Job Discussion Forums

SueH · Joined: 01 Feb 2003 Posts: 1022 Location: Northern Italy

Now look what you've gone and done, made me feel all boring and inadequate..Ok let's try;

Christmas postal worker

tobacco picker (and I'm a non-smoker)

packing factory worker (emptying packets of tea back into the chests!)

building site worker (mainly sweeping and making the bacon sarnies in the canteen, but one day a lorry-load of 11,000 bricks came in...)

systems analyst (in the end, following company reorganisation, I was so bored I volunteered for redundancy - the pension is useful:-) )

summer school teacher

social survey interviewer

relief hostel worker

and Italian and English teacher.

Justin Trullinger · Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 6:33 pm Post subject:

Now you're bringing back the memories, Guy! I had fogotten my brief door to door steak salesman stint. And I am a vegetarian.

A detassler is a field worker who neuters corn plants. (for the purposes of creating hybrids)

guangho · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 476 Location: in transit

McDonalds

Hospital volunteer

Security guard

Securities paralegal

Court interperter

Translator on Holocaust reparations project

Elementary school teacher

ESLer

Aspiring hermit

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

D1CKEE DEE - 4 days

guangho · Joined: 16 Oct 2004 Posts: 476 Location: in transit

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

One might need to be from Ottawa to know that one. I'll leave it a mystery and state only that I ended up eating all my earnings.

valley_girl · Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 10:01 pm Post subject:

Naw, Guy, we had di-ckie dees in Nova Scotia, too. We'd be like Pavlov's dogs in the summertime...the bell would ring and we'd start salivating!!! Laughing

delacosta · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 325 Location: zipolte beach

Having moved from sunny Barbados to Ottawa, I got my first job at age 11, delivering the Globe and Mail (Cananda's national newspaper as they proudly say) door to door. I had never seen snow or expeienced anything below 25 degrees in my life. I had to get up at 5 am and deliver the papers in weather that was often minus 25 and colder.
And my job that put me through high school: selling Dickie Dee ice cream. I was the uncoolest kid on the block, I tell ya.

delacosta · Joined: 14 Apr 2004 Posts: 325 Location: zipolte beach

HA! You can't write Dikie Dee on Dave's!
Guy I didn't read your post, glad to see you're in the same club.
But I lasted two years! Actually the first year I did it I was 3d highest salesman in Canada and the next year I was given my own franchise, so I had a dozen or so kids working for me.
The year after that I decided to go tobacco picking so didn't do the franchise, my brother took it over. Tobacco picking, now that was tough, but great fun living on a farm, awar from home. The Quebecois bikers that we worked with were always willing to buy me and my buddy beer...

What's the Stompin' Tom song?
"Tillsonbourg, my back hurts every time I hear that word"

Sweetsee · Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 2302 Location: ) is everything

My brother and I had had 3 paper routes by age 11, must have been 7 or 8 when we had the first one, can't remember. I do remember that our father had all kinds of schemes for us to make money. We mowed lawns, washed cars and he would take us up to the church and set us up with a lemonade stand where the tour busses unloaded.

Other than that, my first job, and I was paid in ice cream, was dish washing at a parlour where my brother had gotten a job.

First real job was dish washing at a retirement community, lied about my age. Ended up getting fired after I had met my goal of saving up to buy a moped.

Later, got a job washing dishes at a small French restaurant where I ended up waiting tables many years later. Waited on John Travolta, Julia Child, Vincent Price, Fess Parker and Stuart Whitman among others.

But now that I remember it the most crap job, and it lasted less than a day, was stocking drywall in Alaska. Pheew, what a hassle!

Enjoy yourselves,
s

Guy Courchesne · Joined: 10 Mar 2003 Posts: 9650 Location: Mexico City

gaijinalways · Joined: 29 Nov 2005 Posts: 2279

Oh, I forgot, I was in a Jackie Chan movie, 'City Hunter'. I had to go out in the middle of the night by taxi to Sai Kung in Hong Kong where they were shooting the film. It was crappy only because we had to wait around for the dancers to learn their routine (duh), but of course I was being paid, but we were at a set with no air conditioning (only fans) and it was a humid night. Never did see Jackie, but I don't think he starts filming at 2 a.m.!

some waygug-in · Joined: 07 Feb 2003 Posts: 339

My acting debut? ...well, I did a short thing for a program called "crime stoppers" back home. I was asked to re-enact an actual crime and then have my wonderful acting skills being broadcast on the local TV networks.

All volunteer of course.

For my efforts I received a rather rude confrontation from the one police officer involved. You'd think these people would be happy to have someone volunteer their time to try and help them do their jobs..........
but no........ He acted as if I were guilty of some crime or other and let me know in front of everyone there. Confused

Sweetsee · Joined: 11 Jun 2004 Posts: 2302 Location: ) is everything

What's the most amount of money you ever got,
for the least amount of work?

Mine would be lighting a cigar for a twenty!

Aramas · Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2006 6:34 am Post subject:

Hmm...crap jobs.

I started packing baked goods with my father on weekends and holidays when I was 11 - family business and all that. 2am starts and I was paid five dollars a day, whether it was six hours or sixteen. Unfortunately, my father was a stressed out, violent, abusive b@stard, who enjoyed kicking the shyte out of me whenever things went wrong - which was generally about every twenty minutes. In my late twenties I spent around $5k and 18 months with a chiropractor having my tailbone straightened out. Apparently he had never seen anything like it.

Road building in Auckland - with a heavily tattoed and toothless bunch of 'Black Power' members. That was an experience. It was there that I came to answer to the name 'Honky B1tch' - a useful skill for my next job.

Unloading freight trains in Wellington - mostly with Pacific Islanders, until a very large Samoan got annoyed with me and hit me in the face. I literally flew backwards though the air for about five metres, and I can still remember coming around with the taste of blood in my mouth. With one punch he managed to break my nose and push all of my front teeth inward. When they took me to Emergency the nurse freaked out - she thought I'd been in a car accident. It was two weeks before I could see again, but the pethedine was nice.

Summer day shift loading and unloading ovens in a bakery in Newcastle. It's really quite amazing how much water a person can consume over a sixteen hour shift. I sure was lean though, if not mean.

Motorcycle courier for a photo lab in Melbourne. There's a limit to how many times one can slide on their back through peak hour traffic at 160kph and still have some hope for the future.

'Bowser Boy' at two service stations - opening one at 6 am and closing another at 9pm, six days a week. That was a busy year, but a fun one. I was young enough to go out clubbing, get home at 5am and still open the garage at 6.

Which takes me to the ripe old age of 20 Smile

Things picked up for a decade or two, with stints of repairing large computer systems for several multinats and periods at uni.

In more recent years the worst I've experienced was working for a day with a removalist in North Queensland. After unloading an entire shipping container into a raised 'Queenslander' house in the tropical summer sun, I swear I nearly died - I just couldn't decide whether to vomit or pass out first.