Your Worst Summer Job?

[the0ne]

Good little thread to start up.

Mine was being a lifeguard at a local pool, I stood there in the hot sun, no shade for hours watching kids from a Trailer park with mullets swim and do cannon balls. After a day of work, a six pack really helped :biggrin:


What about everyone else?

 

[Aero]

Re: Summer Job, What is your worst you ever had?

Taco Hell.

 

[KooLaid]

Helping reroof the big @ss 2 story house we lived in when I was in high school during the summer in the nasty central california heat. Had to strip off the old wood shingles, then the 1x4's. Add more insulation while the roof was off with that loose blown stuff. Carry up the plywood sheets to the roof, nail those down, then nail down the composite shingles.

Or it could be painting the house the year before.........

It was just me and my brother in law, so it was a slooooooow process since he worked during the day, and we both didn't like working at night and I had other obligations on weekends. Yep so I was on that roof during the day...

 

[DocL]

My worst job, collecting golf balls at a driving range. It was at a private country club and I wasn't in a caged golf cart. I was out there with a ball grabber in the heat acting as a moving target for people to try and hit. After I was nailed twice I dropped the bucket and quit. I think I still have a dent in the side my head from getting hit by a three iron shot. :biggrin:

 

[Q]

I worked at a 7-UP bottling plant in high school. I used to wash the silver premix canisters that you see at restaurants and such. The wash machine used an acid/soap combination that would burn your skin over time, no matter what you tried to do to avoid it. To make matters worse, the room where the washing machine was located was a constant 120 degrees. I remember it was 1988, and in Chicago it was one of the hottest summers on record. You were soaked from head-to-toe with a sweat/acid/soap combination eight hours a day. To top it off, I worked the summer night shift, so I had no social life. :frown:

But hey, I got free soda!! :biggrin:

 

[sportmarc]

Has to be when I worked for my cousin who ran a small sawmill in Northern Minnesota. As the downed trees were sawed into various board sizes, I received them (by myself) at the end of the conveyor and had to sort and stack them. Nothing quite like trying to keep up with a steady stream of 2x12x16 foot pine boards racing down at you. It was also hot since I had to wear boots, heavy, long pants and sleeves to guard against scrapes, slivers, and burrs, and of course being N. MN fed zillions of mosquitos enough blood to stock a good size blood bank.

That was worse than the summer on the township garbage truck. Yup, no danger of too much prior occupational ego here. :biggrin:

 

[NRG]

grabbing cans from the dumpster. I keep telling everyone...i'm poor!..and they don't believe me.

 

[nchopp]

Full-service car wash. Wouldn't have been so bad if the Manager hadn't been the biggest prick on the face of the planet. Hot as all hell, grubby work and grumpy customers. Blech. Got to drive a few nice cars - about 10 feet.

 

[H-carWizKid]

Worst Summer Job

When I was 21 I took a job pouring cement footers with a construction crew. The first couple of jobs went well, and even though we started at 5:30 am- we were usually done by 1:00pm. so I didn't have any complaints. We never worked on weekends.
I was making about $14.00 per hour, and I really didn't have any complaints until my crew was bid on a new construction project where they had done some earth reclaimation (filled in a swamp).
There was a ton of ground water, so basically we were assembling our forms, and laying our footers in 6 inches to 2 feet of water.
In the morning it was freezing cold, and by afternoon it was blazing hot. We were getting eaten alive by mosquitos, and my feet were getting destroyed from standing in the mud all day.

 

[Klayton]

Re: Worst Summer Job / Best Summer Job

Five weeks assembly line shift at the DC plant in Stuttgart.

 

[docjohn]

I was a reserch assistant at U Pittsburgh one looong hot summer,well the free housing was in a dingy prehistoric tenament with windows sealed shut,no ac,and no shower,only a bath!!!

 

[TomCat]

I was hired to (by myself) smooth/fill-in about a 1/4 mile dirt driveway for a rich guy during one summer in Florida.

The main/public road had just been paved and he allowed the city to use his land to stage materials. In return he got FREE piles of leftover "slag" (cement, rock, gravel, etc...) that he wanted to use to patch/repair/maintain his driveway.

He let the piles sit in rain and sun until it took a pickax to break it up and then I wheeled it in a wheelbarrel down pieces through the grass and un-improved driveway filling in holes.

I think I got $5/day

 

[twizt2]

They're so many...which to pick, which to pick.....

Installing residential alarm systems. I was the smallest guy on the crew so I got to run all the wires from the system cabinet through the attic to all the alarm contact points. Yeah.... try swiming around in itchy fiberglass, in pitch black darkness, in 120 degree heat, with 4-inch nails and hurricane clips gashing you in the legs and arms while trying not to take a wrong step and end up falling through someones ceiling into their living room. Yeah... I was over that real quick.

 

[rickysals]

Pottery - 10pm-6am mostly physical labor, shoveling clay/lifting it into hopper-thingies, etc etc...

lasted 3 weeks haha, i said screw that. my dad made me work it to show that money is not all that matters in a job, because I was paid very well

 

[Mike-san]

There's many, but probably the worst was an entry level roofer ( which paid about $1 above minimum wage). My first day, the contracter pulled the guy that was training me and sent him to another job, leaving me alone to bake in the hot sun. I had to transport bunches of tile to their assigned places at different parts of the roof. I had a weightlifting pump for 48 hrs. after that. When the day was done, I had to drive the company truck back to the yard even though I didn't know how to drive stick. It was fun stalling in rush hour. I never went back after that first day. I don't mind hard work, but I won't break my back for a crap wage !!!

 

[0ctan3]

when I was 18, I worked for a commercial plumbing company one summer, laying heavy-ass cast iron pipes in the ground for an elementary school.

and working the business end of these:

it was the most I'd ever made up until then at $9 an hour, and the hardest job I've ever had :smile:

 

[Autophile]

I gathered and stacked hay bales at a farm one summer with a friend in Tennessee about 22 years ago. Man, that was hot, dirty, physically exhausting work. I only lasted one day on that job. It only paid about $3 per hour, too (whatever the minimum wage was in 1984).

 

[RACERnsX]

The very first job I had when I was 16......I cleaned dog and cat sh!+ from kennels at a pet store.

 

[steveny]

Helping reroof the big @ss 2 story house we lived in when I was in high school during the summer in the nasty central california heat. Had to strip off the old wood shingles, then the 1x4's. Add more insulation while the roof was off with that loose blown stuff. Carry up the plywood sheets to the roof, nail those down, then nail down the composite shingles.

Or it could be painting the house the year before.........

It was just me and my brother in law, so it was a slooooooow process since he worked during the day, and we both didn't like working at night and I had other obligations on weekends. Yep so I was on that roof during the day...

I roofed a entire apartment complex, mansard roof. ~1700 squares of tear off including plywood and then roofed the whole thing. On and off it took me and two other guys three years, in-between painting the apartments and other maintenance work. It is a wonder I made it through that.
As far as the worst job, picking up dog crap at the same complex, it was my first job at that complex. I ended up owning the place many years later. After roofing it I sold it at a hefty profit.

Any job that pays by the hour is worthless!

 

[deedubb]

Blowing insulation in attics

Way too hot!

 

[queenlives]

i worked on a farm, taking care of the dairy cattle, catching & plucking chickens and weeding tomatoe beds, then picking the tomatoes. i was 12.

 

[minsbang]

friend of mine went into an adult video store thinking that the position required sitting behind the counter. But when he went in to ask, the job was to clean the place up when the men were done with their job in the booths.

 

[whiteNSXs]

Worked in a pet store and the dogs stunk. I lasted one day.
Worked in a flower shop and the water stunk. I lasted 3 days.
Worked as a house mover and I stunk at the end of the days. I lasted whole summer.
Steve

 

[deedubb]

Worked in a pet store and the dogs stunk. I lasted one day.
Worked in a flower shop and the water stunk. I lasted 3 days.
Worked as a house mover and I stunk at the end of the days. I lasted whole summer.
Steve

I take it you are not a blue collar kind of guy?

 

[docjohn]

I take it you are not a blue collar kind of guy?

Steve is blue collar,,he makes nsx hid light kits all day:tongue: lol