Weird Survival Methods - Strange Jobs

[cluless]

Just for grins, what were some of the strange things that you have done to .... errr... continue?

Refinishing Hotel Bathtubs in Biloxi Mississippi -

[lynnm]

I once spent about a year raising and lowering railroad tracks on a dock using a huge winch. The barge would arrive several times in a shift and I would raise or lower the trackbed so that the freight cars could be loaded or unloaded.

------------------

It is meet to recall that the Great Green Heron rarely flies upside down in the moonlight - (Foo Ling ca.1900)

[Mighty Favog]

A couple years after high school I met up with someone I graduated with. He said he was working for the local Metropolitan Sewer District.......counting turds.

------------------

Tom's Money Pit

[kenratboy]

Well, if you ever come to Reno, tell people you "Work on 4th Street."

It's where you pick up the nessasary "supplies" to compleat a morally corrupt weekend

------------------

Receiver: Sony STR-DE675

CD player: Sony CDP-CX300

Turntable: Technics SL-J3 with Audio-Technica TR485U

Speakers: JBL HLS-610

Subwoofer: JBL 4648A-8

Sub amp: Parts Express 180 watt

Center/surrounds: Teac 3-way bookshelfs

Yes, it sucks, but better to come. KLIPSCH soon! My computer is better than my stereo!

For JBL related subjects and more fun, click: http://www.audioheritage.org

[mike stehr]

Makin' toothpicks outa logs!

[m00n]

quote:

---

Originally posted by tblasing:

A couple years after high school I met up with someone I graduated with. He said he was working for the local Metropolitan Sewer District.......counting turds.

---

Yummy!

I was a carny for a about 2 months. Yep, I traveled with the fair setting up rides and what not. It was interesting but never again. Geeze that was about 17 years ago.

------------------

m00nsCinema to be

the m00n system

FRONTS: RF-7

CENTER: RC-7

SURROUNDS: RS-7

SUB: RSW-12

RECEIVER: Harman Kardon AVR 520

DVD: Harman Kardon DVD-50(DD, DTS)

VIDEO: InFocus ScreenPlay DLP Projector

COMPUTER: ProMedia 4.1

c>Microsoft XBOXc>

f>

[djk]

Don't ever work in a slaughterhouse in the winter. A lot of dairy herds go under the knife in the wintertime. Cheaper than feeding them. Late in the day the cows are heavy with milk. It takes a strong stomach to run your knife through a cow's teats with warm milk spraying everwhere. I lasted 2-1/2 days.

This message has been edited by djk on 09-02-2002 at 04:14 PM

[Stig]

I spent a year working at a Toppless Bar-Liguor store in Key West, Florida 76-77.

I still can't figure out why I left...thats the strange part.

Stig

[justin_tx_16]

I was a bar tender at Club Matrix in the Cayman Islands...

------------------

-justin

SoundWise

promediatech@Klipsch.com /1-888-554-5665 - RA# 800-554-7724 ext 5s>

Email Me

[TheEAR]

Started working at the Rat Shack part time when in college! LOL Selling extended warranty plans and giving away the red Rat Shack battery of the month with the battery card!

At least this is a bit less smelly then counting turds.Paycheck was far from fat,needless to say.Good I left,if not I would still have my Paradigm Atom as the main High-End speaker.

TheEAR(s) Now theears

[jtkinney]

I spent a year after high school at a refrigeration company repairing ice makers in bars and restaurants. Since most bars are small there wasn't enough room for me and the bartender, so I learned to draw beer without too much head. Watching the construction workers drinking at 8am almost turned me off drinking.

Restaurants were some of the worst places to work in. One of the best Chinese restaurants in the city (no longer there) was so disgusting I still won't go out for Chinese, and that was 25 years ago.

------------------

Jim

Family Room:

1978 Klipschorns (mains), SF'2's (center), 1979 La Scalas (rear surrounds), RC-3 Rear Center, KSW-10 Subs (pair)

Yamaha RX-V1 Reciever, Yamaha CDC-655 CD Player, Toshiba SD-1200 DVD, Toshiba TN50X81 50" HDTV

Bedroom:

Yamaha RX-V590, SF-1's Mainsc>s>

[HDBRbuilder]

I spent two years(90-92) wandering around FT Chaffee, AR...gathering up ticks and chiggers, naming them after their meals and letting them go...ensuring I didn't step on any dung beetles(the "protected species" ones found here), wearing a most profoundly carcinogous/poisonous concoction (permethrin) on my clothing to kill anything that touched my clothes while in the woods, jumped out of perfectly good aircraft with lousy pilots who tended to turn on the green light for jumping 4 seconds BEFORE OR AFTER passing over a three-second Drop Zone, and best of all...I got to delight in the mass destruction of the finest soldiers our military has to offer(Rangers, Special Forces, Airborne, Air Assault, mountain troops, and any other light infantry units) while serving as a member of the Opposing Forces(OPFOR) at the Joint Readiness Training Center...let's just say it was laser tag carried to serious extremes...now, just how many folks can claim that they have the ability to totally annihilate anybody the USA can send against them? Funny thing is..it is the truth, too!! It sure is a good thing that the taliban never got to see how we did it!!!

------------------

I can now receive private messages

[tripod]

With various other stops along the way, here is my career path.

13 year old migrant strawberry picker, except I wasn't migrant, just liked the job. Bet you didn't make $10/hour as a 13 yo. Plus all the strawberry's you could eat for breakfast. Worked 4 hours early each morning, spent the rest of the day at the beach in Rhode Island.

Lifeguard for two years during high school, great job for a teenager!

Failed out of college and worked in a warehouse sorting unknown boxes of wallpaper. Sucked, but highly motivating. I returned to college and graduated with honors.

Delivered pizzas for Dominos for 2 years while in college. Same idea as the strawberry job. Not a glamorous position, but great money where I was (Newport, RI) and unlimited free food. Still love pizza.

Ran a housepainting company for a year, hated it. Hated the idea that the only way for me to make money is to overcharge others.

Various positions in grad school.

Psychologist.

Very natural and obvious progression, wouldn't you say?

[skonopa]

HDBRBuilder said:

I got to delight in the mass destruction of the finest soldiers our military has to offer(Rangers, Special Forces, Airborne, Air Assault, mountain troops, and any other light infantry units) while serving as a member of the Opposing Forces(OPFOR) at the Joint Readiness Training Center...let's just say it was laser tag carried to serious extremes...now, just how many folks can claim that they have the ability to totally annihilate anybody the USA can send against them? Funny thing is..it is the truth, too!! It sure is a good thing that the taliban never got to see how we did it!!!

Ahhh, yes, JRTC! I got to spend a couple weeks there for training while I was in the Army! It sucked, but at the same time, it was fun. I even managed to shoot down a helicopter with an M-60 machine gun while there . Yes, HDBRBuilder is correct, it is Laser Tag carrried to some serious extremes!

I also done my fair share of pushing boxes around wharehouses and so forth. Even was a dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant, thus I am with jtkinney, I have never gone out for Chinese either since then .

One of the funnest odd jobs I did was a parking valet for one of the parking lots at the airport in Columbus, OH. The coolest part was all the different cars I have gotten to drive - everything from the most beat-up Yugo to the nicest Ferrari. The parking lot was some 5 miles away from the terminal, so I got to drive these cars some distance, not just into a parking lot. Believe me, some of those cars was awefully tempting to open up to see what they do. The 5 miles was completely straight, 4-lane boulavard with little traffic and no stop lights.

However, I was good and stuck with the speed limits. The same day I was hired for the airport job, I was also hired for a Taco Bell job. Needless to say, I declined the Taco Bell job for the airport

------------------

Steven Konopa

Fredericksburg, VA

Denon AVR3802 (Receiver)

RF-7 (Fronts)

RC-7 (Center)

RC-7 (Rear)

RS-7 (A Surrounds)

Infinity RS2000.5 (B Surrounds - recycled)

REL Storm III (Subwoofer 1)

Yamaha YST-SW40 (Subwoofer 2 - Recycled)

JVC XV-S65GD (DVD)

Sharp DX-200 (CD - ancient)

RCA DWD490RE (DirecTV/Ultimate TV receiver)

Sharp 32 inch (TV)

[drdiaboloco]

Funny, my "motivating experience" after dropping out of college was four years at a large hotel/conference center in suburban NYC, working as a valet parking attendant, capitalizing on my three summers' experience doing same at one of the most exclusive country clubs in the area. At various times got to drive everything from the clapped-out late-70's Tercels to Ferraris, Lambos, Astons, etc. I might have even taken a RUF-modified twin-turbo 911 for "a little spin"... But then again, maybe I didn't.

My first "real" job (which actually preceded the hotel parking job), as in one that was meant to further an actual career plan, was working as a clerical assistant for a large NYC law firm that specialized in products liability cases... At the time it was the largest firm of its' kind in the US and probably the world. I did all the work of an actual Legal Assistant for less than half the pay, which was a comical $8/hr. I spent an alarming amount of my take-home pay simply to pay for my train pass and parking at the station, not to mention dry cleaning. It did, however, prove to me that an office job would drive me bananas.

In any event, I get to live a wonderful Peter Pan existence now, driving people around in airplanes for a living. Have enough left over after the bills are paid to pay unneccessarily large amounts of money to buy HT equipment.

------------------

-Me fail English? That's unpossible!

[boa12]

without a doubt, for a summer job at the ketchup factory, had to go into a rail tanker & rake the tomato

paste to the middle to get every last drop drained out.

that is after they took out the nitrogen & staped a harness around me w/ a rope tied to it.

knee deep in paste in a tanker that had been been sitting in the hot sun all day. most hot & humid in there. graveyard shift to boot.

lost quite a bit of water weight in there. fortunately it was the initiation job so only for 2 nights. when on to become a soup maker - mainly mushroom & chicken noodle.

------------------

My Home Systems Page

[justin_tx_16]

Not a job I had to do, but a friends... He worked at Blue Bell Creamery in Brenham Texas with my brother. BTW, Blue Bell Ice Cream is the best ever!

Anyway, he worked on the stock deck or something of the sort. His job was to wash out the inside of the trucks. So he pressure washed and sanatized the caramel trucks, the chocolate trucks, the strawberry trucks... etc etc. He would leave work smelling like a hot fudge sunday (some ppl spell that Hot Fudge Sonday...weirdos)

------------------

-justin

SoundWise

promediatech@Klipsch.com /1-888-554-5665 - RA# 800-554-7724 ext 5s>

<A HREF="mailto:justin@soundwise.org">Email Me</A>

This message has been edited by justin_tx_16 on 09-02-2002 at 06:01 PM

[j-malotky]

Hi All

My best odd job was in High School. I was a janitor for the YWCA. I would go there after school, set up the rooms for the evening classes, then got to hang out all night while classes went on, then set up the class rooms for the next morning.

OHH - Did I forget to mention all the classes were Aerobics, jazzersize etc.... Ladies dressed in tight cloths dancing around for hours..... The main room had a kitchen off of it for feeding lunch to the kids during the day. You could sit there with the lights off in the kitchen . . . . Well you get the picture.

Then in summer, we got to play with kids all day and flirt with the part time girls.

Had a garage out back that nobody ever used.... except us teenagers...

Oh the stories I could tell...

What a job, for a 17 year old hormone machine..

Ohh to be young again.

JM

[HornEd]

As a 16 year-old high school student I had a job as a reporter with a byline covering high school sports on the S.F. Examiner (William Randolph Hearst's flagship newspaper) during school and worked in a brewery for the summers.

The brewery job really called for union members... and they were all over 21 so alcoholic beverage control laws were not an issue. But since my father was president of one Teamsters Union and the brewery jobs were controlled by another Teamsters Union in the Labor Temple... I had a book in the Bottler's Union when I was sixteen. Not fair, perhaps, but it gave me a leg up on earning power that kept me solvent through high school and college.

My first job was handling a "case off" machine which groups the longnecks into groups of 24 bottles that exactly drop into 24 places in a case of beer. Unfortunately, the foot switch that triggered the drop had a long delay.

So, when I had the case ready to accept the beer, I stepped on the foot switch. Nothing happened. So I stepped on the foot switch. Nothing happened. So I stepped on the foot switch... and 72 bottles of beer dropped into a case where only 24 could fit. While freshly bottled and jostled exploding beer bottles made some room... the case was a disaster.

I thought that my green ineptitude must be slowing down the whole production line, so I hustled to get the right number of bottles per case and shove it down the conveyor belt... but that delayed switch still played havoc and I must have had a dozen cases of beer with too many bottles pulled off to the side.

Then, the greatest of all labor union rookie's fears surfaced... the shop steward was headed right for me. There it was, the spectre of dishoner... the son of a union president bringing dishonor to the family. "Dennis," the shop steward bellowed, "What the hell is a matter with you? Don't you know the other guys on this filler line aren't as young as you are... they can't keep up with how fast you're pulling bottles of this line. For @&%*% sake, SLOW DOWN!"

Since all that happened nearly fifty years ago, I guess no one will be burned by the telling. Unlike my Chinese restaurant vets, I never lost my taste for great ales and beer! Cheers!! -HornED

PS: Break time in a brewery is time to sample what you just bottled. If there is any interest, there are a few more tales of being "sweet sixteen" working swingshift and graveyard in a brewery. Hic!

[cluless]

I have it from an unconfirmed source that a certain forum member may held the following short-term occupations.

Stage prop for The Great Sardini Magician Ordinaire.

Clown in the Short-Circuited Bronco Billy's Buffalo Chip Rodeo.

Long term participant in a Johns Hopkins study on the Human Interactions of Neuro-Toxic Chemicals.

Gotta run, I hear the pounding of a distant drum. Nope, that's not it. I'm OUTTA HERE. I knew this was a really BAD BAD BAD idea.

Might have to move to Ireland and get a job at the Guiness Brewery (If they let me back in - minor details)Wheee Gotta keep moving, no thread is safe....