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To kick things off
Paper round (of course)
Potato peeler for local chippy
Money counter for a bus company
Paper round
Bike shop
Record shop
HiFi Shop
Not really that crap at all.
Condom tester for durex
Charlie you really are a dildo then?! 😆
Yeah, most people think it would have been a great job, but I'm a girl!
Mornings - Milk round [up at 5:30 7 days/week]
Evenings - Paper round
October half term - potato picking
Worked on a farm every summer - crap money and hard work but looking back it was totally stress free - driving tractors, sorting spuds, pulling up weeds amongst the crops
injected processed chickens with 'flavour' ie water, not at all designed to make them look twice as big...... oh no.....
Rose bud tying.
de-tinning pork pies (night shift)
Mainly household chores helping my mum.
multiple paper rounds, pot washer, chef, Barman, cashier in a petrol station, factory work. usual stuff. Worst job ever though was when my boss at the pub asked if i could move some "hay bails" for him down at the farm (his wife had a horse) he said he'd give me £10. I figured it'd be ten bails tops just across the yard from the barn to the stable. It was a trailer full into the barn. 100 Bails. and they were straw rather than hay.
As a teenager, I had a little gardening business going, loved it.
As a student, the two worst were packaging toiletries into blister packs, and working in a machining factory where my job was to continuously go round cleaning all the swarf out of all the machines.
- Gardening for an elderly lady for £1 an hour or something.
- Hauled boxes around for a stationery wholesaler
- Sales assistant and then stockroom guy for JD Sports
- M&S stock stuff for a summer
- Selling cameras, electricals etc in Dixons/Currys
- Poll clerk for a day (aka reading my book)
Now I get paid to waste my time on STW.
I also once nearly took a job as a sandwich (A) board 'operator'. I could think of nothing better than walking around the beautiful parts of Knaresborough all summer long and getting paid for it.
Unfortunately my girlfriend at the time threatened to leave me if I showed her up by taking the job.
I also worked as a tour guide at Mother Shipton's Cave when it was owned by 'magician' Paul Daniels.
paper round
cleaning a pub/loo/pumps
weeding a wind break border at a tennis club by the tie i finished at one end it was time to restart at the begining
but i bet i had the oddest, mates dad owned a small ship anout 400ft long coaster, a bunch of us soent the day crawling in the empty bilges sweeping up the deposits of salt and crud, the space was about 18 inches high and you had to lie on your stomach dragging a brush and bucket
de-tinning pork pies (night shift)
Wot, like, one part of a factory would put them in tins and you'd have to take them out again...? Please enlighten me as to what de-tinning pork pies entails... (or entrails...)
Anyway,
Paper round: of course, but mine was for the local free shite rag so needed a silly trolley to cart them around in and only the most miserable of proper locals actually wanted the bloody thing anyway so there were never any tips or even thanks - the only pleasure I got was from two houses; one that had a notice saying "NO FREE PAPERS!" so they obviously got two -with extra leaflets- (if only they'd appended "PLEASE"...); and the other was a house with a viscious dog that would instantly grab the paper as soon as I put it through the box. I probably could have just let go of the thing, but it was infinitely more enjoyable to hang into it and let the deranged mutt shred the other end into hamster bedding. Circa £3.60 per week.
Then, at 16, I got a job cold-calling in the evenings for a pathetic local double-glazing firm. I got paid £2.50/hr, lasted three months and sold not a single piece of knock-off, leaky, over-priced glaze.
Picking courgettes (thumb pricked until it looked like a bulbous bellend)
Picking Plums (stung by wasps until I looked like a bulbous bellend)
Chipping mortar off the bricks of a fallen wall ready to be re-used.
Creosoting a warehouse
Stuffing marketing bumf in magazines.
Packing uPVC window frames in boxes
Powder coating aluminium window frames
Making corrugated steel sheeting
Worked in a frozen pea factory on night shifts over the summer. One of the jobs was the pod and stick machine, where the peas entered the factory from the field on a vibrating machine where the peas fall through the holes and the pods and sticks (and dead animals) were separated. When I closed my eyes at night all I could see was vibrating peas, and couldnt eat them fort at least a year.
Worked on the fish docks cleaning and packing fish, I smelled great after that and could never get the fish scales off my hands.
Was also an apprentice carpet fitter, my favourite was when I was working with a fitter called "flash", not for his speed, but quite the opposite, he was the slowest fitter in the shop. I especially enjoyed the day I was with him and we had to rip up the pee ridden carpets in a nursing home and take the old carpets back to the warehouse in the van.
Are we talking kids here >16, or older?
just a bit surprised at any factory employing kids on night-shift
I was thinking teenage years up to 20. I must be old cos in my eyes a 20 year old is still a kid.
The usual paper rounds until I was old enough to take a job scrubbing pots / washing dishes in a local Italian restaurant.
Lasted about a year at that then took a job collecting glasses in a nightclub (too young for a bar man). Lasted a week at that - my arse was bruised to bits by all the 40+ year old women grabbing it. That was just not pleasant (after the first few!).
Tomato picker.
A cleaner in a Varta battery factory.
A marquee erector (quite enjoyed that one though but it was hard physical work)
I had a job for a day unpacking boxes of soap, sticking a clear, round label on them and repacking them back up. I have no idea why.
Had some crackers as a student...
Working in a frozen food warehouse (in mid summer!) - cycle to work in shorts and t-shirt, get to work and put on full winter outfit, hat and gloves
Worked as a human conveyor belt when the conveyor packed up at a sofa manufacturer (hurts my back just thinking about it...)
Emptying a warehouse when a clothing factory closed down - constantly getting abuse from the soon-to-be-made redundant staff
Putting stickers on work surfaces with the colour name on, as the automated machine had packed up
Still, it kept me in beer money at the time...
No-one else worked at Maccy D's then? I did for 6 months - it was pretty much as you would imagine it to be. Been KP in a few pubs/restaurants etc too - that's not much fun either.
My worst job though was in a CD packing warehouse - going through pallet after pallet of terrible CDs and sticking stickers on them, while being forced to listen to them at the same time.
Humping gear for a local DJ.
Delivering pot for a local dealer.
Pit washer at a pub. I lasted 6 hours before I jacked.
First propper job was at Drayton manor. Shite pay but the best laugh I've ever had at work. Would relive it again in a heartbeat.
Grumm - I did a stint at Burger King - grim as hell but it's where I learned how to roll spliffs the size of battleships on the half hour break 🙂
I had a job for a day unpacking boxes of soap, sticking a clear, round label on them and repacking them back up. I have no idea why.
it leaves an "unsoaped" bit of soap on which the soap can rest and drain without turning into a soapey mush in the soap dish.
Picking up litter on a landfill site
Hmmmm.
- Video shop - was OK, but pay was almost non-existent.
- Oik working in Olympus Sports, Brent Cross - good laugh, OK pay, discount on sports stuff
- Oik working in Primark, Kilburn High St - boring, but not badly paid. Offered me full time job of stock room supervisor for an extra 50p/hr instead of going to uni.....hmmmm, let me think about that!
- Various jobs working for an agency, including cleaning a new automated line at Viglen Computers, working at a NEFF distribution place, packing wagons at Parcel Force etc....
- Event stewarding for an agency - worked mainly at Stamford Bridge, White Hart Lane and The Oval. Also worked at 2 Farnborough air shows in the ticket booths, Wembley Stadium (saw Spice Girls, Bon Jovi, Oasis....), a race course (horses, but can't remember where), Madjeski stadium once (flippin' freezing, London Irish football club........
all in all not a bad lot, really.
Washing up/collecting trays in a National Trust Tearoom.
The boss' were sexist (boys wash up, girls look pretty on the counter)
Customers were either;
1) Old and would make a cup of tea last 4 hours
2) Miserable
3) Kids
Made a grand total of £2.50 in tips over a year woking there!
Supermarket checkout on a sunday in a small village, boredom, but paid better than the NT.
Worked in a Lab for quite a few summers doing some realy quite fun work, testing samples, playing with big expensive machines (with lasers!) and listening to the radio, got to ride 30miles a day too.
Cleaning out dog kennels, the 'waste pit' was something else in the height of summer 😯
7 paper rounds a week for the princely sum of £97 per week. Did that for 4 years. 4 days off in 4 years!
paper round
greengrocers - started a typical saturday unloading 3 tons of potatoes and 2 tonnes of assorted fruit and veg from the lorry. all for a princely £1.20 an hour (this was about 1990) plus a fish and chip lunch and all the fruit you could eat whilst at work. the saturday girl I worked with was also quite, shall we say, dirty and used to have some fun with her in the store room - great times!
petrol station - dull, but used to skim off the fuel vouchers and ordered loads of stuff from the bp catalogue of the day. occasionally got to drive the odd nice audi/vw for the car dealers next door.
I checked the adding up of marks on A level and GCSE papers one summer.
I also worked in a warehouse unloading lorries full of mattresses which was equally thrilling.
Worked in a brewery -not that bad, got free beer.
Basically manual labour though.
Paperboy but that was a great job, had about 4 different rounds.
Chicken shed cleaner was a pretty nasty job. Very dry and dirty.
Kitchen Porter for a big restaurant was a properly dirty and crappy job. Paid well though.
I was a rat catcher too which was a way cool job.
I worked the traps at a clay pigeon shoot which was ok.
And then one summer I worked for a brewery, mainly with the draymen. Those guys are some of the toughest men I have ever known. They could lift huge barrels no problem and would have a pint at every pub they made a delivery to with no apparent ill effects.
From 13 to 16, 4 paper rounds, 2 in the morning and 2 in the evening, on a sunday i did all 3 that the newsagent had. Those were stress free days, i do remember on Bank Holidays used to get the call at 2pm to say the papers where in so i could start early!
16, first proper job was a Data Input Clerk for Electrue they did parts for small electricals, vacs and that sort of thing. Then went back to college so started working for Safeway trolley boy for 12 months then at 17, Checkout Supervisor then Checkout Manager at 19, even though i went to Uni got my degree i stayed in retail, work for Tesco now.
Its funny when you look back, i remember late shift on friday 4-9 on trollies then 8-12 next day and thats all i used to work, so different these days!
paperboy, then got promoted to the shop to do friday and saturday night shifts because i was the burliest paperboy. only paid £1 an hour. got moaned at if you finished the jobs for not doing it properly/ not thinking of anything else to do. got moaned at if you didn't finish the list of jobs though. kicked it in ofr another paperoound which pid more than the PR and the shop together.
i also used to test condoms, but that was a placement year at uni - and being covered in chocolate lube all day isn't as good as you'd think! 😯
gravedigger.
Filling 1 gallon cans with paraffin 🙁
Various waiting at tables jobs.
Not a crap job but a great job- working as a steward/security/dogsbody for a Harvey Goldsmith company. Got to see tens of top bands in the 70s and get paid 🙂
Finally had to finish college and get a proper job 😯
Not sure I've had any crap jobs, They've all contributed to the experiences that have made me the awesome person I am. One of the things it has taught me is that there are not crap jobs, just crap people, and as a result I don't look down on people who have low skilled jobs.
Grumm - I did a stint at Burger King - grim as hell but it's where I learned how to roll spliffs the size of battleships on the half hour break
Haha - yup that sounds familiar. I did sometimes get a massive free bag of donuts too. Quite good after the spliffs. 🙂
Selling peaches on the beach -- in 1977 when The Stranglers were topping the charts!
Paper rounds.
Helping customers on and off boats at a boating lake.
Selling ice creams on the beach. Commission based resulting in £100-130 a week in the 1983 summer holiday as an 18 year old.
We had some cracking summers the years I was doing those jobs and I don't think any employment I've had as an adult has come close to being as enjoyable. I've never had such a good sun tan again either.