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**update.
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**update.
Yesterday just might have topped out my list of hardest physical day of work. It was a 17 hour day catering the Brown University reunion weekend festivities. Which class reunion, you might ask? Oh, about a fifth of them, I guess, or 12,000 frigging people over the course of the weekend. It was pretty hellish and chaotic, coordinating several smaller parties among the general alumni festivities. It was only 85 degrees, but like 80% humidity. Over S****y cracked pavement and unkempt, bumpy, rooty lawns, we spent half the day hauling heavy stacks of breakable sh*t back and forth. My team did the 25th, 30th & 45th year reunions, all with very different menus and floor plan configurations. I would love to know how much water weight I lost in sweat.
Now I have four days off. :)
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Went on a 12++ hours of work and I was not able to take a break (even for just 30 minutes) because of the urgency of the work that was passed on to me. What really sucked was I got a complain from one of our clients plus the pressure from my ever demanding boss. I can't forget that day and its still marked in my calendar... March 21, 2012. That was the day I worked the hardest yet my boss made me feel as if I was the laziest employee ever hired.
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This is going to seem silly, especially given the preceding stories. I feel that the hardest I ever worked was in my 20s although I have more work on my plate here in my 30s - just I'm used to it now. That said, my most recent hard work day was taking care of my 5 kids while putting on a huge garage sale in 100 degree weather while my husband worked all weekend. Honestly, there are a lot of days with equal labor and it's not that big of a deal. I only find this day significant because after averaging my "hourly wage" I had the revelation that so many people work twice as hard for a lot less money - money that barely covers their food and housing costs; a huge contrast to what that money meant to me.
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Several scenarios:
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Several scenarios:
Mental: Law school, the Cal.bar exam (still haven't passed), caring for a terminally ill friend as well as when my mother was ill, and the present day to day struggle to stay afloat
Physical: Same as above minus law school .....
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The hardest I had to work in my life WASN'T during childbirth or moving patients on the unit. It was when I helped my sister ease into her final resting place. Her last days were painful and I was there to witness it and hold her hand and pray and literally provide her personal care for her. I even witnessed her actual death. God freed her from pain and I am forever grateful that I was there for her. The mental anguish will end soon but that was the hardest I've ever worked in my life. RIP Maureen Joan Pierre April 19, 1985- May 22, 2012 HODGKINS LYMPHOMA AWARENESS.
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I worked at a zoo while I was getting my GED so I could go to college. I was an assistant keeper. Before I got hired on there, I had worked fast food jobs, nothing major. The first day at the zoo I followed the head small mammal keeper around. At the end of the day, I thought "Oh yeah, this'll be a cakewalk." The second day was totally different. That day I actually got to work. In the morning, I cleaned cages and fed the animals in my area. I had never mucked out a barn before then. That day (and every one after that) I mucked out 4. The afternoon was set aside for the REALLY hard stuff. Construction and demolition. I used a jack hammer and a sledge hammer for the first time. I was nearly crying when I went home. I hurt in places I didn't even know that I had. And, to be blunt, I smelled very, very badly. I was too tired to eat and could barely stand up in the shower (which I probably would have skipped if it weren't for the godawful smell). That night, I had bad muscle spasms in my legs and back. But honestly, I was proud of myself. And since I was the only female assistant keeper, I sure wasn't going to quit. I miss that job. It became fun once i adjusted, and it made me strong.
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Volunteer work, picking up and delivering furniture/appliances on a very hot summer day.
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This weekend, I spent outside in 80-90 degree weather, mentally, it was challenging to keep myself going, even during dehydrated periods (water was scarce this weekend for some reason, when water was available, I threw it up). Physically, I felt like giving up, but kept going instead.
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This weekend, I spent outside in 80-90 degree weather, mentally, it was challenging to keep myself going, even during dehydrated periods (water was scarce this weekend for some reason, when water was available, I threw it up). Physically, I felt like giving up, but kept going instead.
Working three jobs was a stretch.
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on one peak day on a backpacking trip i woke up with the stomach flu. i hiked about 13 miles, including hiking up and down a 12,000ft peak, on no food and 1 liter of water. i've never been more exhausted in my life.
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I've had days that were a combination of being physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. Days where we had 2 real deal fire jobs, 7 medical calls, including one cardiac arrest, a MVA and a DOA, all in humid, hot weather. I remember it began raining like crazy at the end of the shift, in the middle of our last job. I earned my check that day. One of the rare days, because everyone (at least in NJ) knows firefighters, EMS and cops usually do nothing but sit around all day and are a burden on the taxpayer...
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A week of building stone block retaining walls in a garden during the hottest days of the year (105F) while also working nights on a business project with colleagues in Europe, supposed to be my vacation, funny it didn't turn out that way but I felt like I got a lot done.
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Football two-a-days
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Football two-a-days
Feels good that it's over. Our coach was a n**i, I remember waking up in the morning and being so sore I could barely walk.
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Working in the hospital plus nightshift. You never knew if you`d get any sleep or not. Sometimes you didn`t and had to continue the next day. I remember getting home after those and just falling into bed. I was asleep within seconds.
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running a two man cleanup crew in central texas in the middle of a fort with no shade for a few months. every day was about the same. lots and lots of work. i felt like i got osmething accomplished because unlike the plant that sent us out there...when you picked something up...and tossed it into the hopper...it didn't happen to end up back on the ground two hours later.
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Working in the fields sucked. I used to cut asparagus, pick cherries, work in the hop fields. f*ck I hated it. Especially asparagus, hunched over for 8 hours doing the same sh*t over and over. With the sun frying your back, Ugh.
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Working in the fields sucked. I used to cut asparagus, pick cherries, work in the hop fields. f*ck I hated it. Especially asparagus, hunched over for 8 hours doing the same sh*t over and over. With the sun frying your back, Ugh.
And the boss was a f****n' d**k. He treated us like sh*t. Most of the people I worked with could only speak spanish and understand a just little english. Just me & this white dude named Henry could speak & understand english. But when the boss spoke to me I pretended I didn't understand him LOL. And I remember the boss saying under his breath "f****n' deport these mexicans" when the language barrier pissed him off.
Also ironically I go to my GED classes with Henry now lol.
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Probably my best combo of physical and mental exhaustion for me came when a was managing a brand new restaurant from the gate. For the first six weeks, my shortest week was 96 hours, and my longest was 106. Before this point, I had no idea that there were 106 hours to be had in a week. As a crapshoot, you could probably pick any random Saturday night or Sunday morning from the initial 10-12 week opening period and it was probably somewhere around the hardest I've ever had to work.
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Probably my best combo of physical and mental exhaustion for me came when a was managing a brand new restaurant from the gate. For the first six weeks, my shortest week was 96 hours, and my longest was 106. Before this point, I had no idea that there were 106 hours to be had in a week. As a crapshoot, you could probably pick any random Saturday night or Sunday morning from the initial 10-12 week opening period and it was probably somewhere around the hardest I've ever had to work.
Then again, I've also catered a bunch of gigs that might have required more physical stamina. Caterers want the weather to be partly cloudy at 68 degrees, 30% humidity and a gentle breeze blowing at about 2.4 mph away from the back door where you'll be smoking butts. Everything else sucks to some degree or another in whatever combination.
How did I feel? Aside from tired? Usually pretty satisfied. I'm pretty good at what I do and I enjoy my work more than I don't. Occasionally disgusted, but that's never about the work and always about the politics. The hazards of doing anything with people. (shrug)
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Cleaning two houses a day and coming home to take care of a dying husband and clean my own house. I was working hard for 16 hours a day, 6 days a week.
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Cleaning two houses a day and coming home to take care of a dying husband and clean my own house. I was working hard for 16 hours a day, 6 days a week.
By the time the day came that my husband died, I took a few days off to spend in bed recovering. I no longer had to work so hard to make a living for myself. Life got easier.
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