Revenge of the Snot
I managed four days on minimum wage as a salad chopper once. It was cold, and I had to get up at 5 in the morning.

Because it was cold, my nose ran a lot, I blew it on the lettuce.

Pre-packed salads? You're having a laff!
(Jugular, Thu 23 Feb 2006, 12:39, Reply)

old people
instead of getting the usual holiday job in a clothes shop or a sandwich shop, my friend sam decided to work in an old people's home. at the age of 16, without any training, she was let loose on the poor old folk. choice highlights included:

cleaning up liquid black effluent off the toilet, the floor, the walls and the ceiling after an old woman shuffled out and said proudly, "i've done my do's".

rolling an old man out of the bath and into bed, ignoring his squeals and moans until she realised she had trapped his bellend under the mattress and was stretching him unbearably.

being attached by an old woman with a wire coat hanger as the old woman objected strongly to being dressed and going downstairs to see the family who had put her in the home in the first place. sam, undaunted, went to the kitchen for a pair of scissors... and CUT the nightie off her...

all for £3.59 an hour!
( rachelswipe with a fork, Thu 23 Feb 2006, 11:17, Reply)

Gluing Magnets on Beds!
For anyone who has even done manual agency work, exploitation is the name of the game!

I did a number of filthy, degrading jobs when I was in my teens and this was by fair was the worst.

The company I worked for was making beds for the NHS alternative therapy section… or something like that. The idea was simple, magnets increase your blood flow... apparently, so installing them en-mass inside beds would be beneficial to people suffering from circulation problems.

Mad? It most certainly was! My job? I had to glue these shitty little magnets into the foam of these magic beds. Can you imagine standing for 8 hours a day picking up magnets the size of a penny coin, covering it in nasty, foul smelling glue and forcing it into the little recesses of a foam mattress, gloveless!

One very unpleasant aspect of this job was the glue sticking your fingers together, gloves where not an option as they apparently would melt if they came in contact to the glue, hmmm I bet it was great for my hands then! The solution to this sticky finger problem was to spray your hands with silicone (I am sure this was poison as well) spray. This nasty combination of chemicals left my hand smelling like I had them stuck up an Elephants anus for 8 hours a day… the smell was also relentless in its resistance to any form of cleaning, in fact, the only time my hands smelt ok again was just before I started work the next fucking day… nice!

So all in all, £3 an hour, making beds that cost about £12 in materials and £10 in labour per bed, knowing that the company was selling them to the NHS for £1200 per bed, also knowing that part of the taxes I paid on my wage went towards the NHS buying these fucking things!

Yes I felt little exploited!
(Minty Hit, Thu 23 Feb 2006, 11:15, Reply)

Sorry about this...
Don't know how I lucked into it, but at 15 1/2 I got a job at the public library, and kept it 'til I left town at 18. Easy work, government wages, pretty librarians, and I had a key so it was my home away from home after hours. But trust me, it's been downhill ever since.
( coronaboomboom, Thu 23 Feb 2006, 10:32, Reply)

Worse than trapping...
Did a fair bit of trapping in my youth, and it was, indeed, awful. There is a job that tops it however, there was still danger, pain, and hatred of my employer, but for drastically less money. I was... a mall mascot. To be precise, I was "Dumpster Dan", the mascot composed entirely of things that should be recycled but 'tragically' end up being thrown away. My job was to walk up and down the each and every aisle of one of our local malls (not one of the good ones either) handing out flyers to people as a reminder to be more environmentally conscious. The irony of handing out flyers that immediately found their way into the trash bins (and the floor) of the mall to promote recycling was not lost on me even then. The agony was not the non-breathing plastic costume which smelled like feet and vomit and was absolutely sweltering inside. Nor the sneers and looks of distrust by the common mall patron. It was the packs of 13 year old punks who made my life hell. I was punched, tripped, hit with chairs, nearly pushed down an escalator, on top of jeers, taunts, and just being shoved and laughed at. I lasted 4 hours before removing the costume in the mens room and leaving it there while I walked home. Not surprisingly, I was never paid.

PS. The gun-nuts I worked for later on eventually got theirs. Turns out the lead form their shot seeped into the groundwater in the nature preserve about 2 km away. Government seized everything.
(Savitar, Thu 23 Feb 2006, 8:27, Reply)

McSlave labour
I'm sure there are going to be hundreds of micky d's stories but here's my tuppence worth.

Not sure who I pissed of whilst I was working there but I found myself inexplicably stuck on the "walker's run" for the best part of a year.

Walker's was the compnay that delivered everything to the store (Buns, patties, fries etc..) It involved getting to work at 4am finding that the bastards from the previous day hadn't rotated the stock in the freezer and spending the next 3 hours lugging boxes in -21c temperatures.

When you finally emerged you'd find that your eyeballs had half frozen and you couldn't focus on anything. You'd also have to then work the breakfast grill for another 4 1/2 hours all for just $5 an hour.
(Neuromancer, Thu 23 Feb 2006, 5:07, Reply)

merkins
Don't vote for this cos I've posted this before, but I want to tell you one of the best stories I've heard.
A black friend was working as his first job at Butlins, and he'd become really popular with the punters. I don't know why there was an American staying there, florida is well nice, but my mate overhead the guest say "One of the friendliest people I've met here is Jeff. He's a British Afro American".
Sorry to repeat myself like that "Talking Heads" Alan Bennett character that ends up in prison for being boring, but I haven't finished my pizza yet. And God knows there are worse stories than this.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Thu 23 Feb 2006, 1:17, Reply)

Not really a child when it happened....
But when I was 16 I had a job in a wood cutting factory. Y'know the type of place that makes frames for mirrors and pictures. Yes. I was totally shit at it too. Despite my best efforts to measure each piece of wood obsessively to "minimise wastage" I was always left with about a dozen shitty bits that no-one could use. The low point came when my supervisor revealed that after 2 months of "taking it easy" I'd have to fetch my own boxes of wood from the warehouse. Okay, I thought, I'll give it a go. Picture me then, weak as a kitten, skinny as a rake, with a 20 foot long, 90lb box of wood balanced on my shoulder. The trick was to let the box literally fall onto you and hoist it. After a single day of that I was truly fucked and resembled a car crash victim. Trust me when I say living on the dole for only 20 quid less a week was heaven.
(Suddenly, zebras Safe and sound for eternity, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 21:57, Reply)

Work Experience
Y10, Work Experience, didn't get a penny...

All i got to do was repair airliners, switch engines, piss about with jet fuel and drive aircraft across Stansted Airport...

Bastards
(The Better Tim! Free of them STDs since, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 21:34, Reply)

I never was
My first job was as an undertaker when I was 14. It was great. Since then, I've worked as a freelance web designer, museum guide, writer and protest organiser. I've enjoyed every one. I generally earn between £7.50 an hour and £150 an hour.
(sqrrl101, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 20:16, Reply)

I was Maureen Lipman's Paperboy!
I was the youngest paperboy in my local shop by about ten years. All the bigger boys picked on me because I was the youngest.

I was thirty.

Ok so it wasn't strictly child labour but while I was underemployed a few years back I used to have a huge paper round in Muswell Hill; Maureen Lipman and other media types were on my round. Many of them ordered multiple papers, especially at weekends, the bastards.

Although by no means the worst, Maureen Lipman used to get the Telegraph, the Ham & High and the Jewish Chronicle. She didn't tip. The scary old people in the methodist nursing home, who all got tabloid papers and smelled of wee and formaldehyde, tipped really well though.
(Wascally Weasel now with 100% fewer jokes., Wed 22 Feb 2006, 20:05, Reply)

Public Services
The NHS, schools, and any other public service you care to mention are partly run by the children of people actually employed by them. For NHS parents I've helped move an entire Drs surgery from one building to another, done filing, checked out the dates on medication, and loads of other stuff. A friend did so much work at her mum's school that displays she had done were praised in OFSTED reports.

Your public services are shored up with unpaid child labour.
(mw, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 19:49, Reply)

Not me but a bud...
Me mate Lou, who's half Caucasion and Half Mexican, got a job working at this place called JJ's Fried Fish. JJ's Fried FIsh is like Mcdonalds but without the ball pits, mass worldwide franchising, tables, burgers, In fact it's not like Mcdonalds at all. All you do is order deep lard fried seafood/chicken, pay and leave. None of that sitting down pansy bullocks. As aforementioned, all they have is fried fish or chicken, needless to say the majority customer is black. Qeue fair skinned Cashiere 14yr old Lou at $5/hr (bout 2 quid):

Lou: Can I take your order?

Large Black Woman: Lemme get an order of shcrimps.

Lou: (confused as fcuk, looks back at overhead menu)...umm...you mean shrimp?

LBW: Yeeea and lemme get som fried scabs.

Lou: (looks back at menu).....only what's on the menu 'mam.

LBW: (blank stare) Hah?

.....he didn't show up the next day or ever.
(The Horizontal Monster Mash Mr. T Pitties Me, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 18:44, Reply)

$2.50 (Canadian) an hour (approx 1 squid) - on night shift
My first ever job was working in a donut/coffee shop between the hours of 12 midnight and 8 am for a measly $2.50 per hour. Fact is I was illegal and this was cash in hand so I couldn't complain.

Once the mens urinal was blocked and not having been given any gloves, I actually put my bare hands into a urinal of still steaming piss and soggy toilet paper to clean it out. Still to this day have no idea what the loo paper was doing in there. Wouldn't do that for 1 million quid now. Show's how afrad I was to lose that crappy job.

THEN, as my Dad wouldn't get off his arse to come and pick me up after work (something about teaching me to stand on my own two feet or some other bollocks) I had to walk the full 1 hr and 15 minutes home as I couldn't afford the bus fare.

Bitter? Don't even talk to me, I'm getting angry just thinking about it.
(Peelmytangerines, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 17:56, Reply)

71p an hour...
Last summer I got a job going door to door around sussex, trying to get people to sign up for some house scam where some guy would go to their house, and force them to buy this cat-sick textured 'paint' to go on their houses that would apparntly make them last forever or something. I'm sorry if I came to your house, I probably did. It was all paid on commission, but only if once i'd signed these people up, they still agreed to have the sales guy aroun. What that meant is that even if i sign a million people up, and they all said they'd changed their mind and didn't want it, i'd get nothing.


One week I got £30. For a weeks work. A week walking up every street pretty much in the world, having doors slammed in my face, and people getting really angry at me.

We calculated it that I got 71p an hour. I wanted to cry. I quit.
(Strangemiester, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 16:45, Reply)

Paper Round
When I was a young lad around the age of 14 I had one of those "super paper rounds". You know? The ones where you have to deliver the 'free paper' that comes out once every two weeks. I had to deliver something like 350 papers every two weeks for the princely sum of £2.20 per round.

Anyways...

Some sour faced old mooky cow would come round every two weeks and drop off this huge pile of papers, give me the last rounds money and promptly bugger off. The paper round took absolutely ages to do. As you can only carry so many papers, I had to go back home after delivering all I could carry to restock and carry on. Needless to say this was hard work for a young lad in the sweltering heat of summer.

So after doing this for a couple of months I actually figured out that nobody was interested in these papers, apart from all the old dears and retired sorts who have more time on their hands then to know what to do with.

Long story short is that me being the cunning sort I made myself a map, a shortlist if you like... of all the houses that I reckoned would complain if the papers werent delivered... Cutting my round down to about 70 papers... I would target all the houses and randomly deliver some to the others as well, just to cover my tracks.

And I got away with too!... for about 9 months before I got the phonecall I had been dreading...

The call went something like...

Sour faced old mooky cow: "You havent been delivering all your papers have you?"

Me: Yes I have, every one.

Sour faced old mooky cow: "No you havent, have you"

Me: No.

As you can see, I hadnt mastered the art of deceipt by this age.

I think it may have been the huge pile of undelivered papers in the garage that might have given it away...

Anyways... first post from me!
(SillyMoo, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 16:40, Reply)

Spanish Practices
I had my first "real" summer job between sixt form and Uni, working in a market garden. Despite being in the deepest darkest yokellish parts of East Yorkshire it was infested by Spaniards. (GYAC, they come over from the Canary Isles, three or four of them club together and buy a cheap caravan, then work the whole season doing 24 hour shifts and make ££££££££ to take back home. Nice work if you can get it)

So, not only did I have to wander through acres of jungle like savage cucumber plants cutting cucumbers, and spray them with industrial Malathion (probably banned now, and I once got drenched in the stuff when a spray gun exploded in my face) and get scratched to buggery and cut my fingers in the process, all in searing tropical humidity, but I had to do it all in Spanish. For six weeks for most of the day I did not hear a word of English spoken... but on the plus side, I DID learn how to say "now we will cut the little cucumbers" in Spanish. A phrase I have never used since in anger.

I don't recall what I got paid, it wasn't much, but I did once start to write a novel about the experience.
(Bookman_Oldstyle, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 15:33, Reply)

M o D
That would be quite a while after I worked with Doug. He used to run a gun club on saturdays and wednesday afternoons, at the West London Shooting grounds (no connection to the fine shooting school there). He also had a shop in Greenford called "The West London Gun Company", but that shut down after a few years. I must admit, even though Doug was a twat of the highest order, he was one of the finest shots I have ever seen. His wife was nice as well.
(urgle-splurgle molesting small goats since, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 15:13, Reply)

That reminds me.....
... this happened to a friend of mine. Not me, but still worth telling. One of his friend's fathers at school was a roofer. It was the summer holidays and this chap offered six of his friends mates some work helping him replace roof tiles. The pay was set at £2 an hour - each mind and this was in the early 1980's so not bad and certainly more than I was getting as a paperboy.

Anyway, next morning the lorry turns up. Six lads jump on the back and proceed to spend a day climbing up ladders, gently taking off the slates and neatly stacking them in the lorry. Any breakages resulted in threats about docking money so much care was taken. Numerous slate-cuts, bruises and strains occur during the day but at the end all of the lads were told to wait in the car-park of a local pub whilst the roofer went to get some cash to pay them.

They waited, they waited and they waited some more.....opening time came.......dinner time came...and went but still no sign of any wages. Deeply upset the boys went home. The next day they went round the roofer's house to collect their money to find that he had been arrested for trying to sell stolen roof tiles.

They never did get any money...... not even for offering to give evidence.
( Spackweasel - because weasels get Downs Syndrome too, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 15:05, Reply)

The delights of a Commercial Kitchen
At the tender age of 14 I was 'encouraged' by my Dad to go and get a weekend job. So out I went and ended up in the plum-job of potwasher for a rather well known chain of pub/restaurants. And 'lo, my lazy Sundays of playing sensible soccer on the Amiga were replaced by endless piles of shitty plates (which are hotter than the sun when coming out of the machine) and sinks full of pans bigger than me with unspeakable substances burnt onto them.

The particular 'highlight' of this evious position is clearing out the grease-trap. For those who don't know, it's a machine that siphons off all the crud, grease and other foul material that goes down the plug-holes, and in a commercial kitchen thats a lot believe me. Those unfortunates who are familiar with this metal box of satan will know that the stench from this machine when opened is like nothing you have ever experienced...and i had to scoop out all the solid matter from within the evil soup, then get rid of all the rest of the shite that's in there. And it is impossible to not get it ALL over you...thus resulting in me performing my dubious duty wearing a giant bin bag and smelling like stig o the dump at school on Monday morning. And the bugger had a rather annoying habit of overflowing at apparently random intervals, spilling its foul contents all over the floor - yummy!

...all for the princely sum of £3 an hour. Still, it's better than working at MaccyD's.

I stuck with it and worked my way 'up' to full blown cook and ended up back there most holidays all the way through 6th form and uni, and had a great time, until my tenure was abruptly ended when my nobhead of a line menager blew half my face off one night, but that's a story for another QOTW...

Apologies, as always...
( RR I love you ... in a way, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 14:58, Reply)

Urgle Splurgle
Did that happen to be at the Oxford Gun Companies place near Long Crendon?
Used to work in the shop there with Bill, Dougs partner, who went on to tutor maddona.
I had great fun in the shop, cheap shells and cheap clays for my dads gun club and I got to hold and polish all the guns in the shop all for £2.50 an hour. Best Job ever
( M o D, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 14:54, Reply)

child labour
When the national lottery launched i got paid £1.95 an hour to sell tickets in my local spar. In order to receive this glorious bounty I had to wear a national lottery tshirt, badge, cap and best of all - big shitty sun glasses, even at night.
I was also once employed at an industrial laundry where my direct superior was on day-release from a mental hospital. She even wore state-owned shoes. I felt both big and important.
(finbad, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 13:49, Reply)

Not quite child labour...
...but as a weedy sixth-former, working in a tile yard was probably a non-starter. Days 1 and 2 not too bad. Fine, I thought. Despite general unfitness and inability to swear every other word, I might get through the whole summer holidays here.

Cue day 3, the hottest day of the year so far. Me and my mate from school had to load a whole roof's worth of slates onto the truck by hand. BTW, I had new, cheap boots on.

At the end of the day, I went to bed and slept for 24 hours, then couldn't get my socks off because the blisters on my feet had burst, dried and glued them on. I had to soak them in the bath to get them off.

Needless to say I didn't go back, and got a job soldering in a factory instead. Still got paid though, £40 for 3 days work, IIRC.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 13:44, Reply)

My name's Lardyboy and I was a teenage trapper
It's like trapper's anonymous here at the moment, so I guess it's my turn to share.

I was quite well paid while I was a trapper, £3 or £4 an hour (not bad in 1984), but I suspect that this was due to the poor safety record of the club. In two years I was lucky enough to escape with a broken wrist and a two inch gash just below my left knee. The latter injury was caused by the blade of a trap which was stuck, but came free, at speed, after the bottom of a box of clays gave way and fell on the manual release handle. After a bit of a sit down and lots of swearing, the boss let me cycle home early. Once home I had a proper look at the damage and found I could see bone, so I took a quick trip to A&E.

When I broke my wrist I got driven to hospital in the owner's Rolls, so I was quite pleased about that.
(lardyboy Next stop, Fissplap Central, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 13:30, Reply)

And did we get a parade when we returned?
No, they spat on us!

Perhaps Paul Hardcastle could do a remake of his famous '80's hit to raise awareness of post traumetic stress in trapping vets...

"In World War 2 the average age of the combat soldier was twenty two, in Trapping it was Fourteen, FUH-Fuh-Fuh-Fuh Fourteen..."
( Colonel Dracula Two manky hookers and a racist dwarf, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 12:37, Reply)

poorly paid child labour
All this talk of trapping accidents, takes me back to my early career choice. For £8 a saturday, we would work from 8.00am until 6.00pm in the summer (4.00pm in the winter). All the usual applied ie no hearing protection, no cold/wet weather gear etc. Health and safety was what older people could fall back on if there were any workplace issues, however as a bunch of 14 year old boys, this didn't apply to us. There were plenty of examples of accidents at work, people getting shot at by the gun-toting in-breeds etc.. but the funniest thing I ever saw was the owner of the business (a total cunt called Doug Florent) giving us a lecture on trap safety, then completely ignoring his own advice and walked into the path of the traps swinging arm. It put a very large and deep cut into his left forearm, and left the staff ie us, pissing ourselves at his misfortune. Even his threats to kick our arses if we didnt stop laughing, fell on deaf ears. It was pure joy watching the beardy twat ranting and bleeding!! By the way Doug, if you are reading this (though I doubt you can read, you neanderthal moron) you are, and always will be, a cunt, to a select bunch of lads who had the misfortune to work for you. Glad that's off my chest after 25 years.
(urgle-splurgle molesting small goats since, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 12:23, Reply)

Gun Club
Col Dracula and others: We really ought to start some sort of support group for former Gun Club trap monkies. We're lucky to be alive.

I've got a story kicking around on me website with far too much length and girth to publish on these pages, so I've stuck it here.

Ah, happy days...
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 12:12, Reply)

Trapping in Yorkshire
I did this too! i lived on the outskirts of Ilkley Moor - but i LOVED this job! Picked up on a sunday morning aged 13, rode in the back of an open backed Landrover, saw guns all day AND got a fiver for a sunday mornings work! My right arm was like a weight lifters mind.. not sure if that was all down to trapping though....
(TheManofScience, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 11:46, Reply)

Pre-Packed Sandwich Converyor Belt... horrific
Temp job one summer to earn cash, me and a mate at a factory that made those pre packed sandwiches you see in supermarkets, garage forecourts, etc.

It was only something like £2 per hour BUT we did get the full hygene get-up for nowt - plastic wellies, beard net, yada yada yaday - our job? near the end of the conveyor, just before they were cut by a huge circular saw - we were 'cheese straighteners' - basically make sure the cheese was evenly spread in the sandwich. Me and my mates just laughed at each other across the conveyor belt... and this conveyor moves fast. AND it doesn't stop for 4 hours till u get your break. At this point, around 30% of the staff on the belt would faint due to motion sickness from watching it move for 4 hours straight...

I did get promoted to 'eggs' once.. basically put a whole boiled egg on the slice of bread as it went past... it was heaven. Till my box of boiled eggs was empty. i had to find another... by then, 30 slices of bread had gone past.

Those biddies at the end of the conveyor took it all so serious and their cries will live with me forever... "GET THE FUCKING CHEESE STRAIGHT!" or "THERE'S AN EGG MISSING - GET ME AN EGG, GGEETT MMEE AANN EEGG QUICK!"
(TheManofScience, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 11:42, Reply)

Bloody hell Colonel Dracula!
That's nasty. I was hit in the face by a trap arm once. Luckily it just cut through my lower lip and broke my glasses. I realised at the time that I'd come close to losing teeth and other bits of my face but your post has brought it all back.

And I wasn't even being paid at the time.
(flimflam_machine, Wed 22 Feb 2006, 11:35, Reply)