During my college years, I had a job one summer as a general labourer with a shady one-man contractor operation. The contractor carried his whole construction business in a rented station wagon, the kind with fake wood on the sides, stuffed to the roof with tools and discarded coffee cups and McDonald’s wrappers. He would accept any construction job, whether he had the skill or not. He convinced one homeowner that we were roofers.

We arrived at the job to find the bundled shingles sitting on a palette on the driveway. The paper packages were damp from the previous night’s rain. With the contractor on the roof, my job was to carry each four-foot-long package up a fully-extended ladder, so long that it bowed in the middle under my weight and that of the shingles. And I don’t like ladders. The only way to carry the shingles was over one shoulder, which meant that I had only one hand free to hold the ladder…..except when I moved to another rung, at which point no hands were holding the ladder. The weight of the shingles caused the package to drape over my shoulder in an inverted “U.” As the packaging was wet, it split as I went up the ladder each time, making the shingles more unwieldy. The ripped packaging also exposed the sandpaper coating of the shingles, which rubbed my shoulder raw. By the end of the first day my right shoulder was an open, bloody sore.

At the end of the second day, the contractor asked me to take down one of the ladders leaning against the highest part of the house. I was having difficulty with the rope-pulley system used to collapse extension ladders, and asked for help.

“I’m busy,” he said from the roof. “I’m sure you can do it yourself.”

“Really, I don’t think I can do it,” I said, feeling like a wuss. “It’s fully-extended, and kinda heavy.”

“I’m on the roof, Bill. Just do it yourself.”

Predictably, I pulled on the rope and lost control of the ladder. As it fell, it scraped along the side of the house, describing a perfect arc, etched into the metal siding. To put an exclamation on the damage, at the end of its plummet, the ladder cleanly sheared off the outdoor lamp above the side door of the house.

I didn’t go back the third day.

What stupid job have you had? Tell me in the comment section below.