The worst job I ever had....

was in a waterbed factory. My job was to do the breakout cutting. That meant that every day, I would be given a cutting list which I would have to extract from the 3rd grade ponderosa pine they had shipped up from Mount St Helens and Susanville, using a nasty chop saw whose blade swooshed up from below to make the cut when you depressed the foot pedal. At the same time, the guard would clank down so you didn't do damage to yourself. While I was there, I had to drive a guy to hospital who had nailed two fingers together with a pneumatic nail-gun. Not long after, a guy was running a table saw with a dado blade-set to cut a slot, and ground all the fingers off one hand. The two guys who did the lacquering in the spray booths worked without a mask. They also happened to be dope dealers (they called their product da best sticky-bud on da island). I don't know why they bothered getting stoned, since they were wrecked up on lacquer fumes all day long anyway. There was a former biker working there, with the full garb, including hand-done LOVE/HATE tattoos on his fingers, like Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. He would be a shaking mess in the morning, but at lunch, he would go over to the strip bar and have 8 or 9 beers, which would settle him right down for the afternoon. Once day he went home and his girlfriend was waiting with a cast iron pan, which she clobbered him with, before taking off to Ottawa. Wanting her back, this character rented a car and sped to Ottawa, but was involved with a bad collision on the way, spending months in the hospital. When he emerged months later, he wanted his job back, but his hands were shaking too much to operate a saw.