job inbetween school and uni
saw it in the job centre ... cleaner at a psychiatric hospital ... now i could say that cleaning geriatrics' shit in the toilets was a problem, that caterwauling old ladies in locked wards was a tad traumatic, or the geezer who drank cold pre-made tea (ie milk, sugar, tea leaves and water) straight from the teapot freaked me out ... or maybe elderly nudity?

nah, what really fucked me off was that the job centre ad had one rate of pay and after i'd been there for a month the manager calmly informed me that i got less because i was 17

grampian health board, i'm coming to get you ... maybe not today, or tomorrow, but sooooooon
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 18:49, Reply)

LifeGuard
Okay, it doesnt SOUND terrifically horrible, but let me explain:

Basically, you get paid $6 an hour to be a baby-sitter. But this includes: sitting/baking in the sun all day, screaming at the top of your lungs "JEROME STOP FUCKING RUNNING AROUND THE GODDAMNED POOL OR YOU ARE OUT OF HERE!!!" then, when Jerome ignores you, you get to try and stem the blood flow from the kids lower lip when he slips and hits the ridge of the concrete pool deck...all the while, watching the blood pouring from his lip into the pool water and watching it dissipate.

Or there was the time that my buddy, doing the exact same job at a pool just up the road a few blocks, had a kid jump into the pool, break his neck and die on him.

All this at 15 and for just $6 an hour.

Are they MAD?!

Sic Semper Tyrannis!
( Citadel Because the world needs less morons, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 18:34, Reply)

Biscuits
i will never eat chocolate chip shortbread again. after leaving school i made the mistake of getting a seasonal job at a scottish shortbread factory (sounds like stalkers). it was the worst job EVER!all sunny outside and i'm stuck sweltering and packing biscuits on a conveyor belt. one day we got moved to the choc-chip line and they didn't give us gloves to begin with so i look up and see one of the (many) old women opposite licking melted chocolate off her fingers before continuing packing biscuits - health and hygiene issue methinks. if your line finished you got to stick stickers on boxes and if someone cut their funger and didn't notice for a while we got to open all the boxes and check biscuits for blood. i lasted about a month or so before people's tales of "once you come one year you'll be back". the thought of spending my life packing biscuits and some mini-Hitler guy telling me i was packing wrong (tryin to do stuff left handed when it's all designed for right handers is not easy). so i asked to go to the loo and just walked out the door.pay was onyl couple of quid an hour too. then got a job in the more store.not much better pay but i could still have a social life and go to work hungover coz they would let me hide up the back of the shop. and i could chat to mates when they came into town.
(fuck_a_duck, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 17:02, Reply)

I notice quite a few people are rubbing in their good jobs...
...and up steps Gat Bandish.
France. October half term. Lumped into Nantes with 30 or so strangers from England, everyone got to work in shops folding clothes.
I was put in a day care centre for 7-11 year olds. Basically where parents dump their kids for the holidays. And it was, as things appeared, for the rich-ish.
So every day I went in to be greeted with kisses on the cheek from the outstanding women working there, went on to the morning playing games, reading books, building towers from wooden blocks (the record was 9 and a half feet, I believe) and generally having a good time. Then eating food with whatever kids took a shine to me that day.
Then in the arvo we played outside. Racing trikes, hula hoops (bit of a failure), basketball, football etc.
Third day, we went to the circus.
Last day was near-enough Hallowe'en, I went in dressed as a pirate, murdered every person there with my fantastic foam-and-wood sword, shouted lots (well I WAS a pirate) and we went trick or treating. There's nothing quite like 50 small people stamping and yelling "WE WANT SWEETS!!"
We even hit the sweetshops.
I was hyper for the rest of the day.
And getting a peck on the cheek from all the wee girls was about the single sweetest thing I've ever seen/experienced.
I didn't even abuse any of them.
(Gat Bandish I've got wood in my soul, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 16:46, Reply)

i was a paper boy
but wandering too close to a naked flame lleft me as a floating cloud of ash. one day i shall return to wreak my revenge.








and don't be a capitalist lackey, form a workers' collective, attack the enemy from within. you know it makes sense.
() do bears shit on the wooden pope?, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 16:32, Reply)

Its not so bad
Back when I was about 13ish (its a long time ago for me) I worked at a Aquarium/Reptile house, thats not to say they put lizards in fishtanks full of water but they had separate areas for said animals.

Now this classes as child labour as i only got £5 a week for doing shitloads of work, but saying that it not so bad because I got to feed chameleons, feed dead pigeons that got run over in the parking lot to boa contrictors and handle insects the size of your fist.

Which was nice
(Absynth&Cheese Have you tasted my Jesus, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 15:37, Reply)

Roguing
...if that's how it's spelt.
Most godforsaken thing I ever did for money: About 17, crouching waist high in corn fields, collecting wild oats on the hottest day ever....EVER! I know this will have been dream job for a few of you. Not me. I guess some people are made for this. Farmers, perhaps. Having said that, if they were so made for it, why pay me to do it? Well, it payed for a couple of beers after work. Can't remember what pittance I received, or if I even started day two. Fuck that...I'm itching already.
That first beer was like frosty angel piss on my tongue....
(Jordy, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 15:26, Reply)

Posh YTS
As a child of 16 (well technically an adult at 16, but I can say for certain that I was still a kid as at 32 I still haven't grown up...) I got rail roaded into some crazy ass posh YTS scheme in 'electronics', which basically entailed me getting all the shit jobs, getting paid less than anyone else in the whole factory (including the mice and cockroaches), while supposedly getting some sort of vocational training.

My duties included:

Cropping off about 0.5 of a millimetre off the legs of some memory chips so a fucking machine could fit them properly. I shit you not, it was cheaper to pay me to take the chips out of their tubes, crop them and put them back in their tubes for the machine, than it was to fix the fucking machine... (an average run of chips took me 2 weeks to get thru).

Cutting reels of wire into strips of wire, then stripping the ends of the wire, twisting the wire and tinning them. I thought my supervisor was talking the piss when he asked me to do this, kinda like how you would ask the newbie to go to the stores and ask for a long wait etc etc. So I sat around aimlessly for 2 days before he came to check my progress... turns out he wasn't joking... 6 weeks of cutting, stripping etc etc.

Inserting pins into printed circuit boards because it was cheaper to get me to do it than program one of the machines to do it... 3 months of pushing pins into pcbs... I had fucking blisters on my hands!

and many many more...

All the while I was supposed to be filling in a 'log book' to show these training monkeys what I had been doing so they could certify my progress and give me my training certificate.

I started to think I was holding on to the shitty end of a stick when one of the people I had befriended asked me what I got paid... "£2 an hour" says I, "fuck me! I wouldn't even get out of bed for £2 an hour" says she... Still, I thought - these are reasonable people - I'll ask for a pay rise and guess what? I only fucking got one! I went from £2 and hour to £2 and 8 pence an hour.

Shortly after when the weather was nice I took 4 weeks off, I should really have told someone but I figured I deserved something for my trouble - I guess I was asking for it when I put in an appearance one lunch time sat in a friends, girl friends convertible, enjoying the sun, my freedom and the company of my friends girlfriend. The funny thing is they didn't say anything about it when I eventually went back to work, until I asked them to dismiss me on the grounds of unsuitability for employment (a loop hole to get paid job seekers without the 4 or 8 week wait during which point the government hope you become homeless and drop off the employment register because you don't have a permanent address) which they refused (bastards - it wouldn't have cost them anything) - I quit shortly after that, a more cynical and bitter person for the first 3 years of employed life.

I got my certificate after 3 years of hell and no one has ever asked to see it since!
( z0mb13e has a bee in his botnet, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 14:44, Reply)

Tranny shoes
My first "job" while I was at school was working in Timpsons selling shoes in the early '80s. For some reason I was put in the ladies department and on the day I started I was told by the manager that we sold shoes to the TV market. Being only 15 and rather niaive, I thought this was something to do with the branch of Currys up the road.

Imagine my surprise being asked by a 6 foot "lady" with a five o'clock shadow for "black court shoes - size 10". Normally, fitting a shoe for a lady involved a numerous furtive glances at their underwear (i was a hormonal teenager remember) - not this time - I was confronted by a pair of rather hairy legs surmounted by a pair of equally hairy bollocks as he/she lifted his/her leg onto the stool to be measured.

Now I feel physically sick every time I see the bad trannies on Little Britain......
(penrose your dog's got tits, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 14:14, Reply)

Will scrape cheese for beer
When i was 15 i decided to get a job to fund my premature drinking and smoking habits. I managed to swing a job in a small and busy 'French' cafe for £1.50 p/h. Straight after school i'd have to walk across town, roll up my school shirt and spend 4 hours cleaning plates and, unfathomably, scraping stinking, once-melted-now-rock-hard-and-gag-inducing cheese out of cups with my fingernails.

At the end of the evening, i would have to 1) unblock the drains of soft, rotting pestilence with my hands 2) clean the inside of he fridge *boke* and 3) sweep and mop the entire 2 floors of the building.

Call this political correctness gone mad, but looking back this is not only illegal child labour but also tantamount to abuse.

Oh the price a 15 year old has to pay to get some cider and 10 B+H...
( mookay immune to icons since, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 14:07, Reply)

Cheese grater accident
When I was in grade 9, we all had to take a course called "work experience," in which we'd get a part-time job and work for a couple hours every week, just for job training. It sounded like a good idea, so I signed up. None of the cool places I wanted to work would hire me, so I ended up in the kitchen of an Italian restaurant.

One day at work, I was grating big blocks of parmesan cheese using an industrial cheese grater. Inside is a spinning serrated disc which grinds up the cheese, and I think it was dull. As I was getting through the block of cheese, I tried unblocking the opening. It was pretty cool. One time I stuck my finger in too far and the serrated edge put a little nick in my fingernail. After that I got more careless.

Then the grater caught my fingertip, and dug in deep, I think all the way to the bone. I pulled it out and it was bandaged using a finger condom.

Everyone got a short break following my accident. One guy commented that it'll be hard for me to masturbate now. Little did he know I actually use my left hand for that.

My finger never healed properly. Even today when I go swimming I can still feel pressure on my fingertip where the cheese grater sliced. It was bandaged up for weeks, and I had to have it always pointed upwards or it would start to throb. This came in handy during a football match when I was blocking one of the posts during a corner kick. The ball got past the keeper and was going to fly in over my head. By simply moving my hand a bit, I made it look like the ball had hit my hand unintentionally. I stopped a definite goal and the ref even let me get away with it. So the cheese grater accident wasn't a total loss.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 14:03, Reply)

It takes family to really exploit child labour
My father ran a coach painting garage and from the age of 12 to 16 my brother and I had to work there, every weekend and school holiday, 9 till 5. During this time I was involved in numerous incidents which health and safety would have been upset about, including close encounters with power tools, chemical burns, fires and the final straw of having a ford cargo lorry layed on my index finger whilst changing the tyre. All this for the grand sum of 2.50 a day(with a bonus £1 if I worked on till 7.30pm).

Our "salary" would accumulate over the year, all noted down in a book, until payday came in August. It was always short and it was some time before the penny dropped that payday was suspiciously close to our birthdays.......... Ended up quitting and working the night shift at Safeway, it felt like paradise by comparison.
(set_phasers_to_alkie, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:57, Reply)

Special source
When i finished my gcses, i ended up at a hospital laundry. This is, worse than it sounds. The old witch that ran the place hated my guts from the get go as i was a 'student' and didnt mind telling me so. Ther rest of the work force were the most soul destroyed, bedraggled, run down bunch you could ever clap eyes on. The temparature was sub tropical, and the machinery archaic. When i complained the metal trolleys they used to dump dried blankets were giving me the worst electric shocks ever the head bitch moved me to 'the top of the line'. This involved getting trolleys off trucks full of bags of hospital laundry. Catheters, shit, piss, blood, puke, syringes, afterbirth etc fresh from the 'source'. When i asked for some gloves and a white coat she just cackled. The bloke who was round the corner from me for some reason felt his job was threatened by me and came round to crash a ciggy off me. I chatted to him for a bit. Half an hour later i got a mighty bollocking off the head bitch for smoking. That cunt had grassed me up. I left within the next couple of minutes.
(balboa, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:51, Reply)

Flame Grilled ?
My first job was in Burger King - £2.35 a fucking hour.

However my Manager was a cunt and a fat massive one at that, in fact he was so fat he couldnt walk properly. Anyway one day he bollocked me for not putting the burgers through the flamer properly, so I told him to get fucked, slapped him with a burger flipper and walked out

£2.35 - fucking robbing cunts
(hoogie Original Cunt Horse Author, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:49, Reply)

Makin' Coin...
My parents used to pay me for my report card. A whole dollar for every A, 75 cents for every B, and 50 cents for every C.

Most I ever made was a buck. Once.
( Demonic Omelette, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:46, Reply)

And another delivery job..
And while I'm on the subject... as a holiday job while at University I got a job delivering the Thomson phone directory. You needed a car to do this, so I borrowed Mum's. Had to drive 25 miles to a depot where a man in a lorry filled the back of the car up with phone books until the suspension was on the stops. Then I was given my delivery round - almost back where I started, delivering these things to every shop and flat on a *pedestrianised* high street. So I had to go and find a trolley.... I found one that was used for shifting pianos. It was just about strong enough. I took me 3 days to finish that round, and what they paid me didn't even cover my petrol. It seems they were having trouble finding enough mugs to work for them because they asked me if I wanted to do another one. I was quite shocked myself by the response they got to that.... So if you ever see an advert in the local paper wanting people to deliver phone books.. DON'T DO IT.
(yesyesyes, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:25, Reply)

Waste of time
Delivering the local Free paper. Well, one of them - we had one for every day of the week. My mate did Wednesday's - took him about half an hour and he got paid 4 quid. Not bad, I thought, so I went and got a round on the Thursday paper.. well I wasn't a big strong 14 year old. That bag of papers was heavier than I was, I couldn't actually lift it so I had to go home and find a trolley. Which buckled under the weight after 3 weeks. My round was a half hour walk from where I collected the papers. Then it took me an hour and a half to deliver them. That's 2 1/2 hours for ... one pound eighty. I did it for a month then started dumping the papers in hedges. They soon caught me but I was glad.
(yesyesyes, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:21, Reply)

Babysitting Hell
When I was a slip of a girl at 15, my mother said she had a babysitting job for me. All I had to do was look after two of her friend's children for the weekend while their parents went away, and I'd get one hundred pounds! At the time, this was untold riches, and so I accepted.

Of course, you'll already guess that the weekend was hell. I got there to find that one of the kids had Asperger's, and the other wouldn't let me alone for five seconds. I also had to feed a psycho cat and clean out two tortoises that stank of shit. The house was creepy and msot of the lights didn't work, and the house computer had such delightful entries in the AutoComplete as 'hottest pissing housewives'. It got worse when I realised that I was being paid just under £2 for each hour I was working.

Still, I figured £100 was a pretty good haul for a weekend sitting and watching kids' films, so when they offered me a whole week, Monday to Friday, while they went to Madeira, I accepted. This time, I said I wanted to be paid £2.50 an hour, £60 a day - I didn't think that was unreasonable for looking after two children, one with special needs, and three pets, cooking, cleaning, doing homework with them, and taking the kids to and from their school on my way to mine.

But no! They waited until they got back from their holiday - until after I'd done the work - and then the stingy fucking father said that if I wanted more money, then he wasn't going to pay me for all the hours I wasn't looking after them. This included when they were at school and when they were sleeping! I saw red at this point, but I believe my vague words were 'Give me the money I'm owed or I'll tell the police you left your kids with a teenager all week.'

They paid up, but I wasn't asked to sit again. They must have found some other poor sap to work for a pittance wage. The dad was such a cheap twat though, he told my mum that to rent their villa would cost £x for five people and £2x for ten people... because you know, an extra five people staying there would cost him twice as much. Mum, to her credit, told him where to stick it.
(Onion Terror, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:20, Reply)

YTS
For those not old enough to know a YTS (Youth Training Scheme) was a way the UK gov got around not paying you a full time salary for a full time job, you got a shitty £29.50 a week, I had the pleasure of filling bags of sand in a builders merchants to the size of 20kg, I lasted 2 days.....
(suntoucher, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 13:18, Reply)

Ashamed
I was made to get a job at Quick Save by my mother when I was 16!

Shity bloody work in a smelly shop stacking shelves with this moron called Malcolm!

3 days I lasted before I told them to stick it!

Did not want to upset my mum though, so I used to take my uniform out with me everyday and stand on it making it dirty before bringing it home for her to wash for the next day!

Cuntish I know, however what's worse I done that for 4 months!
(DiamonKn My Nan Smells of Twigs, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 12:52, Reply)

Pig Food
For my two week work experience at age 15, I wanted to go the the local newspaper, but that was a plum spot that everyone wanted. So my Head of Year, a science teacher, suggested I go to our village's biggest employer instead - a factory that produced and tested animal feed. "I think you'll find it really interesting", said he.

Wrong. I spent two weeks stuffing foul-smelling grass into little pots and being called "my little virgin" by an elderly cleaning lady. In addition, I got a reputation as an "intellectual", because on my lunch break I read the only book in the factory - a Jeffrey Archer novel left by some previous sucker. When a chapter of 'Kane and Abel' is the high point of your day, you soon realise that this isn't the career for you.

Bloody Shelley Calvert got the newspaper gig. I'll never forgive her.

(first post, be gentle!)
(Richard of York gained battles in vain, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 12:51, Reply)

Slave labour.
When we were in middle school Mrs Charlton, of Busbridge school, Godalming, had us preteens tending her own garden in exchange for HOUSE POINTS. This included moving paving slabs and other heavy work.
In this illegal? I am prepared to swear in court that this happened. I'll also say she touched us if it gets her face in the local paper.
( browser still relating boring anecdotes into a void on, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 10:58, Reply)

Mandatory Volunteering
I was in both the Girl Scouts and youth groups in church, so I/we had ample opportunity to be exploited for free. Among the things we were made to do:

Thouroughly clean up before and after whatever space we were using
Make chicken salad (shredding cold, pre-maranated chicken with bare hands = disgusting)
Sell soda - get the cans from cold, cold ice boxes with bare hands
Sell corn - get disgusting boiled corn smell on you for hours
Man various game booths
Bus all the tables in a space the size of a basketball court (which it actually was)
Run a haunted maze (scaring kids is actually fun)
Host other churches for meetings
Make up stupid ice-breakers for said meetings

For all my griping I have to say we girls didn't have it as bad as the boys; for one thing they always had to carry our luggage when we went on our retreat in the mountains :3
(Kitsune-chan I'm not a bunny I'm a grownup girl, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 10:24, Reply)

I was working front of house at the theatre one night
My job was selling programmes, and I wasn't selling many, so I fetched my friend's 6-year-old kid to help me. He stood next to me, big-eyed and cute, clutching his pile of programmes, while I told people that if the kid didn't sell enough we didn't feed him.

It worked too! But we still didn't feed him.
(Pachey, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 9:51, Reply)

Cut me some fresh!
My first job was at a deli counter, in a newly opened super market.

Downside, weak weak pay, upside, taking prime cuts of food. My boss was an extremely subintelligent worm, with thick bright blue framed glasses, (a man!) how I wanted to kill him. He used to say things to me like "Are you fick or sumfing?" why did he risk his life like this? All around were a huge variety of big cleavers, prongs, and the meat slicer. I dreamed of clamping his fucking face down and gently rocking him back and forth, slicing his head thinly while his muffled screams slowly faded.

And then the blue hairs, the biddies who would insist on fresh slices of corned beef, get the fuck out biddy, fresh corned beef. Still they were not to be of this earth for long being blue hairs. And to prove to them that the lights were tinted at the counter, and really all the produce was a shitty grey colour. Their cataract riddled eyes would light up like stinking gas lights in amazement of the trickery.
I worked there for about a month so I would get my pay and then told them to fuck off which was cool.

I'm a loving and kindhearted person, let me cuddle you, but my time there started to awaken a dark side, best thing I quit before Mr. Gunton, (name easily changed) ended up next to the Honey Roast.

I love you all.
(booionic, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 7:56, Reply)

Tote that barge, lift that fucking bale...
My Dad used to have a little weekend gardening business and would 'let' me come along when I was about 12. We'd work for about five hours and then I'd get to choose between getting paid four dollars or getting lunch.

If I chose the money, he'd buy a seething great pizza and eat it in front of me in the car on the way home. If I chose the food, he'd buy us a sandwich which I'd have to eat standing on the side of the road near the tip where we dropped off our cuttings.

One day I took my own lunch and asked for the money. He never took me with him again. Cheap Scottish fuck!

COCK!
(angel collider, Tue 21 Feb 2006, 0:25, Reply)

Child labour
Im only 20 nd i have at least 16 jobs undwerneath my very shiny and sparkly belt

*First Job*

14 - School cruelly sent me to a local nursing home where i 2 weeks spoonfeeding old folk who would spit it back in my face and listening to the ongoing chant of "Nurse, Nurse, Iv wet myself again!!" If it wasnt the chanting then it was the flashing. Oh the old men used to flash me allllllllll the time. And it wasnt even so much the old also the younge, they had a care unit for "learning difficulty" children and my last day there was this guy who was bout 18 and couldnt even spell his own name who pinned me down and tried to rip my earings out with his teeth. Then flashed me. I didnt get paid for it. At the end the guy who owned the nursing home offered me a job when i wanted to leave school. I politley declined.

*first paying job* worked at a chip shop for 3 old fat italian men who used to perv on my 15 yr old ass and then fired me cus i flooded the shop with around 25 litres of blue slush (broke the slush puppy machine) The night he fired me i went home nad got so drunk with my brother nad his friends i choked on my own sickness. Was charged 10 quid for a 6 hour shift and i still hear hauntings of "You wanting salt n vinegar mate?"

Hellhole number 3

Spent a year feeding the obese monsters in my town mcdonalds. 3quid 15 an hour i was paid. Uchhh

Oh god im expolioted. About to spart a job wher eim paid 250GBP Per month for working 36 hours a week on call as a holiday rep. WILL NEVER LEARN....
(StrangeKristine, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 23:34, Reply)

He-ey, wait a second.....
When I was 11 it was time for all the kids in my primary school to take the 11+ exams. Horrible things, and the weird thing was a lot of the kids got private tutors. I got my mum locking me in a room for several hours then coming back to check what I'd done, then making me re-do it 'til I got it right. Argh, the memories...in any case, I digress.

After all the exams were over and once I was in school, a lot of the kids started bragging about what they'd been given for taking the exams. One kid had been 'paid' 50 quid for each exam, one had got a pony (bloody typical of the stuck up school it was), others had got various bits of shiny gadgetry. I considered what I'd been happy to receive after I came back from my exams - one square of that Lindt 70% dark chocolate from the large bars - the strong stuff. I always was an odd kid...

Anyway, it was the motivation that I'd get 'drug chocolate', as I called it, at the end of the exam that made me work hard enough to get a bursary so that I could afford to go and get freaked out by the rich and upper classes, bunch of bloody weirdos that you lot are (I know you're out there hiding in your wellies, come out, I can see you!)
( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 22:58, Reply)

There was this one house on my paper round
that I hated delivering to. It was this huge old victorian mansion with big high fences and trees that blocked out the light, so the garden was always dark. They had this horrible rottweiler and every time you went in you ran the risk of being ripped to shreds.

So this one morning I'm taking them their church times, making my way up the path, and as I get to the door I find the scariest sight I've ever seen in my life. No, not the rottweiler. NAKED OLD MAN!
"Good morning" He said.
"Morning" I replied, handed over the paper and went on my merry way.
(nN, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 22:25, Reply)