What was your worst job as a teenager?

[ri702bill 8,316]

As the title says, tell us about that job that you would rather forger about!!

Mine was working for my Uncle Ray that owned a contract cleaning service. I was in Trade School M-F mornings, and worked for him 6-10 PM M-Th and a half day Saturday. He had one account at a now long-gone chemical company, and one crew would go there on Saturdays. There was one task reserved for whoever screwed up during the week - it was called "The Run". You had 4 hours, no more, to clean close to 90 toilets located throughout the three 3 story buildings, you had to run to get them all done on time. During the week, we had one other kid mouth off to the lead guy, and I figured that "Manny" was a shoe-in for The Run on Saturday.

Saturday morning, my Uncle tells me he got word that Manny quit on Friday, and asked me to do "The Run" in his place - telling me "You're Family, I figured you'd understand".... this happened twice.

Two weeks later, I got an afternoon job in a factory that paid more and no Saturday work. I told my Uncle I was giving my notice, and he got a tad cranky with me, but I wasn't quitting, just trying to do better, then I told him "You're Family, I figured you'd understand"... 

[squonk 41,076]

Golf course watering at night. In the summer before my senior year the entire course staff quit. I was working for my dad who ran the course restaurant. It was a hot job in the kitchen but I got to make the salads sitting in the walk in cooler!  Anyway my Dad calls me and says if you want a job on the course, get up here. So I did. First assignment was picking up the trash cans. I had to drive a Jacobsen golf course tractor and learned how to drive standard quick that day. If I jerked the clutch, the garbage spilled out of the trailer. I had a lot of fun mowing that summer. The guys who quit came back and we had a blast.  Getting up at 4 AM to mow greens sucked but I got done at 1:00

 

I had played Varsity baseball my junior year. In the early spring of my senior year I went to see the course superintendent about a job . He said no problem I will call you when we start getting things ready. So I didn't go out for baseball and the call never came. He hired all the guys back and I went to see him and he says sorry no place for you.  A month later he calls and says I have an opening at night watering.

 

He shows me how to do it. Big honkin pumps and valves to operate. A pump for the front 9 and another for the back 9. You start the pump with this giant starting lever and open a bypass to get water flowing. Put in about 6 sprinkler heads in then close the bypass. Each run takes about 40 minutes. You get to sit for 20 in the shop and then go out and move the sprinklers to the next spot on each hole. One of the rules were if you see lightning, get everything shut down. 

 

It was darn spooky out there alone at night out on the back holes let me tell you.

 

Well one hot evening I had made about 3 runs. I'm traveling to a hole and here come my boss driving his Chevy Suburban on the course heading for me. He's pissed. He says he was driving by and the sprinklers are barely putting any water out on the front 9. He says I never opened the main valve as he found it closed. I try to explain to him how could I not notice the low pressure after 3 runs? I figured a golfer came by and his ball was were a sprinkler was and turned the water off and left it. There were a lot of course members who had worked at the course thru the years. He was having none of it. I was pissed now and almost quit right then.

But at about 2 AM I 'm out there and see lightning. I start racing to get shut down and the storm comes out of nowhere. I get disoriented and can't figure out where I am with the wind and rain. I see a greens flag and drive right up on the green to figure out exactly where I am. I high tail it to the shop and even jumped a small sand trap with the Cushman Truckster. I was almost off the course and a tree about 50yrds. from me got hit by lightning. That was it. got to the shop wrote a note I was quitting! 

[ri702bill 8,316]

11 minutes ago, squonk said:

That was it. got to the shop wrote a note I was quitting! 

I did something similar, but in person when I was a Machine Tool Assembler. The Company was no longer willing to accomodate my needs so I could attend College at night. I told one of the Owners that I outgrew their facility. He asked what that meant - I told him "I need a job, just not this one anymore".

[AMC RULES 37,130]

Delivering newspapers.

[elcamino/wheelhorse 9,297]

Age 15 back in the dark ages. Worked for a hamburger joint on weekends . Hamburgers were $0.15 and cheeseburgers were $0.20 . This place did not have inside service so everything was walk up. Lines would be 50 people , at 4 windows. I was paid $1.00 an hour , one Saturday night the boss decided it was my turn to clean the grease trap , the next week I found a job at a grocery store at $1.05 an hour. Took me almost a year before I would eat a hamburger after the grease trap.  That $1.05 hour job paid my way thru college and 3 years after I graduated .

[pfrederi 17,730]

Refinishing hardwood floors in a school in August no A/C...many pre OSHA chemicals

 

Mixing up asbestos with water to seal boiler access ports and insulate pipes after climbing inside the boiler to scrape carbon build up.  (Gave us a mask for that part.)

[Snoopy11 5,714]

Volunteer tutoring. OOOOOOMG...

 

I graduated a year ahead of my class... and jumped into college. I attended a college where I live... during my LATER teenage years volunteered tutoring.

 

Why was it my worst job as a late teenager?

 

'cause peoples is stupid...

 

I still tutor... just not at "ground zero" where the lights are all burnt out from nobody being home...

 

 

Don

[Jeff-C175 7,201]

Probably as a roofer's 'helper'.  Carrying bundles of 3-tabs up a ladder.  I had a good tan that summer though!

 

[nylyon-(Admin) 7,274]

Greens keeper at a local golf course JUST when Caddy Shack was released.... "Carl the greens keeper...." still hate golfers err... I mean gophers to this day.

 

[oliver2-44 9,739]

So many jobs had good and bad parts. I mowed lawns from about age 12 to age 20. I inherited one lawn from my older brothers friend. It was a big Victorian house all the way across town. I pulled my push lawn mower behind my bike. The big yard had brick border flower beds around the house and in the middle of yard.  They were grown over with grass and now part of yard. It was like mowing a pasture full of stumps. Dulled blades and broke a few wheels there. But she was the sweetest old widow and brought me a coke and my $5 every time. It was my highest paying yard. 
 

Worked for a flooring company a couple of summers.  Pulling carpet out of old wood floor houses where the owner had a ton of cats. The old carpet and the wood subfloor reeked of cat pee and so did you by the end of the job. 

[lynnmor 7,305]

5 hours ago, AMC RULES said:

Delivering newspapers.

I pedaled a bike delivering papers for 4+ miles, 6 days per week for 2 years and made $107,

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per year.

[ri702bill 8,316]

5 hours ago, Jeff-C175 said:

Probably as a roofer's 'helper'.  Carrying bundles of 3-tabs up a ladder.  I had a good tan that summer though!

 

As a "20 something" year old, I hung around occasionally with a kid named Ricky that he and his Dad did roofing , gutters, & siding, specializing in old 3 decker tenement houses, and there were a bunch of them here in RI. One blustery spring morning, Ricky is hefting a bundle of 3 tabs up the ladder to the roof - the wind kicked up just as he was doing the top rung step-over. He lost his balance, dumped the shingles and grabbed the old rotten wood gutter on the way down - must have looked like a 1920's Harold Lloyd comedy!. The gutter lets go and he goes crashing thru the second floor bathroom window. - I asked what he did then - he replied that he & Dad called it a day, and tied one on at the local Pup. Next day, back up on the roof...

[953 nut 55,197]

When I was around 12 I went with my Dad to do some landscaping work for a Gentleman Farmer who moved into a small farm near our house. They had two horses they enjoyed riding. While we were working the owner asked Dad if he knew anyone he could hire to clean the hose stalls once a week. Dad volunteered me for the task and we settled on an amount per day to do the job. After a couple months the manure pile was growing to the point that it needed to be removed. The lady of the house objected to it.

My Dad had been composting for years for planting medium for the green houses. He jumped at the chance to have all this wonderful enrichment and be paid for taking it. From that point forward Dad's old trailer was parked outside the barn and when it was filled he would take it out back to the compost area and he split the money with me, of course he allowed me to unload the trailer.                  I did this every week until I turned 16 and could get a real job.

[Beap52 810]

Helped strip bluegrass seeds during high school.  In northwest Missouri many pastures were surrounded by hedge trees (Osage Orange) and to strip bluegrass inside 20 acres with trees surrounding meant you didn't get much air movement and it was hotter than blue blazes during the summer. The stripper(s) was pulled behind a tractor. Basically it was a wooden box with two wheels.  One of the wheels spun a drum on the front of the box that had a bunch of nails protruding from it. As the stripper was pulled, it knocked the blue grass stems and seeds into the box.  Once it was full, we emptied the box (and an occasional snake and of course prickly thistles) then the process started over again.   If I remember we put these gleanings into gunny sacks.

 

In another location, the grass was cut really short--almost bare ground.  The stripped blue grass stems and seeds were laid out to dry.  Then the dried stems and seeds were piled in long ricks and we actually swept the ground to gather all of the seeds we could and piled them on top of the rick. It was hot work.

 

I suppose the worse part of the job for me was that we weren't allowed by the owners to have water jugs. They brought water around at certain intervals. By the time the water jug go to me, there would be bits of chewing tobacco floating!  Once, I and another teenager found a water jug that was laying next to a rick.  We decided to take a drink but a couple of the old men yelled at us to leave it alone.  I doubt it was filled with ice water as we hoped.

[Jeff-C175 7,201]

37 minutes ago, ri702bill said:

bathroom window. - I asked what he did then

 

If it were me, since I was already in the bathroom, pretty sure I would have used some of that nice soft rolled paper!

[squonk 41,076]

Not a teen job but probably the worst job I ever had was when I worked evenings at the hospital was doing PM's on the dish machine, (nasty), grease trap (nastier) and morque garbage disposal! (Nastiest)!

[Handy Don 12,215]

I spent one week as a field hand picking raspberries at a local farm. Commuted by bicycle.

It left me with eternal respect and concern for migrant farm workers. The work was long hours, back breaking, miserably hot, and paid pitifully. The foreman was insufferable but the workers had to put up with him and they didn't get to go home to a shower, a good meal, and a clean bed like I did. And they couldn't decide, like I did after six days with parents at home that would take care of me, that the work was not worth the pay.

[953 nut 55,197]

Another fun job was bagging and detasseling endless rows of corn for DeKalb. We removed the tassels from every other row of corn so the rows we worked would be pollinated by the plants next to them. By the end of the row that bag of green tassels was heavy. This is the way hybrid seeds are developed.

There were about twenty of us working together and we stayed in trailer bunk houses wherever the next field was located. If you didn't pull your share of the load they would put you on a bus back home. We were working in Iowa but other gropes worked in Illinois and Indiana.

Work started around 2:00 am and continued until the field was finished, usually about noon. They fed us well, took care of the laundry and the pay was great, $ 3.00 an hour M-F and $ 5.00 on Saturday and Sunday (minimum wage was $ 1.15). The job only lasted three weeks but I made more than the rest of the summer combined, not bad for a 16 year old.

[wallfish 16,994]

At 16 being a dishwasher at the nursing home kitchen where my mother worked as a Nurse. $3.35 an hour working in the hottest smelliest and humid conditions you could imagine.

[Rob J. 1,941]

Hard to say. Started mowing lawns, painting kind of stuff at 12. Turned 16 and was a dishwasher for a steak buffet restaurant. Hard work but had some fringe benefits. 17 slinged pizzas at Sbaros in the mall (chick magnet job) until I turned 18 and joined the Navy. First two years were a blast and loved every minute of it. Last two I could have done without. To be honest can I pick my job now? 😬

[Snoopy11 5,714]

15 hours ago, squonk said:

morque garbage disposal! (Nastiest)!

You must tell more...

 

Don

[Jeff-C175 7,201]

43 minutes ago, Snoopy11 said:

You must tell more...

 

Don

 

Uhhh... No. Thank. You!