What is the best/worst job you ever had?

[S.A. Boggs]

Working in a produce warehouse/ running my own business.
Sam

[Vern Humphrey]

Company commander along the DMZ in Viet Nam -- best and worst.

[Art]

Best: Crimefighter, when it was good it was addictive.

Worst: Trainer in a health club; what a snake pit that wasl

[Dan Shapiro]

Best/worse. Same one. Being a cop. Or as I used to tell my trainees, "This is the best job you will ever hate!"

[RED]

Best job was a as a Manufacturer's representative. I had targets to meet and a budget of 5.35% of sales. As long as the targets were met, I rarely spoke to my boss and usually saw him once per year.

The worst job was catching chickens. While in college, I spent way too many nights in 400' long brooder ("growout") houses catching chickens for the processing plant. Chicken poo and other nasty things were swallowed and breathed routinely. the pay was very good at $1.25/hour.

[togor]

One of my favorite jobs was as a food vendor, roaming the seats of Milwaukee County Stadium during Milwaukee Brewer and GB Packer games as a high school/college student. Pure commision, 16.23% of gross. The guy who ran it had a bonus system. If you sold the most in your assigned area (say hot dogs in lower grandstand & bleachers), then your assignment went into the "bonus box" for the next game. Scrabble tiles and a cigar box, blind draw. When your area came up, you got to pick your assignment. Back then you could make $40 selling programs through the first inning as your bonus choice and then finish off the game making another $15 selling popcorn. $55 gross in 1980 for 3 hours work was good money. In my time doing that job I averaged over $20/hour gross, but I was humping and physically tired by the end of a long homestand. The bonus system meant that those who were willing to work hard and smart had more opportunities to enjoy success. I loved that system, but by rule you couldn't go back-to-back on bonus. That said, he wouldn't stick a proven vendor with Pizza on Memorial Day weekend. (Pizza sucked. The case was huge and it smelled bad.) He took care of his main guys when they weren't on bonus and spread them around so that they didn't collide with each other too much.

I remember a double-header against Boston. It was wicked hot and humid, and a bunch of us guys on bonus got together to try to figure out the best move. A few of us decided to choose Pepsi in the upper deck. Carrying 20 cups of soda+ice in a steel tray. One full load weighed about 25 lbs. The upper deck at County Stadium had steep and narrow steps, and only a few food stands, and the place was packed. You'd take a double--or triple--load of sodas, the wire of the trays digging into your fingers, stagger up the ramp and pivot and lurch up a few steep steps to the first landing and yell "who wants Pepsi?" Immediately 2 dozen hands clenching dollar bills shoved in your face. I cleared $90 that night gross, but man I was seriously wrecked for the next day. I remember the guys who had to run the soda/ice/plastic-wrap machines, who worked strictly on hourly wage, wanted to take a break for a cigarette. We vendors were like...c'mon man, one more load, OK? We wanted to get back out there because we couldn't sell it fast enough. You learn how to get along with people whose aims may not exactly align with yours, LOL.

People used to say to me "hey great job, you get to watch the games!". Not really, no. When the fans are buying you are selling. And you hope you're not walking around with a half-sold load of something in the 9th inning because that sucks. When a Brewer hit a home run you got to take a blow and watch the replay on the jumbotron, but when people sit down you go back to work. No BS, no politics. Just haul your load and move product. In many ways the most honest job I ever had. The strike in '81 hurt me a lot and took a lot of money out of my pocket, but I mostly remember the good times now, including stopping at a local tavern run by an old guy on the way home from work. We were 16 or 17 but we had our stadium shirts on, and he didn't inquire about our ages when we asked for a cold beer. I think the name of the place was "Zeke's" and I'm sure it's long gone now, as is Zeke himself.

Great question, Sam. That's one memory about which I am kinda sentimental.

[TomSudz]

Best- Current. Firefighter.

Worst- Saturday nights during high school from 12:30 (0030) to 7:00 (0700) inserting the comic section and ads into the Sunday newspaper.

[p246]

Best current job, worst building concrete pads in desert for fiber optic regen sites, fine sand got everywhere and no amount of sunscreen was effective. Very long hours 7 days a week.

[bruce]

Haven't really had any bad jobs. Washing dishes at a hospital ... got to eat all I wanted for free plus getting paid. Bagging groceries ... tips from customers always doubled my hourly pay. Climbing and cutting trees ... made good money and was in terrific physical condition. Selling firewood ... real good. Sell three loads a week and always have more than $100 ... good money in 1976. Once I graduated college and got married ... worked night security in shipyard in New Orleans. Very good job indeed. In 1979 ... began the best job of my life ... minister in a local church downtown. Have been a full-time pastor ever since. In June my wife and I will move to our new appointment down on the coast of Ga. just outside of St. Simon Island. She is happily buying some new furniture. And I am looking forward to what looks to be the most significant pastoral opportunity of my life. Praise the Lord! To God be the glory! Sincerely. bruce.

[Fred]

Best job was a U.S. Armor platoon leader and Opposing Forces field instructor at the National Training Center for Desert Warfare where I helped develop and teach tank warfare tactics as part of a Thousand man unit that wore Russian uniforms and used Russian tactics to instruct U.S. Armor and Infantry Units on how to fight and defeat Soviet Tanks in combat.

Worst Job was rigging dinomite for a heavy construction company. If just a single Spark of static electricity had occurred between the Bronze awl I used to creat the holes in the dinomite to stick the wired blasting caps into, and the stick of dinomite, I'd have been blown to Smitherines.
I rigged up about 300 sticks per day to blow. I was on edge every moment. Didn't like it at all, but I was poor and needed to eat and pay rent.