Had a temp job in the fall in the early 1980's - downtown Omaha Brandeis Dept Store was closing and I helped out on the dock loading stuff into customers vehicles. Got paid by the day so that wasn't bad. The work wasn't the greatest though. Also detasselled to earn enough to bike across iowa!
Friday OT #2 - Odd Jobs
- Thread starter Angie
- Start date
Yeah, I was kind of the old guy there. Like I said there is a story to it, my dad was PO'd when he heard the situation and was chewing the people out that were involved.
Also worked at an outdoor concrete factory once for a summer just after college.
Mainly did cattle passes and pipes that fit under roads iirc. Was interesting to see the process and occasionally I see a pass and wonder if I made it.
Developed carpel tunnel a bit in my forearms and developed this weird 'anger' from the job that seemed to be common amongst the workers there. Some of them were like 35 but looked 54 so three months was good enough.
Mainly did cattle passes and pipes that fit under roads iirc. Was interesting to see the process and occasionally I see a pass and wonder if I made it.
Developed carpel tunnel a bit in my forearms and developed this weird 'anger' from the job that seemed to be common amongst the workers there. Some of them were like 35 but looked 54 so three months was good enough.
I worked at a professional softball team as a jack of all trades it seemed like.
Then I got a job at Geek Squad and that started my IT career before moving onto an internship on the helpdesk at the local health department.
- I worked at the concession stand as a cook
- I was a mascot for a few games because the guy quit
- I was on field crew duties before the game
- I helped load and unload visitor equipment and put it in the locker rooms
- I delivered pizza to the locker rooms after every game
- I was a hawker as well which is the guy that yells "hot dogs $1!!!" at the top of their lungs.
- Loved doing that and made BANK from tips.
- I even got asked to work at the minor league team on the other side of town so I ended up doing that too and made even more money
- I even acquired different hats based on what I was selling and that was always a hoot
- Stuff like this
-
Then I got a job at Geek Squad and that started my IT career before moving onto an internship on the helpdesk at the local health department.
Not really a "job", but home projects in my old house where the sewer line wasn't draining properly. Here was the sequence of events.
- Bathroom stopped draining. Pulled toilet. Fished out squirrel parts.
- Stopped again, a few times. Eventually fished out entire squirrel
- Bad smell in the kitchen, tried several changes under the sink. Still stunk.
- Crawled under the house (far side) in 24" dirt crawl space. Found "wet soil" where pipe goes into ground
- Replaced all sewer lines to that point. Still stinking.
- Pulled kitchen cabinets, cut out subfloor, dug a 4' x 4' x 4' pit (through "wet soil"). Replaced rest of pipe.
- Still stunk. Found out that the sewer pipe was crushed, just outside the house.
- Hired guy to dig that out and replace. I was officially done with it.
Worked for a Monument Company on the side right out of college.
Cruised the obituaries and sent post cards to the families of people that died inquiring if they'd purchased their monument yet. Morbid but actually fairly lucrative at times.
Just proved to me that there is a total lack of education to people that they need to plan BEFORE they die.
Cruised the obituaries and sent post cards to the families of people that died inquiring if they'd purchased their monument yet. Morbid but actually fairly lucrative at times.
Just proved to me that there is a total lack of education to people that they need to plan BEFORE they die.
I used to teach basis computing skills to preteens and senior citizens in my summers late in high school and my first few years of college. Wow, $10 an hour sure sounded like a lot of money back then.
The preteens did not need any help. They were utter brats. The hard part was keeping them off the porn and social media and trying to teach them some practical skills about Microsoft Office, IT management, or programming. I had to disconnect the Internet from at least a few of them a few times until they could figure out to open back up command prompt and type "ipconfig/renew" to make it work for them again.
The senior citizens were... hopeless if friendly about it.
The preteens did not need any help. They were utter brats. The hard part was keeping them off the porn and social media and trying to teach them some practical skills about Microsoft Office, IT management, or programming. I had to disconnect the Internet from at least a few of them a few times until they could figure out to open back up command prompt and type "ipconfig/renew" to make it work for them again.
The senior citizens were... hopeless if friendly about it.
Last edited:
Had many assorted odd-jobs over the years including:
- Writing the description blurbs on the back of DVDs
- Summer custodial work at elementary school
- Valet driver
- Referee/umpire for many children's and adult rec leagues
- Intern for professional soccer organizations
- Security guard
- Bartender
- Summer camps
I've had a lot of strange jobs. From furniture upholsterer in a factory to a foam insulator and undercoater in motorhome factory, to a mud boy on a construction site. For those who have never heard the term, a mudboy is the guy who makes the cement in the mixer, erects and tears down the scaffolding, carries the bricks and/or cement blocks to the mason and keeps his cement from drying out on his board by adding water now and then and stirring it with a shovel and also goes around and smooths out the seams between the bricks with a tool before the cement hardens.
I lost a lot of weight doing that job because most construction sites are a muddy mess and slogging through that in work boots covered in cement, carrying bricks and blocks and cement is a workout and a half. After work, I used to play basketball in my same work boots. I was in the best shape of my life back then.
Good question. Maybe just the repetitiveness of the jobs?
There were a few people there with some general anger issues so maybe it was just the environment.
Maybe it was more stressful than I realized.
Small town Iowa middle school:
We didn't have much available in terms of stores, so very little access to a variety of candy. We went to Sam's Club with our parents on weekends and stocked up on huge quantities of candy unavailable in town, and resold them at school.
If you purchased Caramel Apple Pops in the mid 90s in SW Iowa, odds are you bought them from me.
We didn't have much available in terms of stores, so very little access to a variety of candy. We went to Sam's Club with our parents on weekends and stocked up on huge quantities of candy unavailable in town, and resold them at school.
If you purchased Caramel Apple Pops in the mid 90s in SW Iowa, odds are you bought them from me.
There's a picture that exists somewhere of me, aged 16, in a locker room full of grown women wearing that hot dog hat and two of the players basically in their underwear next to me with their mouths open pretending to bite the hotdog and there I am in the middle with a smile for the ages lol
I don't think many people can appreciate how disgusting of a job that had to be.
I've seen an entire trailer full of bins of processed chicken slime that had tipped over, gotten warm and oozed into the grooves of a reefer floor. The smell alone was suffocating.
Asphalt plant inspector for Iowa Highway Commission as it was called back in the day. Sat on catwalk on the pugmill, watching gauges and writing load tickets, in a bare rock quarry with no shade above a fuel oil fired blast furnace. Got your blazing summer sun, got your heat off the blast furnace, got your dust, got your asphalt fumes, got your fuel oil exhaust, got your diesel truck exhaust and the whole platform shook from the rock screening.
The other guys with the Highway Commission sat in an ice conditioned trailer most of the day weighing rock samples, packing testing to be sent to Ames when not out doing core drilled samples of the new asphalt pavement. Just added some insult to the whole setting. Plant broken down one day and almost heat stroked teen Boxster went into the cool trailer, a treat. Guy in charge handed me a broom and told me to sweep the trailer floor. I threw the bloom on the floor and told him to "******* sweep it yourself!" Thought I might get fired but nothing happened. I didn't much speak to him the rest of the summer outside of short sentences. Pretty much all of the workers, government and construction guys, hated college kids.
The other guys with the Highway Commission sat in an ice conditioned trailer most of the day weighing rock samples, packing testing to be sent to Ames when not out doing core drilled samples of the new asphalt pavement. Just added some insult to the whole setting. Plant broken down one day and almost heat stroked teen Boxster went into the cool trailer, a treat. Guy in charge handed me a broom and told me to sweep the trailer floor. I threw the bloom on the floor and told him to "******* sweep it yourself!" Thought I might get fired but nothing happened. I didn't much speak to him the rest of the summer outside of short sentences. Pretty much all of the workers, government and construction guys, hated college kids.
Was for coaching videos so definitely had great info to absorb and learn from in addition to being paid for it. Started out doing basketball videos, then eventually moved into things like field hockey and lacrosse. Didn't get as much out of watching those videos haha
It's the scale at our main grain storage facility, so it was corn and soybeans mixed in with mud and years of rain water. Of course my dad made us do it in August, 95 degrees out, and after football practice.
It was absolutely disgusting, and it was also infested with a lot of rats. You would take a scoop shovel down there because that was the most efficient way to scoop the slop up, but you would need a sand shovel for rat killing, because it's hard to swing a scoop shovel hard enough to kill them.
One guy would go down in the pit with the shovels, and fill up a 5 gallon bucket on a string. The other guy hoisted the bucket out of the hole and filled a skid loader bucket with the waste.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that it was about 5' deep, so you were bent over the entire time.
