Child LabourThere is a special part of Hell I'd like to reserve for those arses that order every single Sunday paper. Do you know how heavy that makes the bundle of papers some poor kid (ie me) has to lug around? Funny how your papers always seemed to get mangled in your letterbox...
I loved my paper round, but, looking back, I was getting paid peanuts to ruin my back and cycle around in the cold and dark. How were you exploited as a child?
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chthonic, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 12:05)
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Paper RouteHated it. I found out I wasn't a businessman. Never got bitten by a dog, but I met all sorts of sadistic people who hated the paperboy for some reason.
The kids who locked me out of their apartment building, laughing at me as they held the door shut. The building superintendent who verbally abused me for ten minutes for buzzing him and asking him to let me in. I was 10 years old. I just wanted to deliver the goddam paper. The older kids who used me as target practice for their rock filled snowballs. You can't run very fast with a bag full of papers. And then there was the psycopath with the route next to mine who used to beat me up or throw away my papers, because we picked them up at the same drop off spot and, well, he was fucking psycho.
When the paper went bankrupt, the psycopath cancelled one paper on my route, so when the last ever collector's edition came out, I didn't get my copy because I was 10 and too stupid to keep one and short change any of my ungrateful, non-tipping clientelle.
These days, because the papers all come out at 3AM, only lonely, unemployable adults with a car are allowed to deliver the paper.
Thank God. (Please don't burn my embassy).
(, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 22:01, Reply)
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