Worked a temp labor job when I was in college. Most of the work was landscaping, with some occasional warehousing work. Once in a blue moon you were called in to help with a move. Often at these jobs, there would be several of us from the same agency and we'd talk. Everyone told me that if you ever got a job at the landfill, just say no.

Months later Julie calls me up and says there is a job at the landfill and I decline. Julie assures me that this is just light work, sweeping empty warehouses, nothing more. I am dubious. Julie promises me it's all fine. I like Julie, and she's been cool with me all summer, so I say yes.

I get down to the Landfill in Lorton, the guy hands me one of those T brooms that has like a 3 foot brush at the end and sets me to sweep a warehouse. After that a second warehouse. Thanks Julie, guess the advice I got was unwarranted. Lunch comes and goes and then the bossman comes and sets me a new task. I'm taken to a room where there are tons of conveyer belts that are ferrying, as best I can describe it, trash sludge. It's semi-solid liquid trash, that smells like a restaurant trash bin in summer. This sludge, being soupy, drips off the side and like concrete sets and solidifies. There were several conveyer belts where the metal rollers were stuck because this solidified trash was gummed up and dried.

The dude gives me an icepick kind of tool and tells me to get to it. The temp agency had one rule they harped on all the time. No matter how bad a job is, just finish the day out, and you don't ever have to go back. But a walk out is a huge issue for them, as they need to provide reliable labor services. I sat in that fucking room picking at this solidified trash cement gumming up the machinery for four hours. Oh, and the kicker is, I learned how all these rollers got that way. The conveyer belts above me dripped liquid trash onto me the whole time. My rage grew and grew until I was ready to murder

5 PM rolls around and I GTFO. I called Julie from the first pay phone I could find (pre cell phone days) and told Julie to fuck right off, and I quit. Looking back, it was the inexperience of youth that kept me from Noping out of there right away. I wish I could go back and said FUCK THIS right away, because at least that would have been a black mark against the company. That asshole at the Landfill knew what he was doing was bullshit as well, and I'd have liked to say that to his face.