What Has Been The Hardest Physical Work, You Have Done?

[malcoml]

The two hardest jobs I ever had were a bricklayers laborer and a carpenter form worker.

Both these jobs I did when I was quite young in a part of Australia where the temperature was often in the mid thirties.

The bricks were also not the small ones that they use in southern parts of Australia and other parts of the world. They are large blocks which are quite heavy.

[a10ams]

Derrickman in the North Sea in the winter. Up on the monkey board pulling pipe with a rope and the rig heaving up and down in the high seas.

[BB1955]

18-32 worked in a salvage yard 12 hours a day 6 days a week nasty work and dirty and little pay .

32-55 a street cop still nasty work little pay but a bit cleaner !

[maybefitz]

One that hasn't been mentioned is military service. I did 'P' company in the UK - the fitness assessment and then parachute training to join the Parachute Brigade.

That was really tough. I understand from 'Pegasus' (the para's old comrades) that we old farts think even today's young Para's have it soft. One good thing, I

knew when to draw the line, = the run-through for the S.A.S. in the Brecon Beacons was way over my level - I have every respect for those that survived that one.

[lanny]

Christmas help carrying mail. Nearly everyone on the route I worked subscribed to the old Life Magazine and, on the days it came out, I couldn't carry all the magazines to be delivered on one block but the mail bag still weighed over 60 pounds (carried on one shoulder.)

Set pins in a bowling alley one summer - picking up pins and putting them in the rack to reset and lifting the bowling balls to the return. Had to work fast and it was HOT.

[robertson468]

Attending British Army Outward Bound Course in Norway in January. Routine, get out of sleeping bag in 160lb tent and lie in River for 5 minutes. What a shock to the system and wide, wide awake after that. Then 3 mile run at end of which had to swim in fjord on which the ice was just receding. Then cook and eat breakfast in 30 minutes and wash dishes in freezing stream. On parade to do rock climbing and abseiling (more often than not in freezing rain/sleet). Go make and eat lunch and wash dishes in stream (again). On fjord to kayak several kms at the same time learn capsize drills and then how to navigate upturned kayak from underneath, back to shore. 3 mile run followed by swim in fjord. Evening meal (in same manner as breakfast & lunch) followed by map reading and survival lessons. Tidy camp area and tent, then collapse into bed absolutely knackered!! This lasted for three weeks and was interspersed with days of mountain trekking, with 30Kg pack, Final exercise was "Survival Island". Dropped off at about 0230 with no food and enough clothes to cover the (by then) shrunken genitals, a pair of boots and a vest. Compared to that the Commando Course was a dawdle and I have ever since, appreciated greatly modern comforts. As the saying goes, "those were the days". At the end, had a great feeling of achievement and relief that it was all over

[heybruce]

Hands down it was field labor, specifically picking the bottom tobaco leaves under the August sun in the deep south while constantly watching for snakes that liked to rest in the shade under these leaves. I've hauled garbage on a construction site manually lifting large barrels of scrap metal (three men lifting from below and two pulling up from the flatbed truck), unloaded a boxcar full of 100 pound/45kg sand bags, pushed a shovel in a lime kiln while the dust ate many holes in my body, and cleaned up an oil spill under the massive rollers used to press and dry hot raw cellulose during the final stage of production (I'm pretty sure that last job broke some labor laws, if I had stood up I would have been crushed). None of these jobs were as hard as field labor, which is why I have a lot of respect for people willing to do it to earn an honest living, and a lot of sympathy for people willing to do anything to escape the subsistance farming life in Thailand.

Some people mentioned oil field roughneck, which I'm sure is hard but I know nothing about. Some of my cousins worked as roughnecks on the offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, but for them hard work was normal and not worth mentioning. I only heard a few stories about how they spent their money in the bayou between jobs, apparently they had a good time.

[Mangkhut]

_{I used to be a Fisherman on a longlining fishing wessel in the North Atlantic sea - out of Northern Norway. This was in the mid to late 80's. Only 50 feet long and no shelter deck the ship was. 12000 hooks to pull and set out pr second day. All kinds of weather during winter - down to minus 15-20 celcius degrees. The shortest stint was 19 hours plus 5 hours steming each way. The worst was <deleted>**in 36 hours on open deck in terrible weather. Then 5 hours steaming to shore which was my duty.....}

_{Today I would probably choose to starve to death if longlining was the other option.}

[canuckamuck]

AT 17 I thought being a grill cook was difficult. Very busy restaurant and very hot kitchen. But I quit that and tried my hand at hauling beef in an slaughterhouse and that was harder. I have done quite a few of the things listed here. Did all the farm stuff, worked in the oilfield too. Finally I got wise and got an education.

I still think some of my best experiences were doing some of the most difficult tasks. It depended a lot who I was working with.

[JeffreyWitty]

Being a soldier is hard work - war zone or not (generally speaking).

[pizzachang]

Winter logging in Alaska for 8 years, sawmill work for summers.

[djhotsox]

Swamping (First Officer) on a Twin Otter on floats in Northern Canada.

I loaded fish ( for the commercial fisherman) packed in tubs of ice onto the Twin Otter (hunched over in the back of the aircraft stacking them inside) then helped fly them to the fish plant at the nearby town, and then unloaded them onto a fish truck, drove them to the fish plant and then unloaded the truck there.

You want to puke for the first three days from the stench of fish and the pool of slime in the back of the aircraft but after that you get used to it.

I worked from May 15th to Sept. 17th without a day off! In the summer, that far north in Canada, it never really gets dark.

The pay sucked.

I lifted and stacked 1.1 million kilos of fish packed in ice that summer. I was lean!

But that was the best job of my life! My first "flying job" where someone was paying me to fly their airplane!

-----------------------

A close second, one year I was the most junior guy on a roofing crew and I used to carry bundles of shingles on my shoulder up the ladder to the roof for shingling....that was hard work.

[sgtsabai]

USMC (VN '66/67) 1964/1967, throwing 'skids' as a laborer on a pipeline SE Texass late summer, bucking hay in New Mexico for 10 cents a bale, fighting forest fire for USDA Forest Service all over the states, come to mind quickly. Other work that had it's bad times included high altitude survey in Northern New Mexico (until I got in shape again), very long days often leading into night tracking wounded Elk (damn piss poor shot city boy 'hunters') in Northern New Mexico, in the snow below freezing. I did have a good recovery record and all in all the bad days were more than offset by the great hunts with good folks over many, many years. The physical part of New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy. Long scary nights busting poachers (etc.). Some rough times surveying in the marshes of SE Texass (along with the rednecks I had to work with).

Enough, I'm getting a headache, need beer. Brings back too many memories not of the work itself but the bad and dangerous bosses I've had to deal with over the long years. As one my few remaining t-shirts from Chama Days (Northern New Mexico village reunion and big party) says, "Screw Work-I'm Going to Chama Days", well I say screw work period, I'm retired!

[brianb1944]

Hod carrier for 3 years...was spitting blood for the first weeks.

Up those "bouncing" ladders until your calves were knots of pain and the hod had settled past your collarbone onto your top rib?, nah, never did that. wooses use a hoist now.

[islandguy]

Fun to read this thread, thanks! Farming is really hard work, but I got off fairly easy as I was just a kid (a big 11 year old [5'9'']at the biggest when I helped out on the ranch. One thing about stringing fence is that the barbed wire can lash out at you if it gets loose - makes doing the job much harder! As far as being hot, I used to work surveying in the desert and once walked about 8 hours carrying a bag of wooden stakes when the official temperature in the nearest small town was 118 F (47.77 Centigrade). After a few weeks getting used to it, it wasn't that hard - but I grew up with those conditions. Happy I wasn't rescuing cows in a blizzard!

[LingLek]

Any form of piece work.

[humqdpf]

I have done most of the physically demanding jobs there are - loading fire bricks in a factory, building work, digging trenches, mixing cement by hand, agriculture work, pitching bails by pitchfork to the top of a loaded truck, loading and unloading silage etc.

But by far the hardest was when I was a labourer for a scaffolding company in an oil refinery in Germany. All we did was load,unload, carry and lift heavy scaffolding poles all day for the scaffolders. We only had a 30 minute break for lunch and two smoke breaks per day. After a few months I became huge and probably still have muscles from that time. It was also dangerous - a chap died from a fall a few days after I left. And I never got my last pay packet because I did not give two month's notice.

[transam]

Here in LOS once a week, ask the mrs. ...........

[Raybo]

At 16 digging septic tank holes with a sharpshooter and regular shovel.

At 19 US Army Combat Engineer

23 getting a 90 lb jackhammer to do what I wanted it to do removing refractury from an incinerator.

23-59 Electrician, Instrument technician.

Being a good Dad was hard work too.

[bra]

For someone who normally works in front of a computer, my hardest work was fighting a bush fire for a couple of days - the heat, smoke, noise, wind, thirst and to keep going after the first 6 or 7 hours then complete exhaustion. It was my land so I had an incentive to keep going and house and sheds were saved and nobody hurt. I have the highest admiration for volunteer and professional fire fighters.

[ronz28]

Worst summer jobs included unloading by hand large bags of coffee beans from a ship, unloading many boxcars, worst were bags of clay etc. used to make ceramic tiles. However, absolute worst job was construction, digging into recently compacted job-site to lay pipes. Real incentives to stay in school as manual labor would have put me in the grave years ago.

[twominutesbuddy]

BC coastal tree planter

herbicide sprayer

Edited May 29, 2013 by twominutesbuddy

[robblok]

I admit not that much physical work, but I really hated taking the heads of tulips. You walk bend all day in an bad angle taking the heads of the tulips. It hurt my back a lot from the uncomfortable position. It was not nice work and it was the same all the time but it was extra money for going on a holiday.

Other than that not that much as I quickly got myself a good education and job in the financial sector and later accounting. Now the hardest work I do is in the gym but I enjoy that after a day of crunching numbers.

[somo]

I admit not that much physical work, but I really hated taking the heads of tulips. You walk bend all day in an bad angle taking the heads of the tulips. It hurt my back a lot from the uncomfortable position. It was not nice work and it was the same all the time but it was extra money for going on a holiday.

Other than that not that much as I quickly got myself a good education and job in the financial sector and later accounting. Now the hardest work I do is in the gym but I enjoy that after a day of crunching numbers.

Sounds similar to picking grapes during the vendage. Once got stuck on my boat in the French canals but got a job doing just that. Back breaking and long hours BUT we were anthesitized by umlimited free wine!

Sterted at 6am but 7am had short break for wine & cheese + french bread. 9am back to the farmhouse for breakfast.

Lunch lasted 2 hours with unlimited wine and same all afternoon. Really hard work but so much fun.

85 year old dad must have been a millionaire as he had loads of land and sold to the Chablis coop but stil drove his tractor to the supermarket. 3 sons all 60ish worked faster than I could and drank 3 times as much. They sold the juice to the coop and made hooch out of the residue. Wonderful people great memories but yes hard hard graft.

[IsaanAussie]

Working in a factory that made "blow-in" roofing insulation. Hammermilling newspaper and boric acid was the easy bit. Loading the railway boxcars was the heavy task. "Just move over that box car over here near the door!" the foreman said and handed me a long crowbar. Don't know what was hardest, getting it rolling or stopping it.

[khaowong1]

Marine Corps boot camp.

I worked on a farm for a summer. That was tough.

I was a bicycle messenger in San Francisco and going up all and down all the hills all day was pretty good exercise.

Marine Corps boot camp.. How did I forget that one?. go to bed totally exhausted every night.. waking up in the morning hoping it was all a bad dream.

After finishing Pendleton, never so fit in my life. humping the trails in South Vietnam.. lugging 60 - 80 pound rucks. sleeping beside the paths on the ground, hoping not to wake up with a cobra sleeping on your chest. hoping to wake up. Lord we were young then. had the world by the ass and didn't know it.

Semper Fi..

[andyuk]

2 jobs i had were hard work, the 1st was when i spent 2 years Roof tiling, all hand carried up ladders and secondly i worked piece work in an abbatoir killing 360 lambs an hour or 70 beef an hour, that kept me fit. Only 12 guys in the gang of slaughtermen, all hard as nails.

[jbrain]

Here in LOS once a week, ask the mrs. ...........

Braggart

[NoshowJones]

Grouse beating, walking through heather all day, Pheasant beating slightly easier but often going through woods full of brambles and briars

Repairing pot holes in the farm road

Moving manure from the byres in a barrow

Planting potatoes, even in a small garden, hard work

Not heavy work but my least favourite job ever......weeding

Cleaning fire damaged properties

Cleaning the rusted rails in an abatoir working above head height with a grinder

The hardest job I ever did was help to lift the bands gear up stairs if the venue was not on the ground floor, it would take about 20 mins, no, we did not have roadies. The hardest work I do in Thailand is about 20 mins exercise on the machines in the park five days a week. I have never been a worker where manual work was concerned, but I have always been an earner.

[yakster]

Muckraker for a construction Co. Deep shaft small tunnel utility mines. Best part was it made me realize I could study and do well at school, because I sure as hell didn't want to do that for more than a summer. Oh, and my first marriage. That was tough.