Vitacress.
I was never really worked hard as a child - I had the usual paperound, but it took about fifteen minutes a day (if that) and I got a tenner a week from it. Apart from normal chorse and stuff, nothing exciting.

But...

I worked for Vitacress for one whole day when at sixth form. I don't like naming names, but that place is hell. I signed up througha temp agency, who after noting that I was particularly looking for office experience threw me into a salad factory.

For the first few hours of the day, I was a human conveyor belt, as one of the mechanical ones had broken down. Someone threw me a bag of salad, I caught it, and threw it on to someone else. Yay.

In the afternoon I was promoted to salad mixer or some such twaddle, which basically meant standing at a big table mixing everything up a bit.

The machines were so noisy that you couldn't hear anyone speak, and the background radio was all but pointless. The only entertainment all day was the constant "Hurrrrrrrrrn" of the machines.

There are worse jobs in the world, but the quitting moment came when I found out that by going through the agency I was being paid *half* of what I would be if I turned up at the door on the day and asked for some work.

The highlight was chatting to a posh bird over lunch who, after breaking her arm, was spending a week at each of some of the most unpalatable jobs - Vitacress, McDonalds, and suchlike. And that was the highlight.
(Captain Skippy pooed in a bag and left it on your doorstep, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 17:35, Reply)

FSHH
well last year i started my dream job... perfect hours and doing something a absolutly adored. bearing in mind im 21 and the avergae wage last year was about 5.05 and hour..... they paid me 3.75 an hour. I had a house to run a bike to fix and a partner to feed. Cunts. bunch of sad ass wank juice drinking molusc eating turd burgers. and thats putting it nicely.... i was fired. when i asked why i was told 'no reason you just didnt say hello to me this morning and that in my book passes for a bad attitude' *rant over* does anyone else find that very very unfair? child labour? how bout adult labour, they may aswell have flogged me all the way home!!
(Serbitar Has a furry shit canon called Whitey., Sat 18 Feb 2006, 17:06, Reply)

Getting on my tits
I had a sucession of crap jobs as a kid mainly to fun my weed habit. Did the usual paperrounds etc but in a dope induced year out I some how got a job at a local bacon factory. This place really was the seventh circle of hell. It reeked of death and shit and all the other workers were like some mike Leigh/Ken Loach nightmares. As if all this wasnt bad enough my actual job was to stand in line on a conveyor belt for 8 hours at a time wearing a white boiler suit holding a mecanised circular razor (looked like a magnifying glass) whilst sides of pork wizzed past. My role was to grab the mobile pork and shave of its nipples at a frantic pace which caused them to ping off in all directions often into my eyes and mouth - kind of like Pac-man but with cold dead pig tits. This went on for an entire summer, however I still eat bacon.
(MC2000ftjesus Isn't an MC 2000ft or jesus, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 16:57, Reply)

Cream
When I was a wee lad I had the worst job of them all, I was a Cream Boy.

Once a week this very dodgy-looking chap would drop off 50 tubs of Cream, and I would don the white hat and jacket and go peddle them round my neighbourhood, past the houses of boys and girls from my school, who all thought it jolly funny.

How much did I make?

10p per pot.
(FiftyFour, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 16:54, Reply)

Fool me once....
When I was a small boy, the thing I wanted most in the world was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel (seems a bit of a gay choice of breed now, but what can I say, I was only six years old).

After getting fed up with hearing my protestations that "yes, I really could look after it"/"no, I wouldn't get bored with it"/"yes, I did realise that dogs live for a long time" etc. my parents finally conceded to let me prove myself worthy of dog ownership (and that I could walk it every morning). For six months I had to get up extra early every day, walk to the local shop to buy a newspaper and walk the long way home.

I was often tempted to walk back the way I had come. Fear that today might be the day that my parents chose to check on me (they never did) kept me to the long route home. It was a pain at first, but soon it just became an established routine. My innocence prevented me from realising the significance of the anxious looks exchanged between my parents towards the end of the six months as I returned every day with the paper. I remember feeling so happy the day I completed the challenge and was practically pissing myself with the excitement and anticipation of going to Wood Green Animal Shelter to pick my dog.

When my Dad sat me down and explained that I couldn’t have a dog because it would fight with my sister’s cat, I didn’t take it lying down but he countered every argument that I could come up with. I even asked if I could have a dog “after my sister’s cat died”. Thank fuck he had learnt his lesson and answered with a definite “No” rather than a “maybe” or a “yes”. The consequences for the cat would have been appalling and I wouldn’t be the man that I am today.
(Scr@p, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 16:45, Reply)

Child rearing
I was all of ten years old when my baby sister Fina was born. A year or so later, mom went back to work. Babysitters are quite expensive, so she had the bright idea to have me spend my Summer vacation taking care of Fina instead of hanging around with the neighborhood kids lighting things on fire like usual.

My promised reward was, at Summer's end, I'd get a printer and some disk drives for my prized TRS-80 computer. This was of course back when crappy 1980s PCs and their peripherals were fuckoff expensive, and it was an orgasmic prospect for a young nerd like me.

Roll on three months of feeding, changing, and basically parenting, with only a fledgling collection of videotapes and books to break up the monotony while my friends were enjoying the full spectrum of childhood pyromania, graffiti, trespassing, and other assorted misdemeanors. I had swapped an ntire Summer's worth of adventures and freedom for diapers and formula. Still, I was confident it'd all be worth it in the end..

Did I get all that computer stuff when it was all over? Did I indeed receive any recompense at all for sacrifice of an entire Summer?

Did I fuck. We were far too poor to afford that sort of thing, a fact that Mom only admitted to me come Autumn.

Nevertheless, I fell for it all again the following year, when the promised reward package had a Nintendo added to it.

Did I finally get anything for my extended troubles and sacrifices over two adolescent Summers?

Did I fuck.

No apologies for length, girth, texture, or odor. Also, I do love my now grown-up sister dearly, partly because she feeds and cleans her own damn self these days.
( Rob T Firefly talked, like, William Shatner, on, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 15:53, Reply)

Not that bad...
... I spose, but now I look back it was taking the piss.
Started working for a farm retail shop (selling the odd equestrian bit of crap too) when I was a few months over 15.
£2.75 an hour... Warehouse work. Unpacking goods & lugging them round as well as pricing. But also collecting customer orders.
The smallest bag of feed was 25kg. In fact they more or less all were, apart from the odd 30kg and the fuck off fertiliser bags at 50kg.
Being the muscle bound rower I now am (ha) it doesnt seem that much, but at the time, feck!
No wonder I put my back out. Should have sued the fuckers - no training or nuffink. Only common sense - cha!
Did get a pay rise a few months later. £2.82!!!
I worked bastard hard for those pikey twats.

On another note. Now mostly defunkt supermarket screwed me over by not paying me inline with the fecking shelf stackers. I was stock management for fecks sake - actually had to think about my job.

Then an insurance company did me out of a hundred quid or so by *accidently* overlooking a pay rise of the basic pay rate because I'd had an increase in line with my sales rate. After that increase my pay was still about 40p less than the now basic rate.
They're all bastards.

And people wonder why I've signed up to a medical testing clinic.

Ha. I ranted. I feel better.
(tweebianmonkey Should be known as Widget, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 15:43, Reply)

My dad paid me in alphabet sweets once
For some work I did for him.

I wouldn't have minded, except I was 25 at the time.
(Pachey, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 15:24, Reply)

sexually

( the wild elk Freeing excellence affects reality, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 15:14, Reply)

i still havn't worked this one out
i would have been about 12- 13, working a 18hr shift (8pm friday night till 2pm saturday afternoon) for 25£ paid in cash. but its not the money or the illigal hours which consern me.

about 15 equally young kids would go to a factory for this shift, bagging white sand, for model railways we were told, by hand into little plastic resealable bags.

if anyone can explain this, hartlebury trading estate around 8-9 years ago.id love to here it.
(kola, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 14:17, Reply)

I'm cheap
Yet another paper round victim. I think my parents wanted to teach me the value of money (not that we had a lot of it though). I did a paper round with my brother for a few years. We got $5.52 between us for just under 300 papers (this was over 15 yrs ago, but I still remember the amount). It took us 2hrs (1hr in the morning and 1hr in the afternoon), so that is $1.38 per hour (in Aussie dollars, so 58p per hr at today's exchange rate). Why so long, you ask? Well, first we'll have to ride up a massive hill on our bikes, then up a driveway, paper in box, down driveway, up the next one etc. I was justifiably upset when I found out city people were paid the same rate for delivering to a block of flats.

Still, I got a good tan and I'm still pretty fit. Plus this was a part of the country where if it rained I'd just wear lighter clothes - rain doesn't matter so much when it's not cold (except for having less effective brakes on the bike, which can be a problem with an extra 20-40 kilos on the back). Some days we'd get inserts which would slow us down a bit, but put the pay rate up - once I got around $10 for a few hours - I felt rich.

Later in life, I came home one weekend and my dad asked me to mow the lawn (1/2 acre block so it would take an hour or two) and offered me the old amount of $2. I was now working, so said I'd do it for free. He looked a bit crestfallen that he couldn't "help me out" like this - I felt glad I hadn't told him were to stick his totally inadequate offer.
(Skippyfillet, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 11:58, Reply)

How a man boy was thrust into the wonderful yet frightening world of work by his evil ma
At age 15 my ma decided schooling me was a waste so she asked me what I wanted to do. Work with horses or build buildings was my reply. Well I ended up working for this racehorse trainer. This aboriginal apprentice jockey JC and I lived in the loft above the horse boxes with some decent sized rats. If we didn't get out of bed at 3.30am when called trainer threw a saucepan of water over us which was a bastard when you got back into bed after trackwork at around 9am. Every sunday morning he would make us put the boxing gloves on and fight each other in the backyard. This became quite hazardous as we got older and began to stay out drinking all Saturday night.
(rodgerroop, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 11:57, Reply)

evil
i sat at the end of the desk in Re last year an i was nearest to the book shelf so every lesson i would have to carry 20 really heavy text books. i hated it.

so as revenge one day i moved to the back of the class with my good friend and continued to blind the teacher with my mirror.

the next book carrier had a better idea and shoved a table infront of the door. she nearly broke the glass on the door trying to get in.
(torture bunny lives under the kitchen sink, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 10:55, Reply)

nutgrass
frigging nut grass.. my dad being the lovely tightfisted bastard that he is, once paid my sister and i $10 each to spend the weekend picking out "nutgrass" from our newly turfed backyard.

Little did we know that nutgrass grows back overnight and we ended up sitting outside for 20 hours pulling grass from the ground.. all for $10 each.. at the time it seemed like a bargain, but wrong!

after we did it, he paid us the $10 each, until he went out the next morning and saw it was all back again. He yelled at us and told us we hadnt dont it properly and that we were lazy little bitches. He ended up taking $10 off one of us and making us split the remaining $10 between us.

$0.25/hr.. what a generous pay rate.. especially to spend the whole weekend earning this pitance

we got him back though.. scattered bird seed all over the turf so weeds would grow.. muwahahaha
(brotagaia, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 10:43, Reply)

At the car wash
To make some speedy cash, me and my comrade decided to go round the road asking if our neighbours wanted their cars washing. Noone said yes until the end of the day. We spent bloody ages cleaning this twats car, and what does he give us? 20p. To share. Hung himself a few years later so Im sure I win overall.
( HelloIamAdam and Adam is my name, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 10:36, Reply)

Down on the farm
It took many years to dawn on me that my family actually owned the hundred-year-old farm with a healthy rat population, and therefore that we were actually middle class. Nevertheless, I have fond memories of being six years old, walking up and down long ploughed fields of something or other, plunging my bare hands into bags of soft, multi-pastel-coloured superphosphate to strew it daintily along each row.

I wonder if it's in any way related to my being severely fucked in the head?
(Emily Bruce-Dickinson http://jovialfellow.blogspot.com/, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 6:22, Reply)

I've always had low self esteem...(Kind of on topic)
But this sealed the deal. My twin sister and I have always been really self conscious of ourselves because we developed way earlier than 'normal' kids (a hormone issue). I guess our aunt noticed our disomfort and tried to make us feel 'better'...*sigh*
My aunt got the bright 'idea' to let us in a beauty pageant thing, as her bratty daughter did them all the time. My mom agreed, although I don't know why. She hated my aunt. Probably a competition thing, lol. Wouldn't you know it, I came in first runner up, and my sister second. I was so proud of my nice shiny TROPHY.
Fast forward to a few years later, upon finding the trophy in a box, forgotten, collecting dust. Went downstairs, showed my mom, and she told me the real story. :(
Turns out my aunt(I don't claim her anymore for other reasons...she's a nutcase) had FIXED THE WHOLE DAMN THING:( The real clincher comes when I remember who won first place.
My snotty cousin, who would be her daughter. I still have that trophy though..it's missing limbs.
All for nothing...My mom got the last laugh though, I shall tell the rest some other time..it's comical.
(gingerdeadgirl, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 4:45, Reply)

Carrying bricks
My parents overhauled their back garden when I was about 10 or 11, and did all the building and landscaping themselves. They live in an old terraced house with no rear garden access, so all the building materials had to be delivered to the front garden and then carried through the house. And so my brother and I were employed to do this. 2 bricks at a time, one in each hand. It took days. I think we got paid minimum wage (~£3 an hour back then?) so it could have been worse.
(moik, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 3:02, Reply)

Never hay for a neighbor
before finding out what the conditions are there first

I grew up on a farm and during hay season we'd hire up to six other kids to help pile hay in our barn...between every load we would go into the milkhouse and drink our fill of sweet well water and every other load my Mom would send out sodas for everyone

So when one of our neighbors asked if I could help him hay one day I said sure...I was always looking to make a few extra bucks

The guy hired a friend and me only...we were sent to a barn out in the middle of nowhere with NO running water and a quart mayonnaise jar of warm water for the both of us meant to last all day

The water was gone after two loads of hay...we both very nearly died of dehydration by the end of that 100 degree Summer day

To his credit the farmer knew he screwed up but no matter what he promised after that I never helped him hay again
(Inventor of the slipless banana peel, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 2:30, Reply)

Only had a paper round...
...but i managed to relieve the boredom somewhat by having the odd wank down a deserted alleyway. You've got to love the fear of getting caught!
(MrTrent cannot think of a clever sig., Sat 18 Feb 2006, 1:46, Reply)

Never work in a hotel...
Did my work experience in a large hotel (part of a very big worldwide chain) - I wanted to work at a big IT firm, but the only place left they had was in a hotel. Aged 15, I ended up working as a waiter in the hotel resturant for two weeks as the manager took pity on me and said I couldn't possibly be expected to lug bags everywhere as a porter [actually I think he probably didn't want me earning any tips from the guests.].

So I spent two weeks (for no payment) serving middle-aged corporate tw*ts on conferences who complained about everything, wanted service at the speed of light and asked a 15-year-old trainee waiter where they could pick up some 'women of the night for some fun' at the end of the evening. And don't even get me started on the tourists - I'm surprised most of them managed to get out of their own countries.. including the fat American woman who complained I served her a cream tea she'd ordered, because I was supposed to be psychic and work out she was dairy-intolerant... why the hell order a cream-feckin'-tea then!!!

God, I resented those bunch of b*stards - four days in and the rest of the exploited staff made it their mission to train me in the fine art of hotel revenge, such gems included; keeping a magnet under the desk to wipe the strip off the company credit cards, calling the Chef to say that 'Table 4 is complaining about the food' (if you've worked in a kitchen, you'll know what happens to all the food for Table 4), and my personal favourite, accessing the billing system and adding one or two pron films to the bills of 'difficult' customers, espcially those who's bills are sent directly to their companies for payment.

This is why I'm always very nice to hotel staff and try to eat out whenever I stay in a hotel...

Length..Apologies..etc
( HSDriver was probably still at work on, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 1:34, Reply)

Me and some mates
When i used to live in France i had a group of friends with which i would go out to a small farming village in the foothills of the Pyrenees and would occasionally help out the locals with various farm jobs. We decided to head out for my friends 18th for much drinking and smoking. Skip to us at 6 in the morning on my mates bday picking potatoes for his grandad till the sun went down...for free. By the time we had showered and regrouped after this we were far to tired to even bother drinking and my poor friend was in bed with terrible sunburn after supper - good times
(dethsd, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 1:31, Reply)

Old-ish guy, lived down the street, old friend of my mum's.
It's the summer holidays, I need some pocket money, so my mum suggests that I do some garden work for him. Cue a week of cleaning ponds, digging grass, mixing cement, cleaning sheds, breaking up bricks, pissing about with water features, cleaning filters, you name it. I spent everynight that week dreaming of a shiney tenner that awaited me on sunday. Come the end of the week, I pop 'round in order to receive my monetary bounty and what do I get?...a quid. A fucking quid. Cheers, Bob, you stingy cunt.
( Laughing Boy, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 0:56, Reply)

I was forced.
My mother and grandmum when I was a kid used to make extra money having garage sales and selling stuff at flea markets at every free weekend. So any extra unpayable worker they could get to help them was drafted - including me and my sis. Unfortunately my sister being an utter cunt and the fact that everyone knew they weren't gonna get paid left me their only option a good deal of the time. So primary school age me got stuck every saturday in the blazing hot sun either helping to sell my old toys and clothes (which sometimes my mum sold without even telling me beforehand) or cheap school supplies to old women with fanny packs and bright-colored stretch pants looking for stuff to give their grandkids.

My reward for my chlid labor: the ability for me and my sis to eat school lunches everyday. And the occasional sunburn.

I have two jobs now and neither of them are in retail.
(HaMM, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 0:20, Reply)

Bob a job 25 years ago...
"50p to wash your car mister.. bob a job."

50p and 10 minues later with one shoddy carwash to show for it we'd be pissing the money up against the sweet shop wall.

They never did ask us why we were out of our scouts uniforms.

hmm. maybe this wasn't exactly in the spirit of the question.. but hey. We got paid.
( Airman Gabber Living life like a 70's BBC presenter, Sat 18 Feb 2006, 0:10, Reply)

bob a job
Being in the cub scouts in the 70's, every year bob a job come round and we would have to go round touting for jobs.
The worst ones were the old biddies who, for 5p, would have complete garden makeovers, by a 8 year old. how times change, thank fuck
(drewpy, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 23:37, Reply)

Picking spuds for Paddy priests.
when I was at boarding school in the early 70's, all of us who boarded at weekends would have to pick the school farm's potato harvest. Three hours in the pissing rain, with forty 12 year old boys staggering under hundredweight bags of spuds.

And the pay?

10p.

Still, at least it was a break from the anal rape.
(all my scars face forward possesses 2.5% of a hyperalloy combat chassis, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 22:14, Reply)

A life of work is fucking hard
In my fourth year of high school we were allowed out into the world of work for work experience. I ended up at a local fish selling company. Now i expected a easy life of stock taking in the company shop but it wasn't to be. Firstly myself and another member of my class at the smae company had to dispose of old company documents kept in a disused fishbox store. Now this was fucking like the victorian era building, infested with rats and virtually no light. Also the cunts gave us old coal bags to put the documents in so we were coated in coal dust and looked like chimney sweeps. I sneezed coal dust for a most of the cunting week.

Another time working down the local fish market I has the glamourous job of covering these big tubs (about 4ftx4ftx4ft) full of fish with ice. I did this for about four hours and twas fucking sore on me old back and being up to your elbows in ice isn't that much fun. Saying that I made £50 for this so was good money all you had to do was put up with the cold hard labour and scary fishermen :(
(Pfft_Of_Course_We_Graduated_COCK_Beer?, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 20:56, Reply)

Well..
I work for the News of the World and I get those hip young kids at b3ta to make content for us, we put it in our pisspoor magazine and then don't even give them a mention, far less payment. mwah ha hah
( BadBadman saw an incorrect comma placement on, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 20:42, Reply)