Great wages for little effort
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@chimoaus said in Great wages for little effort:
@voodoo at 13 I rode 30 minutes to a cafe, washed the dishes, cleaned floors and tables for 2 hours and rode 30 minutes home. I got $5, but at the end of the week I had $25 which was a lot, plus I got leftovers which my mum loved.
See, you've earned every fucking bit of your current cruisy gig!!
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@chimoaus said in Great wages for little effort:
G'day all, I find it very interesting how we get remunerated for our efforts and how many people get paid very well for doing SFA.
At uni I worked as a storeman in a warehouse and decided to read the award we were working under. Apparently no one else had thought of doing that. Turns out if I worked late one Saturday evening and came in early the next day the penalties effectively made two days equivalent to a week's wages. The company put an end to that level of flexibility pretty soon thereafter.
@voodoo said in Great wages for little effort:
Flipping the thread around (fuck you, it's the Fern), what's the worst pay you had?
Staff (officer) cadet at RMC. Ludicrous hours and impost on my life for the princely sum of about $25k p.a. Graduation and the opportunities it provided to seriously misbehave and blow shit up slightly evened up the ledger.
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One of my first jobs was at the warehouse and one job they asked me to do was assemble the boxed bikes.
The previous guy that did them (promoted to Assistant Manager) loudly told me if I do them properly I could get, let's say 6 done in a day...I was pretty handy at putting them together and quickly found I had to do them incredibly slow to match that time, so I did.
A summer sitting outside in the sun, watching girls walk in and out of the store, working at about 1/3 capacity while my.mates were inside stocking shelves all day...I did keep it to myself for a few weeks as initially no one wanted to do it so were happy to leave me out there...but I was the main bike-putter-together-er that summer and was great...even got a few phone numbers 😀
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@taniwharugby I worked at the Whangarei Warehouse around 95/96 I think. Best job I had was when I had to destroy all the returns. They had to stop people going through the trash and exchanging items so I had a sledgehammer, craft knife and just went to town.
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18 month assignment with large client in York and Sheffield with a reasonable budget. Hard work in a few ways but a really enjoyable time and everything seemed effortless - a great period of my working life and am still in contact with some of the people.
Even used to look forward to the 3hr drive up on Mondays at 6am.
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Night porter at a hotel in Wellington for 4 months while I was a student at uni. Hardly any work to do. Pay was pretty crap, but the occasional great tip from foreigners. Plus a few interesting propositions.
It kept me in Steinlager and Babycham to the extent that I never turned up to lectures and dropped out of uni after one year. Not such a bad thing really, as it turns out me and my mates who dropped out of uni and got jobs are all on much better money than the ones who stayed to qualify.
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I’ve told this before. I did a summer job for Takapuna City Council. I had to do a survey of what was then a newly emerging trend of in fill housing (cross leases). No one managed me. I used to take a car from the pool pick up some mates and go to the beach / pub for the day and drop it back just before 5:00 pm. I even got to rent a plane to fly over the city
I was 19.
In between times I’d fuck off and play cricket
It really was a monumental public servant piss take. After a few weeks I got a bit worried and so put in three days concentrated work so as to produce an interim progress report. A few of the old hands took me aside to explain that wasn’t how it worked and I was making them look bad doing so much
I worked illegal for 2 years in Holland and had some rubbish jobs but the worst without doubt was working for a firm that made cleaning solutions to clean printing presses
Tankers would deliver various different chemicals into big cats that we would mix into 25 litre plastic drums by hand. They were corrosive poisonous I don’t know how many danger labels were on the tanks. Out PPE consisted of a pair of rubber gloves. Guys would regularly pass out from the fumes. There were holes in the roof. The other side of the road was the English Channel and it was winter. When it rained you’d be working up to the tops of yr boots in water. We even had snow settle inside
We used to have to label the drums by hand in a mezzanine loft that was no more than 1.5 metres high
All for 70 quid a week before tax for a six day week
I was only doing it to save money to hitch round Europe so I lived in a condemned council house across the back fence with no power and one cold tap I made a bed out of the plastic bags the empty drums came in and ate half a tin of baked beans a day. Lived on 3 pound / week which enabled me to travel for nine months
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Scoreboard at the Basin for the cricket. A day off school, $45 for the day, unlimited hotdogs and coke and loads of perving.
Due to not paying attention when I was doing batting some guy called Salim Walik batted for a couple of overs before Salim Malik took his place after a slightly shitty walky talky notification from the guys at the other end of the ground.
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@majorrage said in Great wages for little effort:
I .
Saturday morning shift was 5:30-1:30. So had all afternoon to do whatever. Brilliant.
This reminded me of another fav job I had. At 17 working at Maccas, me and 3 mates were on "delivery". Started early, 4am or so I think, used to crank the music loud and unload a bunch of frozen food from the delivery trucks into the freezers. Great fun for 4 hours, had to to do the brekkie shift afterwards for a few hours which was average, but we were on the golf course by 12pm. Good times.
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@frank said in Great wages for little effort:
I've always thought being a lighthouse keeper would be pretty cruisy, provided you like being alone.
That job used to be part of one of my chat up lines as in "I'm a lighthouse keeper and I've just got back from/just going on a 6 month shift. Care to make my first/last night memorable"?
The fact that this eventuated in zero success did not stop me from using it for quite a while.
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One of my best mates, in IT worked for his dads business and barely did any work.
When he went to the UK we all thought good, he might have to do some work now.
Instead, he gets a job for a pretty decent sized company, his office in the dungeon of a multi story building, the people he worked for up on L3.
Anyway, company car, phone, expenses, no one knew if he was in the office except the security guard for the building.
He rocked in at 10 most days (when he went in) left when he felt like it.
Obviously he could sort most issues over the phone.
When they got his his company phone.and laptop, 2 were sent, so they sat there for a few months before he realised that no one knew they existed.
Then, we (4 of us) got £1 tickets to Dublin, he had no leave...but decided to go anyway.
We were there for a whole week, he got 1 call all week and no one knew he was gone.
Then when he finished before coming back, they had no record of him having a laptop, so had another free one.
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I had a job as a superannuation administrator during the 1987 RWC. They gave me time off to go to Uni as I was doing a Bcom, they also had flexitime, so just worked when you wanted to (in my case, never).
It was an exciting place to be. A couple of us administrators and a load of actuaries. The mirth and hilarious pranks were one a minute...(I don't think that I have ever spent time with such a dull bunch of people since).
The thing with flexitime, and me being able to leave to go to uni was nobody knew when I was supposed to be there, so I just wasn't there at all. It was a salaried position so I got paid a handsome sum (for a 20yo) and nobody really knew who I was. Would show my face occasionally before a RWC match then hop back on motorbike and go to Eden Park. Think that I saw every match at that RWC, either live or at the pub.
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Easiest - $12/hr working as the token male for a guy in a wheelchair on Saturday afternoons (1-7). He was only a couple of years older than me, while the rest of his staff were middle-aged women. In theory I was a caregiver, but the job was hourly pressure relief, sorting out his food, smokes and drinks (sadly I can't drink because it makes me vomit or I could have had the occasional Scotch), and watching Sky sport. Later, he joined the Richmond Working Men's Club and my job duties added taking him to the pub for the afternoon...
Minimum wage was $7 when I started, for reference.
Hardest was probably temping for an agency that mostly unloaded containers, so a day's backbreaking labour for $9/hr. I also did a couple of days at the gelatine factory (I'm vegetarian...) which was different.
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When I first arrived in the UK I got a job as a night security guy at shows, pay was crap, minimum wage (4 quid an hour I think) but we were generally inside an exhibition hall that had it's own security so often I'd just sleep most of the night through in a 12 hour shift. Some of the shows had cool displays. I watched my first DVD at one and played my first VR at one (gigantic headset which meant you could barely play longer than a few minutes.
Then when I was working as nanny in my last job over there the parents split up so my job, which was already short 3pm - 7:30pm shrunk to 3pm - 3:30pm which a little bit of cleaning in between, as the father just wanted to spend as much time with his brat of a daughter as possible (the mother moved out). Another lowish paid job, but short working hours and all food and accomodation provided.
All the jobs I've had in Oz have been fairly cruisy, there are buzzy periods which I generally know when they're coming up, but outside that nothing is too strenuous and the pay is definitely heaps better, oh and I work 4 day weeks.
Worst job was summer holidays roofing during uni.
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@frank said in Great wages for little effort:
Not proud of this - but when I was a student, I was employed at a fair around Newmarket in Auckland to conduct surveys on what everyone thought of the event. We were sent out for 6 hours with no supervision. As it was being explained, it twigged that they wouldn't know who filled in the surveys. My eyes scanned the group looking for the other person most likely to realize what I did. I found one guy and we promptly walked off out of the grounds, sat on a bench, hurriedly faked surveys and then went to KFC or the movies or both. This went on for five days. The pay was shit, but the "work" was non-existent.
I too am not proud of this - I did phone surveys for a media company for a year at uni - there were three of us, I think we only ever did real surveys once a month, then we just repeated the results. My mate was one of the DJs, he always got great ratings.
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Easiest job was counting people who were using a park. Mum drove me to said park in the morning and picked me up in the afternoon. Much to my annoyance I think 2 people walked by and meant I actually had to "work". Forget the exact pay but it was stupid money for a 16 year old.
During uni I was also paid to test McDonald's stores 4 times a week. That was a nice little earner although I ended up hating McDonald's after going through ever time on the menu a million times.
Worst job was earning 4 bucks an hour in a metre box factory. I did that with a mate of mine who spent more money on the steel cap boots he needed than what he actually earned. Farking idiot.
Actually worst job was working as a dishwasher when I moved to Norway. Having 2 degrees and washing dishes is a very humbling experience.
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My worst was a laboring job at Uni loading up wheelbarrows with dirt and then trying to get them down an extremely steep hill to dump the dirt. And then, somehow, get the wheelbarrow to the top again. Sometimes, the wheelbarrow would get away on someone and they would yell a warning as it tumbled down the hillside. The guys who normally did laboring didn't want to do the job, so they hired some students. They spent a bit of time laughing at us. Two days of this and I had never been so exhausted.
