will be one of the absolute most worst jobs EVER!

In the summer after graduating High School, I worked for a turkey processing plant. (Yep, where turkeys from the farm went to become turkeys that found their way to your Thanksgiving tables.) My job was to test the gravy packets that went into the turkeys for a tight seal. In effect, I spent ALL DAY squeezing gravy packets. And what did I get when I found the ones that were sub par???? I was rewarded with a face, shirt, and lap full of ice cold gravy. THAT wasn’t the worst part though, believe it or not.

In order to keep the gravy at a certain temp, we had to keep it on ice, which we would get from the “ice room”. The ice room was a HUGE room filled with ice (Go figure, huh?) that had an auger running down the middle of the floor. This auger created a “tunnel ” of ice as it would move the ice from the bottom, but sometimes the rest wouldn’t fall down. You wanna know what their absolutely cockamamie  solution was? From time to time, we had to go INTO this ICE FILLED room with a PITCHFORK, walk INTO the tunnel of ice, and JAB at the ice over our heads until it started to fall into the auger again (GENIUSES came up with that solution.) One day, while performing this RIDICULOUSLY dangerous duty, I was hit in the head by a piece of falling ice, and was knocked “loopy”. I went to the doctor and was placed on “light duty”. I went back to work a couple of days later dressed NOT for gravy packet duty, but dressed as one that was fully expecting office duty. What I got was FAR from it.

I was given a chair and was placed unceremoniously into position where the trucks filled with turkeys came in. Now to help you understand the next part, I have to give you a bit of insight into the process of the plant. The trucks would pull into the facility and at this point a team of people would pull the turkeys from their cages on the trucks and place them by their feet into some type of stirrup like getup that was attached to a mechanism that would carry them through the plant. From there, they would visit each station and go through the whole process.

The FIRST part about what made this so bad is that I was sitting RIGHT NEXT to the people that were pulling the turkeys from the truck. The turkeys were not happy. They would be flapping wildly as they were pulled off; flinging feathers, dirt and even worse, turkey feces all over my office ready clothes and face. (I told you it was bad.) And I don’t know if you realize it, ( or maybe I was exceptionally PUNKISH) but turkeys can actually be kinda big and intimidating!  They’re big, and ugly and would be flapping around like crazy.  They’d be scratching and clawing and pecking…..geez.

And even THAT wasn’t all of what made this job so horrible. You want to know what I was put there to actually do? Sometimes, after going through the whole plant, the turkeys’ FEET would be left in the stirrups. My job? My job was to sit there, next to a trash can and pull the left over turkey feet from the stirrups and throw them in a trash can.  (Insert PETA threats here.)

Imagine a 17/18 year old kid, fresh out of high school, covered from head to toe with turkey feathers, dirt and feces, plucking turkey feet out of stirrups and throwing them into a can and you have just gotten a glimpse of hell.

I mean…how do you even PUT that on a resume?!?! What’s the job title? “Turkey Feet Remover”??? I got a better one for ya. How about: “Worst……Job…….Ever!”

I joined the Air Force shortly thereafter.