Working steady midnights at a factory all summer 8-8 straight time for overtime at $4.50 per hour. I actually didn't mind the job (except for the acid or caustic burns) but the steady midnights and long hours took a toll. You ever hear the process workers song by Great Big Sea.

Payless Gas and covienience store. Next door to the A & W.
2 years. Paid minimum wage.

Winter. 1981. Three years old. Mommy comes through the door with newborn triplets No nanny. Bring on da poop!

Ever put a condom on another man? How's about a urinary condom?

I also once worked doing cleanup type stuff at a mill. The $20-per-hour greatly aided in numbing any semblence of anomie. Yeah I know, I'm a soulless cash whore.

A new girl at A&W lasted a record 4 hour shift. She broke 5 large frosted mugs, the till was unbalanced and she dropped acid half-way through her shift! Ah... memories.

The worst part of any of my jobs was cleaning bathrooms. Horrid. I will never again do that. The men's bathroom was always a frigging disaster.

When I worked at a gas station where they were the key-entry ones outside, I just started spraying the room with bleach and taking the hose to it.

quote:

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When he finally decided to give my breasts individuality by naming each one in Farsi, I hit the road, and kept the uniform.

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Excuse me while I cough up a lung from laughing so hard...do you happen to remember what those names were? I could probably get a translation for you the next time I see my husband...

My shortest job? One day as a chambermaid at a little motel where the boss was a bitchy old former nurse. She referred to RNA's (registered nursing assistants) as registered nursing assholes. She hired another girl, my age (we were 14) to clean the rooms together but didn't let us talk - she thought it would slow us down. But we both quit because she told us we had to work 7 days a week without any days off in the summer, and I was in a marching band and needed about 4 days off that summer. So we quit together on my first day and the other girl's second day. She and I were friends for years from that day.

Regarding unpaid training - yeah, that happened to me once too. This jerk at a cigar and tobacco store (Edited because I identified the store location in the original post, and I don't want to get babble in trouble since I don't have documented proof of my allegations here) made me sign a contract saying that I will not be paid for my first week of work if I do not stay in the job because that would be a "training" period. He had a regular customer who he would sneak tickets from the newest Nevada batch instead of the current one, and I wasn't discreet enough when he told me to do it for her I guess (I didn't know it was illegal or secret when he told me to do it). He stood practically on top of his employees (it was a small store) with a major eagle eye. I didn't need the pressure, so I quit. I should have gone to the labour board about the money because he owed me $70 for my first week, but I just figured it wasn't worth the grief.

I suppose it could have been worse. He could have named my breasts in Farsi (actually, he really could have since he spoke the language). I'm still giggling over that one. Admit it, Dawna, life would be less interesting without experiences like that, even though they suck at the time.

1. Grocery Store Packer and Parking Lot Cart Collector: Really cold in Alberta during January, but I had enough money to buy books and albums...
2. Water Treatment Plant Operator: an early summer job. Read a lot of books, had plenty of time to listen to the radio, talk on the phone, and save enough cash to put myself half-way through university...
3. Garment Worker: Carrying around materials used for mass-producing stylish clothes. Little money, and the 12 hour days not to my liking. It got hot in there during the summer...
4. Dishwasher: I lasted two days before running away…
5. Candy Store Stocker: I did not get to sleep with the lush central-american babe who owned the shop…
6. Envelope Stuffer: My Quebecois girlfriend got me a job at UQAM for a few days.
7. Olympic Stadium Roof Repairer: I worked on this job for about two weeks after a big storm tore the roof of the fabric roof in Montreal. Got to see baseball games way up.
8. Convention Center Booth Assembler: Met some interesting working class friends but lost all my upper class ones...
9. Swamper: Driving a truck in Alberta for an oil vessel manufacturing company... all the guys kept teasing me about being a college boy...
10. Security Guard: Boring job. I was fired for taking my lunch-box computer into the apartment block security office at night and rewriting a novel between patrols... Best part of that job was working in the university hospital where I met terminal cancer patients and sexually-abused teenage girls being treated for post-traumatic stress syndrome: Very eye-opening...
11. University Student: Finally, after five universities in Ottawa, Montreal, Saskatoon and Edmonton, and between the ages of 18 and 31, I finally got a B.A. degree! Can anyone guess what the degree is in?
12. School Teacher: Moved to Taiwan after finishing university and have taught 8 to 14 year-olds how to speak English – this is very noisy work. Same thing but bigger classes at a technical college. The best teaching job I ever had was for a prestigious Catholic all-girl High School, Sacred Heart – (perhaps my favorite job ever): There, I read Romeo’s appeal to Juliet and made the girls weep:

ROMEO: He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
[JULIET appears above at a window]
But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou her maid art far more fair than she:
Be not her maid, since she is envious;
Her vestal livery is but sick and green
And none but fools do wear it; cast it off.
It is my lady, O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks yet she says nothing: what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold, 'tis not to me she speaks:
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars,
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See, how she leans her cheek upon her hand!
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
JULIET: Ay me!
ROMEO: She speaks: O, speak again, bright angel! For thou art
As glorious to this night, being o'er my head
As is a winged messenger of heaven
Unto the white-upturned wondering eyes
Of mortals that fall back to gaze on him
When he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds
And sails upon the bosom of the air.

13. Radio Journalist: I wrote and broadcast over 80 15-minute episodes about travel, society and culture in Taiwan and China – for the international shortwave radio station of Taiwan, BCC…
14. Report Editor: I helped to write reports about infrastructure and economic prospects for industrial development for an international business research firm… one of the best office environments I’ve ever known, with Americans, Canadians and Taiwanese working together… Most interesting report was about rice-growing practices in China, Thailand, Viet Nam and India…
15. Technical Manual Writer: Cut and paste and sometimes write new software and hardware instructions for computer motherboards… Interesting and challenging at times, but also routine… That’s my current position…

Cr..s.s

Compared to jobs like cleaning toilets or frying burgers, it doesn't sound so bad. After all, I was paid well, and didn't have any feculence to deal with, right?

Wrong! The place was a nightmare! The owner was a cokehead, who installed his cokehead mistress as manager. Verbal abuse rained down upon all us employees on a daily basis as coke highs elapsed. Later, after more had been procured I'm sure, there would be apologies, and free dinners and the like. It was kind of like an abuse cycle.

I was also forced to forge backdated beer and weight loss commercial documentation, to cover our flagrant abuse of CRTC regs, so the whole place didn't lose it's license. I did it. I probably shouldn't have, but I did. However, when asked to perjur myself in court to save them from an unjust dismissal lawsuit by another employee, I refused. I was "downsized" several weeks later.

But if I don't find a way to stay AWAKE all night, then I won't be getting much of a chance to write anything new... I have hundreds of story ideas and thirty novel ideas and no time, ha, ha... So my "next" job will definitely be arranged to make more waking hours available to writing... But I am getting a little older now, and that means I have to worry more about keeping afloat. That's life. I am not going to bother worrying anymore, just try to use the noggin to figure out some way to do it all... The next novel... When will that happen? So many ideas. I'd post my novel and story ideas on rabble, but you people might lift 'em!