Your hardest earned dollars?

[timbervest]

In high school I worked in a pancake restaurant as dishwasher/busboy on the Friday/Saturday night graveyard shifts (10pm-6am -- I wasn't particularly social at that stage of my life). Very busy on the weekends, but back then all the bars in town closed at 2 am so the bar rush would start and the place would be packed until 4am --Hells Angels, assorted other gangs, heavy drinkers, etc would leave the bar after a night of drinking and come to our restaurant to eat as it was the only 24 hour joint in town. It was mayhem. $2.00/hr. After scaping cold soggy pancakes off the dishes all night, I couldn't eat pancakes for a decade after that.

 

[Sarah S]

Working as a nursing assistant in a nursing home on a floor where everyone was total care and most had dementia. Physically and emotionally demanding and sometimes dangerous as the residents were occasionally violent. When I got a job at the hospital ( which seemed like a vacation almost) I started with a black eye from my previous job. Everyone thought I had an abusive boyfriend

 

[skipro33]

After high school, I got a job over night at a convenience store that also had a gas island. This was in Davis, California, a university town. I was constantly hounded to sell beer to underaged students. I was robbed several times and not just for the cash. Some people wanted the beer displays! Several gas pump scams were ran as well. Tag-team distractions were also pulled as I could not leave the check-out counter. This was in 1974. When I decided to quit, I also made a plan to max out my 'pay'. I had a van I lived in. I'd buy beer, put it in the van and when someone came in wanting to buy beer, I'd tell them no, but for a finders fee, I'd tell them where they might 'find' some. Since I was underage myself, I don't know how that would have gone down; selling alcohol to an under-age, me, while being under-age, then reselling to others under-age. I finally quit after too many knives and guns pointed at me, then enlisted in the military. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire! I was not a smart man back then, just what Uncle Sam was looking for. Ha!

 

[savory]

Delivering watermelons to supermarkets or their warehouse. There are 2,000 to 2,200 20# to 25# melons on a 18 wheel truck. Always one less when work started early in the morning as it slipped out of our (a small crew each assigned to one truck) hands for breakfast.

I would meet the driver who brought the melons from the field to the produce terminal. The driver was provided a route for our delivery. The driver was paid by the truck and was more concerned with his pay then his health as they were self medicated to stay awake.

A truckload of melons supplies about 8 supermarkets. We would drive to the back door and I would toss the melons down from the truck to the produce crew and they would put them in shopping carts.

It was a summer job for which I was not in shape for a full day of work. At least until the end of the summer when I went back to school. The first few hundred are not difficult as they are near the rear door and 20# or so was not too heavy. The remaining get harder with each stop since I needed to not only bend down and pick up the melon but walk several feet with each melon to the door. This was made even more difficult with trailers that did not have a side door. There was bonus pay for those but I preferred the side door.

Before my first warehouse delivery where we put the melons on pallets with a fence around it, I thought it was going to be easier then direct store delivery. But as you know, melons are temperamental and do not like to be dropped. Pampering each melon until the last row near the top, also had its complications for a person who has not worked those muscles. Today, given a choice, I would pass on the warehouse delivery.

While a hard job, I was very grateful. The job paid well and allowed me to save a fair amount of money. It was helpful for the family at the time given some financial challenges. Knowing what I know now, I would do it again but only with trailers with a side door.

 

[jcretire77]

In high school I helped my step-father with mobile home maintenance. Rooftop swamp coolers to clean out and get ready for the summer. We also used five gallon buckets of a petroleum product to paint foam roofs. I always thought that there was asbestos in the liquid, but that may be a false memory. Very hot to be up top and tough as a scrawny kid to get the buckets up the ladder.

Also hated coming home from McDonalds smelling like a french fry. But not a tough job.

 

[AudiDudi]

Kind of a tossup between Navy submarines in the mid 70's or short order cook at a Sambo's working night shift at the only place for about 20 miles that was open after midnight.

 

[PlayinwithFIRE]

Well lets see. Fun to think about.

1) Pulling dead deer parts out of the gratings underneath a dam. This was just a sadistic boss though..not really in the job description, nor the deer's fault The dam was part of the hydro for a very old paper mill in New England and I was on maintenance detail. Lower side of the dam was riddled with catacombs from 100 years ago with very bad lighting, water dripping everywhere. Sweeping out the sludge which continually built up. $6.50/hr and a $750 scholarship for college.

2) Being the "up man" in a teamsters freight loading facility...which meant you got crammed into the space between the boxes and the roof of the semi trailer truck (usually about a 2 foot gap left in there) and a couple teamsters would enthusiastically throw boxes at you while you madly tried to move them forward to the head of the truck and not get buried. Of course-this was in the summer..so the metal roof of the truck would blister your skin on contact. Shop had mandatory overtimes where at the end of an 8 hour shift-they'd announce, you'd be staying yet another 8 hours. Continual semi-veiled threats from the teamsters "you better get down to the house and sign up !", "The last guy who didn't sign up, his car got trashed !"..etc.. $25.00/hr and $38.50 on those mandatory overtimes....that was worth all the crap for a summer college kid.

3) Filling ice cream orders in a -30F walk in freezer . Freezer was around 0F but the blowers were running a constant 20MPH blast in your face...loud freezing air hehe. You'd gear up, and go in for 2-3 hours at a shot taking merchandise off shelves and loading it on carts to be brought out and loaded again onto a truck. Roll out into the loading area massive fog pouring out behind you...and all the happy summer customers (buying blocks of ice for their parties lol) staring at you. $3.25/hr

I never picked tobacco as a kid, but knew a lot of my friends who did. Even I had my limits

Looking back, I've come a long way...but those jobs made the artificial hardships of the office/lab world I'm in laughable today.

pwf

 

[Idnar7]

Working at a nursery. Had to shovel wet sand up into the potting beds (four feet high), then level that out, then shovel on the potting soil. All that in a very warm greenhouse. I blame that for my sore rotator cuff.

 

[mebden]

1) Late 70's at 14 having to peel the bark of off popular trees by the time you did this for 8 hours your hands were totally blistered but soon became very strong hands and doing this all outdoors being attacked by every bug known to mankind and sweating everything you drank right back out of you.
2) early 80's at 16 working in a sawmill stacking slats of wood coming off the cutter faster than you can stack them and getting yelled at by the operator saying quit slowing me down move faster as every piece was part of your pay that definitely tired you out after 8 hours in I'll call a sweat box.

 

[Dash man]

Hours upon hours of fruitless searching for survivors of maritime accidents.

 

[pacergal]

First two years out of nursing school, mid 70s, hospital float pool. Had to work rotating Days/Evening/Nights and all over--went to ER, ICU, Burn unit, Medical/Surgical, Ortho, and the "stroke" ward.
Excellent learning, but tough physically and mentally.
Burn unit was the hardest for me, I had to take care of a fireman who fell through the roof and a 3 year old who pulled hot coffee on himself for the two weeks I was there.
Even the IV morphine didn't always take care of the pain.

 

[Gallaher]

Hay crew in the Oregon badlands.
At least there was some girls there too.

 

[rk911]

For a while I worked three jobs while still going to U of I Chicago and taking my wife to work and picking her up after work. It was a ballet!

- Wife to work @ 7am Mon-Fri and then off to U of I most weekdays
- Leave school by 1:30 to pick up wife @3
- Hit main job by 4..delivering pizzas till 11p mon-fri nites. Tips were excellent!
- Thursdays I helped my buddy open and then staff a Radio Shack store between 10a-2p
- Fri. and Sat. nites I was overnite armed security at a local community college from Midnight to Noon.

That left Sunday for school work and recuperation.

But the most physical jobs I had were...
- working on a truck dock unloading semi trailers. 5-nites 3p-11p. (By now I had left school and quit tne three jobs)
- Ist summer home from college I worked the hot beds in a steel mill. No bueno.

It all worked out in the end.

 

[jollystomper]

My dad worked and saved to buy the apartment building we lived in. by the age of 10 I (along with my brothers) were his "cleaning crew". The apartment building being in a bad neighborhood meant I had too many encounters I cared to think about with vermin. Especially when we had to clean out an apartment of someone he had to evict, as these folks never left the apartment in any decent shape.

In addition to cleaning, we would also be with him when he collected rent. My first constant exposure in seeing people making excuses (and even lying) about not having the rent money. My dad was firm but kind hearted, and let some of these folks go a little too long... which they repaid him when they moved out or were evicted by leaving a mess.

Doing that earned part of my allowance, but I dreaded having to do that every Saturday morning, even after we moved to a house but he still owned the building for several years after that. It "cured" me of any desire to be a landlord .

 

[old medic]

Like many others on here, I have done a lot of heavy labor stuff in tough conditions. The amount of hay I've picked up and stacked would bury a small town... didn't make a dime. Using snowshoes to run traplines and collecting sap. Framing construction in weather below 0 to over 100. Anyone else here ever hot tar a roof?
But the hardest I every worked was for about $7.50.....
Doing CPR on 2 teenagers at the same time, while looking at a 3rd one that was to far gone, hardest 30 minutes of my life.

 

[DrRoy]

I was a paint vendor rep in a car assembly plant in the 90's. One year they were rebuilding the paint line that I supported and I had to work long overtime hours over Thanksgiving weekend. Barely got a quick turkey dinner on Sunday. I made great money, and it wasn't hard labor like many above, but I was very tired and glad when it was done.

 

[rembrandt]

The worst job was working in the parking lot at Home Depot. I had to work outside in the brutal cold and heat, and the customers thought I was a loser.

 

[mystang52]

My very first job, at 15 years old, busboy at a local and very busy high-end seafood restaurant. I earned some serious money, even by adult standards, but it was hard work. I hated it, despite the money. Honorable mention, though, to my current friend. He started working (illegally at age 13 or so) walking the summer beach lugging 2 over the shoulder coolers of Good Humor ice cream.

 

[Surewhitey]

Lumber slinging after school at the small lumber yard in a small town. 2x12x16's & 60lb bags of concrete were a beast. Got in good shape though. Massive $3.35/hr.

 

[rembrandt]

Lumber slinging after school at the small lumber yard in a small town. 2x12x16's & 60lb bags of concrete were a beast. Got in good shape though. Massive $3.35/hr.

My boss at Home Depot wanted me to load a truck by myself with 100 pound bags of cement. I told him he was out of his mind.

 

[Samething]

I worked as a laborer in a shipyard for a few months during a Florida summer. My job was grinding tack welds smooth inside the ship holds. 12 hour shifts inside 100 plus degree cargo holds. We had 1/2 hour lunch breaks where I ate and drank as much as possible to make it through the rest of the shift. We drank a lot of water and sweated it out. Dangerous environment. Breathing masks and hard hats. We launched the ship and they laid us all off because they didn’t have another contract to build another ship. I was never so happy to lose a job before or since.

 

[Kabowest]

The hardest earned dollars, but learning what it meant to work for a living. Working as a teenager during the summer in the 70's stripping asphalt shingle roofs in the Boston area.

 

[Car-Guy]

My boss at Home Depot wanted me to load a truck by myself with 100 pound bags of cement. I told him he was out of his mind.

Probably why they have cut "most" type of bags of cement down to 80 lbs these days. Still it's hard to toss around any size/weight of cement bags.

Speaking of Home Depot, anyone ever notice how hard it is to get anyone to help you load your cart(s) in the store with stuff but they come from everywhere when it's time to load your truck. (where the tips are made)

 

[Sue J]

From 2007 to 2017 I had a summer job as an usher at an outdoor concert venue. This was age 52 to 62 so I was not a teenager!

The pay was minimum wage so I was doing it mostly for "fun", but I enjoyed having a thing to go to and most of the other ushers were also in that age range or older.

The venue was Blossom Music Center in Ohio, a very well known concert venue that brought in big name rock, country, and other bands. But it's also the summer home of The Cleveland Orchestra and they had their concerts there every weekend.

The tough part was the long hours standing on concrete and dealing with the public. I had beer spilled on me many times at the non-orchestra concerts. Drunks would behave like drunks and cause havoc or just pass out.

The place had a pavilion with seating but also a huge lawn section for up to 13,500. After the concert the ushers all had to go out on the lawn and pick up the trash left behind, Yeah, for minimum wage. But we had a good team attitude and chatted while we did it and laughed a lot as all us oldsters grunted and groaned as we bent over to grab stuff.

Orchestra nights were a totally different crowd and vibe. Much easier all around and for an orchestra concert we were allowed to sit during the performances.

I did it for 11 summers and while individual concerts were tough, overall I liked the job and looked forward to getting put on the schedule. And all my pay went into my Roth IRA! So it was a good retirement job.

I would have continued doing it but I had my first hip replacement in 2014 and my 2nd hip was starting to go bad and the long hours standing on concrete was making it really hard to continue.

 

[Pointby2]

Nothing to compare to other's stories.
It's a toss up. My first job was bussing tables and washing dishes in a small restaurant. Cleaning the grease traps out was the notable highlight. Worked part time while in HS for $1.10 and hour. That summer I worked a 40 hour shift and my paycheck was $38.00 or so. I quit immediately.
The other job with a warehouse grocer paid better, but every shift started by unloading a semi trailer of grocery items. Canned goods got heavy fast. But I wish I was in that kind of shape again.