Your hardest earned dollars?

[kgtest]

I was thinking back to my hardeast earmed dollars and was wondering if anyone else ever thought about this?

I would guess people might respond of the times they earned the least amount of dollars... but I was curious...what was the hardest thing you've had to do for pay?

I know, I know...this is totally a "I walked up hill both ways below zero temps in three feet of snow to school when I was your age..." type of discussion, but let's have it.


I think my hardest earned dollars were when I was working overnights in my senior year of high school. It was the year 2000 and tech jobs were paying do outrageously well, my dad manage to land me a job at his tech company he was consulting at. But the kicker was it was overnights on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The hard part about this job was not the pay, the pay was incredible for the time. I was earning more per hour than my high school teachers.

It was those overnights during school. I would make it to Friday classes. I would want to hang out with friends Friday night after school, but often be a little tired from the night before.

Honestly, looking back I have no Idea how I was keeping this up. I would sleep on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning and show up late to school Monday's or just skip the whole day.

I can remember driving home some mornings being so tired I was scared I would crash my car. Especially Sunday mornings, which thankfully not a lot of cars on the road at 6am when my shift ended.

Looking back, I'm surprised my folks let me do this. I had to become emancipated minor so they wouldn't be on the hook for all my truancies on those Monday mornings. At one point the Assistant Principal of the school called me in and let me know I had missed more school than any other student with the exception of the kids who simply dropped out that school year. I still graduated, but I had to work with the school and some teacher's to make it happen.

I've had some physical jobs in my day. Framing houses, installing windows and doors, arborist...had a super boring job once where all I did was refill popcorn for movie-goers when I was 15. They would assign me 9 hour shifts on Saturday and Sunday to sit in the auxiliary candy stand...problem was people really only popped out of a movie to quickly refill their popcorn. That job bored me to death, sitting there all day with almost 0 interaction with people.

 

[badatmath]

Well IDK about "hard" but the most unusual job I ever had was 4 hour shifts of copying telephone books. Mostly yellow page ads but sometimes white pages as well. I kind of liked it as it paid $1 more than the minimum wage job I had before.

The advertisers wanted to see what the competition was doing I guess so you would get an assignment like "pizza" or "moving and storage". I was in college at the time.

 

[lem1955]

Defintely, cleaning behind the french fry machine at Arby's the summer after my freshman year at college. If I had had any doubts about whether it was worthwhile to stay in school, that experience ended my doubts.

 

[frayne]

The hardest job: completing Ranger School at 19, followed by a year in 1970-71 as an infantry squad leader and platoon sergeant in the Republic of South Vietnam, leading fellow 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds in the 1st Air Cavalry Division. It was a year of extremes—crushing boredom punctuated by sheer terror. Nothing sharpens the senses quite like someone trying to kill you and your buddies. I don’t remember the pay, but I do remember it was tax-free while serving in-country.

 

[PaunchyPirate]

Two not-so-fond memories…. My Dad used to “volunteer” us kids to help the neighbor farmers bale straw and hay every summer. Back in the days where it was done by tossing the bales up on to a wagon by walking alongside the wagon. And then getting up in the hay mow (is that spelled right?) and stacking them. Lots of HOT, DUSTY manual labor before automation arrived to help. I hated it. But we got paid what we thought was decent money at the time. ANY money was more than I had the day before.

Another summer job started as a temporary painter - the assignment was to paint a chain link fence that surrounded a 15 acre lumber yard. We used brushes and rollers to hand paint it with a heavy oil-based paint. Every day, I ended up like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz. The paint soaked thru any clothes I would wear and got into my pores. It was also hot, miserable work. But I stuck it out for the 2 weeks it took and that got me hired for the rest of the summer loading lumber on to customers vehicles. That part was a great summer job while in college.

 

[Tom52]

When I was in my early teens I would have said maybe bailing hay in the summer was my hardest earned dollars. This was back in the days when the bails were about the size 2' x 2' x 4'. You stood on the wagon and stacked them up as high as you could reach. When the wagon was loaded you went back to the barn and unloaded them onto a conveyor, or you were in the hay loft and stacked them up there. Very hot summertime work for very little pay.

However, that was not the worst job I ever had. In my later teens and early twenties I would work summers in a gray iron foundry. My job was an iron pourer. You pour molten iron at 2,500 plus degrees into green sand molds. The temperature was often 90 degrees outside, but on the pouring deck it was usually 125 to 130 degrees. The environment was hot, filthy, and noisy. you had only a pair of safety glasses, not even a face shield. The pouring ladles were open and as you stood there pouring iron the heat coming off the boiling iron was unbelievable. Of course, you also had the burns from the splattering metal. There were no air cooled safety suits in those days, just safety glasses, gloves, and leather leggings to keep spilled iron from running into you boots.

That job was the hardest dollars I ever earned. It also motivated me to go to college and get a decent job.

 

[rembrandt]

When I was in my early teens I would have said maybe bailing hay in the summer was my hardest earned dollars. This was back in the days when the bails were about the size 2' x 2' x 4'. You stood on the wagon and stacked them up as high as you could reach. When the wagon was loaded you went back to the barn and unloaded them onto a conveyor, or you were in the hay loft and stacked them up there. Very hot summertime work for very little pay.

However, that was not the worst job I ever had. In my later teens and early twenties I would work summers in a gray iron foundry. My job was an iron pourer. You pour molten iron at 2,500 plus degrees into green sand molds. The temperature was often 90 degrees outside, but on the pouring deck it was usually 125 to 130 degrees. The environment was hot, filthy, and noisy. you had only a pair of safety glasses, not even a face shield. The pouring ladles were open and as you stood there pouring iron the heat coming off the boiling iron was unbelievable. Of course, you also had the burns from the splattering metal. There were no air cooled safety suits in those days, just safety glasses, gloves, and leather leggings to keep spilled iron from running into you boots.

That job was the hardest dollars I ever earned. It also motivated me to go to college and get a decent job.

I read a news story recently about an employee that fell into one of those huge cauldrons of molten iron. He was vaporized immediately.

 

[Gumby]

Deployed aboard a Navy submarine.

 

[jimbee]

I know, I know...this is totally a "I walked up hill both ways below zero temps in three feet of snow to school when I was your age..." type of discussion, but let's have it.

Close. Walking up and down hills in the woods through knee-deep snow, carrying two five gallon pails of maple sap. At least the temperature wasn't below zero, because the sap doesn't run much when it's that cold.

After you do that all afternoon, your arms feel like you can just about touch the ground without bending over. Hey, at least I got minimum wage, so the pay was about $2 per hour.

 

[Car-Guy]

Hardest jobs (physically) were those I had while still in school. All were outside, hot in the summers and cold in the winters and ALL were for low pay. I mean really low pay. I think I max'd out at $1 an hour by the time I was out of school. But at least they were all paid in cash and tax free. , so that helped. Hardest job (mentality) was my last job in the O&G industry. Suit and tie, air conditioned and clean, but the politics was so thick you could cut it with a knife. We spent as much time planning and plotting against our peers as we did doing the job. But the pay and benefits were off the map.

 

[Lewis Clark]

Deployed aboard a Navy submarine.

This was by far my hardest job as well.

Not hard in the physical sense (needing big muscles to do the work) but hard due to the long hours and the stress, and the amount of time spent on my feet. As a department head I probably averaged about 5 hours of sleep each day during an entire deployment and it was rarely uninterrupted.

One of the few things consumed by the crew in greater quantities than uranium was coffee.

My second hardest job was probably the time in port on a Navy submarine while not deployed .

 

[athena53]

Definitely my first job, working as a waitress at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from the Hoover Company in N. Canton, Ohio. I was 16 and worked there only for the summer. Some of the workers would treat us like servants. The counter faced a long freezer bin against the wall where canisters of ice cream were stored and old men used to sit there and drink endless cups of coffee (no charge for refills) and ogle us as we leaned over to scoop out ice cream. You MIGHT get a tip from the Hoover workers on payday. Most didn't. At the end of the summer I took all the tips I'd accumulated- $18- and bought a pair of earrings. Definitely motivation to continue my education- and it also gave me a healthy respect for people who do those jobs.

Tom52 described working around molten iron; Dad had a degree in Metallurgical Engineering but the company for which he worked must have wanted all their people to start with the basics; I remember in the late 1950s/early 1960s that Dad was working shifts and we had to be quiet sometimes during the day. He'd describe conditions where the side of your body facing the ladles with molten steel would be sweating profusely and the other side would be freezing because the interior of the place was open to the elements. It was a bad day if they had a "scrap heat"- the mix wasn't up to their standards and they had to throw it out and start over. Eventually he was promoted to a desk job but he'd still get calls in the middle of the night when things went wrong.

Wow- a great reminder of how hard Dad worked to support us.

 

[DJRR]

Working during summer break from college laying asphalt in the summer. Standing on top of a steaming pile of asphalt and shoveling is not fun when it is 98 degrees. Confirmed my life choices of working in an office.

Worst job mentally was working temp work. I worked at a medical lab. Started at 5am and they would dump 10,000 test result pages from overnight on a big table. Then we sorted them into 1,000's, then 100's, then 10's, then in order. Then I went home. Took about 8 hours. Brutal mind numbing work.

 

[street]

Picking up square hay bales from hay fields. Day after day and weeks of it twice a year. Walking in the fields throwing bales on trailer stacking them then hauling to hay yard. Wore out jeans then the job was worth in pay.

I got 2¢ a bale and had to handle the bale 3 time to 4 times. I never complained about this work I loved being outdoors and the small amount of money was huge to me. I was rich!!!

Picking rock by hand from fields farmers planted crops. Pay was poor work was hard but again I did appreciate when I was asked to come to work. You walked alongside a tractor and trailer threw rocks in loader and trailer when full go hand dump the rocks.

I also painted old two story rural and town homes in the summer while school. I did these paint jobs by myself with an extension ladder to the max with a can of paint and a brush. I also had to scrape first so again hard work little pay.

Friends driving around drinking beer and having fun I was working.

I wouldn't trade or would not have had it any other way. I wanted to work!!!

 

[jfn111]

One of my many High School jobs was a mechanics assistant at a ready-mix concrete plant. I loved the mechanic part, working on the trucks, but I also had to take an air chisel and go inside the drum of the cement trucks to chisel out dried cement.
There weren't a lot of safety rules back in the 70's so no mask or ear protection. Loud, hot and dusty was the name of the game.

 

[Gumby]

This was by far my hardest job as well.

Not hard in the physical sense (needing big muscles to do the work) but hard due to the long hours and the stress, and the amount of time spent on my feet. As a department head I probably averaged about 5 hours of sleep each day during an entire deployment and it was rarely uninterrupted.

One of the few things consumed by the crew in greater quantities than uranium was coffee.

My second hardest job was probably the time in port on a Navy submarine while not deployed .

My first boat was truly ancient and prone to things like fires and un-isolable seawater flooding in the engine room. The first once knocked out four of our five AC units when we were not in a position to surface, so we had to run that way for almost 24 hours. It was 130 F in maneuvering and 175 F between MS-1 and 2. We could only stand watch back there for 15 minutes. The second required us to first make it to the surface, which was not a guaranteed thing, and then drive home that way.

On my second boat, I was the DCA, which is in my opinion the most difficult division officer position. I was the permanent mid-watch OOD, since the other three OODs were the LCDR department heads and I was only a LT. Which means I was the one who took the boat to periscope depth in the dark to get a satellite fix, blow the sanitary tanks, operate the TDU and occasionally ventilate the boat. You know, all the really dangerous and stressful things. And then I had to do all the things during the day, like run my division, participate in the engineering casualty drills and weapons systems readiness tests (I was also the battle stations OOD and the permanent maneuvering watch OOD), and occasionally stand EEOW watches to remain qualified. I was greatly sleep deprived.

The one benefit is that for the rest of my working life, no matter how bad things got at the office, I could always say "I've done way harder work for way less money. This is cake."

 

[Teacher Terry]

When I was 15 I got a job at a car wash. It was all day Saturday and half day on Sunday. It involved jumping in a car as it rolled down an assembly line and washing the windshield, dash, etc.

You rotated position on every car because getting in the back seat of a 2 door car quickly was hard and often the person in front pushed the seat back so fast you got whacked. You had to be done by the time the car got to the end of the line and then run back to get in the next car.

By the time I got home I was filthy and too tired to eat. I’d take a shower and go to bed. It was ruining my social life and I quit after 8 months. I then got a part time job at a fast food restaurant which was easy in comparison.

 

[Ronstar]

Survey building beams about 80 feet above the ground. Fording a neck deep creek teeming with snakes. Measuring a spent nuclear fuel pool, surveying the pavement of interstate highways amid traffic, surveying piping in oil refineries. Surveying landfills and hazardous waste sites. Getting shot at while surveying a pipeline across Texas.

 

[sengsational]

My job as a dock boy was the hardest and the most fun. Hard because there was a lot of physical labor (hauling 5 gallon gas cans out on the dock to fuel boats, carrying trash cans, sacks of potatoes, cases of beer, etc), and I was a scrawny 14 year old. But given responsibility (driving the portage vehicle, collecting/recording cash for gas and portages). But hanging out with the other dock boys, and occasionally the female staff all summer, finding ways to goof-off, getting into mild trouble, made it fun. The only time I wasn't on call to do some random thing was when sleeping. And depending on how eager the fisherman were, the day might start at 4:30, one of my least favorite things was bailing and cleaning the fishing boats, with yesterday's bait, line scraps, hooks, and beer cans to clear out. I got paid literally cents per hour, since I was "working" unless I was sleeping. But we found such creative ways to make goofing off look like work, hehe!

 

[aja8888]

Mid to late 1960's...military,,.combat situation. After that, anything is a piece of cake.

 

[Jerry1]

Unlike the Four Yorkshiremen, I hardly worked a tough day in my life. I had a few physical jobs early in my life, but by 20, I was at a desk job until I retired at 57. I did actually bail hay and milk cows one summer when I was about 13 but that was a family gig with no pay involved. The main jobs I recall being hard evolved around mental stress. Thankfully, those were brief moments in time and not the nature of the job overall. The toughest time in my life was in my early twenties when I was working full time afternoons, going to college and helping with our first born daughter. DW worked days, I worked afternoons. I watched DD on the days I didn’t have classes and had help from our parents on the days I did have to be in class. Rough times but they most certainly paid off.

 

[CO-guy]

I grew up spear fishing. There's nothing easy about being able to dive to 40-60 feet, hold your breath long enough to find a suitable target, and then, if successful, spend the next few minutes treading water while waiting for the boat to reach you before heading down again. Short of a small craft advisory, you're going out six days a week with all the dangers of being in open water. We'd push away from the dock at 6am and have all fish cleaned and sold by noon, but that was a hard 6 hour day to do 6 days a week.

As far as hourly compensation, I was earning more at 15 than I was at 45.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

When I was 19 I worked in a gray-iron foundry, grinding the flash off of castings. I handled a lot of heavy pieces, stuff that required a hoist to maneuver. And it was piecework, so you had to keep moving. My primary tool was a heavy-duty pneumatic angle grinder that weighed about 5 pounds. I built a lot of upper body strength on that job.

 

[sengsational]

@CO-guy cool job!

 

[braumeister]

Hard and interesting at the same time. Summer job doing disconnects. Back when you rented your telephone, it was important that they get it back when you either moved out or failed to pay your bill. My job was to get the "instrument" out of the building (lots of stories about that), then climb a couple of telephone poles to undo the upstream connections so it wouldn't be possible to hook an unauthorized phone up.
Constantly going between air conditioning and extremely hot pole climbs, I got strep throat several times that summer and was constantly taking penicillin pills.
Tough job, but I mostly enjoyed it because I learned a lot. I also got a bookie operation busted by noticing an amateur splice job while up on a pole. Reported it to my foreman and later learned that the cops thanked him.

Also spent a year in Vietnam trying to avoid getting killed. Extremely scary at times, and I'll just leave it at that.