Low wage jobs

[Ratt Mhule]

Nice stories JJ. I think you and I are the only ones on this board that have worked fast food, although we didn't last very long.

 

[JJ Husker]

Nice stories JJ. I think you and I are the only ones on this board that have worked fast food, although we didn't last very long.

I didn't mind working at the old Kings restaurant. It wasn't quite fast food yet it wasn't quite sit down dining either. I guess more of a diner type place. It sucked during the day when the owner and his wife worked. They were not real friendly and wouldn't put up with any shenanigans. But, in the evenings when our buddy was in charge, it was pretty fun. That is when I figured out beer freezes and beer floats weren't a good idea. Also learned that a bucket full of ice in the fryer was a very bad idea. Frequently we would throw one or two cubes into the fryer to mess with whoever was working that area so logically someone took it a step further and dumped a bucketful of ice at one time. Wow, what a mess. I and a buddy of mine worked there and at the gas station at the same time. Depending who was where, we would trade onion rings for gas and vice versa.

 

[BigRedBuster]

More stories knapp about your time as repo man

and BRB im sure you have some good stories from the hospital

More stories knapp about your time as repo man

and BRB im sure you have some good stories from the hospital about the nurses

You think I'm going to put those on a message board? That's for over a beer sometime.

 

[icedavis]

I did the detassling gig for two summers. Same stories.

I also did the HyVee gig. Was a solid employee for 8-ish months then for two weeks I get treated horribly and they wouldn't work with my sports schedule. Had a bball game in Pierre on a Friday night, get home at 4 am and have to be at work for a 7am shift because the bossman decided that was a good idea. naturally, overslept, then proceeded to get canned.

Then worked 5 years at a golf course picking range balls and wrangling carts. Free range balls, free golf. Best 5 years of my golfing life. pretty much played all day, everyday for 5 years on the city's dime. Went to college and picked up a course maintenance job over the summers to keep the good life going. Ah, those were the days.

 

[knapplc]

More stories knapp about your time as repo man

and BRB im sure you have some good stories from the hospital

The very first day, maybe the second delivery I ever went on at that job, we're taking a washer/dryer set to this house. We get there at the scheduled time and this girl opens the door, just out of the shower & soaking wet, wearing only a towel. She was probably 19 or 20 and looked reeeeally nice. I thought this job wouldn't be so bad after all upon seeing her, but sadly, it went way downhill after that. And after she opened the door & showed us where to put the stuff, she went into another part of the house & changed, and we weren't invited to the clothing change. It was literally like the start to 90% of the porno films you've ever seen, but the ending wasn't so happy.

Without naming names, I'll say that there are quite a few former Husker athletes still living in Lincoln, not doing so well, who have rented stuff from that place, and we had to go repo from a few of them. Pretty sad, actually.

Not a repo run, but once we took a 32-inch TV up to Frankie London's place for some game he wanted to watch, presumably with guys on the team. Me & my buddy carried this heavy sucker up three flights of stairs to Frankie's apartment, put it where he wanted it, and stood there out of breath while he signed the papers. It was a heavy damned TV. Then Frankie decides he doesn't like it where he had us put it, so easy as picking up a toothpick he grabs the thing & moves it across the room. Frankie was pretty skinny, if anyone remembers him, even in his Sophomore year (this was 1997), but for a slender guy he was damned strong.

We had a few regulars we delivered to, one of whom was this guy I'll call Bob. Bob was not the brightest bulb in the pack, crushingly socially awkward, and a huge pain in the butt whenever we had to go to his trailer because he would not stop talking to us while we did our work, and he was always saying something so utterly stupid you had to choke back laughing at him. Bob had knocked up this tremendously ugly "lady" who he then married, and she hated him. One day we're at Bob's place and he's yapping like usual, and he says something he thought would be funny but it was just dumb. Dumb, dumb. There's this awkward silence after Bob's gem, and when it got uncomfortable Bob figures it out and says, "It was only a joke." At which point Bob's wife pops out with, "Your whole life is a joke, Bob." Much as we disliked Bob, the disdain in her voice was crushing, and we both agreed upon driving away that we felt bad for Bob. Nobody's spouse should disrespect them in front of strangers like that.

More repo stuff...

Had a guy yelling at us through the door as we were knocking trying to get our stuff, telling us he was going to F us up and being all tough-guy and threatening and such, and finally when he realized we weren't going away he rips the door open and half barrels out like he's going to make good on his promise to mess us up, only as he's coming around the door he kinda glances up at me and my partner and sees that we're each twice his size, and the look of "Oh $hit!!" was pretty priceless. He deflated in about half a second, and aside from some grumbling, let us get our stuff after getting a good look at us.

Never really had anyone get violent with us. If anyone was really belligerent we turned them over to the professional collections guys, and they employed dudes who made me look tiny. Utterly immense men, built on a scale much larger than normal humans. If those dudes showed up at my door I'd give them whatever they wanted. They usually had a Sheriff's deputy with them, which helped, but those were guys you would NOT mess with.

The smelly/awful place I talked about before was just one of the hell-holes we went to. On another repo run, in another trailer, we went in to get a fridge out. There was food everywhere in this place, and the owners had abandoned it for at least a week prior to our arrival, so you can imagine how awful it smelled in there. I remember stepping on a package of hot dogs that just disintegrated as I touched them. Food is not supposed to do that - I can't really describe how it just lost shape and became this mass of "stuff" to make you appreciate how disturbing it was, but I'll never forget it.

That roach story I told before, I have about five dozen similar stories. That's why you should NEVER EVER EVER get anything from a rent-to-own place. We'd bring stuff back choked with bugs all the time. We'd have to leave them in the back of our box truck overnight with a bug bomb before bringing them into the store. We had a guy whose job it was to disassemble the appliances, TVs, stereos, computers, and to clean out the bug debris after they'd been bombed. I don't know how he did that, but it had to be a terrible job.

We had this couple who lived on Capitol Beach, who rented a mattress/box springs from us a few times a year when they had company over. They jokingly called it the "prison bed" because they presumed that the people who had otherwise used that bed were ex-criminals, and they thought that was pretty funny stuff. But those mattresses really had been in someone else's home, a home those people likely would never have set foot in, and they're bringing it into their house with all those other peoples' nastiness still there. Horrifying stuff, and it makes me cringe just thinking about it typing this.

Some of the places we went to were so rank we'd wear work gloves in no matter what we were doing. We had sanitary wipes in the truck, but we also knew the location of every decent gas station bathroom throughout the city, and we would frequently go to these places after a home visit to wash. We bought a lot of gum - you can't just go in there and use someone's bathroom without buying something.

 

[huKSer]

Not a repo run, but once we took a 32-inch TV up to Frankie London's place for some game he wanted to watch, presumably with guys on the team. Me & my buddy carried this heavy sucker up three flights of stairs to Frankie's apartment, put it where he wanted it, and stood there out of breath while he signed the papers. It was a heavy damned TV. Then Frankie decides he doesn't like it where he had us put it, so easy as picking up a toothpick he grabs the thing & moves it across the room. Frankie was pretty skinny, if anyone remembers him, even in his Sophomore year (this was 1997), but for a slender guy he was damned strong.

Why were you moving furniture when you were 62 years old?