Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

[Tubingluvr]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Started working for my dad when I was 10 working on rentals.
The work wasn't bad.....mainly mowing painting and cleaning vacant units and loading salt in softener.
It was the boss that sucked ....what a slave driver.

The worst job came later.....I have worked in construction, roofed, and done apartment maintenance in every area(Hud,MSHDA,Student) and currently I drive Garbage truck.

Nothing compares to when i would work for the chicken farm on a temporary basis.
They would hire us for 1 week as teens.
You worked at night and your job was to go in and catch the chickens and load them in a truck and then unload the truck at a different building.
Pay was $10 a day.

 

[DianneB]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Another farm kid here but I actually liked the work - there was nothing to compare to so I didn't know any better :redface: Paid my way through college picking tobacco - good pay but back-breaking work. I guess it taught me "work ethics" because I still out work people 1/3 my age

The absolute WORST job ever was in an American Can Company factory - mindless, repetitive work in a place so noisy that wearing both muffs and plugs STILL hurt my ears. I worked one shift and quit.

 

[SS MAYFLOAT]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

My neighbors had a livestock and dairy farm. I always helped out to be able to go play with my neighbor friends. They couldn't go play unless the chores were done. Then at 14 I started working the big produce farms at 50 cents an hour. By the time I was a senior in high school I was up to a whopping $1.10 an hour. However, I think back and gas was about 45 cents a gallon.

 

[LadyFish]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Believe it or not, I peeled logs for log cabins one summer to make extra money. There wasn't a whole lot of jobs in our area at that time, so I took what I could get. If you knew me and my girly ways, you would never picture me doing this.

I never worked so hard before in my life. I was super fit by the end of the summer and made some pretty good money. However, between the sap that stuck all over my skin and hard to get off and the back breaking work, I promised myself I would never do it again. It dosen't sound like it would be that tough but trust me it was.

 

[Bob_VT]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I will just mention this........ when I first enlisted as a private the money was horrible.

Anyone who started in the military years ago will shudder at the low pay.

 

[rbh]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I will just mention this........ when I first enlisted as a private the money was horrible.

Anyone who started in the military years ago will shudder at the low pay.

$23.70 per day, before taxes! Cdn Forces res private 1982 (+- a cent or two)

 

[angus63]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

From 14-16 I had a 125 customer paper route on my bike 5am every morning. Also was a golf caddie at the local golf club. Delivering Sundays and then humping 2 bags all afternoon was a long day, but saving for a car was the goal of every kid then.
From 16-18 I delivered "Chicken Delight" (Fish/Chicken/Ribs/etc..) in the '64 AMC Rambler Classic I bought and worked on constantly with the money from above. Never did get that smell out of the car.
At 18 entered the Academy and sailed cadet on steamships to Panama. We used to tell each other to "go to h*ll to cool off". At 22 sailed a Victory Ship to Holy Loch, Scotland and stood bow iceburg watches in January North Atlantic. Wished I were back in h*ll to warm up.
At 23 I built and operated a seafood processing plant with several 90 million BTU burner units. Back in h*ll but smelled alot worse.

 

[perchin]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

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.

Its screwed on plenty straight...
I've taken up so - called iron workers that have wet themselves...

This is around 700' up looking down on things.
http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae180/chaz_ring/Work Photos/PICT1640.jpg

Yes Michigander's that's gun lake area..... Just keeping you b-93 listeners of country music happy...
http://i969.photobucket.com/albums/ae180/chaz_ring/Work Photos/PICT1645.jpg

 

[roncoop75]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

How did you get up that?

Elevator, riding winch line, climb?

We had to climb ours, the were pretty strict about safety.

 

[itsaboattime]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Grew up on the farm.
We ran about 1500 head of beef cattle though a year. Dad owned just under 600 acres of ground and we rented bout another 400. My day started at 5am everyday and ended around 7pm. Then I got to do my homework. Used to only go to school 3 days a week during harvest and planting seasons.

He used to tell us that our pay was on the table every night at suppertime and on our backs and feet. lol.

One of the happiest days of my life was the day I left for the Navy at 17....... lol

 

[BeaufortTJustice]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Summers between school year when I was 14 and 15 I worked for my uncle who was a carpenter. Being a "go-fer" wasn't that bad, but when he had a deck job, I was the hole digger for the posts...by code they had to be 42" deep and wide enough to fit 12" sauna (spelling?) tube. Did I mention this was in CT, the rock capital of the country. A six foot steel prybar was my best friend. A post-hole digger was useless.

Builds character and discipline, though!

 

[eastont]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Geesh.....Reading about all the supposedly hard jobs has just made me chuckle. Not one of the posts has anything close to a hard or difficult job. All the talk about cleaning animal stall, and climbing up 400' towers, just makes me laugh.

You want a real tough job, try working in the fruit and vegetable department of the local grocery store. Making sure that when you re-bag potatoes from the 50# bag into the 5 & 10# bags you haven't put one extra potato in, or could you change a bigger one for a smaller one. Or making sure that when you bag the oranges they are perfectly arranged so that the best part of the rind is on the outside. And that there is never, and I mean never any brown on the lettuce. Plus making sure the fruits and vegetables are always looking their freshest, keeping them wet and removing the worst to be made into fruit salads.

The worst part of this is the manager was my older sister's boyfriend and if I failed to follow his direction he'd rat everything I did to my mom, and that would mean death.
He was old enough to go into the beer store so he'd buy me and my friends a case of Labatt's 50 every Saturday. The best thing that happened was the lowering of the drinking age from 21 to 18.
I quit one day by throwing an over ripe peach at him.....made me feel great.
He is still married to my sister almost forty years later.

 

[bruceb58]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

Paper route...made a whopping $1.50 per day riding my bike 8 miles. I also had to collect the money from the cutomers. I had one lady who told me to come back Monday when I went by her apartment on Friday...she moved over the weekend stiffing me for $4.

Best job as a kid was a tennis ball rallyer. People would pay me at this club in Hollywood to play tennis with them.

 

[Brewman61]

Re: Worst jobs as kids and beyond?

I guess I've not had it as bad as some of you, but here are my picks

1- Cement Chipper. Temp job, they didn't dump a load of concrete in time and it hardened in the truck. My job- go inside the hopper or whatever you call it, thru the side panel, and chip away at the dried concrete with a hammer and chisel. Tedious, backbreaking, hot and noisy.

2- Quality Control at a factory that made rubber washers. Quality control was to stare at an endless procession of washers running by and pick out the bad ones.

3. Fast Food- Cleaning the broiler and deep fryers- yuck. Everything that didnt' sell in time got chucked into a plastic pail and at the end of the day I had to tally everything in the bucket. That included unwrapping sandwiches and counting their components- 1 bun, 2 small beef patties, 1 slice cheese, 2 pickle slices, etc..............

After that it was office work which isn't physically demanding or gross, just tedious.