Jobs as a Kid

[bambam]

DJ's quiz devolved into talking about our jobs and Marlow brought up that he was a dishwasher during the summers in high school. What about everybody else's jobs in high school, summer or otherwise, or as a kid?

I flipped burgers at a place in Framingham, Massachusetts called Mr. Hamburg, which had about 5 stores around the state and tried to compete against McDonalds. Did it for three full years in high school, in school and out.

[Daisy]

Re: Jobs as a Kid

Gardening and odd jobs.

[jhc68]

I worked several summers at the Browning Sila-Flex factory making (among other things) fiberglass vaulting Skypoles. The plusses were that it was close to the beach and big-time vaulters and decathletes would sometimes visit the plant. The minus was that the place was an industrial death trap!!!!

[gm]

As a kid? Nada.
As a later teen? Cashier at a betting shop, unloading semis of TV's at a factory, throwing feed bags from the conveyor belt onto a pallet (that one realllly sucked), cutting acres of cedar saplings by hand (sucked even worse).

Those weren't the good old days

[gh]

Where/when I grew up, HS kids didn't have summer jobs (other than the galley labour your parents put you through). Now college-summer jobs: I can curl your hair (if you've never worked a union job in a metal-production plant....)

[JRM]

I guess, in retrospect, I was a spoiled brat. I never held a paying job before University. My parents made me get a volunteer job at the local hospital when I was in grades 11 and 12.

The summer after my first year in University, I worked two jobs in Toronto. I was a coach at the University of Toronto Track Club Camp (for ages 8-12), and I was also a "crew member" at Tour of the Universe at the CN Tower:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PghjJCkj6ZA

My next three summer jobs were working in the Physics Department at U of Toronto as a research student. After that I was a graduate student. So, I missed out on some interesting life experiences.

[bad hammy]

Ages 10 - 16: paperboy.
Age 16 until I got a real job in my late 20s: burrito making at Taco Bell, slinging parts at a Ford Motors warehouse, all aspects of working a dry cleaner/laundry, slicing bread and body parts at Togos sandwich shop, working the production line making computerized wheel balancers and wheel aligners, accountant for a carpeting contractor, computer (non) salesman, tech support for a company selling counterfeit software. Might be missing a couple.

[lonewolf]

Born and raised on a dryland diversified family farm in SW Oklahoma during the Great Depression, after hand milking cows twice daily and year round routine of either planting, cultivating or harvesting wheat, cotton, oats, sorghum, alfalfa and tending cattle, horses and pigs, fence building and windmill servicing, I did not need a job.

For relaxation, I roughnecked and worked derrick on oil rigs, oil field roustabout, laborer and heavy equipment operator on road construction crew, bus driver, welders helper and side-boom cat swamper on pipeline crew. laborer and apprentice carpenter on various construction projects, truck driver and combine operator on Texas to Canada custom wheat harvest crews.

In college, before I learned about track scholarships, I flipped burgers, waited tables and fried donuts in a campus greasy spoon, janitored and made picture frames in a photography studio, demolished buildings and cleaned bricks. I was being introduced to the relatively high-paying job of sexing baby chicks at a hatchery when the track thing came up.

[cullman]

I was a daydreaming, lazy SOB as a kid. Family didn't trust me with sharp objects nor responsibility of any kind. My first real paying job was as a Forest Fire Fighter in McBride, BC Canada the summer after my first year at university.

From Wikipedia

"McBride has a large percentage of Mennonites, who are attracted by inexpensive land and relative isolation to ensure their agrarian culture continues to survive. For similar reasons McBride also has a healthy population of draft dodgers from the US who settled in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Seventh Day Adventists also make up a large percentage of McBride."

cman

[SQUACKEE]

Our evil dad made us do yard work. Did yard work for neighbors. Was the campus mailman at the college of San Mateo,then did sound for the Killer Whale show at Marin World/Africa U.S.A. when it was located in Foster City, then dishwasher at Farrells Ice Cream Parlour for $1.40 an hour, then cook there. Dropped a hamburger pattie during a rush hour and it fell into a drain. I asked the manager what should i do, he said pick it up!

Then partime janitor making 55 bucks a week, fulltime busboy,then cartoonist, then fulltime janitor, then air conditioning work for huge corp. park,then a curiour in L.A. driving around in a 64 bug with no air delivering stuff,then picked wild flowers for store windows in Nevada ect. with an ex-hobo named Froggy, then worked in a Label making plant making stickers, then tech on mobile treatment plant in L.A. -our boss descovered running in his 50's and only hired runners, for $15 buck an hour, then moved to Connecticut and started a new life as a shipping god. opps- did my whole life!

[Pego]

Mostly farm jobs and road construction (some as a part of "socialist brigades" that the college students were required to participate in).

My two best summer jobs were still in junior high. One summer as a delivery boy in a large second hand bookstore with many antique pieces, one summer in a cartography institute.

[DrJay]

Age 12-18, cut grass around the neighborhood. Age 12-14 paperboy for a suburb weekly paper. 16-18 sold shoes at an Athletic Attic. Summer jobs after college started included pumping gas one year, working in U. of Louisville's exercise physiology lab the next, then one of their biochemistry labs the next, then in a lab at pharmaceutical firm Burroughs Wellcome the summer before med school. Odd jobs during college included washing glassware in a lab, feeding and watering one researcher's rats, Sunday morning janitor in my 900-person dorm, and tech crew for Broadway-on-tours shows and concerts.

[Cooter Brown]

First job was at Spoetzl Brewery in Shiner, TX. Friend's uncle was the brewmaster and he hired us to tear down some old barns on the property during the summer when I was 16.

Next job when I was 17, was at a saddle factory making stirrups and finishing out saddle skirts. It was "piece work" which meant each task was given a time table. I remember the skirts were allotted 12 minutes each (40 per day). If you did 40 or less a day you got paid minimum wage. You got paid more for doing more. I was really fast...consistently doing 1200 minutes of piece work in a 480 minute day...so I averaged like $12/hour which was a fortune back in '88 for a summer job.

[Daisy]

one summer in a cartography institute.

Tell us more. I love maps.

[TrackDaddy]

Roofed houses, fastfood (KFC and Whataburger) and construction labor work.