#1 2020-02-08 12:24:47

I cataloged the many shit jobs I had as a kid ages ago, then box entombed them hoping I'd forget. Didn't work.

Fled's recollection of humping DC office equipment reminded me again how many of those pre-OSHA and enforced child labor law jobs I enjoyed, and learned something.

Got any of those?

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#2 2020-02-08 14:00:52

I have another that stands out in my now hazy memory.

IHOP busboy - got fired for complaining when the cook hocked a loogie in the batter.

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#3 2020-02-08 14:28:53

Fled wrote:

IHOP busboy - got fired for complaining when the cook hocked a loogie in the batter.

The IHOP mngr in my town turned up on the Ten Most Wanted List.

I busboyed for a year. Worked my ass off but they fed us well and the waitstaff were fair about the tip split. Same town also fined homeowners for failing to shovel their walks, always a source of kid shake downs.

Remember the last time you saw a kid raking leaves? I don't.

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#4 2020-02-08 15:38:51

Not me, but one friend in Cleveland literally worked in the salt mines, and another shoveled arsenic for half a day (in a full hazmat suit) before he came to his senses and realized how dangerous it was.

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#5 2020-02-08 20:21:02

...reminded me again how many of those pre-OSHA and enforced child labor law jobs I enjoyed, and learned something.

Got any of those?

And don't forget the pre EPA poking around era!

Filling Sodium Hypochlorite carboys by hand with a gravity fed nozzle. A thousand at a time, I couldn't believe it, but I watched the guys show me how if you stayed just alert enough, you could catch it and not have to shut the hard to turn nozzle of when moving between jugs. No containment, just a bunch of old pallets that would get replaced as the turned weirdly white and were eaten away. Never quite seen mud like that since. I remember being amazed at watching the clothes disintegrate off my arms and legs as I gawked but miraculously my skin remained unharmed. Your skin is amazing stuff! That year I never had itchy poison ivy no matter how I waded through it. Envy of all my stoner friends.

The fun came to an end the day a 20000 gallon tank split all at once from stem to stern while refilling. The way it erupted out from the top of the high tank was an incredible spray, covered the entire company fleet of trucks and out over the fence up along the neighboring houses next door. The tanker truck driver promptly unhooked our hose and drove off. Can't really blame him, it was not his tank that split wide on the other side of the chain link fence. The 60 employees were mobilized to create make shift levees out of PVC tarps to keep the deluge out of the plumbing warehouse down the slope. It was successfully diverted just in time! And sent on its way...right down the storm sewer manholes we popped open and when they overflowed right over the tarmac edge to the woods. And that was that. Except  down in there beyond the green wall of the riparian margin was our favorite creek where all us kids spent our childhoods learning how to live, what it meant to be outside in the world, hunting crayfishes and tadpoles, falling in love at the swimming holes  and later growing maryjane back up behind the nettles.

They put up reinforced concrete encased tanks after that. And in a pretty clever way, by laying in an extra thick layer of concrete across all the yard, removing the old site out beyond thick catchment walls and fancy surface sump pumps, they effectively entombed the 40 years of bleached mud all the way down to the water table. Like capping a nuclear cesspool at Hanford. Out of site, out of mind, no one would ever need to know what is down below.

Last edited by Johnny_Rotten (2020-02-09 09:01:49)

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#6 2020-02-08 23:23:43

Does being a drug mule at 15 years old count?

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#7 2020-02-09 08:58:40

Only if it was for something really interesting.

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#8 2020-02-09 13:54:37

Taking Mescaline from Colorado, to San Francisco, Exchanging it for LSD to back to Colorado.  1967.

Last edited by SpacePuppy (2020-02-09 13:55:15)

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#9 2020-02-09 15:34:47

SpacePuppy wrote:

Taking Mescaline from Colorado, to San Francisco, Exchanging it for LSD to back to Colorado.  1967.

You're fifteen so you longhair thumbed it, hidden where?

Do we want to know?

I hitched from Tuscon to CT with a $40 1Kg brick of ditchweed and a fist full of peyote buttons in the bottom of my bedroll for personal consumption. I got risk averse after that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dealing:_ … -Bag_Blues

Last edited by choad (2020-02-09 16:44:42)

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#10 2020-02-09 16:48:12

Mescaline was legal up unto 1968. LSD was scheduled only in California, until 1968. Legal going in, not so going out of California.  All in my pack. Weekly there and back over several months, along with forays to L.A., Santa Cruz, etc.

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#11 2020-02-11 11:26:07

I cleaned hog casings and moved tubs slopping full of steaming offal in a hot shed for a summer. It was good training for being an IT consultant later.

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#12 2020-02-11 12:10:14

GooberMcNutly wrote:

It was good training for being an IT consultant later.

Word.

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#13 2020-02-11 15:34:33

Carny, 'nuf said.

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#14 2020-02-11 19:11:19

Emmeran wrote:

Carny, 'nuf said.

..I think of Gary Busey.....

Last edited by Mugwump (2020-02-11 19:12:27)

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