security guard at a botanical garden...very low key
security guard at a botanical garden...very low key
Mr. Clean wrote:
I worked in a water bottling factory. All I had to do was put a cap on 5 gallon water bottles and move them onto a pallet as they came down a conveyor belt, 1 per second, for 8 hours.
I last 2 days.
It was the cleanest job I ever had. And it was the job I most hated.
Oddly enough, or maybe not so, a man had been doing the job for almost 30 years. He was autistic.
Like someone else said, jobs like these make you appreciate your college degree.
C'mon dude, there is absolutely no way that you moved 40 pound bottles of water at the rate of one per second for 8 hours. It wouldn't even be possible to do 1 in 1 second.
moon3.14 wrote:
My most usual job is serving at a restaurant. But it's great because the time goes by quickly and before you know it, you have $250-300 in tips in your pocket. After I get the 9-5, I'm definitely going to continue doing 2 weekend brunch shifts, since this place has the best brunch in the city, people reserve days in advance. 2 shifts a week is 2,000 bucks. My work experience and degree from a top-tier program should land me a day job at 80 K minimum, because bs undergrads start at 60 after graduation. I'm looking at 7K net which is livable income for the city. And I'm super excited about the $800 rent for this one apartment. Anyways...I got to go and make it happen because I'm kinda ready to move into a place ;)
Congrats, but please post this in the thread where people discuss how awesome they are.
I've read that title numerous times and never noticed that.
reading 101 wrote:
You got six? I guess you weren't counting the title, "An usual job that you've had."
Cleaning, maintenance, and general servicing of video wall projectors. These are the big wall-sized screens you see in places like Best Buy. They're used a lot in brokerage firms and government installations also. These screens can have upwards of 50 extremely fragile projectors, with tiny mirrors that are a couple hundred bucks a pop.
The most eclectic job I've had though was dismantling cubicles for companies that were closing offices. They pay was pretty good but we spent the whole time moving irregularly shaped heavy objects, which usually took more brain work to figure out how we were going to move it than it did physical exertion actually lifting them.
Both these were while doing 80 mile weeks with 2-3 workouts. I have no idea how I pulled that off. Oh that's right, I didn't, because both times I got injured.
Bouncer/Doorman. Met a ton of great people though I had two knives pulled out on me in two years and this was at a decent place.
Drove a pedicab. I used to make $150.00 a night in the early 80s which wasn't bad.
DJ in a dive bar. I still don't know what to say about those days or daze.
My first job as a 12 year old was as a trap setter. Worked at a trap shooting club as a "setter" putting clay pigeons on the machine. You had to be very careful of thy fingers.
I worked at a Turkey processing plant for a summer job after freshman year in college. Paid about $3-7 dollars less than the job I had the year before at the local steel plant depending on class of work I was doing for the steel union. A real downgrade but it was the best I could find at the time.
I consistently refused the plant tour and only went directly to my department (raw packaging)without looking at anything along the way while holding my breath until getting there. I never looked at processed meats the same since. They brought in a couple bus loads of adults that lived in a care home for the slaughter and cleaning part of the job in the other half of the factory. They always seemed happy and I heard their paychecks were pooled together to make life in their home comfortable with the most modern conveniences and forms of entertainment. Thank goodness the dis-assembly line was between the slaughter dept. and the raw packaging dept. The colder air where I worked supressed all of the wonderful smells to a bearable odor. I handled large breasts all day!!!!
Not a place to find hot chicks. Everyone was dressed in white lab coats, hair nets, rubber gloves, boots, hardhats & safety glasses. Weekends were something to look forward to and not volunteer for overtime hours. Even though I needed the money, I had to quit a week early to have some normalcy before returning to school. Running that summer was ok but the last week was the best week without having to stand on my feet all day in rubber boots.
Other jobs:
Delivered newspapers for 3 years in high school and a year as an adult for extra money.
Detassled corn for several years. The last time I did it, I said it would be the last time. Corn kept getting taller and the sun kept getting hotter.
Steel mill: painting, sweeping, driving fork truck.
Cook at resturaunts from Perkins-like to French Cuisine. Leanred how to cook good food and avoid eating crap college food.
Been painting houses every summer since the turkey job.
Teaching 25 years.
Would love to get work in a National Park out west or on the beaches of San Diego area for a summer job.
2 jobs through temp agencies:
re-tapping the holes on military radios that because of machine error were not waterproof, 16 holes per radio 8 hours a day, I lasted a week
and
fire restoration at a bar that had minimal damage but we had to also remove the cigarette tar from the ceiling which was nearly impossible, I can imagine a smokers lungs
I know your pain, one summer I worked at the city's election board. What happened was that they were transferring all of the voter I.D. cards stretching back from 1910 in to the computer from these little 2x6 inch cards. I got to scan them in one at a time and then type in the name, address, and voter I.D. number for each person. The whole process took about 45 seconds each. I live in a major city so there was an entire wall full of these things for our county, I think it was around 250,000. I got through 5,000 before I had to call it quits and I hadn't even made a dent. It's ironic that as a runner I don't do well at all with mindless repetitive tasks.
not really a job, but for two weeks I lived in a monastary in Japan. about five days in the head teacher decided to send us door to door begging, so I dressed up in full monk gear and walked thru the streets of a large city constantly chanting the monosylible "ohhhh---". I got two old ladies to give me $10 each, and I was the highest grossing of the monks that day. Afterwords we went out for beers and fried meat. And yes, I am a white American, 21 at the time.
not that unusual but I worked at a state park one summer just collecting people's money as they drove in. It was pretty remote, and on weekdays we'd rarely have more than 25 cars come in so I just read or studied most the day.
Drove an ice cream truck one summer in college. They set you up as an independent contractor. You only get paid if you sell. I could do about $30-50 a day (this was the early 1990s) after expenses. On the 4th of July, I found a good spot and did $120. When it was raining, it wasn't worth showing up.
Best part was the occasional hot mom or college girl (few and far between). Worst part was when the crappy freazer wouldn't keep the ice cream cold enough on really hot days. The ice cream would get soft and fall off the stick when kids tried to eat it. I always gave them a free replacement (the sundae/cone thing would hold together). But, it felt like I went around telling kids there was no santa claus all day when I would see kids burst out crying when their pink panther ice cream pop fell off onto the sidewalk.
16 yo - stock boy at the local drug/liquor store. Manager opened a door to what i thought was a closet filled to the top with empty boxes and he told me to break them down and bring them down to the incinerator. Little did i know I was staring at the top of the stairs leading to the incinerator! Boxes jammed all the way to the basement. 2 straight days of nothing but breaking down boxes and that was enough. walked.
worked at a golf course for 8 years (wanted to be a teaching pro)
Got hired right after the golf job on a cruise ship and spent 6 months at sea travelling around europe, teaching golf, getting laid and partying my butt off.
Several Gap stores
Fleet Feet in Walnut Creek, CA
Waited tables for about a year and learned if you put 1-2 drops of Visine in someone's coffee, they'll be sh!tting for 3-4 days. Never did it but knew a few of the staff who did it to jerk customers.
working IT for 22 years.
Municipal Garbageman/woodchip truck operator for a couple summers. Being a garbageman is actually pretty fun, as long as it doesn't rain (rain = maggots). We got to knock off as soon as we finished, and my coworkers were hilarious. There was a guy named Carlos who had fought in the El Salvador civil war. He'd drive back to El Salvador every summer, using proceeds from metal he obsessively scrounged from garbage with a big magnet. The other kids spent most of the summer smoking weed out of a hollow apple with a garbageman named Julio.
Wood truck was less fun. Almost got my arm caught in that thing a couple times.
Freelance copywriter -- terrible. It seems like a fun job at first because you set your own hours, but then you spend a day writing a hundred 50 word blurbs about identical wicker chairs or selling MLM scams. At 2-4 cents a word, you don't have time to do anything but type.
One summer I worked in promotions for an Anheuser Busch (Budweiser) distributor. I had a van loaded with neon beer signs that I installed in bars and stores that carried the product. Many times, the bar owners would give me free beer. I also sold the signs to friends (nobody kept track of the inventory.) I also set up keg trailers for company picnics, parties and events such as car races. Once the event started, I stayed to make sure the beer flowed and I drank as much as I wanted. That was such a great job.
Answered a want ad to help assist cleaning out a house. $500 for one week of work. As a broke college student, I could not resist.
I arrived at this immaculate Victorian home, and met the owner who looked exactly like Conrad Dunn (Psycho) from the movie Stripes. The guy was certifiably crazy, and a hoarder and had tons of old 1950's furniture that literally filled each room from floor to ceiling. Sofas were stacked on top of each other. He instructed me, and a some girl who had also answered the ad, to move all of the furniture to his drive way so it could be hauled away by a relative. While doing this, his mentally retarded son (who wore a motor cycle helmet at all times) would follow us to each room, stare at us and say nothing.
It took us five bizarre and uncomfortable evenings to move everything...and he paid us each night. On day 3, the girl almost quit, thinking we were probably going to get murdered.
Worked for a wealthy family trapping mice in their mountain home.
When I was 17 I cared for one of the three or four populations (in the entire world) of Hawaiian nene geese. They were facing extinction and maybe that's why some of them were nasty.
They've made a comeback, which is really good. I must have helped a little.
I also had to watch and report on the "jack ram," for a Mouflon sheep breeding project. The jack ram was a vasectomized ram that we let stay with the ewes. When he'd start mounting a ewe, we knew she was ready and let the Mouflon stud in.
Nasty rare geese and sheep sex. So exciting.
This was all at a place called Pohakuloa, on the Big Island, in 1960.
I was a message board moderator for a week for letsrun. I also edited each post for grammatical errors.
My current job: Pathologists' Assistant.
Anything that is removed from the body for surgery comes to me. Gallbladders, colons, lungs, thyroids.....anything. I cut it up, sections are turned into slides for the Pathologists to look at. I also do autopsies.