Craziest Sh1t You've Had To Do On The Job That Wasn't Part Of The Job Description

so i spent 2 summers working as a painter at the mississippi state hospital, the state mental institution. it's outside the city of jackson. laid out like a campus. gated, of course. as a member of the paint crew, we'd spend our days going around paiting windows, benches, walls, etc. it was hot and terrible. on rainy days we'd hide in the shop where, behind a big curtain, they had a ping pong table. i really improved that summer. these total rednecks were total badasses at ping pong! especially this one guy, whose style was so smooth. i really learned a lot from him. anyway...

there was this pond on the campus and the higher-ups decided they wanted to drain it and refill it and stock it with fish so the patients with grounds priveledges could fish on occasion. great. so they call us, the paint crew to do this job. we begin to drain it by taking a very large pvc pipe and creating a giant siphon, which sent the water across a small levee into the woods on the other side. that worked for a little while and reduced the pond's level, though not all the way. and there were plenty of fish in there, just undesirable fish apparently. so the higher-ups came up with another idea. they acquired a net, about 3 feet by 100 feet. a group of us, including me right in the middle, were to take this net and start at one side of the pond and walk it across holding the net in front of us to sort of push the fish to the other side where we'd beat them with sticks or something. i dunno. fish rodeo. it was terrible. the water was black and disgusting. the mud was 2 feet deep and it smelled like oil and sewage. we started across the pond and the people on the bank were laughing at our misfortune. i was in the middle so i had to traverse the deepest part of the pond. pretty soon i was treading water while trying to hold this fcking net. the fish were getting restless in the black water. i could feel them freaking out and slamming against my legs and belly. it was horrifying, really. they began leaping out of the water and several fish hit me in the face. i yelled. that really cracked the people on the sidelines up. we finally made it across. zero fish in the net. i just sat in the mud for a while. when i went home i had to throw away everything i'd worn because the stench wouldn't go away.

stories!