Funny/Weird "part time jobs" as a young adult or while in school

[BringBackFergy]

Was just reminded of these various jobs I had as a youngster...some funny, some weird:

 

1) I turned 16 yrs old and looked in the Pennysaver.  The Springbrook Hotel was in need of a bartender. Yes, I was 16, but they didn't care. It was kind of a dive bar at the time (earlier years it had decent fish fry). I started out and worked with the older bartender...then I was on my own one night.  Most guys would order 12 ounce Genny Cream drafts or simple drinks like that.  One night the tenant who lived upstairs was so drunk I had to help him upstairs. I'm pretty sure the other guys at the bar helped themselves to draft beers and shots while I was away from the bar.

 

2) In graduate school I had THREE weird jobs:

   

a) Ice Cream Truck driver - through one of the worst sections of the city where I was in school...I lasted three days.

b) Ballroom Dancing Studio - Telemarketing - I had to call people at night and offer them free dance lessons.  I felt worthless.  I think I converted maybe 1 or 2 households (scheduled them for free lessons) over two months.

c) Last job was at a private country club.  The guy I worked for was Lebanese.  He was miserable to me.  I was table prep and bussed tables.  I also had to assist the host with the table side Caesar salad (prep the cart with all the ingredients) so I learned how to make a real Caesar salad from that experience.  The members were complete asshats.

 

Anyone have any funny or interesting part time jobs you remember? 

 

[SDS]

Strawberry picker. $.25 a quart.

[Joe Ferguson forever]

Ice cream maker at my uncles dairy.   Cut lawns for them too. Anybody ever go to Lombardi's before it closed?

In college, I exchanged peoples linens for the linen service.  YUCK!!

Dishwasher at Holiday Inn in NF.  Damn hard work.  Made some money betting with my aunt every week on Bills games.  She took whoever I didn't want.

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by redtail hawk

[Guffalo]

Summers in high school in college I worked at the local graveyard, mostly cutting lawns and gardening, but early season we would also have to dig foundations for gravestones, 2 foot by 3-5 foot per footing, 3 feet deep. I also had to dig graves for infants and kids since it was too small for the backhoe. 

[Joe Ferguson forever]

19 minutes ago, BringBackFergy said:

Was just reminded of these various jobs I had as a youngster...some funny, some weird:

 

1) I turned 16 yrs old and looked in the Pennysaver.  The Springbrook Hotel was in need of a bartender. Yes, I was 16, but they didn't care. It was kind of a dive bar at the time (earlier years it had decent fish fry). I started out and worked with the older bartender...then I was on my own one night.  Most guys would order 12 ounce Genny Cream drafts or simple drinks like that.  One night the tenant who lived upstairs was so drunk I had to help him upstairs. I'm pretty sure the other guys at the bar helped themselves to draft beers and shots while I was away from the bar.

 

2) In graduate school I had THREE weird jobs:

   

a) Ice Cream Truck driver - through one of the worst sections of the city where I was in school...I lasted three days.

b) Ballroom Dancing Studio - Telemarketing - I had to call people at night and offer them free dance lessons.  I felt worthless.  I think I converted maybe 1 or 2 households (scheduled them for free lessons) over two months.

c) Last job was at a private country club.  The guy I worked for was Lebanese.  He was miserable to me.  I was table prep and bussed tables.  I also had to assist the host with the table side Caesar salad (prep the cart with all the ingredients) so I learned how to make a real Caesar salad from that experience.  The members were complete asshats.

 

Anyone have any funny or interesting part time jobs you remember? 

 

too bad you didn't sell more people on dancing.  When my nephews were in high school, I pleaded with them to learn to dance.  I learned too late that there are always way more females than males at almost any dance and they're just waiting to be asked.  They didn't listen.  Dummies.

[teef]

let's see...

 

i worked as a gas station attendant, i detailed cars for enterprise, i ran a heat press one summer, i oversaw a operation where the employees stuffed envelopes for credit card adds, and i worked at oak hill cc cleaning golf clubs and doing B word work for the members.  

 

edit: @redtail hawk helped me remember, i was also the summer manager and made ice cream/donuts at a shop some family members owned, (it was buckmans ice cream in greece for anyone from the area).

Edited September 28, 2022 by teef

[BringBackFergy]

34 minutes ago, SDS said:

Strawberry picker. $.25 a quart.

Similar - in my 13-14 yr old range, I worked at a lettuce farm and used a little triangle tool to thin out lettuce plants every 7”. Pretty sure it was $1.50/hr. I was let go when I complained about the bad pay. 

[Nextmanup]

I enjoyed the Springbrook Hotel bartender story, especially as you were a 16 year old.

 

BBF:  What did you study at graduate school?  Just curious.

 

 

 

[Joe Ferguson forever]

Forgot sandblasting and painting big chemical tanks with "lunch" on the docks of the upper Niagara with the crew.  Superfund clean up in Oswego living in rented trailers.  Both were actually really fun and great memories.

[Johnny Hammersticks]

In middle school I had a paper route.  Interestingly, my first day was during that huge snow storm in 1993.

 

When I turned 14 I got a job washing dishes at a local restaurant.  Fell in love with the restaurant biz…learned how to cook on the line, wait tables, and bartend.  Worked at the same restaurant throughout HS (Balloons Rest in Auburn, NY) and during summers in college.

 

A couple consecutive summers I got a job at the West Chop Club in Martha’s Vineyard.  My friend was the executive chef there, so he got me a job as the “beach guard.”  The club owned a section of beach and only members were allowed.  I sat there all day and when a car pulled in I just had to check that they had the club sticker on their vehicle.  I think maybe 10-15 cars came each summer.  I just sat on the beach, fished, swam, and smoked weed.  It was great.  In the evening I would bartend or wait tables in the restaurant.  I have some very interesting celebrity stories.

Edited September 30, 2022 by Johnny Hammersticks

[SlimShady'sSpaceForce]

I was driving Coca Cola trucks at 16

in Rochester at Anderson Beverage w/o having driven before.  
 

 

The boss said go bring in a truck 

🛻

I was about to say I don’t have a.. 

 

BRING IN A  TRUCK NOW!!!

Edited September 30, 2022 by SlimShady'sSpaceForce

[WhoTom]

My career path:

 

Farm hand

Snow shoveler (paid)

Penny Saver carrier

Loading dock worker

Dishwasher

McDonald's crew person and then shift manager

Quality control inspector

Assistant manager of a bar

Parks department foreman

Teaching assistant (as a grad student)

Design engineer (1st job out of college)

Professor

Textbook reviewer (side gig)

Freelance technical writer/editor (current gig)

 

 

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by WhoTom

[WhoTom]

11 minutes ago, SlimShady'sSpaceForce said:

I was driving Coca Cola trucks at 16 in Rochester at Anderson Beverage w/o haven driven before.  The boss said go bring in a truck 

🛻

I was about to say I don’t have a.. 

 

BRING IN A  TRUCK NOW!!!

 

Man, those Coke distributors are tough to work for.

 

"You know the pay was pathetic.

It's a shame those boys couldn't be more copacetic."

 

 

Edited September 28, 2022 by WhoTom

[DrW]

Department store clerk

Between high school and army I had 6 weeks time. 4 of these weeks I worked in the largest department store in Hanover (Germany) as "Verkaeuferin" which is the word for female sales clerk (I am male; this was in the mid-1970s where they still were allowed to pay women less than men). I was put into the photography department.

As I did not have any sales experience, they did not let me sell cameras, but I was part of the team responsible for making photocopies and selling the low-end stuff. Among other things, we were selling picture frames. I vividly remember how sometimes people came with very wrinkled photographs and were disappointed that the wrinkles did not disappear just by putting the pic in a frame. Another item we sold were sunglasses which were a favorite target for thieves. The best time for sunglass theft (seen from the point of view of the thief) was the last half hour before closing time. Most sales staff would tend to look away when they spotted a thief during that time, to avoid the lengthy procedure to formally deal with the theft; they just wanted to get home.

 

[Augie]

1 hour ago, redtail hawk said:

Forgot sandblasting and painting big chemical tanks with "lunch" on the docks of the upper Niagara with the crew.  Superfund clean up in Oswego living in rented trailers.  Both were actually really fun and great memories.

 

One of my friend’s first job out of college was working Public Relations for the Love Canal. Hey, good luck with that! 

 

When I was 14 I got my NY working papers, or whatever they called them. I’d work all summer at an apartment complex mostly doing landscaping…..except for garbage day.

 

All the trash stored up in the basements of the garden apartments had to come out to get picked up. We are talking week old garbage full of dirty diapers and week old fish that would gag a maggot. It would drip thru the bags and down your legs when you carried it out. 

 

I’ve had good jobs and bad, but if I’m having a bad day I just look back to garbage days. It makes me feel better about what seems like a problem in the moment. 

 

 

.

Edited September 28, 2022 by Augie

[US Egg]

Was sort of the main daytime building/maintenance man for a 12 apt. bldg. ages 19/20.

 

[Augie]

In college I worked as a sorter for UPS part time during the holidays. It was either 11PM to 3AM, or 3AM to 7AM. And it would change all the time. Somehow my young body survived all that. 

 

We also did polling over the phone for the “Cincinnati Voter Opinion Poll”, a/k/a the AFL/CIO wanted to know what you thought. The current me would shoot the former me. 

 

I was also recruited by friends to work at a mostly college bar checking ID’s at the door. This was before I learned the old “if you were born before this date” trick. It kinda happened on the fly, and I was just paid in drinks….to do math every time someone walked in the crowded bar past me at the door. I’m sure I got a few right, but it’s curious that I don’t remember ever turning anyone away.  🤷‍♂️

[Another Fan]

My 1st job I had when I finished college in my early 20s was as an office manager for an HVAC company.  It started out full-time in an office but it shifted to part-time at the owners home...  which was part of an animal farm.  This was around 2008ish when Wall Street collapsed and it effected the business and my boss could no longer afford the mortgage on the farm so he moved all the offices there.

 

 

In the meantime my boss just got married so he lived with his new wife at her place.  He rented out his house to his cousin and her son.   Her son was a juvenile delinquent.  

 

So yeah in the meantime, I had these new tasks assigned to me:

 

Take care of and feed his dog

Feed the cat...  who one day just disappeared 

Feed his fish

Take care of his sheep if need be.  Which leads to a story of chasing after a few of the them one day when his fence broke and some were threatening to escape

 

All the while sharing the "office/house" with a juvenile delinquent.  The first time we got introduced he showed me a warrant for his arrest.  Lots of his colorful friends came through 'the office".  As did some interesting chicks he chased to say the least.  But we got along.  We even shot games of pool in my lunch hour and when the owner wasn't looking lol.  Sometimes for money.

 

 

 

I'd add his "office/home" didn't have heat in the winter.  It was on a hill too and more than once I fell walking to the mailbox.  I got stuck driving my car on his driveway more than once as it was a sheet of ice.

 

 

All in all it was actually a fun job though.  But it became a part time so I couldn't sustain myself on it 

 

 

Edited October 2, 2022 by Another Fan

[SlimShady'sSpaceForce]

2 hours ago, WhoTom said:

 

Man, those Coke distributors are tough to work for.

 

"You know the pay was pathetic.

It's a shame those boys couldn't be more copacetic."

 

 

lets say that I wasn’t kind on the clutches and there may or may not have been scratched paint and dents on other cars and trucks 

 

Tow Motors on coke slick pavement was also fun.  
 

crashing into a 15 foot stack of empty bottles made a huge mess.  

[Johnnycage46]

Not my weird job, but my father's current retirement job, in addition to mowing the cemetery lawn for the local church, is basically preparing gravesites and doing burials at said cemetery.  He has some summer help (18 year old kids) and he still works circles around them at 75.

 

I guess it has to get done but we always tease him that it's a little bit of a weird job.