Millions of people returned to work after the festive break this week, with many of them vowing to seek a fresh start in 2025 by finding a job they actually enjoy.
Because everyone’s career has had a few false starts with jobs they simply cannot stand – including our writers, who rolled back the years in this week’s blog to recall jobs where the money simply wasn’t worth it.
YOU could say that I was the original nepo baby, having asked my dad – an administrator at what was then the City Hospital – to get me a summer job during my time at university, writes Sarah Newton.
I had visions of a nice little office job, where the most hands-on I’d be was making a round of teas.
I should have known better. For Dad landed me a job in HSDU – the hospital sterilisation and disinfection unit. And let me tell you, nothing builds character like decontaminating surgical instruments before lunch.
Essentially, the job involved standing at a sink, armed only with a pair of standard marigolds, cleaning trays of surgical instruments fresh from theatre, like props from a horror film.
Every tray needed to be checked to ensure all the instruments were still there -otherwise there would be a frantic call to theatre to track it down, hoping it would be found in a pile of scrubs as opposed to the insides of a patient.
But there’s nothing quite like the smell of a tray of speculums from a GUM clinic, the stomach-churning unwrapping of a colonoscopy tray or just the gruesome array of tools used during a hip replacement, surely medieval torture devices?
And just when you think this job couldn’t be any worse, you need to factor in the horrific conditions. After manual cleaning, each tray was then fed into an autoclave which permanently spewed steam and high temperatures into the room.
I’d like to say that after hours of scrubbing, sterilising and sweating, there was nothing more satisfying than a gleaming tray of instruments, each one ready to save a life – or at least perform a gallbladder removal.
But if it was a moment of pure triumph, it was quickly ruined by the arrival of yet another cart of used instruments and my Dad wandering past to give me a cheery wave.
***
MY first job involved me having to defend my actions to the police on more than one occasion, says Kirsty Green.
As a university student desperate for extra cash, I wanted to focus on my studies in term time (cough) and earn cash in the holidays.
So, when a friend said he’d worked for a furniture store paying £10 an hour for weekends only, I went down to ask for a sales job.
And I got it!
Then I found out it involved standing on the pavement outside a well-known high street sofa store (OK, DFS) handing out flyers.
But the flyers weren’t for DFS, they were for a small, unheard-of company hidden around the corner, in an industrial estate.
As you can imagine, I wasn’t that popular with the management of DFS. I wasn’t allowed to step off my tiny strip of public pavement and I wasn’t allowed to approach customers on the way in. Any infringement of those rules resulted in a very prompt call to the police.
So, I had to wait for cars to start pulling out of the car park and then run up to their driver’s window waving my flyers. Sometimes they’d wind it down and let me ask if they’d already bought a sofa and, if not, if they’d be interested in checking out the firm round the corner.
On the odd occasion they were grateful for this information, but more frequently I nearly lost my fingers as they pulled away or wound-up windows hurling abuse at me for my cheek. And sometimes I accidentally stepped off the pavement to reach the car window, which would result in the arrival of the police
Add all this to the fact that I had to stand out there for eight hours, in all weathers, meant that in the summer I suffered horrible sunburn on my face and in the winter I lost all feeling in my toes.
I guess the only positives to be taken from this job, apart from the cash in hand each weekend, was the fact that it was all good preparation for the reception I got as a roving reporter doing vox pops.
***
MY early journey through the world of work was fairly ramshackle, writes Lucy Stephens.
The 90s saw me undertake a succession of roles, many of which might be said to be a fair contender for the title of this blog.
The jobs themselves weren’t bad – more my performance at them in some cases. The occasion when I was let go after one evening as a silver service waitress was a low point.
Once, when working as a chamber maid in a hotel, I found a small box underneath a departed guest’s bed.
On opening it, I was startled to see they’d actually left their glass eye. After a small scream, I carefully packaged it back up again and spent the rest of the day taking pleasure in others’ screeches as I presented them with the box and the words: ‘Take a look at what I found today’.
Probably the worst job I’ve ever done, though, was strawberry picking in the fields of Fife, Scotland.
My friend and I had signed up. She was keen. I was in it for the cash. The salary expectations weren’t huge.
One was paid £10 for a tray of strawberries – one tray holding around 20 punnets. Any inferior, misshapen strawberries (we were picking for the posher supermarkets) would be cast into separate punnets – for less money.
Believe it or not, Fife can get quite hot. Especially if you’re bent double picking strawberries all day.
It was haaaard work. It was not financially rewarding. I lasted precisely one day. My friend, who is the better woman, stuck it out for three weeks.
But on reflection, I might have been better at strawberry-picking than being a silver service waitress.
***
ONE of the most exciting aspects of promo work was the variability – you never knew what each job would bring, says Sarah-Louise Elton.
I’ve done it all: stood in the freezing cold weather handing out anti-smoking flyers to people who probably didn’t smoke, to strutting around Fistral Beach on a sunny summer day, handing out Lynx freebies and joining in the fun with festival-goers.
So, when I got a call booking me for ‘costume work’ I happily accepted with an open mind.
I showed up at the supermarket, fully glammed up – make-up done, hair immaculate – only to be led to the back office to get ready.
Now, I don’t remember exactly what character I was supposed to be, but let’s just call it a Spongebob Squarepants lookalike. It was basically a huge body-length box that went over my head and giant clown-like shoes that my size three feet felt very lost in.
For three days, I stood in front of the store, stuck in this box prison, as basically a target for kids to come up and punch. But while I was protected by the box, the real challenge was staying upright in shoes that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a circus. I imagine it did my core some good at least.
I do love children and it was lovely to see their faces light up (or run away in tears) but I have a busy mind that needs occupying and it felt more like three weeks than three days.
I stuck it out and now, whenever I see someone in a similar situation at a shopping centre, I can’t help but feel a little sympathy for them.
The moral of the story though is some days are amazing, some are a test of your sanity, but the variety keeps life interesting.
And for someone like me who thrives on the element of surprise (and occasional absurdity), that is what really keeps me going.
***
I MAY have had what I thought at the time was one of the best jobs in the city, but the day I had to be an ape for a newspaper feature was without doubt a low point in my local journalism career, writes Simon Burch.
Even now, some 20 years later, I’m slightly mystified at quite why I was given the gig, but it was designed to coincide with the release of a new Planet of the Apes film and to showcase the work of a Derby special effects bloke who had done some prosthetics work on a latest movie.
And so I was sent to his studio to have a cast done of my face, which was then fitted a week later with a rubber mask that made me look (quite effectively) like an ape, albeit one wearing a shirt and tie.
The experience of having plaster of Paris smeared onto my face was horrible. The experience of being fitted with the mask was also horrible.
As also was the experience of then being driven to Twycross Zoo for a pre-arranged meeting with a chimp (called Danny – true story) and then being ferried to the Eagle Centre Market to buy a bunch of bananas from a greengrocer.
I’m game for many things, but I don’t really like fancy dress and hate being the centre of attention, so having passers-by staring at me was as bad as it gets – even if they couldn’t see my face.
And sometimes what doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger, either – it didn’t make me resilient or give me an insight into what its actually like to be an ape. I just hated every second, so I just hope the good people of Derby enjoyed the fruits of my misery in the pages of their favourite read.
Even now as I write this, the fact I was asked to do this, and did it without protest, strikes me as quite unbelievable. Perhaps I have an unhealthy deference to authority or, as is more likely, I accepted that doing unusual stuff in the course of journalism was par for the course.
Because before me I’d witnessed a male reporter spend the day walking round Derby in a skirt to test the 1990s general public’s reaction, while another colleague had spent the day in a cardboard box in the Market Place to experience a cut-price day in the life of the illusionist David Blaine, who at the time was living in a suspended glass box in London.
And then there was the time when my now business partner Sarah spent the afternoon at the Baseball Ground dressed up as Derby County mascot Rammie’s girlfriend Ewie, to report on what it feels running out in front of 20,000 fans in a giant sheep costume.
I know the experience has scarred her deeply, but the guilt I feel that I had originally suggested the assignment to newsdesk, having seen an article written by fellow journalist Paula Cocozza, who’d done the same thing for Goal Monthly magazine, has long worn off.
Because the person who gave me the assignment to spend the day as an ape was also Sarah, in her later role as my boss, as head of news features.
She claims she never intended my ape feature as payback for me having suggested her Ewie thing all those years before but I’m not sure. Because revenge is certainly a dish best served cold – and tasting, it would seem, of bananas.
