What is the toughest minimum wage job you have had?

[Snarkoleptic]

I detassled popcorn at age 14 and worked as a busboy during high school.

[tanyev]

1. Waitressing. 3 summers of it during my late high school/early college years.

I worked with ladies who were at or very near retirement age. I don't know how they did it.

ETA: It was really sub-minimum wage work. They could do that because it was expected that tips would make up the remainder of the wage. They did, but this was a family restaurant in a small town. The tips were nothing like what you could make at an expensive restaurant in a big city.

[Snarkoleptic]

9. That's a rough gig!

I worked at a Carlos Murphy's (chain restaurant) and saw servers break down and cry on a few occasions. Abusive customers who leave little/no tip or a nasty note were more common than one would think. These folks were making $2.01/hour plus tips in the early 1980's.

[tanyev]

13. Yep, mine would have been early 80s, too.

$2.01 sounds right. I think the minimum was $3.15 at that time.

[demosincebirth]

109. Try picking walnuts @ .50 cents a sack for 8-10 hrs a day. Thats what I done in the summers,

among picking other crops, when I was a teen. This was in the early fifties before chain and fast food restaurants.

[CrispyQ]

15. I was lucky.

I worked as a waitress in a small town at the local Dog-n-Suds. The locals were nice & left good tips, cuz we were local kids. They knew us & our parents. We went to school with their kids. There was a sense of community. We had some fun times there. Our boss was a great guy who knew how to work with kids. This was also back in the early 70s.

I see how people today treat waitstaff & service people in general & I'm appalled. People treating other people poorly because they know they can & the other person can't defend themselves. Assholes.

[Snarkoleptic]

55. There is still a Dog-n-Suds drive in Grayslake, IL

Old school awesome!

[CrispyQ]

73. ~lol

Thanks for posting! Never seen one in neon before!

I'm saving it along with a couple others I found on the net.

:thumbups: :thumbups:

[justabob]

48. indeed

There have been many a breakdown on the floor. The wage was 2.13 when I started in the 90s and only went up to 2.27 (I think) last year. Really. Woohoo 14 cent rise in 25 years! (Texas- other states have a better wage, but not all).

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

2. Working in a chicken and pizza joint

Pizza was fine.

I hated working with raw chicken, washing, trimming, slimy crap.

[LittlestStar]

3. Lots of fast food work when I was a teen but

the worst was actually my husband's job to put him through college, which was moving furniture. It totally destroyed his back. He is 41 but has the back of a 70 year old according to his chiropractor.

[hunter]

37. I moved furniture but it wasn't minimum wage.

I know it was in some places, but the pay was pretty good where I lived. It wasn't a union job, but the unions still had some influence on general pay rates.

That was the first time I made $100 in a day, but it was a very long day...

This was the early 'eighties.

I was strong and fast. I ran a lot too.

Now my knees are trashed, maybe from moving furniture, maybe from loading and unloading freight, maybe from running, maybe both.

It occurs to me just now that I've never had a minimum wage job.

[LittlestStar]

59. Probably all of it trashed your knees!

Lucky (smart) you, never doing minimum wage.

[cheezmaka]

98. I hated moving furniture too

When I was trying to find a job in Michigan a while back, even "Two Men and a Truck" wouldn't hire me...lol!!

[doc03]

4. Harvested hay for 50 cents an hour back in the 60's, I think

minimum wagewas like $1.25 then. Farmers never heard of minimum wage.

[brewens]

153. We called it 'bucking bales". I used to have to do that every summer on "vacation". It was only

three days when we went to visit relatives in eastern Montana. A local guy had several small fields around Ekalaka that my cousins were in charge of harvesting. It was good training to get ready for daily doubles in football when I was in high school.

[Scuba]

5. Re-tarring roofs.

[raouldukelives]

22. Doesn't get much worse than that.

I operated a jackhammer one summer vacation taking down old home foundations in 100+ heat. Not a lot of fun.

[Scuba]

34. Well, it does get worse, but I haven't had to go there....

... I understand harvesting sugar cane may be the most difficult and dangerous work around.

[Snarkoleptic]

67. One of the harvesting methods is to burn the whole field down.

I saw the smoke plume in the valley from up on Mt. Haleakala (Maui) and asked some friendly locals about it.
The the day after the burn they'd go in with front end loaders and scoop up the cane.

[cheezmaka]

93. #1 answer

I did that years ago in 90+ degree heat...

[Scuba]

96. It was hard, it was hot and it was filthier than filthy.

[brewens]

156. I also set trap at a gun club. Trap boys in the bunkers put the clay pigeons

on the arm to be released for the shooters. it seemed a little dangerous the way the spring loaded arm would release. One time I caught my glove during a fall shoot and it stopped it. I then realized you could safely grab the thing and hold it even when the pull girl hit the button as the shooter yelled "pull".

That changed everything. There were shooters we liked and those we didn't. I'll just say we could make it a little more difficult on the assholes. Hold that arm for just a fraction of a second to throw them off or maybe use one of 'the birds" you had chipped a little hole in. It was an easy matter to keep count of when the victim was up.

[Scuba]

158. I've set trap. I've also set pins in an old semi-manual bowling alley. Noisy back there.

I always kept my hands away from the trap, so never learned your trick.

[Motown_Johnny]

6. I went from delivering newspapers 7 days a week to washing dishes 3-4 nights a week.

A friend and I "split" the job since they just needed one of us there at a time. I guess I was 13 at the time. I kept on washing dishes for spending money right through high school.

I'm guessing that I started out at minimum wage but I can't swear to it, this was a very very long time ago.

[Freddie]

7. Worked in a clothing factory

Sewing cuffs for ladies blouses for a summer job when I was 16 for $1.70 per hour. No air conditioning, no radio, just relentless tedium all day long and pressure to do more. Made me very determined to go to college.

[tanyev]

11. OMG, that just reminded me of a temp job I had for a couple days.

It was at a clothing factory and something must have been stitched wrong. It was my job to cut out seams all day long. 8 hours of hunching over and breathing in what felt like tiny bits of fiber. I was glad when that was over.

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. Cleaning at night in a butchers shop.

A real mess cleaning the saws. All that beef fat....what a mess. A good lesson at 15 years old.

[darkangel218]

10. I never worked for minimum wage :p

* hides *

[dkf]

12. Me neither...not even my summer job out of high school.

[Nikia]

24. All my bad summer/part time jobs paid a little bit more

It was probably considered bad form to pay minimum wage or something so many of the jobs in my area paid $5.00-$5.50 when minimum wage was $4.25/hour.
I did actually make minimum wage a couple of times doing some part time temporary jobs for the athletic department in college but timing a swim meet or keeping track or of the score for a wrestling meet isn't actually bad work.

[hunter]

44. Me neither. I thank the unions for that.

Even when I wasn't union, employers were reluctant to pay less than union wages.

[quiller4]

122. Nor have I.

I was fortunate enough to find work at union stores when I clerked while in school. When I was a junion in high school our state minimum was $1.60. I was making $2.00 as a union clerk at a local department store. Later in college I made $2.25-$3.00 working at union stores.

[COLGATE4]

14. Being a Pin Boy in a pre-pin setting machines

bowling alley. The 'best' part of the job was trying to get out of the way of some assholes who deliberately tried to hit you on their second shot. All that for .75 an hour!

[msedano]

16. U.S. Army,

and laborer in the soaking pits at Kaiser Steel. 16 hour days monthly shovelling slag from the raceways. Start on one's knees in a three-man relay, keep shoveling until you can stand up, then soon all three are standing slinging slag in the incredibly smelly humid traces of a roll line overhead that only 8 hours early fed red-hot ingots to a plate mill.

[mnhtnbb]

17. $.50/hr. babysitting. Ugh. One couple was supposed to be back at midnight

one time--and they didn't show up until 2 a.m. And yes, I stayed awake the
entire time. This was in the late 60's--so no computer--no HBO...

Never was available to them when they called after that. And their kids?
OMG. Constant attention required. Fix their dinner. Clean up dishes.
Play with them. Give them baths. Read them stories.

[Snarkoleptic]

43. I babysat in the late 70's for $1/hr.

We never discussed what time they'd be back and they arrived home shitfaced at around 4am.
I also became unavailable for future babysitting for this family.

[Le Taz Hot]

142. Same here.

For 50 cents and hour in the late 60's. I babysat for this one single lady pretty regularly. One night she didn't came home. No phone call, nothing. I called my mother who came to pick up me and the baby when the baby's mother drove up with some guy. This was about 10:00 am. She apologized profusely but my mother would never let me babysit for her again.

[mnhtnbb]

145. That is unbelievable. I was hesitant to call my parents--didn't want to wake them up--

but by 1:30 a.m. I was imagining the worst--car accidents, etc.

But to not come home at all--and not even call! Unbelievable.

[HopeHoops]

18. Changing shit tanks at a travel-trailer sales/service shop.

I did some other fine things like ripping off my knuckles to repack bearings, spray-painting wheel hubs, bumpers, and propane tanks to make them seem more impressive. And then there was crawling around on hot roof tops putting down sealer on all of the seams (and there are a LOT of them.) Fortunately it was only for one summer in college. It was pretty gross.

[Atman]

19. Kitchen help at a banquet hotel

It was a hotel outside of Boston that regularly hosted conventions and banquets of 300-500 people. In the mornings I'd prep hundreds of salads, washing and chopping cases and cases of lettuce, tomatoes and cukes, the plating and racking the salads. After the event, I'd switch to dishwasher, cleaning up all those dishes and giant pots and pans. It was hell.

[Brother Buzz]

20. Soldier, US Army

[Coexist]

21. hotel chambermaid.

gross and crappy tips.

[TwilightGardener]

23. Night shift in a nursing home. Not quite minimum wage, but close.

Every two hours, make rounds, turn/wash/change or escort to toilet--by the time you finished your midnight rounds, it was almost time for 2am rounds and starting all over again. And then around 5 am, it was time to start getting residents up (which has to be done very quickly), so the hardest part of the shift came right at the end, at the time when I was the most exhausted.

[Mz Pip]

25. A couple of factory jobs

My Dad wanted me to experience factory work so I had a job working swing shift in a factory that made the spray tops for aerosole cans. It was loud, boring assembly line kind of work.

[BanzaiBonnie]

26. cleaning in a casino

absolutely disgusting. I didn't stay too long. I was afraid I'd catch some sort of deadly disease.

[darkangel218]

36. did you ever find any money on the floor?

[NYC_SKP]

27. Pack rice cakes into bags, put on twist tie, repeat.

Lasted 90 minutes.

[Iggo]

28. Dishwasher.

That job was bullshit.

[Ship of Fools]

29. Bused tables in a 3-story restaurant

Lobster trays and bar racks. Sheer hell.

[justabob]

46. stairs in a restaurant are a really bad idea

I waitressed in a restaurant with stairs.... that sucked. Restaurant work in general sucks, but with even a step or two involved it becomes that much worse and you learn where every single muscle in your body is, and they all hurt at the same time. Even on the main floor, toting heavy trays of iron skillets and industrial weight plates around gets old fast. Bus tubs, glass racks, ice buckets, silverware racks....ugh. I hope I never have to go back to that life.

[Ship of Fools]

58. I'm with you there. This place was an old, historic inn.

My sister worked there years before me and fell down the stairs. Could probably
have sued, but...

I should have sued when the owner, after meeting me for
the first time, insisted that I have a seat on his lap. I did,
out of sheer terror (I was a very young 14).

[justabob]

75. oh geez

I had to fend off a line cook or two in my day, but never anyone in a management position. A sit on his lap?

The stairs... yeah. I can't believe there weren't more tragedies on the stairs where I worked. Lots of drink trays (especially drink trays) and food trays were spilled, but no major accidents harming people happened.

[Odin2005]

30. Helping the school janitors with summer cleaning.

I was 15 at the time. Awful job, dirty with lots of nasty, dangerous cleaning chemicals.

[slackmaster]

31. Scrubbing pots in a university cafeteria

The big roasting pans were the worst.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

32. Mixing concrete for a mason.

[panader0]

45. I've been a mason for forty years and can tell you that being a "hoddie" (hod carrier)

is hard work. I always paid my guys a lot more than minimum wage though.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

68. I was fresh out of the marines and needed work.

All I did was feed the mixer with sand and gravel with a bigger shovel than I'd ever run across. I was in good shape but one day of that was enough for me. It took me about 3 days before I could walk straight again. I've worked in construction digging ditches under houses with an entrenching tool, but that was a breeze compared to that goddam cement mixer.

[fredamae]

33. Mopping Blood off the floor

in the ER when I thought I wanted to go into medicine....

[former-republican]

35. Curtain factory

After the rolls came off the machine .
My job was to take and stack them in piles in the back warehouse.
It was a roll coming off every 2 minutes or so. They weighed over 100 pounds and I lifted and stacked them by hand.

I was 16 and was happy to have the job because my father was hurt and it was the only income coming in for our family.

[TexasProgresive]

38. General hand on egg producing/processing farm

Worst than minimum wage as farms were exempt from the minimum wage law.
Duties were:
feeding
cleaning waterers
gathering eggs
washing, grading and packing eggs
vaccinating chickens
catching and crating elderly chickens
cleaning and preparing houses for new chicks
and the best part-the day the babies came- 6,000 peeping balls of yellow fluff.

[Ellipsis]

39. Acid washing aluminum semi trailers.

[Betsy Ross]

40. Assembling swimming pool filters.

I lasted one month. I was 160% efficient. The boss just couldn't understand why I quit when I was doing so well. It did have a lot to do with the toxic fumes.

[edhopper]

41. Janitor

early shift, started at 5 am. The night watchmen gig on the docks wasn't hard work, but it was cold and rough to do over nights.

[Marinedem]

42. Oh jeez.

I guess I'd say warehouse stockman at a retail store.

It made my time in the Marines seem easy. Then again, The USMC wasn't really what I'd consider minimum wage, when you factor the benefits.

[alc]

47. taco bell if you're talking about salaried jobs

I have worked for a few startups where I didn't get paid for months and invested my own money and they didn't make it so I got $0/hour as well as being out $10k+. I consider those "fun" rather than "tough" though.

[Greybnk48]

49. Working in a commercial laundry.

I did this twice, the second time as a supervisor for the last few months. Very hot, hard labor. Heavy lifting, pulling on wet sheets and having to keep up with machines. Lots of toxic chemicals and lint.

[lunatica]

50. I was a waitress in the 70s

Very hard work but I made a very good income with the tips. It was a popular restaurant with very faithful patrons. I was lucky to get the job because the waiters and waitresses were lifers there.

[Speck Tater]

51. Pizza delivery boy in 1963. nt

[cali]

52. working on an assembly line in a decrepit factory in Southie

it was unbelievable. so bad it was like something out of a movie. It was somewhere around '74 or '75. The fumes from open barrels of chemicals were unbelievable. Management had smashed the windows in the women's room so we wouldn't spend too long in there. Sexism was rampant and frightening.

I didn't really have to work in such a shit hole but I did for 9 months. Don't ask.

[MindPilot]

84. I worked at a place like that

This was a little factory/fabrication shop that made "low cost" replacement parts for small airplanes--Cessna, Piper--and I believe minimum wage at the time was $1.60. (After 90 days I was advanced to $1.75!) I had to have my own hand tools, and the owner/manager was an abusive prick who wasn't capable of speaking to anyone about anything in a civil tone. The incident most deeply seared into my memory is when the owner physically attacked one of the floor supervisors and literally torn the UAW patch off the jacket the guy happened to be wearing that day. That would have been maybe 1973...

[proud patriot]

53. chopping tomatos at taco bell

back in the day when you had to chop and chop for hours

[laundry_queen]

54. Busgirl/waitress

I made 'less' than minimum wage because at the time, even here in Canada, the student minimum wage was less than the 'real' minimum wage. I made $4/hr (in the 90's). It was awful work, there was sexual harrassment and I was only 14 at the time. On weekends, the owner was too cheap to have a 'real' waitress right from opening (he wanted her to start later so she'd help the evening waitress with the dinner rush), so I had to waitress the whole restaurant on my own for the first hour (at least I got to keep those tips, normally I didn't but that 1 hour I did). I didn't undergo any 'training' for this. I had to learn it all on my own. In addition to busgirl/waitress I was also the janitor and p/t cook. Those assholes worked me to the bone. I was so glad to quit that place. I would rather babysit for $2/hr (going rate at the time).

I had another min wage job when I was 18, but I liked that job. It was in retail in a card shop. Very low-stress except on Christmas eve and Boxing Day.

My other sucky jobs were higher than min. wage.

[Snarkoleptic]

64. I always hated the closer shift as it meant you'd be there until 12:30-1:00am cleaning up.

Kinda tough to keep up the HS GPA along with football and speech team.

[laundry_queen]

101. I hated opening more.

Because I was 14 they couldn't keep me late, so they would close up at 3 am, and the waitresses would not clean anything, then I'd have to show up at 10:30 for an 11 am open and clean the disgusting mess from the night before, including the barf in the bathroom that sat all night.

AND I didn't get paid for that 1/2 hr. There was some loophole in the wage law that said 'prepping' for your shift didn't have to be included in your time working. Thankfully they've since closed that idiotic loophole.

[jberryhill]

56. Why did your high school have busboys?

I was a janitor at an elementary school. I mowed lawns, worked at a drugstore, delivered pizza, and had a sub-minimum wage job as a substitute teacher at a high school.

Just not all at the same time.

[Snarkoleptic]

69. Should have written "while I was a highschool student". lolz

It was a corporate owned chain restaurant where I bussed tables.
The had a mexican steak burrito that was really good (but not very authentic).

[jberryhill]

76. "I was a corporate owned chain restaurant"

Wow. That must have been traumatic.

I was a drive in movie theater, but my therapist really helped me a lot.

[Snarkoleptic]

79. doh! cain't speel

I gonna fix. I gonna make it nice.

[jberryhill]

86. OHHH! Okay, so...

Your high school was a corporate chain restaurant.

Got it.

That would explain the need for busboys.

[coalition_unwilling]

57. I have distant memories of a summer job cleaning out a neighbor's

pig barns at the age of 15 for minimum wage back in mid-70s. Hot, stifling and stinky work. (Pigs are generally very decent creatures, btw, but man do they stink

The next summer I graduated to helping with haying. Still hot and dusty work but smelled a lot better.

[patrice]

60. Loading trailers for UPS. I only lasted a couple of weeks. nt

[Snarkoleptic]

70. A friend of mine used to drive for UPS.

He said they'd occasionally follow you on your route. It was never announced and they'd always keep their distance and try to go unnoticed. He never got into trouble but some of his fellow drivers were written up for what they called "stealing time" from UPS.

[Iggo]

72. I did that.

Seasonal help. Not sure I even lasted two weeks. I quit to go throw Xmas trees at the All American. Hard work, but at least there were tips.

[patrice]

89. Un-airconditioned warehouse, hundreds of conveyor belts running constantly coming from every

direction, non-stop, packages in every size and SHAPE from business envelope to 50-60 pds (?), you're by yourself, building the load with bigger heavier stuff on the bottom, layers staggered brick-wall wise, up to lighter stuff on top, all different sizes of packages arriving by conveyor to your dock in no order whatsoever, a couple of ounce size followed by 50pds in size, and watch the zip codes or else!!!, and if the supervisor of the supervisors said we weren't done at the end of a shift they wouldn't blow the horn to stop all of the conveyor belts and let us get out of there.

I used to get out of my car and stagger to the swimming pool at our apartment complex and fall in fully clothed, luckily it was the middle of the afternoon, so no one was there to complain about me.

[cheezmaka]

99. I loaded trailers for RPS(now FedEx Ground)

Sunrise shift 4am-9am. Was late 2 times and the manager said If I was late again I would be fired. One night I woke up late, came in, and the manager said "See ya". I drove back home went inside the house and went BACK TO BED!

[senseandsensibility]

61. I worked at a private preschool for minimum wage.

I had to supervise dozens of two and three year olds out in the hot sun for hours, cook their lunches, lead art and phonics classes, and best of all, clean their community bathroom every couple of hours. It was a huge room full of tiny potties that all had to be hand scrubbed. I have never worked so hard in my life. Oh, and did I mention I had a teaching credential and a masters degree at the time? Their were no public school teaching jobs available. Of course this job had no paid sick days, no vacation, no benefits of any kind. Even back then, I knew that this was the rightwing's plan for public education if they could privatize it.

Thanks for the thread. We're a hard working bunch. Happy Labor Day!

[TlalocW]

62. I don't know if it was minimum wage

Because I think I've been lucky in that I've never worked a minimum wage job... This was the worst one ultimately because of lack of mental stimulation. I've worked labor jobs and enjoyed them, but ultimately, I'm a computer guy so I'm going to play to my strengths, and nothing drives me battier than no mental stimulation.

So the worst one was Sprint tech support. I was laid off from a good programming job and took it while looking for a new one. Two weeks of training which required that we get there at 7 am, which wouldn't have been bad if it didn't take an hour and a half to two hours for the instructor to actually start instructing - had to decide on a topic, go get the overhead projector, go get a different overhead projector because the first one wasn't working (happened more than once - might want to put a sticky note on it), maybe get a few phones, figure out where to go on the computer tutoring system, etc. I started bringing books to read and then said screw it, I don't care if they're monitoring the computers, started surfing the net til he was ready.

Finally got to the actual job. Boss was a devout Christian who liked to belittle people almost to the point of tears, and the first thing he told us was that if we ran into his ex-wife, don't tell her where he's working. Shift kept getting changed so sleep schedule was spotty. Also to get around the no-call list, while we were helping customers - normally drunk ones who just wanted help downloading the latest ringtones - we were supposed to look at their account and offer upgrades.

Boss was a hyper-competitive jerk, and the company was braindead. He constantly berated us for our low participation in trying to upgrade as there was an official contest sanctioned by the company to reward (monetarily) the manager who had the team with the best participation numbers, and he really wanted to win it. I finally asked, "What does the team get?" Nothing was the reply. "Do you possibly see why there's no much incentive then for us?" He stared at me for five seconds while he was processing that then got pissed off at me.

I finally got so fed up with how he and the company treated us that I just quit in the middle of the shift while having a one-on-one with him where he was supposed to be getting on me for not quite meeting the percentage of calls I was supposed to upgrade. I went off on him, quit, got up and left.

We were on the 20th floor of a building, and as I was leaving the final door to get to the elevators, I could hear him calling after me so I took a chance and went into the stairwell and ran up two flights. I heard him burst out the door, calling my name and then exclaiming, "Damn it!" apparently believing he had just missed my getting into the elevator. So he got in the stairwell and started running down 20 flights to try and catch me. I stayed in the stairwell for 15 minutes then leisurely strolled down five flights and took an elevator the rest of the way down.

A week later I was in training for a job approving Yahoo personal ads before Yahoo decided they didn't want to use our city to do that and then switched over to tech support for DirecTV (much nicer) and then finally another programming job.

TlalocW

[senseandsensibility]

63. Why is no one reccing this?

I think it's a great thread.

[Snarkoleptic]

74. Right? How 'bout a little love for the Snarkster?

[tularetom]

65. Hauling hay

It may have been sub-minimum wage but I was 16 and I think it paid like a buck an hour. All I really wanted was enough to keep gas in my car.

[DonRedwood]

66. 12 hour nightshifts at a skanky 7-11. I quit and my replacement was murdered a few nights later

I drive by the building several times a week. It is a mexican restaurant now but I still picture the poor guy, in his 7-11 smock, dead on the floor.

:0(

[LeftyMom]

71. Supervising visits between foster kids and their biological families and typing reports on their

activities and transcripts of their conversations for family court. $8/hr, which was the state minimum wage at the time, no benefits, part time, but I did get a free case of swine flu from the little plague rats.

[DearAbby]

77. Nurse Aid, Nursing home.

[Snarkoleptic]

88. My sister is an RN and I was horrified to hear about how LPN's would

have to decompact patients bowels.

[bigwillq]

78. Pet store worker back in high school

It was a dirty job at times. Collecting crickets and mice to give to customers, cleaning cages and tanks.
Hardest work I've ever done! lol

[lonestarnot]

80. Hash slinger.

[pinboy3niner]

81. I had to laugh when I looked up my starting Army pay and minimum wage at the time

Starting pay for a Private E-1 in early 1967 was $96.90/mo.--or about 56 cents/hr. at a time when the minimum wage was $1/hr. The 56 cents is based on a 40-hr. week; I put in waaaaay more hours than that as an Army Private, lol! And in Basic and Advanced Infantry Training you work a lot of details cleaning latrines, scrubbing mess hall pots, peeling potatoes, and polishing garbage cans. That was on top of the physical training, low-crawling through the mud under barbed wire, exposure to CS gas (and mess hall chow), etc.

[rbrnmw]

82. Picking Cotton and Hanging Tobacco

not even minimum wage got 3.45 hr in 1993 for 1 and the other 25 dollars a day under the table jobs

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

83. Graveyard shift in a convenience store in a very rough neighborhood

That was in the mid 70s. I was there for more than a year and there were a lot of crazy incidents, like a guy who punched his wife out in the parking lot where I had to call 911 (I called 911 a number of times, mostly to help people outside the store) but fortunately I was never robbed. The hardest part of the job involved the lack of sleep. I can't get used to sleeping during the day.

[flamingdem]

85. Putting springs in little plastic Pez containers on night shift

I didn't last very long..

[The Midway Rebel]

87. Waiting tables at a steakhouse in the early 80's.

$2.01 per hour plus tips for the business lunch crowd. The job sucked hard.

I have had many tough jobs, most paid a tad better that mimimum wage.

[1monster]

90. Fast food. Opening and/or closing staff.

$1.85 per hour. Opening at 5 AM. Closing: has to break everything down can sterilize and be out one hour after closing by 2 AM. Three or four bus loads at the same time....

[RC]

91. Working in a recycling plant bailing leakers.

Hundreds of pallets of Coke cans from a local bottling plant that were not properly sealed. Most of the cans still had Coke or some other Coke product in them.
I had to load the bailer. With each bail being crushed, the contents would run out the bottom of the bailer, all over the floor. Summer time, overhead doors open, flies. 8 hour day.
At the end of the day, I got to hose the very sticky floor down, to be ready for the next day of the same. A couple of weeks of work.
Wore my overshoes to protect my shoes, but ruined a good pair of gloves for minimum wage.

[cheezmaka]

97. That is bad

I worked in a regular recycling plant bailing steel and aluminum when I first moved to Michigan. The place was very "dusty" and "hot" even with the door open.

[alterfurz]

92. picking strawberries, summer of '64...

...for 8¢ per quart (never topped $8/day). Broiling sun. Biting flies. Aching back. Weeks after the season ended, knees still remained stained red.

[Lucy Goosey]

94. Sandwich shop kitchen

I know a lot of people have had it much, much worse than that.

[progressivebydesign]

95. Cleaned dog kennels. Delivered phone books. Cleaned houses. n/t

[Zorra]

100. Sorting tomatoes on a moving line down in Naples, Florida.

They would not let us sit down, and the monotony was maddening. Did that for most of a winter, so we could hang in the warm Florida weather until it got warm enough in the rest of the country for us to move on.

Also, picking strawberries and getting paid by the flat, (I think it was in or near Roseburg, Oregon), for less than minimum wage because I was not a good enough picker to even make minimum wage at it. Brutal on the knees and back. This was back in the late 70's, and my partner and I only did it for a week, just so we could get gas money to move us somewhere down the road. We actually found that we could make more money picking up bottles and cans by the side of the road (Oregon had what we called a "bottle law" in those daze, they probably still do), or at campgrounds on weekends ~ one day we found a $20 bill, a quarter oz of weed, a half case of Oly, a good axe, and a fishing pole, plus a good haul of bottles and cans.

Naturally, we used that extra money to buy tickets to go see the Dead at Autzen Stadium in Eugene.

Those were very different times; work was plentiful everywhere, and we could travel around, roll into a town, find a squat by a river or lake for free, get some quick work, and then head on down the highway when we had enough money together, or had enough of some mean petty tyrant boss.

[intaglio]

102. Cleaning factory office space and workers changing rooms.

It was contract cleaning at a cinderblock factory, and there were supposed to be 3 of us. All too often there was just me. Officially we were supposed to have 2 hours for our sections but it took 8 for one person to do the lot. Then one day the paycheck bounced ...

and the contractors weren't there ...

[Agnosticsherbet]

103. Harvesting Potatoes, slopping pigs, busboy. All when I was in my teens.

[brewens]

104. Irrigating cucumber fields. We had to unhook, pack and reassemble the pipes.

Tough work in hot weather. I was also a grocery boxboy, not too tough and worked at a Skippers, not too bad either. Still, at all those jobs you were not allowed any slack time. Boxboys were expected to be in an isle facing shelves, at the Skippers, you were cleaning.

Many people are employed where they are sometimes at least allowed to just sit around if nothing is going on. That's getting more rare though. Minimum wage employees, almost never.

[Hula Popper]

105. I packed printed

product on skids, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, 350 days a year.........But I got my 6 month raise in only 8 months!
$1.25 to start.

[Gregorian]

106. Stripping paint off the walls of a mansion while on a scaffolding.

[HockeyMom]

107. $6.75 an hour in 1966 just out of HS

Oh my, I just looked up the minimum wage and it was $1.60 an hour! I worked for an import/export corporation as a stenographer. I guess that was a good salary for a17 year old HS grad back then.

As a pre-teen I would catsit for the gay couple upstairs. Even they paid me $5/hour as an 11 year old. NYC wages apparently always were a lot higher than average.

My hardest job, although not lowest paying, was working with developmentally disabled adults; pushing wheelchairs, lifting them, changing their diapers, severe behavors, etc. I did it for reasons other than money.

[jillan]

108. Telephone solicitor! What a thankless job!

[Cleita]

110. Working in a cafeteria, when I was in college.

But the next minimum wage job was really sweet, working in a candy store. The lady I worked for didn't mind if I ate the chocolate bonbons that weren't pretty enough to sell.

[NNN0LHI]

111. Flipping burgers at McDonald's ...

was the easiest job I ever had.

Don

[yardwork]

112. Waitressing during college and the year after - not even close to minimum wage.

Even with tips added in I never made minimum wage per hour, and the jobs were exhausting, both physically and emotionally. Very frustrating, difficult work.

[HeeBGBz]

113. Uniform shop

Worked 10 hours a day repairing ripped uniforms that the company supplied to businesses.

Hot work, breathed bad chemicals. Don't know what the chemicals were but they tasted pretty toxic.

The boss wanted us to repair the clothes dirty if we could. I can't tell you the million times I went to sew up a crotch seam and find chunky skidmarks. Didn't realize how many people went commando. Of course, we were told to toss those in the wash before we sewed them but the gross out had already occurred.

[littlewolf]

114. worked mostly farm labor

picking berries and aspergrass was by weight rather then hourly ...

put up hay for 1.00 hour ....

Pizza Hut was the only non farm job I had
until I went in the military ...

[Politicub]

115. Front counter order taker and closer at McDonald's

Worked there for two years starting at age 16. The place was run like a workhouse. Enjoyed it at first, but it became difficult to stand so much because my feet would ache at night. Management's favorite thing to say was, "if you've got time to lean you've got time to clean."

I also did closing chores, which kept me out past 1 am on many nights.

[Liberal_in_LA]

116. what's up with that cat?

[Snarkoleptic]

129. The cat is what's up with the cat.

He's my durty librul hippie levitation cat and I luvs him.
I used to have a pair of him in my signature line, but it was nearly hypnotic and I had to revert to single levi-cat.

[Liberal_in_LA]

117. Got to experience the vibe people give to "the maid" as a hotel housekeeper

one summer while in college. never forgot it.

[rustydog]

118. Furniture delivery for local mall store

The only delivery guy. The owner told me to tell customers I delivered to that my "partner' called in sick and ask them to help me unload beds,dressers, tables...

[demwing]

119. Day labor for a roofing contractor

loading shingles onto roofs in Colorado, in the middle of summer.

I was in my mid 20s and could do it, but it's a bitch of a job. Squat, lift 50lbs, turn, carry 20', repeat--in the sun, on a black tar paper roof, till the job was done. Minimum wage, and you provided your own boots and gloves, or rented them from the day labor office. No one worked without boots and gloves.

[Burma Jones]

120. Detassling here too

What awful work, the heat, the humidity, no breeze, the dust gets into your throat.....

[Snarkoleptic]

130. Yep, that was a brutal gig.

I did it in Northern Indiana for a popcorn company that rhymes with Schmorville Beddenrocker.
We worked through rain, wind and thunder/lightening. I was really frightened to be out there when lightening was striking, but they kept assuring us that it would never strike in the middle of the farm fields. Kind of tough to keep going when each foot had what feels like 5 pounds of wet mud attached.

[slampoet]

121. self delete

[one_voice]

123. I cleaned a rich person's...

big freakin' house--(a member of the DuPont family) it was a huge house. They had live in help, I was just summer and after school (when I could) fill in. Cleaning other people's toilets is always fun when you're 13. But it bought my school clothes and helped mom.

[WooWooWoo]

124. when i was deployed to Afghanistan I did the math....

I was getting $1825 a month as pay, plus $300 for being in a warzone.

Which averages out to about $60 a day, or about $7 an hour if you go by regular 8-hour a day workdays.

Except you don't work 8 hours a day on deployment, it's actually more like 20.

So just for the record, there are soldiers deployed right now in Afghanistan busting their butts and risking their lives for $3 an hour or less.

[Snarkoleptic]

132. Ding...ding...ding...we've got a winner!

And that handjob Mitt RMoney didn't mention Afghanistan once during the RNC.
He has a massive blind spot and labor is squarely in the middle of it.
Natch he ducked his own service to ride a bike around the French countryside trying to convince French people to swear-off wine.

[Alduin]

125. I worked as a janitor's assistant for a summer in high school.

Never again.

[muntrv]

126. Dishwasher, when I was 16.

[orpupilofnature57]

127. I pulled the fire alarm in school 1971 8th grade .

2nd Earth Day, two weeks later busted, a criminal, by today's standards a terrorist. I wa grounded for life and my only freedom was to secure a job on a farm owned by the biggest opportunist,degenerate in our community, for $1.35 hr. , I was paid every two weeks for 12 hrs a day, and had to bring him to the Labor board to get my two last checks. When I asked my dad why he let me do it , He wanted me to experience someone Who made up their own rules, and what an inconvenience to suffer assholes that don't do what they're supposed to do.

[Still Sensible]

128. Landscaping in Phoenix in the summer.... n/t

[Neurotica]

131. Picking bad potato chips off a conveyor belt

I had quit my insane advertising job and was getting ready to move to another city (with no job lined up), trying to convince my parents that I was responsible and that everything would work out fine.

Everything eventually did.

But in the meantime, I spent several weeks doing temporary work in a potato chip factory. I had to survey the potato chips that had just come out of the deep fryer and pick out the ones that were deformed or had lots of spots. It was summer and there was no air conditioning. Hot, greasy work.

[aikoaiko]

133. Technically, I've never had minimum wage jobs.

As a teen I was a stock boy and worked in fast food. These were at $5 when FMW was at 3 something.

During college I did odd landscaping jobs at above minimum wage. Spaying pesticide on rick people's trees in the summer was a drag. Pool construction was a literal pain in the back, but it paid well.

Graduate assistantships in grad school paid horribly and were a lot of work, but it also came with tuition remission (ca-ching).

And then professional life.

[Odd Won Out]

134. Dishwasher at a country club

that was a lot like Bushwood from Caddyshack.

[Snarkoleptic]

136. When I worked for AmFam, my douchnozzle of a boss was a member of a

country club on the West side of Madison. He was required to drop a certain amount of money per year in the restaurant and bar, so he'd misuse his expense account to take us commoners out to dinner and drinks. He was a classic no talent, no clue Captain Hazelwood type who ran the financial services division of the company into the ground and screwed over lots of career employees.

[Odd Won Out]

138. The country club I worked at was Stevens Point Country Club

Stevens Point is only 110 miles north of Madison. Lived in Madison for over 20 years.

Stevens Point Country Club was dominated by Sentry Insurance executives. Their world headquarters is located in Stevens Point.

[Snarkoleptic]

137. Almost forgot...Welcome to DU.

[Heather MC]

135. I didn't make Min. Wage but my toughest Job was "Rent a Teen"

I was 15 years old and I wanted money, Rent a teen was program in my town for low income kids to do part-work during the summer. I believe I made 2.15 per hour. and I was hired to do everything from Mowing fields, not lawns fields with push mower, I did windows, I cleared brush from backyards, and I worked at a consession stand at the ball park, I had to scream "popcorn, peanuts, cracker jacks" a hundred times a night. going up and down the stadium stairs. Selling the drinks was the worse they were so heavy. I worked my ass off. I was so proud of myself i saved every dime. by the end of the summer i had made $1500 bucks.

I loved it. I got to get out of the house, learn responsiblity and make my own money.

[mshasta]

139. 24 cents

24 cents for piking grapes 1989...I have to do about 10hrs of work before I can get to $5.00 a day

[nc4bo]

140. Working 3rd shift as the night auditer for a flea and flee motel on Eastern Blvd., Fay., NC

**shivers** good god almighty.

Then when manager went on vacation to India, subbed for him, cleaned some of the nastiest rooms I've ever seen when half the cleaning staff fell out for a week...

[Navl]

141. Cleaning test tubes full of blood

Yep, back in the 60's....back when the used the glass ones over and over again in hospital labs. It was pretty gross. Then I worked as a janitor in the same hospital. The worst part of that job was going it to fumigate a room after someone died in it.

[Broken_Hero]

143. Baker's assistant at a grocery store, nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

144. "Lab Assistant" was the title, but the job was killing pinkies and sterilizing rat cages.

I made it 6 weeks and then decided delivering pizza was better.

[MadrasT]

146. The only job I had that was close to minimum wage

was working at the candy counter in a fancy department store. Somehow I can't get worked up about the horrors of wearing a dress and weighing out chocolate a 1/4 lb at a time.

I've had some shitty, dirty, hard jobs, but they weren't even close to minimum wage.

[hack89]

147. Unloading UPS trailers. nt

[easttexaslefty]

148. Cleaning houses

Working at a day care center.

[a la izquierda]

149. Waiting tables in Beverly Hills.

Not all my waitressing jobs were awful (I waited tables at a great coffee shop/diner). But the place I worked at in Beverly Hills was atrocious. Snotty, rich a-hole customers. One lady called me a C U Next Tuesday, and that was the end of it for me.
I also waited tables at a bar/restaurant in a college town with a great football team. The coaches were awesome when they came in- good tippers. However, working on gamedays was a nightmare. Picture drunk fraternity and sorority kids with big bank accounts and no class.

[backscatter712]

150. Flipped burgers at a couple fast food joints.

My very first job, the boss was nasty and abusive, and put me to work on the fryer, cooking fries. The standard procedure was to take a bag of fries out of the freezer, cook some of them, put the rest back, and after a few trips in and out of the freezer, they'd be covered with ice crystals

i still have scars from when I got spattered with hot oil. Felt like napalm!

[Jackpine Radical]

151. Well, it was subminimum, actually.

Infantry in Vietnam.

They paid me 24 cents an hour to bleed into the ground at night on a holiday.

[KansDem]

152. Working in a cardboard box factory...

$2 an hour.

It wasn't so much "tough" as it was borrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring

Spent 8 hours a day pulling finished cardboard boxes off a conveyor belt (they came off flat--the process closed the loose ends with a strip of paper tape), stacking them on a pallet, counting them and signaling for the forklift operator when that count reached a certain number. He would take the pallet away and bring back an empty one. Then I did it again...and again...and again...

That's what made it tough.

[GodlessBiker]

154. Dishwasher in a busy restaurant.

[marlakay]

155. Worked for dry cleaners

And we also washed and dried with large machine then folded hundreds of hotel sheets. It was hot and very physical...

I was 17 (56) now so I am sure they have easier ways to do it now....

[Paladin]

157. Cleaning Filthy Old Kitchen Stoves For Re-Sale.

In between high school years. In a warehouse without air conditioning. During the summer, in Austin, TX. Hot, exhausting work for very little money---but it was a learning experience, with some personal growth involved.

[JustAnotherGen]

159. Housewoman for a hotel

Some room cleaning . . . but cleaning the public restrooms, vaccuuming hallways, cleaning elevators, errands from sales to housekeeping and front desk . . . taking bags up to people's rooms, etc. etc. Was only 6 hours a week the summer after Freshman year of high school but to this day . . . I leave my towels hanging when I check out of a hotel room. The bed is stripped. And all refuse/garbage is in a tied bag.

[ladjf]

160. Give this thread a rest. nt

[polly7]

161. I helped our neighbour with his livestock and green-break young horses for about three years.

It was the lowest-paying in terms of dollars, but seemed more like a dream come true than a real job.

[kjackson227]

162. I worked a part-time retail job...

and I acquired an abundance of respect and admiration for the ladies and men who have to do this for a living. It is not an easy job AT ALL.