Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What crappy no future jobs have you done, to keep food on the table?

I rebuild fiberglass boats in my spare time, got one in the barn now and it's been a 100+ degrees for over a week now. Sometimes I think cleaning bathrooms in a restaurant and bar beats sweating and itching. Working in a layer house wasn't all that much fun either, and opening the lid to the pit to dump the dead birds is a smell that you never get use to.

Apprenticed under the Johns Mannsville stock refinishing program.
Was moving up the food chain nicely, ahead of peers.
Best thing ever happened to me careerwise was unassing that place as soon as I got wind of the Dan Halen in the works acquisition of the Company.

Yeah....I’ll have the fudge dipped roach blizzard

I worked in the woods ie timber in my youth. Most guys would say ah man dream job. Bull chit! running a saw all day, [bleep] sweat running down the crack of your ass. Then stumble into hornets nest get stung a few times. Take a quick break from getting bit by hornets work up the nerve to go get your saw to work again. So rule of thumb stumble into hornets nest chuck your chain saw far as you could then start running.

Unloading 94lb bags of cement from a box car in the middle of a Southern Oregon summer heat wave. I worked three years on swing shift pulling 27s from a round table at a plywood plant. The round table was at the end of a long 200+ degree dryer. During summers it was often over 130 degrees at the round table. Worked and went to college at the same time. Don't remember a lot from those years - I was perpetually tired. It wasn't really a crappy job, just a hard one and a good challenge. It did reinforce the idea of getting a college degree.

port of albany , temp longshoreman . I hated bananas , pineapples and all tropical fruits for a long time. but paid my tuition and a lot more.

I spent two summers working my way through college as a brick mason's helper. Two helpers for 8 masons. Good God! Not much shade for the masons building the apartments in Atlanta on a 98 degree August day.

I did everything besides whoring myself.

32 months at Wal-Mart.
kwg

That stuff can become brutal - best if it is done by young bucks who need the work and have strength and stamina to spare. One of my summer laborer jobs in the oil refinery was in a unit where they used clay for some refining process, and it arrived in 95 pound bags - a boxcar full - every day. Scoot up the ramp, grab a bag, hustle down the ramp and 10 yards to the conveyor, smash the edge of the bag on the requisite spike and dump the clay into the spinning worm. Toss the empty bag into a dumpster. Repeat for 8 hours. All four of us looked like the dough boy after each shift.. Helps develop perspective.

Working on family farm for free, parks and rec grounds maintenance, waiting tables, mover, landscaper, fly-fishing guide. Pretty much whatever it took to keep food on the table without a government assistance.

Two full time jobs. Both were split shifts so I was at each work place twice a day. Three years straight.

Only working one job a day was akin to having a day off. Not working either, which was very rare, was like a three day weekend. Was able to finally quit one of those jobs to work 6am to 6pm every day. Did what I had to do at the time.

Grew up emotionally and financially during that time and cut ties with people I realized weren't friends. Also made lasting bonds with those who encouraged me at my lowest.

Worked in a hog barn while in college. Minimum wage but an apartment was provided. Allowed me to get through college with no debt. 6 am in the nursery and soaked through with sweat. Days when we had a plug in the line draining the pit, was standing in liquid manure almost to my chest reaching over with one hand trying to feel and find what was blocking the outflow pipe opening while my ear was just touching the liquid.

Cleaning out underneath raised nursery floors. Lay on the concrete floor to reach under the decks and remove boards that contained the manure under the pens and not leach/run out into the aisle and you pull your arm out with pig manure all over it and maggots crawling all over your arm.

Fed some pigs in a research trial a feed made from yeast. The manure was the consistency of really thick peanut butter. Scraping those pens daily was a bear. At the end of the trial trying to clean off the little layers that built up over the months was brutal. Dealing with hogs that had been dead days in the summer sun. I could go on. But, I had a great boss. Nothing we did, he hadn't or wouldn't do himself. Loved the job because of my boss and coworkers.

Another job I took when I needed a job was power washing nursery and farrowing rooms in a commercial hog outfit. I would show up around 9pm and go to power washing maybe a dozen crates in a room or 6 nursery pens in a room. Expanded-metal type floors and every speck of manure had to be cleaned off all those metal rods that made up the floors etc. Mind numbing. Would finish up around 2 or 3 in the am. Drive back to where I was paying a guy $100 to sleep on his couch because I didn't have a place to live and couldn't afford an apartment.

Worked for my step-dad on a roofing crew. Reroofing flat roofs in the summer. Chipping, power-brooming, brooming and shoveling all that gravel and material into a wheel barrow and hauling it to the roof's edge and dumping it. Sucked a $s. First day I was on a power broom as a 16 year old, I made the 24 yo fit athletic guy working with me run to the edge of the roof to puke. I just kept on pushing that fricken broom. I do not have fond memories of that job. Most of the employees were bonafide alcoholics. Tougher than hell. I could never figure out how they drank the way they did and still show up the next day and work their butts off in the heat and humidity. Learned right there I was not tough enough to be an alcoholic.