Korean Job Discussion Forums

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004

http://www.mindfully.org/Farm/Detasseling-Faces-Extinction9aug02.htm

I was reading this link about a popular summer job for high school students/university students called corn detasseling. Basically you spend a hunk of your summer in the hot sun in a corn field full of bugs and "he who walks behind the rows" and you pull the pollen thingys off the top of corn stocks. And you have to bring your own water.

Tree planting in North Ontario was another crap job for students. You ship out to wilds of Canada. Flies, no movie theaters within 900 KM, rain, mud, drugs, booze, gambling, sex.

In the pacific northwest, I think working on a fishing boat in Alaska was their equivalent of corn detasseling/tree planting.

Oh and there was Katimavik in Canada.

I personally always worked a part time job through my school years and never actually experienced the horror of either of these.

Given we're undeniably in summer, anyone got any good stories of your school summer job?

VanIslander · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 3:16 pm Post subject:

prospecting assistant: my job was to carry the dynamite Shocked

that guy · Joined: 29 Feb 2004 Location: long gone

I found this to be quite funny.

part 1

http://www.gaijinsmash.net/archives/6_circles_of_hell.phtml

part 2

http://www.gaijinsmash.net/archives/6_circles_of_hell_part_ii.phtml

cwemory · Joined: 14 Jan 2006 Location: Gunpo, Korea

Animal Planet had a documentary on llamas last week. There was a part showing a scientist doing research on sperm counts of male llamas. To get an adequate sample, he was having his research assistants jerk off the llamas into test tubes. Thought that would be a horrible way to spend your summer, jerking off llamas.

RACETRAITOR · Joined: 24 Oct 2005 Location: Seoul, South Korea

One of my earlier university summers I had no luck getting a job so I worked for a student painting company. The pay system is dubious and you have to spend some time going door-to-door looking for clients. I never had any experiences too awful doing it, although it was a cheapass job.

One day I left work early because I had an interview for some company writing commercials. I showed up to find it was a pyramid scheme. They interviewed about four of us at a time, and my hands were still covered in paint. The others seem interested in such a great offer, but I got the hell out of there.

khyber · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Location: Compunction Junction

I worked on a honey farm. Specifically, I was in the extraction barn. Full coveralls, a barn that HAD to stay above 32C all the time, bare hands.
I got bit on average, 4 times a day (my worst day was 11). I got stung on my eyelid once. It was somewhat hard but very tedious work.

I remember my last day of work, leaving that hot hass barn and unzipping my coveralls to expose a sweat soaked t-shirt that hung low. A bee flew right at me and plunged that stinger deep. I couldn't pull it out and I ended up squeezing all the venom right into me. That was the worst way to end that job and I still have a scar from all the picking.

Young FRANKenstein · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:03 pm Post subject:

Chicken catching (at a free range poultry farm). Worst job ever.

At the beginning, it's easy... you can catch the slow ones and the stupid ones and the passive ones. After that, you're left with hundreds of the smart, fast ones that like to fight back. My arms from the elbow down were covered in blood from their feet scratching me to hell.

Worst 8 hour shift of my life. Never went back.

swetepete · Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Location: a limp little burg

Re: the OP

Treeplanting in Ontario might've been like that, but in BC it was pretty damn good most of the time.

De-silking corn, though? Yikes. Probably not as bad as meat-packing, chicken-killing, or fish-gutting, but pretty nasty nonetheless...

kimchi_pizza · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:17 pm Post subject:

As a young teenager, I mowed my neighbor's lawn for a few bucks. Then one day he asked me to mow the lawn of his recently deceased brother. A few weeks later I found out his brother was killed with an ax by his own son. I was mowing the lawn of a grizzly crime scene.

It was a summer job and a true horror story. Did it ever give me the heebie-jeebies everytime I went there.

Happy Friday the 13th!

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004

swetepete · Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Location: a limp little burg

Hard physical work is good for young people. For me, not so much, but I'm glad to have done bushwork for the decade that I did. Sure it's a grind sometimes, but it gets easier as you get better at it, and it makes you strong, and you get to make great money to pay for your traveling and college and whatever debauches catch your eye.

Treeplanting was especially good because there were lots of girls, I got to ride in helicopters sometimes, the money was excellent, and I got to see lots of crazy stuff that people don't normally get to see.

I've done lots of labouring jobs in the city too, and I can't say those are quite as fun. Different class of people as well; planting, I met Olympic athletes; scholars; loads of recent immigrants who'd been doctors and air-traffic controllers in their home countries but couldn't ply their trades in Canada and were therefore out in the clearcuts because it was the only way they could make 2 or 3 hundred bucks a day; an abundance of highly educated world travellers; and, of course, loads of sweet hippy chicks.

Roofing, painting, landscaping, and framing, while each has its own charm, is dog work and you generally are surrounded by cokeheads and rednecks.

I get nostalgic around this time of year for the old planting days, but happily my memory is good so I can pretty quickly remember the bad times too, and enjoy the fact that a) I did it, and b) am glad as hell to be not doing it today.

F**k the mosquito clouds.

mindmetoo · Joined: 02 Feb 2004