What’s the worst job you ever had?

I saw this question in the Yahoo! Answer site, and couldn't resist contributing my answer:

Since completing my Secondary Four education in 1967, I have been many things -- home tutor, survey assistant, army quartermaster, wage clerk, personnel officer, factory administrator, newspaper reporter, Web editor, and even once as a public relations manager, which turned out to be an unmitigated disaster.

But PR wasn't my worst job. It was being a casual labourer at the Far-East McGraw Hill printing plant in Singapore (it no longer exists). I was 17, just out of school, and desperate for a job -- any job -- to help support my family. In those days the only few jobs usually available were for school teachers or shop assistants.

In the factory, we were just unskilled workers and the only thing we could do was to load and unload cartons of books, sweep the factory floor, clear away rubbish and squat in some hidden corner of the building when we were idle, which we were, most of the time. All of us -- 30-odd young men -- envied the printers, forklift drivers, machinists, electricians and carpenters. They looked self-important, wearing the factory overalls (labourers were not entitled) and busy doing meaningful work, and constantly being spoken to nicely by supervisors and managers.

Being an unskilled worker is degrading, not just socially but mentally, as I'd experienced. You feel your work does not contribute anything worthwhile to society. While people would not be deliberately rude to you, they can be just as cruel by treating you as non-existent.

In the kopitiam in my HDB neighbourhood, there is a young man working as a table cleaner. He is very fair and slim, has deepset, clear eyes (the type from northern China) and an alert face, and is neat and presentable, and if it was not for the rag he holds in his hand, you could take him to be, say, a trainee schoolteacher or a technician. In fact, his build and eyes remind me of those fighter pilot officer cadets I saw during my own cadet days in SAFTI in 1971. But he only cleans tables for the zhi-char stall -- he doesn't even get to serve meals which are reserved for the China girls.

I go to the kopitiam frequently for dinner and I notice that nobody notices the young man. He must feel the way I felt in the printing factory -- someone invisible, ignored and only needed to do those mean tasks that anyone can do but nobody wants to do.

Fortunately, most young Singaporeans today would not likely find themselves cleaning tables or carrying carton of books, after they have completed their secondary education. For the majority who do not make it to JCs and polytechnics, they can always hang around in airconditioned shopping malls and sip latte at Starbuck, until someone finds them a "nice" job selling insurance or cosmetics, or -- heaven forbids -- structured funds.

If you have only an O-level qualification, with no further academic or technical qualification, do as I have done, to get out of the rut: Find a job, no matter how lowly or meaningless, work and earn and save money, and invest your savings in EDUCATION.

EDUCATION LEVELS THE PLAYING FIELD

If I have forgotten everything my father told me, I have not forgotten this remark he drummed into my thick cranium whenever I came home with red marks in my school report card: Please study hard, because only education can level the playing field.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the O-level (we called it Senior Cambridge) certificate was a valuable piece of paper. Today, you need at least a Bachelor. So, if you are still an O, go get a diploma and then a Bachelor. No matter how experienced you are in any profession, you will usually lose out to someone who has similar experience PLUS a degree.