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The job that comes to my mind is a summer job I had during one of my college summers, and due to opportunity and need-of-cash it extended through most of the next winter.
It was at the local Goodyear Tire Retread Plant. The corner where we hung out (inner city Philly neighborhood where kids like me hang out on corners with friends) was across the street from the plant and the plant manager used to walk by the corner on his way to my friend's dad's "shoe shine parlor" which was really a front for a numbers bookie parlor with miscellaneous illegal gambling on horses and card games, and the plant manager was big time into gambling card games and horse race betting. So one day in early summer as he was walking by I impulsively asked him if I could have a job and he said sure, show up in the morning.
When I first walked into the work area the next day, it looked like Dante's Inferno to me. Dirty old smelly and wet tires everywhere. The machine where I was assigned as a helper shredded all the old tread off each tire carcass so new retread rubber could be applied, so the rubber dust and burning rubber smell was everywhere. The tires we worked on were the large and heavy big truck tires and each one had to be lifted onto the cutting lathe. The machine operator and I wore coveralls with all the openings sealed up so the rubber dust didn't totally cover your body by the end of the day, but a lot got through anyway. Plus you always smelled like burned rubber. Even though we wore a hair covering, the rubber dust also permeated your hair each day. After the machine shredded off the old tread we had to lay new uncured rubber onto the carcass in the correct manner so when the tire went into the mold, the rubber filled the mold cavities. Then the molds themselves were several long rows of large, heated platens big enough to fit a large truck tire inside, then close it up like one of those grilled sandwich presses, and then it would heat up to flow the rubber into the mold pattern and then cure the rubber tread. After the right cure time, you pulled each tire out of the mold and stacked them up.
This was a pretty dirty and very hot job, especially doing it in summer. But the pay was half decent and not many jobs around that year. I also got to know the guy I was helping, who was a pretty interesting guy, and since he was one of the most senior experienced guys in the plant, I got some "respect cred" just from being his helper. He was also an avid fisherman and I got a lot of good fishing tips from him, as well as some good fishing spots in the general area.
After a while, a day or two a week I got to help another guy who worked on huge off-road tires. Some of these tires were like 8 feet tall! This job was an order of magnitude dirtier than the truck tires. As far as I could tell, the old guy who did this job never said a word, he just grunted. And he used to eat cigars while he did his job...not smoke, eat! I think he got to like me anyway since I was enthusiastic and wanted to do a good job. So I got a few positive sounding grunts.
While this might not seem like a fun experience, it turned out that way for me. But I still don't envy anybody who has to do a job like that for their entire lives.
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