Your first job

JasonWx wrote

x10003q wrote

 

During college, I worked in the cafeteria keeping the milk dispensers filled. You had to lift the 6 gallon containers and shove them into a dispenser that was chest high. They weighed 50-60 pounds. I got this job because I was tall enough and strong enough to handle the lifting and maneuvering of the milk. There were about 20 dispensers. I also helped move heavy food packages around the kitchen. This job allowed me to hang out with my friends while I was working. One time, a 5 foot, hundred pound girl who had the crap job of clearing the trays started complaining to the manager that I did nothing and she wanted to have the milk job. He smiled and said to go right ahead. He took her to the milk refrigerator (some of the milk containers were on a shelf that was 6 feet high) and asked her to put one of the 6 gallon containers onto the trolley and bring it to a dispenser that was empty. She some how wrestled a container from the lower shelf and got it onto the trolley. When we got it to the dispenser, he told her what to do. She lifted the container about 6 inches off the trolley and that was as high as she could lift it. I was laughing at her the whole time, as was the entire kitchen staff. Then she watched me do it and said to the manager, sorry to waste your time and then she looked at me and said Fuck You, you big ape. Even students waiting in line were laughing. Eventually she realized how silly she looked. I had that job for 4 years.

I am  food service director at a college..we used to have these milk dispensers. every week someone would drop one of the 6 gallon bags. the mess was unreal...we now use 1.5 gallon bags..
great story

I still laugh when I think of it. The milk was in 6 gallon plastic bags inside a cardboard box with a tube sticking out. You actually had to spin the box on the way into the dispenser because the milk was always stored with the tube (where the milk came out) up. That tube had to point down in the dispenser. The manager loved when I was around because I never dropped a box and I did whatever the staff needed for getting supplies or moving stuff around the kitchen. It was a great job.

In college, I planted trees ("reforestation") in northern Ontario, about as far north as you could drive.  We slept in tents most of the time, making between 5.5 and 7 cents per tree.  My best day, as far as numbers go, was 5159 trees in a day.  That's a tree every 7.5 seconds for 11 hours in an area that was just logged.  Hardest fucking day of work in my life.  I did it because if you planted over 5000 trees in a day you got a free t-shirt that said, "5000 tree club."  I needed some sort of motivation.

I calculated that I planted about 315,000 trees in the 5 years I did it.  That's about the length of a 3 hour drive on the interstate, planting trees at 6' apart.

I have a few funny stories, but had some of the worst days of my life doing that.  I had no connections and the student unemployment rate was probably close to 20% at the time.

Not sure how I can really define my "first real job." When I was old enough to push a lawnmower around, it didn't take long for before the neighbors were offering me trivial amounts of cash which I thought was a lot at the time. I was young enough at the time that "summer job" was not really on my radar. I was really more interested in just being a kid, but I had enough lawns to take care of that I raked in an average of 35 bucks a day. I eventually had to find a way to get my lawnmower around, so I modified a bike trailer with a piece of plywood, and straps, and I pulled my lawnmower and other equipment around behind my bike. When we left the neighborhood in town, and moved to Woodstream, I continued to do a lot of my lawn mowing work, but I had also developed a variety of construction skills from building our new house. in 2012, I got a job for this guy in Oneonta who owned a bunch of apartment buildings. He hired me to do maintenance, and improvements to his apartments. Some of the jobs included ripping out walls, and installing new doors, and windows, appliances, etc. I found it difficult being a freelancer, and ended up working two summers full time plus some for a guy in Cooperstown across the street from the Dreams Park. I did groundskeeping work, and maintenance on a cabin colony he owned and three restaurants. But I also found that I was still picking up a fair amount of construction jobs on the side. The last two years, I have worked for myself exclusively. Oh, and there was summer in there where I worked at Plattekill. It was a great job, but I couldn't justify the amount of driving it required for the pay.