Child LabourThere is a special part of Hell I'd like to reserve for those arses that order every single Sunday paper. Do you know how heavy that makes the bundle of papers some poor kid (ie me) has to lug around? Funny how your papers always seemed to get mangled in your letterbox...
I loved my paper round, but, looking back, I was getting paid peanuts to ruin my back and cycle around in the cold and dark. How were you exploited as a child?
(
chthonic, Fri 17 Feb 2006, 12:05)
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Beware the crooked uncleBeing 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.
(, Mon 20 Feb 2006, 1:06, Reply)
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