a fish thing
first summer job from uni, small fishworks in aberdeen, mostly salmon (not smelly), some white fish (smelly) ... boss was a grasping capitalist cunt of the first order ... paid students substantially less than other staff as "they don't pay tax" (a lie), left an open barrel of fish guts lying around all week until it was swarming with maggots then delegated staff to maneouvre it out the door for the fishmeal truck to collect ...

and once when packing salmon in a mini-production line, i managed to accidentally spang another staff member in the face with a shovel (ice fell off it, the release of weight let the shovel rise, the other guy was leaning over a packing box, i broke one of his front teeth)

i was pretty guilty but the boss was solely concerned that the now toothless student wasn't going to sue him ... bastard

also this was a long long time ago (chaz & di wedding) ... on the day the office staff got champagne and a tv so they could watch and celebrate - we got fuck all (didn't want anything but a complementary gesture would have been nice)

old bastard
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 13:51, Reply)

The Wonderful World Of Work
For work experience, (aged 15) me and a friend were both packed of to the local offices of a certain civil service that shall remain nameless. Whereas I had a fab time sitting next to an hilarious woman who was the office favourite for the fine reason that she had amazing legs and a taste in skirts that were so short they stopped a couple of inches south of her belt, my mate had less fun.

He was sat next to a man who seemed reasonably normal. At first anyway. His first clue was at the coffee break when the man got his mug out of the drawer. Not only was his mug in the shape of a ceramic tit but his open drawer revealed a stack of men's muscle magazines. Naturally this freaked my mate out slightly, but nowhere near as much as when his new colleague started gently resting his hand on his thigh while explaining things to him.

Cut to the next day and, after a swift conversation with one of the bosses, my mate was 'working' in a different department and the man with the cermic tit mug had mysteriously stopped coming to work. Funny that.
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Mon 20 Feb 2006, 13:48, Reply)

gas
I'd like to tell you about our old gas meter. When I was only about 6 or 7 My mother told me it was a magical money box. So every pound coin I gained went straight into the meter. Weeks passed. I didn't know how to retrieve the monies and my mum was unable to furnish me with an appropriate answer.
I soon rendered the meter inoperable resulting in a visit from transco (or whoever it was then)
(xwoody01, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 13:38, Reply)

Paper boy
I always imagined being a paper boy was like being on the amstrad 464 game of the same name, tear along on ones bike avoiding radio controlled cars, dogs, bee's? Pikey cunts!

But when I got a paper round it was teadious, and I'm not very good at getting up in the morning. Any how I went to work at the local corner shop for some miserible cunt know as Shifty for it was his name, but locally know as Shifty the shit!

Any how I would have to deliver 2 types of paper, 1 free and one not. So I had to make 2 trips.

Several weeks into the job my Dad came down from the shed 1 day asking why the shed was pilled high with papers. See I decided I couldnt be fucked to deliver the free one! Dad didnt care he had something to light the bonfire with.

Some weeks later.
Some old dear had complained that she wasn't getting her free shitty paper, and Shifty the shit had a right go at me, when I told him to stick his paper up his arse he went to punch me, at which piont I kicked him square in the bollocks, not bad for a 15 year old!

The point is I was getting paid fuck all so Why should I deliver some shit paper that was free any way, (go to the shop and get the smegger!)

Still cant get up in the morning and I run my own business.
(ruud316, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 13:19, Reply)

When I was 18/19or so...
[Only just realised how long this is – ah well, I’ve just spent 10 minutes typing it so you’re ‘avin’ it ;)]

...one of my older cousins was harping on and on about how much money he was making picking cockles at a beach in our then-native Merseyside. And yes, it was the very beach where years later, those poor illegals got caught and drowned by the tide and spawned various hoo-haa's for a few months. For as long as people remembered enough to give a fuck, anyway.

My brother and I listened to this bragging on my cousin's part and eyed the, at that time, impressive amounts of dosh he had to throw about. After a brief brainstorm we offered our services as he had mentioned that the 'boss' (which, as we found later, translated to the Queen’s English as ‘double-dealing pikey cunt’) was always looking for extra help. Sadly, the phrase ‘high staff turnover’ and the warning bells it should ring weren’t installed in my brain at the time. So, we were waiting on a street corner with our cousin at 5am on a Saturday for the lad with the van to come get us. The van ride was good fun – skinned up, took the piss out of the idiots with windsurfers setting out for a day’s total failure to travel more than 5 yards in an upright position on the Merseyside coast etc. Then the time came to get to work.

I think, unless you’ve actually had to do it in industrial amounts as we did, that ‘picking cockles’ sounds quite light-hearted and jolly - theme tune to The Archers-type stuff, right? Imagine, then, spending the best part of six hours bent double with what was essentially a high-quality seaside-set rake dragging these little fuckers out from below the sand to fill enormous sacks, for which you were paid £7.50 each. Cockles spit at you if disturbed too, and its extra-salty – just try catching a few of those shots in the eye – the novelty wears thin quick. Bear in mind also that Merseyside's beaches aren't the cleanest in the world by a long chalk.

In short, it was fucking backbreaking and highly unpleasant besides.

At the end of the day (about 1pm), I had four sacks to call my own, collected and tagged by another pikey on a quadbike. When my catch was evaluated, the boss bitched illegibly for about five minutes about my now three-quarters full sacks. My protestations that I don’t do half or even three-quarters of a job that I’m being paid for, and that they were full when quad-boy took them from me fell upon deaf ears. I found out from my cousin later that he did this to a random selection of the new ones, skimming about a quarter of their catch off to bolster his own. I say ‘bolster’, but I mean ‘manufacture’ as I didn’t see the craggy bastard on the beach once the entire time, so I was already suspicious when he compared his own magical graft-free sacks to mine. In the end, I was offered £4 per sack. This pissed me off big-time after what I'd been through for the promise of nearly twice as much, so I grabbed the bottom corners of all four sacks and upended them onto his feet – ‘Now they’re worth 4 quid, you shady fucker’. I then retired to the relative warmth of the van to sulk and ache until such time came to go home. I didn’t even get to rest up in the van though because the boss needed to use it as well as his own small flatbed to take the haul to the fishmongers or wherever.

‘Yer still on one wi me lad?’ he asked as I jumped out of the van. ‘Yeah, well being bent over and fucked without even being asked does that to a lad round my way mate’. He laughed and seemed to take a shine to me after that. He came to me a little later saying that he couldn’t fit the quad onto his own ride along with the day’s haul and needed someone to keep an eye on it here at the beach until he dropped the cockles. For this, he would still pay me the 4 notes per sack despite the fact that I turned them into near-roadkill and another fiver for watching the quad. This placated me somewhat.

They were gone for more than 90 minutes, leaving me alone with a knackered-looking but well-maintained and still quite nippy quadbike and an expanse of beach to play with, so I did just that - good fun :)

I was sat there on it enjoying a slightly jury-rigged spliff after I’d finished playing when some middle-class arsehole, his wifey and two spawn came down onto the beach. Looking across at me on the quad he said to his wife but loud enough for me to hear ‘So that’s who was waking me up at seven this morning’, referring to quad-boy’s more industrious use of the ride rather than my own recent larking about. Still, I've always hated it when folk snipe in such a spineless manner - especially blokes who, in my opinion, really should have more balls. So, I started up the quad and rolled up alongside them (probably looking as grizzled as my employer-for-a-day after what I’d been doing all morning), and said ‘What, you mean like this?’, revved it until it screamed and peeled off, showering the four of them with the effluent-encrusted sand. I have to say, that satisfaction alone made the entire day worthwhile.

Eventually the party returned, and the boss asked me (after paying me) if I felt any better, so I told him ‘Yeah, just about’. He laughed again and said ‘See yer again then?’. My reply of ‘Not if my fucking life depends on it mate.’ caused his recent fondness to fade before my eyes and he shuffled off, muttering. True, he had tried to make amends and I'd shined him on but he shouldn't have tried to short-change me in the first place, the theiving prick. At the time I couldn’t give a toss anyway – I just wanted to get home and get in the bath – I ached and stank in equal measure, and the measure was quite a big one.

Cockling; take my advice folks – not a pleasant pastime in any conceivable way, and not worth the money they pay for it even when they don’t fuck you, free quad fun or no. Oh, and if your headman doesn't know or care the first thing about the tides, you could drown too. Better leave it, all things considered.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 12:40, Reply)

What do you mean child labour...
Im A first year student nurse, My pay for my 40+hr weeks is £113.75 a month!
I did a little maths and this works out at 71p per hour. And I might just add that me and the other students really do most of the work. Anybody staying in a hospital where student nurses work might well agree that we do most of the work too...
(iydlibm ...If I Am Online Here, I Am Definatly Bored..., Mon 20 Feb 2006, 12:16, Reply)

Work Experience...
... worked out pretty good for me. Year 10 (15 years old); I get work experience at a certain Civil Engineering firm in south London (I lived in Ruislip, NW London at the time). The 2 weeks started mundanely enough - filing, photocopying etc.; however, by the end I was going out on site visits for clients (Tescos at Tunbridge Wells, if I remember correctly) and making specified alterations to structural drawings for a building under consideration (I don't know where it was for, so I can't tell you if it's now collapsed).

Anyway, at the end of the week, what should I get but - £200; result! (travel had worked out to about £40 all told) The school's official line was no pay, but this placement not being organised by the school, they obviously didn't get this info.

Did this experience lead me into my current career path (currently 3rd Year engineer at St. Aidan's, Uni of Durham)? Probably...

PS On the other hand, I have been exploited rotten by my parents whenever they need help with DIY/gardening.
(Tri-ang is keeping up his 1 post per 2 months average, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 11:57, Reply)

Evil Nuns
20 odd years ago I went to a boarding Primary school run by nuns (Nuns are pure evil BTW and back then beating you with a stick was their idea of fun - or something) - They'd get you to do idiot things at the church like moving the pews, organs, , etc for which you weren't paid at all - Doing work for your church was payment enough apparently - not very convincing even to a 7 year old I can tell you......

(Suffice to say that I don't practice religion, restrain myself from hurling abuse whenever I see a Nun and have a general hatred for all things Roman Catholic these days)

First post this year! Hooray :-D
(james_tiger_woods is going to start his killing spree on the, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 11:46, Reply)

I thought I would go against the theme of back breaking paper rounds...
I did a paper round for about 4 year, and it was excellent.
about 30ish papers (our local rag, so inbetween a broadsheet and the sun) a few minutes bike ride from my house every morning.
The best bit was the fact that since I worked directly from the paper company (the van dropped off my bundle of papers at my house every morning) I got to go round every house once a week and collect the money due, then pass on the required amount. So lots of people paying me £2.50 for the week instead of £2.35 or whatever, which adds up when you get to keep any tips to yourself - usually about £25 a week

The best bit was christmas, one year I made something like £120 worth of tips in the week before christmas, plus a few selection boxes and stuff nice old ladies gave me, and a rather cool wallet from another house

There was also the evening rounds, similar to the above, but we had to go round to a house (namely the ladie who ran our area) and collect the papers, which usually ended with me and a few friends pissing about for ages before actually doing anything, and the delight of the local loonie coming past every so often and talking at us - he would stand and talk about utter shite, completely unconcerned by nobody payign him any attention or the lady who lived there shouting at him to piss off

I gave it up after they started getting everyone to pay via direct debit instead of me collecting the money, so no tips or anythign over the standard pay. except the last few weeks before they chenged when I nicely reminded the customers how it was changing and got a few farewell tips from these people I had been seeing every week for the last few years. Excellent

Now I work in the photo lab in Boots, which is cool too, and definately miles better than working in Asda or something

back breaking work? I will leave that to someone else if i can...

David
(442, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 11:36, Reply)

My afternoon paper round was actually a popular event.
Friends used to come with me on my afternoon round simply for the fun that used to ensue.

One house had a dog which could reach the rather high letter box.

It used to leap up, grab the paper and then fuck off. We discovered that if you didn't let go then the dog would jump repeatedly, getting more and more angry and ripping more and more of the paper to pieces.

Every day after this discovery they received a twisted ripped utterly fucked newspaper.
We used to cry with laughter at that. They never said a word either. Still, it was the Daily Mail.

We also winched a mate up a scaffold in a builders bucket. He got to about 60ft up the block of flats before he started to cry.

We showed our willies to a woman in a different block of flats.

We stole 'prizes' from the old peoples home tombola, usually some tinned peaches or some such shit.

We routinelly tried to piss our names onto the road or do distance pissing, or perhaps the high-piss.

then i'd get £8 at the end of the week.
(beebolbod for those that are hard of hearing - LISTEN, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 11:02, Reply)

Work Experience...
Year 10 I turn up to a primary school with a class of 7 to 8 year olds for my work experience, thinking I will be making a difference helping these little kids to learn, but they have different ideas, what wonderful work am i given? they sat me on those fu cking 2ft high chairs and gave me about 10 ice cream tubs full of pencils to sharpen. The job did not get a lot more thrilling as the week went on i can assure you...all for absoloutely nooo money, the bas*ards
(You Love It, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 10:54, Reply)

My cunty mother...
...signed me up for a morning round when i was about 12.
First day, about 30 papers on top of the ice cream freezer. In the bag. Easy.
Despite the cold etc it was a piece of piss and i started to forgive my mother for making me do this horrific work.

Until Saturday and Sunday.

I entered the shop and looked to the freezer. No papers.
Instead of my pile on the freezer there were 2 piles on the floor, both of which reached my shoulders due to all the fucking supplements.

I didn't last long.
(beebolbod for those that are hard of hearing - LISTEN, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 10:45, Reply)

Every cloud....
When I was about 14, a paperboy in the next town went missing from his paper round, and subsequently turned out to have been murdered by a paedophile. This is a terribly sad but true story.

Until the man who did it was caught, there was a very real sense of panic among parents that this person could strike again. So many stopped their children from doing their paper rounds

Obviously, this led to a skills shortage in my local town of people with a the relevant qualifications to deliver newspapers. i.e. posession of bicycle, ability to read numbers on front of doors.

The newsagents were either having to deliver the papers themselves, or ask their customers to come fetch them. Not an ideal situation.

Seeing an opportunity to cash in, I strolled into my local Dillons (local paper shop chain) and said "Any paper rounds going?".

The following day I found myself laden with three day-glo orange bags on my Raleigh Mountain Bike (with mudguards that my Dad insisted I have, I mean how gay are mud guards on a mountain bike?) spending an hour and a half delivering papers to the mostly elderly residents of my town, who turned out to be excellent Christmas tippers!

I kept this up for the next 18 months, and also took on an evening paper round too. I ended up being shit at school, but rich (for a 14 year old).

So I'd like to extend a big hand of thanks to that paperboy, who's untimely demise indirectly benefitted me to the tune of about £25 a week. Cheers.

So not really a story of how I was exploited as a child, but a story of how I exploited the newspaper delivery industry. Yes.

Next week: How I got a school caretakers job in Cambridgeshire, when the previous employee had to leave the post unexpectedly.
( Roland E O'Dorant R Tape loading error, 0:1, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 10:03, Reply)

when I was 13 it my old man decided I had to get a job
so I got a morning paper round, all well and good 14 quid a week and at Christmas I would get 200-250 in tips, not that bad really.

on top of that when I was 15 I worked in a bike shop for 20 quid every Saturday.

and from the age of 16 I waited on tables 3 nights a week.

I should have been raking it in but all I have to show for it is lopsided shoulders, a rather nice bike and bad attitude to work.
( Neon Blue Ah ha ha haa! I feel positively capital!, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 7:32, Reply)

This happens every weekend.
Since I was raised in a technology centered household in the 90's, I learned a lot, and quickly. I started using the internet at the age of four, and things have progressed rapidly since. Needless to say, I have more advanced skills than the average trained monkey.
My father's fiancee claims to know a lot about computers, when actually she doesn't. She also has a thirteen year old son that is operating mentally and socially on the level of maybe a nine year old (either this, or I was less stupid when I was his age) and thinks he knows about computers.

I'm forced to live there on the weekends with my father, and since he's too busy with her or whatever he claims (all I know is I'm the one always fixing things) so I'm the one that always has to fix their computers, which seem to have seirous problems all the time. I'm paid nothing, and I get all sorts of verbal abuse from his fiancee and her son.
This QOTW made me go check online just how much it would be for me to actually charge for me fixing their things.
This month alone, I've installed a wireless network, installed antivirus programs, troubleshooted problems, and been on hold with tech support just to prove that there was a significant problem I couldn't fix.

And this list is only the stuff I can remember. (prices are for Best Buy Geek Squad)
Wireless Network Setup (Two Computers)- $159
Antivirus Install- $129
Antivirus Install- $129 (I did this on two different computers)
Antispyware Install- $29
Antispyware Install- $29 (also on two machines)
Software Install- $29
Software Install- $29
Software Install- $29
Software Install- $29
Software Install- $29 (at least five pieces of software)
Network Troubleshooting- $79
Network Troubleshooting- $79
Network Troubleshooting- $79
Network Troubleshooting- $79 (and most likely even more than this, also.)
System Tune Up- $49
System Tune Up- $49 (twice on one machine, even.)
Peripheral Setup- $49
Add a Device to an Existing Network- $129
PC Setup and System Customization- $129
I'll be assisting in Data Migration (Transfer) next weekend- $229
PC Setup and System Customization- $129
2-Hour Basic Training- $229
2-Hour Basic Training- $229
2-Hour Basic Training- $229
2-Hour Basic Training- $229
2-Hour Basic Training- $229 (I've provided more than ten hours in the past two years, I can say this.)
This adds up to a grand total of $2598, without taxes, and this is only the stuff I can remember.

So, since I'm an unpaid geek filled to the brim of teenage angst, I plan to have as much fun as I can with the systems there every weekend starting next weekend, ranging from me finding the kid's passwords on his computer and making copies to all, to installing a backdoor to his system and controlling it remotely, to simple things like a keystroke logger and me just generally messing up things internally and externally.

The spoiled little brat will have no idea what is happening to his new $1200 computer (I fail to mention she just bought this kid a new dual core media center PC with 17" LCD just so that he can play his ninny little games with his so called friends. When I was his age, (less than three years ago) all I had was a quickly aging windows 98 machine that couldn't even run open office properly, and it was a great starting computer, as you couldn't mess it up any more. But this kid... damn is all I have to say.)

They're none the wiser, because the kid IS a moron (he was caught deleting part of the system registry a few months ago) and when things will start to go wrong in the next few weeks, I'll not be the one at fault, as since I have to fix it, then why would I do such a thing? I'm a good big sister apparently!

/end rant
(to the lighthouse, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 6:33, Reply)

paper rounds..
i used to get paid £18 a week (big money at 14!) for doing a morning round at 6am, an evening round at 4pm, and then doing a huge 40 supliment paper round on a sunday.

worst thing was by the time i got my wages i had about £3 cos i'd already took magazinges and choccy bars out of my wages :(

edit: now there's a 16yr old kid at work earning over £1000 a month and he wonders why i don't like him
( northernwifeb3ta is going to Dubai in December :D for "work", Mon 20 Feb 2006, 2:20, Reply)

Beware the crooked uncle
Being young, poor, and an insufferable geek I was direly in need of a little money to upgrade my PC. My uncle, who had started up something like his 7th business in two years, wanted me to go posting leaflets around town, and offered to pay £35 for it to me and my elder brother. Okidokie, we say, thinking it can't be too many houses.

Oooh no, he wants every single house in the town done.

Cue a few weeks of us hauling crates of leaflets with us, popping one in every letterbox in the entire town, sometimes for hours at a time, in the blazing summer sun, the only thing keeping us going being the promise of proper money after we'd finished. (I even got bitten by a dog as I posted one - hurt like hell, bled a lot, and got me put on antibiotics for a fortnight. Yeeeeea)

Finally we had finished our Herculean task, and returned the excess leaflets to my uncle. He looked down at the masses of over-printed leaflets, looked back up to us, and said "You've not finished."

Yes, his own completely fucked up calculations were somehow our fault. He'd over-estimated the town population to about ten times larger than it actually was, and docked our pay to a miserable £15 each.
(Vulpine or something, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 1:06, Reply)

Health and safty anyone?
Work experience aye? Best way to teach kids that your life is going to be shit so just reach for the bottle.

At the age of 15, so around 4 years ago now, i got a placement in an office. I turn up on the first day and enquire as to just where my contact is, the morons at reception point me to anouther building, so I go to cross over the industrial estate to get to said building, only, there are many buildings, and i dont know which is the right one, and all the trucks in the north east decide to use the area as some sort of race track, makign the crossing VERY scary. I fianly manage to get to the building I'm ment to be at, ask anouther receptionist about my contact, im told, shes gone on holiday. Fucksocks!

So I wait about an hour, before some guy comes to get me and drive me to the first building i went in, and introduces me to the genetic throwbacks that make up the office. He hands me my first task, photo copy boy. Brill. Once I do that, I file all the papers in some stupid system, still using files, it was 2002 for god sake! Any way, after a couple of days of this, I get moved to work with a woman so intoxicatingly stupid I fear I may catch downs syndrome just by listening to her. I finaly work out what the office does, they investigate asbestos in local buildings. Great, I'm saving lives. Was great, untill I spent a day with asbestos samples on my desk, in little plastic zippy bags, that are poorly sealed. By this point I wanted to leave badly, but still, more files to be fileld so i get to work. By midday on my 4th day, they ran out of stuff for me to do, I spent 2 hours at a desk, staring blankly into space. My final day and I really cant take much more, I get to send a fax, which i didnt manage to do properly, first i dialed the phone number, then I send the whole 12 page document. Apparently "Fax this" just means the first page. We live and learn.

By 2pm, I was again, finnished evry last boring task the office had, so I decided to ask if I could go. I'm told I can, but I should talk to the guy who drove me to the hell hole in the first place. Great! Some money I thinks, even £10 would have done, just to show thanks for my tireless efforts to keep the files in order. What do I get? Nothing, he literly talked about how he hoped that it had been of some bennifit to me. I Said it had, still expecting money, unfortunatly, all he gave me was a hand shake and let me go ride the bus filled with old ladies and ugly people.

I still hate them, though I did learn somthing, DON'T WORK IN AN OFFICE!
(Mong goose, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 0:47, Reply)

Paper Route
Hated 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).
(cox2inhibitor, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 22:01, Reply)

enforced massages
My parents were a very stressed lot, what with the impending financial doom caused by Dad's gambling, alcoholism and of course three teenage children.

Money for normal teenage things like going to the roller skating disco on a Friday in a new bubble skirt (it was the 80s, had to be earnt and my main job was to massage my dad's bulky shoulders and my mothers high heel deformed feet! Which I can tell you could really stink and be somewhat strange to explain to my friends.

But that wasn't the worst, my parents then started telling relatives how good I was at massage and soon every Nanna, great aunt and uncle all wanted some of the healing hands of yours truly.

To stymie demand for my services I upped the rates but without luck and the horror of going to a family occasion and seeing rows of feet slipped out of shoes as I entered a room still lives with me today, and the smell the horrible smell.

On the bright side my powers of massage still impress people today and can be put to strategic use when I need IT boys to get something done for me at work and of course getting laid.

Long time listener, first time poster.
(thirpy, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 21:08, Reply)

Car Washes.
Me and a couple of mates used to tour our local area when it was nice offering a car wash for a mere £1. All you had to do was provide water, soap (optional) and sometimes a sponge because we used to use anything that was vaguely spongelike at a pinch.

We all though it was a fantastic idea that would keep us in the good books of our local neighbours (when we weren't throwing things at their cars), but looking back on it, £1 for a car wash was akin to slave labour. Self induced.
(drviagra, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 19:13, Reply)

Work Experience
15 years of age, making a database for a smallish company, apparently work experience has to be unpaid and the school manages to tell every employer this. What utter bastards.

Imagine my suprise when I was given a £50 cheque on the second day. Score!

*laughs at everyone else's misery*

Years later realises this was £2 an hour, half minimum wage! Still better than your heart ripping stories.

*resumes laughing*
(Runawaypig ran away on, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 19:13, Reply)

Synagogue
About 11 or 12, living in montreal, my sister´s boyfriend told me and 2 mates that cleaning the synagogue down the street paid really good money. Little did we know that some parts of the place hadn´t been cleaned in decades (i shit you not).
Cue the big metal garbage dump which he had to empty and clean...cue a 4 inch thick layer of maggets, worms and a smell that INSTANTLY made the three of us vomit. "big money" we all said, cleared the magget infested, now vomit coated mess for about an hour.
a week later, pay day... $30 can. for the three of us. Needless to say we were not very convinced about joining the faith. But oh the sweet revenge, in the form of stuffed roadkill in the heating ducts.
(JUANZO_BELL, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 17:31, Reply)

Stade rides Hastings - 15 - 80p an hour
Talk about child labour - working on Stade rides Hastings Old Town circa 1989 for 80p an hour. My how I felt rich.
Highlight of the year was the carnival day we could work 18 hour shift whilst dealing with rowdy kids, drunk townies and heaving unwashed masses.
Then all the money was spent in arcades - that the owner of the amusuement park owned. Arf.
(The_artist_formally_known_as_alz0r, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 16:22, Reply)

Trench Warfare!
Many years ago (age 10 or so) my friend and I were watching some old war films on a glorious summers day in the holidays, might've been All Quiet on the Western Front or somesuch. We took from this the idea that fighting in trenches was a Fun Thing To Do (we may have missed the point of that particular film).

So we were talking about how we could perhaps make our own trenches to fight in if we could find some shovels and somewhere to dig. My friend's father overheard us and announced that he thought that the trench warfare sounded like a Fun Thing To Do also, and, very kindly, offered us the use of his shovels.

'Where to dig though?' we asked, to which the father replied that he would let us dig in the far end of his garden, as he didn't use that part of the garden for anything.

Needless to say we were ecstatic, and happily dug out trenches at matey's father's direction. Our masterpiece of the sapper's art was completed after a few days, and we were all combat fatigued up and ready to fight. Matey's father pointed out that it was getting dark, and so playing there might be dangerous, suggesting to start the following day.

On our arrival the next day we were greeted by the sight of matey's father cheerfully filling the newly tarpaulin'd 'trench' with water from his hosepipe. "Cheers boys, why don't you go and play football down the park?"

If we had paid more attention to the war films we may have questioned him as to why he wanted the trench dug in a more circular shape, as looking back, his justification that "that's how they dug them during the first world war when they wanted extra protection" wasn't really watertight.

We went down the park to play football.
(ianfidel, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 16:07, Reply)

I used to work in a travel agents...
when i was about 13 or 14, doing the data entry and mundane IT type tasks for a pitiful 'wage' of 85p an hour. I also used to work out my own timesheets and once got a massive bollocking for accidently rounding up to 90p, meaning i made about an extra pound that week. My boss died of a heart attack several years after i left. Karma? Maybe...
(town, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 15:46, Reply)

I've been a Sunday paper boy since I was 13 (Now 17)
I've not had a single payrise, the papers get bigger year on year, and every fucking week I get the same fucking cunt complaining about his paper. Take a few weeks ago for example. Pissing it down with rain, all the papers are getting fucking soaked. I get to the cunt house, push his cheap crappy Mail on Sunday through, and wait for the door to be flung open. Sure enough, it was. And I was treated to a lecture about how "all you chav kids are the same" and that I "should dry the papers before posting"

The paper was in a plastic bag and I have long black hair, was wearing all black and listening to Bullet For My Valentine. So yes. I'm a chav alright.

Oh and I only get £5 a week for 2 hours work.
(Karl avec un K I am an England fan, Sun 19 Feb 2006, 15:18, Reply)