What was the worst job you ever had as a teenager?

[Behind Enemy Lines]

picking mushrooms one summer at Chesswoods (?) farm...

worked 8 hours on each of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to be rewarded with the princely sum of £24 on Friday afternoon...!

this was in 1986 not 1966...! (needless to say me and my mate didn't turn up on Monday morning - funny thing was that we genuinely never even found how much we were going to get paid before we started - naive or what?...)

I did that too. I lasted for about 4 weeks though by which time, my work clothes had almost rotted away. What a horrible toil that was. Mind you, it paid more than £ 24.00 quid. You must have been short changed! I didn't eat mushrooms for years after that.

 

[Monkster]

I grew it, you picked it !

They ate them

 

[Commander]

bumping out concrete blocks on a poorly constructed scaffold


A VERY brief stint as 'Froggy' at 'Froggy's Fun World' at the Crumbles retail park in Eastbourne in my early 20s was far worse however. Standing in for a mate who'd had the shit kicked out of him by a plague of toddlers - bad days

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

arsegos on weston road. *shivers*

''oi daaarlin, where can i get some sov'in rings innit?''

''elizabeth duke, over there''(i point)

'' 'o's fuckin 'lizbeth duke?''

 

[Deano's Right Foot]

Turkey farm one christmas.

No good at plucking so I caught the buggers and strung them up and held their wings while someone else broke their neck with a metal device.

I also weighed and tagged them - the pluckers used to delight in slamming them down on the table where I was sitting so hard that shit would shoot out of their arses and splatter me.

I also turned vegetarian like Redland, but after 12 years lapsed and now I eat meat.

 

[Rowdey]

During holidays from Fawcett in '85, got job at Miami Dolphins Chip shop between Fortune of War and other pub (forgotten name, use to be a bikers pub back then) on seafront.

My job was to bump sacks of spuds into peeler machine, then into the chipper machine..

Got covered in starch, the sacks and spuds often rotted right through, had to kill marouding rats, and i got paid £1 per hour..

Still, at 15 i could afford a Tachini tracksuit in a week and a half..!!

 

[Trufflehound]

Picking the crushed cockroaches out of the hotel linen after it'd been through the roller presses at the industrial laundry.

 

[Simon Morgan]

I've been working at Primark since last November and I have grown to hate it. However, I have now secured a new job as a waiter/ bar person at the newly refurbished Preston Park Tavern on Havelock Road. I'm sure I'll be much happier there

 

[Easy 10]

Turkey farm one christmas.

No good at plucking so I caught the buggers and strung them up and held their wings while someone else broke their neck with a metal device.

I also weighed and tagged them - the pluckers used to delight in slamming them down on the table where I was sitting so hard that shit would shoot out of their arses and splatter me.

I also turned vegetarian like Redland, but after 12 years lapsed and now I eat meat.

I think we have a winner.

 

[Man of Harveys]

I think we have a winner.

Seconded - now I can't get the image of a youthful DRF being splatted by a newly-dead turkey sphincter out of my head.

 

[Les Biehn]

Packing body shop lipsticks into packs of 3 at a warehouse in Burgess. I did it for a week and it was f***ing gash. Still the bosses last name was Cockhead so that gave me and my mates a constant source of amusment.

 

[Dave the OAP]

one of the worst jobs I ever did was my mates father was a farmer in Melksham in Wiltshire and he said he had a job for me.

He said get to his place for 6am on a Saturday morning.

I did so, to be met by a milkman and the job was a milk round that was about 40 miles round trip started at 6 am and finished at 12 o/clock - ie 6 hours and I was paid 50p...seriously 50p!

It was in 1973 odd and even then 50p was an insult.

I lasted about 2 mnonths .

one perk was I delivered to Lower Dummer where mark Phillips lived and in 1973 the day of the wedding to princess anne we were allowed ( ) a small sherry from the kitchen - I hated it and my milkman boss was a communist - so it really went down well.

 

[robbied69]

I served food at the footie at White Hart Lane and Highbury.

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

Turkey farm one christmas.

No good at plucking so I caught the buggers and strung them up and held their wings while someone else broke their neck with a metal device.

I also weighed and tagged them - the pluckers used to delight in slamming them down on the table where I was sitting so hard that shit would shoot out of their arses and splatter me.

I also turned vegetarian like Redland, but after 12 years lapsed and now I eat meat.

The things we do for money! There was always a rumour at school ( Steyning Grammar), that someone who worked on a Turkey farm got caught trying to shag a Turkey. Rural myth no doubt.

 

[Race]

It was in 1973 odd and even then 50p was an insult.

That would have got you 100 'alf penny sweets though, result!

 

[Pigsy]

Pulling dead fish out of a large lake, blue green algae had invaded and killed dozens of them. I was set adrift in a small boat, and had to pull them out of the water. No gloves or protective clothing was provided. This job was instrumental in me deciding to return to full-time education.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

I served food at Highbury.

wish i had done that job

 

[The Antikythera Mechanism]

I used to sell ice creams and kia-ora from a tray, in the intermissions, at the old Academy cinema in West Street - Dressed in Purple suit, pink shirt and purple bow tie

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

How about this for being a dumb kid in the late 1970's. My first after school job was working for the local high street Chemists. Basically I had to deliver, in wind, rain or snow, prescription drugs to peope in the Steyning area. An area which covered many square miles, up and down some f***ing great hills. I did this Monday, Wednesday, Thurs, Fridays after school and on Saturday mornings, when I also has to wash up all the old stinking bottles. It added up to at least 5 hours work. How much do you think I got paid for this? The princely sum of £1.50 per week!! Yes, one pound and fifty pence. God I was a mug.

I used to get a so-called "Christmas Box" from people once a year. But some nursing homes, naturally always in great demand for presciption drugs, never coughed up. But I did have the last laugh and they would live to regret not giving me any money because from then on, they got their drugs late, if at all...

 

[Le Premier Cru]

My worst was my first:
Shaving straight nylon rods down to make them tapered so that they were the right shape for making riding crops. So BORING!

Imagine - fourteen years old and making whips! It explains a lot that's happened since...