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Top 5 Crappiest Jobs As a Kid

Piobaire

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Title says it all. What are/were the top five crappiest jobs you did as a young person? In no particular order, mine are:

1) Work on the "slaughter line" at a chicken farm.
2) Muck stalls
3) Pick tomatos
4) Roofing
5) De-tassle corn.

Bonus question: Did you, or did you not, feel like a REAL MAN?

I felt too tired, at the end of the day, to care.
 

js4design

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1. Installing 2-way radios in commercial vehicles (including garbage trucks)
2. Pita delivery by scooter (with a bent front axle)
3. MCI telemarketer
4. Subway sandwich artist
5. Landscaping

I felt like a man after 1 and 5, like a jackass after 2 and 4, and suicidal after 3
 

Rye GB

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1. Age 13. Newspaper boy for local free press paper. I was paid two pence per paper and had to carry 150 papers at a time.
2. Age 14. Potting plants at a wholesaler for UK garden centers (All the full time workers were alcoholics).
3. Age 16. Glass collector at a local pub. Everyone was drunk by 9pm, if you picked up a glass that still had 1/16 of phlegm mixed with lager in the bottom you were fucked.
4. Age 18. Tending bar at a Bowling Alley full of more drunken UK scumbags.
5. Age 16-18. Selling sneakers at UK retailer Allsports whilst being subjected to constant threats of violence from all of the local shoplifters.
 

kwilkinson

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13 years old, working for a trucking company. The company took all the drained semi oil and recycled that to heat all the workshops. So I'm the lowest man on the totem pole, I had to go down there every 4 hours and check on everything and change filters. Queue to me, stepping into what is essentially a manhole, climbing a ladder down 20 feet, with only this tiny little circle of light above me, and replacing filters on huge machines every 4 hours. Took 90 minutes to do, and I'd be so covered with oil that I was asked to ride my bike home and shower before returning to work.

Did that one for two years.

That was just for winters. In the summers, I would pick up rocks in fields and de-tassle corn. Detassling, as Pio surely knows, sucked complete dick, but you were too tired at the end of the day to care about anything but sleep.


Edit: Oh, btw, the first job w/ the oil was done for free because my father felt it was important for me to help out around the company while I was at home doing nothing.

Edit 2: Not sure if this counts as a "job" per se, but it's an interesting story. You know how they say that if you break enough dishes, people will stop asking you to wash the dishes? Well I took that logic and applied it to my lawn. My dad wanted me to mow? Alright, I'll run over rocks, etc, and break the mower and then I won't have to mow anymore. Broke mower #1, Dad gets pissed, buys new one, tells me to be careful. Broke mower #2, Dad gets pissed, buys new one, tells me to be careful. Broke mower #3 (this was all in a 3 week span), dad gets REALLY pissed, doesn't buy new mower. Makes me mow lawn for the next 3 months with a non-motorized mower with the blade that spins from momentum. Over a full acre yard, mowed twice a week. Never broke another mower in my life.
 

unjung

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Parents had a commercial greenhouse and nursery, so I had all sorts of weird jobs. In no particular order:

-Mowing their ridiculous number of lawns with a gas push-mower (probably a couple acres worth, seriously). By the time I finished doing them all, it was time to start again.
-Smacking dirt off the root bulbs of perennial lilies so they could be replanted and flower again (cut Asiatic lilies).
-Filling pots with soil.
-Digging drainage trenches.
 

dfagdfsh

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my stepdad owned a tiling/construction business, so doing unpaid demo work on bathrooms ******* sucked

I guess if you aren't paid it's not really a job
 

Piobaire

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LOL @ Kwil Edit #2
 

why

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Cleaning products factory line worker -- Christmas Eve, no heater in a warehouse filling Revereware bottles with the same stuff as a private label.

I didn't mind my other jobs as much. They were all good experiences and money in my pocket.
 

lee_44106

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I've never had a real job until adulthood.

Did these kid/teenager part-time jobs do you any good? Did they make you appreciate money that kind of stuff?
 

Piobaire

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Originally Posted by lee_44106
I've never had a real job until adulthood.

Did these kid/teenager part-time jobs do you any good? Did they make you appreciate money that kind of stuff?


For me, they did things like let me not wear my brother's 12 year old hand me downs, help feed my mother, sister, and myself, replace the family car when I was 16 because it stopped running. Meaningless stuff like that.
 

unjung

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Originally Posted by Piobaire
For me, they did things like let me not wear my brother's 12 year old hand me downs, help feed my mother, sister, and myself, replace the family car when I was 16 because it stopped running. Meaningless stuff like that.
Sounds like it may have been worthwhile.
 

Mark from Plano

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In order of their "Suckageness" or is it "Suckosity"

1. At age 14 (1975), my dad was in the construction business. He was building a house in Oklahoma City with a full basement. My job was to take a trowel and cover the outside of the cinderblock basement walls with this black, pitchy, waterproofing compound before they pushed the dirt back over them. It's the middle of the summer and 95+ degrees outside. I'm working down in a trench next to these walls. By the end of each day I'm worn out and covered head to toe in a mixture of sweat, black goop and Oklahoma red dirt. That sucked.

2. During college I worked as a night desk clerk at a crappy two-bit motel on the north side of Oklahoma City. It was owned by a Korean couple that spoke broken English. A pimp had taken up residence in one of the rooms. All night long I would route calls from his girls to his room. He would pay periodically in cash, but the owner was too scared to call the guy and make him pay, so he'd wait until I got there at night and make me do the collection calls. I would call the guy up and have to argue with him until eventually he cursed me out and came over and paid up (always in cash off of a big pimp roll). I quit after 2 weeks when I felt like my life might be in danger.

3. Sold Bibles and other books door-to-door. Don't ask. Yes, it sucked. Had guns pulled on me multiple times.

4. Also during college I worked during the summer for a moving company. The full time guys were a rough bunch. One guy was constantly drunk (only he was allowed to drink the "coffee" in his thermos...which always had a strangely peety aroma). Many were old and broken down from years of schlepping furniture. They all hated us "college boys" that came and worked during the summers.

Can't think of a fifth that I'd put in that category. During HS I worked cooking Pizza's at Pizza Hut and worked in an office. Neither of those sucked that bad. My other college jobs were OK, too.
 

odoreater

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I actually enjoyed the jobs I did as a kid:

Plumbing with my dad
Gas pumper
Ice cream truck driver
fence company (ok, this one sucked)
 

randallr

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I only had one job that sucked horribly. I worked at a go-kart track and always had to hear that annoying loud noise of the kart going around. During my last week there I got hit by some little girl and it really messed my knee up.
 

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