Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

[Jim Marshall]

I was watching "Dirty jobs" the other night and thinking about growing up and the jobs I had. I thought it might be nice to share a few stories about jobs my brother and I had as kids.

My dad owned a water well drilling business and he was a stickler on maintenance. The most dreaded thing for my brother and I was cleaning up the drilling rig getting ready to paint. Since we were smaller and more agile we would spend days crawling around the transfer cases and transmissions, winches and hydraulic drives scraping grease and mud and cleaning with solvents. I think we did a lot of cleaning with our clothes.

My dad was a stickler on detail. He inspected everything and it seamed like it lasted forever. We did it two times till I grew up and escaped to college. Dad used to laugh at us and say, "now you know why you have to study."

There were other jobs like changing sump pumps in the bowels of grain elevators, working at feed lots and crawling around dug wells, fishing rats out. We were amazed sometimes about wells where people actually drank the water. Drilled wells were typically much more sanitary.

This was in Colorado and in the winter I knew about he old saying "Cold as a well digger's butt."

Jim

 

[roncoop75]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I have a few:

For you people doing boat restorations, I worked in a fiberglass shop for almost five years in my early 20's. Door closed in the winter so the fumes would make your eyes water, burning up in the summer wearing a muck suit. Everything was sharp, and if you cut yourself and didn't notice it, you'd figure it out soon enough, as you washed resin off you hands with acetone dozens of times a day. I'm guessing that experience took a few years off my life expectancy.

Laid flood irrigation pipe for a farmer over the summer during high school. Nothing like following a pipe trailer through a cornfield on a hot summer day in Nebraska.

Scariest: I climbed towers for a company, working on their 2-way radio installations. Five above zero, I'm 308' up, changing the light at the top. Not fun!

Here's one of me up on a tower looking for leaks in a wave guide in Humboldt, IA. I really didn't like this tower. I prefer doing the ones in the country where you don't have so much to look at to give a scale to judge how high up you are. Corn looks the same at 200', cars get REAAAALY small.

That's about 270'. Ours only went up to about 400'. The guys that do the really tall ones don't have their heads screwed on straight if you ask me.

 

[Jim Marshall]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

For you people doing boat restorations, I worked in a fiberglass shop for almost five years in my early 20's. Door closed in the winter so the fumes would make your eyes water, burning up in the summer wearing a muck suit. Everything was sharp, and if you cut yourself and didn't notice it, you'd figure it out soon enough, as you washed resin off you hands with acetone dozens of times a day. I'm guessing that experience took a few years off my life expectancy.

Having done two fiberglass jobs over two wooden boats I can't imagine doing it for five years.

Towers, too. The drilling rig was high enough for me. Sometimes we would work on a windmill.

Jim

 

[j_martin]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

When I was in high school, I worked at Photo News as a printer's devil. Was being "trained" to install plates by one of the owners, who I later found out was so dangerous to work with that the post office workers would not unload mail bags with him. Cost me my left index finger tip. They were po'd because the flesh damaged the front page blanket.

 

[gonefishie]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I detasseled corn for a month once. It's no wonder only kids do that kind of work.

 

[Jim Marshall]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Gonefishie,

I know how that goes. When we were kids we grew five acres of white corn for tortillas. We had it picked but the husks were so tough that the picker didn't remove them and my brother and I were stuck removing every one by hand. We then put them in a shiller, ran them through and ended up selling it for seed corn. Probably made at least ten cents per hour.

My dad must have worried a lot about us because he was always figuring out something like that for us to do.

Jim

 

[tswiczko]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Lets see here ?

slopping hogs,
plucking chickens,
cleaning stalls,
grain elevator operator,
no I think the worst job I ever had was in a warehouse. I had to be indoors all the time and hated that.

 

[Summer Fun]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

1. Working on a farm picking ROCK from the fields for $3 a day.
2. Pumping septic tanks at $5.50 a hr.
3. Working at the slaughter house at $7.10 a hr.

Then I got smart and drove CDL trucks for 33yrs.[ Retired]
Yep getting paid to sit on my butt & made a GOOD living from it .

 

[shaneb0422]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

A summer cutting trees and fencing on Grandpa's farm.
Waiting tables - Dealing with people's money/food, suck.
Labor kid for a General Contractor...known as Get Wood or Sweep that, or Move that dirt from there to there.

 

[ezbtr]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

working as a cook at Der Weinerschnitzel for a few months, smelled, felt like a bucket of grease - yuk...then worked at a gas station, loved that

 

[DaNinja]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I notice a common thread, lots of us worked too hard for too little as farm kids.

It was a good upbringing, though. I started working in the fields when I was 12 and was employed until I retired from the Army last year.

Thirty-three years of work...I guess that's why it feels so strange right now.
Time for the next career!

 

[Tig]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I've had crappy and needlessly dangerous jobs as a kid but worst job was as an adult. This may sound odd, but trust me the job sucked and it was killing me. I was a director in a high tech company that would partner with companies in financial difficulty. We would negotiate them to bankruptcy, buy the assets and offer jobs to the laid off staff. We would then abuse and fire them while raping their contracts. Our legal rope a dope was despicable. Win or loose we never paid out a dime. It was very lucrative, but sickening. I tried to keep people's jobs and grow the business, but that really wasn't our style. Before my health completely failed I took a 50% pay cut to get to a job I enjoyed with a good company. Best career move I ever made.
Even writing this brief account has made me twitch.

 

[Bifflefan]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

My worst 2:

1, picking strawberries, for I cant remember how much, but not much. Age 12, 13 and 14, 3 summers of that #&$@.

2, Baskin & Robbins. 1.75 an hour. 6 hours a day after school.
I didnt eat ice cream for years after that job.

 

[Cofe]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I notice a common thread, lots of us worked too hard for too little as farm kids.

So true Bubba!

Grew up with 7 siblings on a family farm. I was the oldest son so guess who got all the grief. This was back when all there was for feed bales were the small two string bales that can push 200lbs. Woke early, worked hard, had good food and a good bed to sleep in. I was driving a tractor when I was eight years old. Made me appreciate a good work ethic, and gave me experience on how to work smarter. All in all, it didn't kill me,(although sometimes I thought it did) so it made me stronger.

 

[tswiczko]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I worked as an HVAC/R service tech for 15 years until I was in a car wreck that really screwed my back up four years ago.

Now I'm a full time student at a local university. I think I'm gonna be a geologist when I grow up

School is harder than any job I have had before, but definately not the worst.

 

[PGFISHER]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Pitched hay for 75 cents an hour 'till I got hay fever. Worked as a chipper for $1.00 an hour after school, chipping cement off mixer trucks. Got a job as a stocker in a mom and pop grocery store at $1.25 an hour; that was heaven. Make a lot more now in my "golden years", but the high tech BS I have to put up with sometimes makes me yearn for thoes simpler days.

 

[Pa mountain man]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Used to trim christmas trees in the summer, it doesn't sound bad until you do it. No wind, 95 degrees, bees, 3' knife, and all of the needle pricks and sap left on you, only to be found by soap later.

The worst: Drilling gas wells from WV to NY, 12 hour days, 12 days on, 2 off. If it were 110 or -25, you were outside for 12 hours, soaked to the bone with an extra 30 lbs of mud on your boots. I fell 15' and screwed my back up, now I'm very happy working with the corps of Engineers.

 

[HopeSheFloats]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Farming is chores, work is different, or so I was told {lol}.
Being a golf caddy...4 hours lugging 40+ pounds in the sun & heat, listening to old fogies reminisce, or 5 hours in the woods, weeds or swamp looking for Mr. Hackers lost golf ball, listening to him cuss the poor job us caddies did for $1.25 {average} an hour.

 

[HAV2FISH]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I have a small farm and we are doing 50 acres of square bales of hay. Its 106 degrees in the fields. Hot, sweaty, miserable, walking behind the bailer stacking hay on the trailer, then unloading and restacking it in the barn. It's a pita. Glad im the one driving the tractor. We've put up 900 bales in two days with one more day to go.

 

[roncoop75]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I notice a common thread, lots of us worked too hard for too little as farm kids.

Ya know, laying that irrigation pipe was the first real job I ever had.

I worked harder than the other guy (there were only two of us and the farmer, who drove the tractor) and the second week I got $2 more an hour and was told it was because of my extra effort AND I was told the other guy got nothing extra.

That made a lasting impression on me. A lesson that I think most kids today miss out on.