The (worst) Working Week

The Age

Saturday March 8, 2008

David Wilson

Six well-known Victorians collectively have something like 200 years of work experience behind them. DAVID WILSON asks them about their least enjoyable jobs.

Renee Geyer (pictured) is Australia's queen of soul, with a basketful of successful albums extending back to the 1970s.

For about 18 months before she was able to work full-time as a singer, she worked as a clerk and then a recep-tionist - her worst jobs.

"I think it was around 1971 and I got a job as a clerk. I earned $28 a week as a clerk, that was the going rate.

"I did every-thing. I organised files and put them in alphabetical order. I did everybody's running around.

"I eventually got to the reception-ist's desk and soon after I moved to another job as a full-time recep-tionist, where I had to work with a 60-line switch-board.

"I was working of a night time as a singer and I took to singing full-time as soon as I was able to earn enough money from it to look after myself," Geyer says.

Sharan Burrow is president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the peak body representing Aus-tralia's 1.8 million trade unionists.

She says the worst job she had was working in a pet shop part-time.

"It was horrifying. I was petri-fied of snakes and lizards.

"I was 16 or 17 when I did it and it was a part-time/casual job. I applied for it and because I needed to work, I did it for 12 months.

"I used to live in fear a cus-tomer would come in when I was on my own and ask me to get out a lizard to show them.

"They were decent employers. But I'm not sure I was ever going to become an entrepreneur in the pet industry," Ms Burrow says.

Ron Walker is Australian Grand Prix chairman and the chairman of Fairfax Media which publishes The Age. He is one of Victoria's best-known businessmen.

Mr Walker says cleaning the windows in the members' stand of the Melbourne Cricket Ground before a grand final match was his worst job.

"I started a cleaning business and a friend gave me the contract for the cleaning before the 1960 Grand Final.

"I discovered the windows hadn't been cleaned for years.

"It was all ladders and buck-ets then - there were no squee-gees in those days. I had some friends from school helping me.

"The first time around, the windows were all left streaky- worse than they were. We eventually got it done in time for the final but it was my worst job," Mr Walker says.

Peter "Percy" Jones is a former heyday captain and coach of the Carlton Football Club and a long-term hotelier.

He nominates his two- to three-hour stint at the old Footscray abattoirs as worse than anyone else's worst job - ever.

"When I first started at Carl-ton you had to be employed and I wasn't, so I got a job at the abattoirs.

"I was about 19. It was my third or fourth job. I had never been at an abattoirs before.

"They gave me a shovel and told me to move a mountain of offal, sheep's hearts and lungs, cow's innards, that sort of thing.

"I started feeling dizzy and sick. I only lasted two or three hours at it and walked away. I didn't even ask for any money - I just high-tailed.

"I've never gone anywhere near an abattoirs since," Mr Jones says.

Tim Costello is chief executive of World Vision Australia, a social jus-tice crusader and long an opponent of excessive gambling.

His worst job was in the cos-metics department at Myer.

"I was about 18. I'm colour-blind and I was absolutely terrible at it.

"I just don't know how I ended up there. I had to spend about three months hiding from or lying to my friends about the job I had taken.

"I have lived with this terrible secret ever since," Mr Costello says.

Hugh Wirth (above) is the president of the RSPCA and one of the country's foremost animal advocates.

He grimly remembers a calving as his worst job experience.

"I have never been anything else but a vet and the worst job I've ever had was calving a cow when the calf had already died.

"I was 25 and there was no such thing as shoulder-length gloves but there was a lot of soap and water.

"The calf had started to rot in the cow when she went into labour and had to be removed bit by bit by bit. The stench was horrific.

"After I got the calf out, I had to wash the cow out.

"The cow lived but I nearly didn't," Dr Wirth says.

We've all had our worst jobs and an internet blog browse bounces up some beauties.

People have named spying, working in a chip factory, picking up dead birds from roads, working as a kennel or child-care attendant, being a lift operator, an ash-tray cleaner, a personal assistant or being a doctor as their worst jobs.

But one job in the rural sector caught my eye: dagging sheep.

And even that pales into insignificance compared to some of the jobs our great-great-grandparents used to do.

In times past, we employed people as swan egg smashers to try to stop swans breeding and choking up waterways. Just one of the problems workers encountered with swan-egg smashing was bereaved swans chasing after them.

And tannery workers did it hard. Apparently it wasn't uncommon for them to fall into vats of chemicals and die on the job.