As cubicle minions, it’s easy to bake under the fluorescent lights and bemoan our jobs. But when it comes to some of the craziest occupations the history books have to offer, data entry suddenly doesn’t seem so bad…
1. Poopsmiths (more commonly known as Night Soil Men)
Around 1815, London was overpopulated in terms of its ratio of people and places to put their excrement. With this problem, along came the Poopsmiths of London to save the day. Their responsibility was to traverse the backyard cesspits of residents, shovel their excrement into buckets, and transport it to the countryside. To top it all off, they would have descend deep into the cesspits, literally standing waste-high in feces.
2. Whipping Boys
It’s not just an expression folks. Around the 17th century, young princes would have a boy assigned to them who would be beaten for transgressions committed by the royal. The prince was made to befriend his whipping boy to really make it a punishment for everyone, so it’s OK to feel bad bad for everyone involved. No one wants to see their friend beaten because they forget their math homework.
3. Human Alarm Clock (also known as a Knocker-Up)
During the Industrial Revolution in Ireland and Britain, alarm clocks were neither effective nor affordable. To account for this, enter the Knocker-Up, the early 1900s equivalent of a hotel wake-up call. He would go from house to house with a long bamboo stick, tapping on windows until everyone was suitably irritated and ready to go to their super-awesome jobs in textile factories.
This is of course the tip of the iceberg in terms of horrible jobs–feel free to add any more that were left out here in the comments. –New Guy Nick
Via: Listverse
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Copy & paste this:
Ummm, you leave off some very terrible jobs in human history, such as slavery (yes, it wasn’t technically a job) and migrant field workers. I know these posts are supposed to be light and funny, but this one comes off very Eurocentric.
How do I find out what “Part 1″ means?
You’re right. There’s nothing lighter and funnier than slavery.
thank god somebody gets it. well played sir
Probably because that’s where the Caucasian history was at that point in time?
There is a massive world that exists outside of America.
True, and we’d like you all to stay out there.
Please and thank you.
Noo…Noo
I will bring lemon pledge..
Don’t worry mate. I for one have no ententions of ever going to Gods very own country of retardation thank you very much.
Migrant field workers is not a horrible job as most take it to be. These employees are great at their jobs. These people move from town to town to continue working. It’s no where near as bad as some other jobs at there.
Yeah, except for the long hours standing bent over in the hot sun, the minuscule wages, the exposure to toxic chemicals, the sexual abuse, the knowledge that, if you utter a single word of complaint, the boss will call the ICE to deport your uppity ass…no, not a bad job at all!
I would rather be a whipping boy than a groom of the stool (look it up).
Even though it was a highly sought after position?
The worrying thing is people would have fought each other to the death to be groom of the stool.
And today we think call centre outsourcing is bad.
groom of the stool was a notable position, I doubt night soil man was
As jobs go, tapping windows with a stick doesn’t seem all that bad.
Is that REALLY the worst they could come up with?
Not bad, until you realize that “snooze” is emptying ye olde chamber pot out yon window.
Or tossing a brick/rock.
It should probably also be noted that many whipping-boys ended up in incredibly powerful positions – there are records of Earldoms from it.
One of the worst has to be people who tanned hide.
Not only did they have to scrape the hair of the skin of dead animal but they then had to soak it in a combination of human urine and dog faeces.
All for your wearing pleasure.
And brains.
And they were shut off from the rest of society, their tanneries kept well outside city limits due to the smell.
There used to be a tannery (working tannery) within the city at Canterbury (Kent, UK). It’s only about 15ish years ago it was closed down, and maybe 7 or 8 years ago turned into a large housing estate. That place stank like a mofo, with an incredibly distinct aroma I remember vividly from getting the bus to school that went past it.
Knock ‘er up? I never even touched ‘er!
*rimshot*
You can’t get knocked up from a rimshot! (Oh wait, I’m thinking rimjob.)
Never mind ancient history, one of the worst jobs of the modern age is I.T. Help Desk technician. Come on, people, you don’t need to *lie* to me when I ask if you’ve rebooted the PC!
^This
Also, it is no longer a badge of honor, nor is it something to be proud of, nor is it cute and endearing to proclaim that you’re “not computer smart”.
Thankfully, I have extricated myself from the dregs of the IT help desk, but that’s where I got my start, so that’s where my heart is and will always be.
I’d say retail could possibly get close. I work in an electronics store, and the questions we get, or the assumptions of people who think that “a girl wouldn’t know computers” can be both oddly entertaining and give a migraine like no other.
Standing “waste-high”, eh? (It actually could be a play on words, but unfortunately, it wasn’t.)
Allegedly fuel-pump attendant at a satellite-launch facility isn’t much fun.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/old/rant/blow.html
Even if it isn’t true, it makes a good story.
Cool story, bro.
I don’t know, The King of Town’s Poopsmith seems to enjoy his job well enough…at least he’s never complained.
Poopsmith: What a crappy job he had. Someone call Mike Rowe, quick!
Is this where the term “knocked-up” came from?
“Why are you late?”
“I wasn’t knocked up in time.”
Philosoraptor would wonder how the human alarm clocks could wake up in time.
philosoraptor….ha!!! oOo=^9.6^=oOo (V)(;….;)(V) oOoo-^6.9^=oOo
Not to forget that the “night soil” job still exists in the developing world…
Although it is a much better job now, we still have honey dippers.
Jobs involving collecting the male contribution for artificial insemination of livestock (hogs, horses, etc.) have to be pretty bad.
Indeed. My page-a-day “your job sucks” calendar tells me that one of the worst science-related jobs is “elephant masturbator.”
I dunno, Tom Green seemed to enjoy doing it in “Freddy Got Fingered.”
Really, the knocker-upper seems like a decent enough job. Just stand out of the way of anything being thrown down.
I think being a Pharaoh’s servant should be pretty high up the list, especially when it comes to that whole “being entombed alive with them” part.
(yeah, it wasn’t the norm, but it *did* happen)
I work on a picking line in a Mass Recycling Facility. On a daily basis I handle Faeces in bags (seriously who poo’s in a bag?!), soiled Womens sanitary towels, Soiled nappies, dirty Hypodermic needles, dead animals of varying sizes and Idiot middle-management. For minimum wage at 48hrs a week with a constant threat of losing my job because i work for an agency. I think my job is probably classed as one of the 21st century’s WORST jobs.
+1
And if you asked an environmentally conscious hipster to shout you a round they would look down their nose at you.
I for one thank you for doing this thankless task and saving our world.
I now work at an aluminum recycling facility returning all those cans you sort back in to sheet to make new cans.
Look how much money Harry King made in Ankh Morpork with the whole waste management stuff
It may not be as disgusting as some of the above, but it’s actually more disturbing: there’s an ad on the Cheezeburger network for a girl to be your girl on Facebook for five dollars. I kid you not. Is that a “virtual escort service”?
Powder monkeys on eighteenth century warships.
Bad working conditions (sometimes literally), little pay, and you could have any part of you blown off at any time.
Don’t forget that they were usually kids, sometimes no older then 5 or 6.
In all seriousness, whipping boy sounds like it would have been an awesome job. You’d just get beaten by some noble instead of your own parents. Plus you’d be hanging out in the castle with the prince, instead of living in a shack and shoveling coal or whatever normal kids did back then.
It would depend on how badly beaten they really were. A spanking, even a hard one, would be fine, or maybe punches to the shoulders. But actual “whipping” or anything that would draw blood and scar I think would make me step out of that one.
Typically starvation and then conscripted to war. At least for the boys.
For the girls, starvation and conscription to marriage. At least the weren’t stabbed to death in a foreign land.
I know you like to think that anyone born with a dong for all of history was just rich and happy, but in all reality the whipping boy thing is the way the world has always worked. A privileged few, regardless of race or gender abuse those below them in a system they design to keep their ‘lessers’ in a place where they must accept any and all manner of abuse.
The average serf, living on the brink, had no choice but to obey and do whatever he had to in order to survive. he would frequently get his ass beat by knights, him and/or his wife sodomized for late taxes. Held down while cattle dung was dripped into his mouth, sometimes while watching his kids hung.
Then when the people doing this to you and yours decide to go to war, conscription. Whipping boy would’ve likely not paid anything at all.
“Honey, the knocker-up is here…”
“I may not have an alarm clock, but I’ve got a goddamn gun…”
Neeeeeeeeeecropoooooost