The first time you earn money on your own can be special for someone. This may vary quite a bit from society to society, and I assume you are well versed in the various ways this happens in the US of A. So, I decided to come to you one more time with a story from Romania. How did Pie make his first moneys? By this I don’t mean getting an allowance or pocket money in exchange for chores from parents. This was, in any case, not a thing in Romania. I had chores and I was expected to do them, no money involved. My parents also gave me periodically some money, though not much, and most of it was for a specific purpose e.g. I need to buy this or want to go to a movie with friends, etc. My pocket money came from the government child allowance, which was a smallish sum every child got every month in Romania. You had to go to the post office and pick it up, most parents took the money for daily spending, but mine gave it to me as my spending money for the month, which I had to budged to make it last. I was, you might say, on the dole. Then again, all kids are on the dole more or less, though in their hearts are yearning for the mines. In the big city, where I grew up, and in Romania in general, there were no such things as paper routes, or neighbors paying kids to shovel snow or do small yard work and so on. So not many opportunities for a kid to make an income.
As I have talked about before, I used to spend my summers with my grandmothers in the countryside, in a village in the hills, surrounded by forests, hanging with the local gang of kids. There, I made my first money independently. As some sharp eyes noticed in my marketplace post, In Romania the plant generally called sea buckthorn, which is often used for both culinary and medicinal purposes. I do not know how real the benefits are, but at the very least it has a bunch of Vitamin C and antioxidants. Some people like the taste, and there are jams and juices made with it. I do not like the taste myself. The plant is of the thorny variety, the berries are fairly small and tightly clustered around sharp thorns.
This leads to making some money. In the countryside, where I wasted my summers instead of working in the monocle mines, the forest rangers would go in the hills as part of forest maintenance, cut shrubs of sea buckthorn and bring them back to the village. A big pile was made and then they would pay the kids – me included – to get the berries off the thorns, generally using a fork. I have to assume a more automated process exists for this, but not back then in that region of the world. This was the first time I did something for money completely independent of family, and it was very exciting. I was not all that good at it, so did not get as much as the more experienced kids, and my hands were punctured several times by the thorns. But after a few hours, I made several ice-creams worth of money and was very happy with myself. And cliché as it may sound, it is good for kids to make their own money by good honest work. Builds character for the future. Though the content of my particular character is, of course, debatable.
Outside of such odd things, and very occasional, I did not make serious money before starting university. It was not really in the culture, as the scion of a middle-class urban family from Bucharest. Rural kids, as in most places, were expected to contribute more work. I was expected to study, which I did with some success. My first income in university was a small scholarship that everyone with a grade average above 90% got. I was working for my father’s small business, programming some Microchip PIC micro-controllers and helping with computer stuff, which my father, an old school electronics engineer, did not master. But I did not get a fixed wage doing that. Between my second and third year, I got a practically full-time job, as most of my peers did at the time. University was pretty bad at the time, and people wanted some real-world experience. As not all classes had mandatory attendance if you could pass the exams, which I could with not much study, there was tie for a job.
I worked in warehouse management software, for again a small company, with the wage of some 200 American a month after
tax. C#, SQL, and a few other odds and ends. Small companies have the advantage and disadvantage of having to do whatever is needed instead of specializing. So, I wrote code in C#, but I also had to interface and program scales, barcode printers, volume measuring systems. I had to go to warehouses and offer support – and one encounters quite unexpected bugs like the fingers of a worker were too thick to press the buttons on the mobile barcode scanner. I had to drive a van delivering pallets of labels for the barcode printers. The van was particularly eye-opening when I realized how easy you can change lanes when driving a dented white van, every other driver allows you to do it. Also, it was fascinating that after I used the very rigid clutch of the van, getting back in my car I initially slammed the clutch pedal so hard I thought it might break until I got readjusted to the lighter touch needed. I had to spend the night in a second-class sleeping cabin of Romanian trains, which I do not recommend. But I also did get to spend time in a copper smelter and see the huge copper melty thingy and the wire makey thingy (hope I do not to get too technical for the layman). Though the technology we used at the time did not allow us to solve a significant issue the company had, which was a truck leaves the plant with 4 tons of copper and somehow reaches the destination with 3.5 tons. I assumed evaporation.
After I finished University I changed my small company job for the big corporate world, and have been at it ever since, , but for a better wage and some benefits. I do not particularly like the work, but a job is not for liking. That’s why it is called a job and not “being in a hammock on the beach with a cold beer”. I somewhat regret my corporate job mostly because I specialized in a very niche field, and it is very difficult to change, as it is probably the best company in Bucharest and all Romania for such work. But it is steady work and I have no fear, for now, of being jobless. And that is well that.
Raises a glass in solidarity with being in a niche career field
“I do not particularly like the work, but a job is not for liking. That’s why it is called a job and not “being in a hammock on the beach with a cold beer”. ”
Also raises glass in solidarity.
Very true.
I worked for a year in Okinawa as a carpenter.
I didn’t speak the language yet, but I knew how to cut boards and nail together
My boss was a racist and always made me do grunt work when he was on-site
When he wasn’t there I would do regular carpenters
Worked there a year and a half until I knew the Japanese enough to find a job at a better company
I never told my wife about the situation until I was working for a good boss for more money
I ended up working 6 years for the good boss, until the economy crashed and I rejoined the Marine Corps
I do not particularly like the work, but a job is not for liking
Tell that to Winston’s Mom.
Summertime in Okinawa doing that work?
You are the man!
No doubt in a long sleeve, long pant jumpsuit with a hard hat tied on like a bonnet.
What was the cost of living at the time? I can’t tell how good or bad that is save from my current situation where that would be brutal.
the cost of living was fairly low, but not low enough to afford e.g. rent. But as luck would have it I am Romanian so I lived with my parents as was the custom at the time and that was gas and pocket money going out etc. I did not pay rent and ate most food fr free.
No, that was clearly sublimation, it didn’t go through a liquid stage.
That is also the #1 benefit of my current job. As long as I don’t commit a felony, sleep at my desk, or get drunk on the job, it’s difficult to get rid of me.
Does that mean sexually harassing your coworkers is accepted?
You’ve seen IT dudes, right?
Yep. Being essentially un-fireable is nice.
Until I got a “real” job I was also on the dole, specifically a disability check each month. I wasn’t physically capable of a fast food or landscaping job, so my first job was crushing aluminum cans my uncle brought me from the golf course, and recycling them. Next, one of my art teachers paid me to sand and prime wood cutouts that she painted as Christmas ornaments and decorations. Eventually I did some of the initial painting, and made some of the ornaments for my family. My mom still has some of those.
sea buckthorn, which is often used for both culinary and medicinal purposes
And shaving cream. Reminds me I need to order more.
obligatory
Then again, all kids are on the dole more or less, though in their hearts are yearning for the mines.
!!!!!!!!
Tangentially. I am amused/dismayed by employers asking for people who can “multi-task.” I’ve known for thirty years there is no such thing. It’s just you half-assing a bunch of things at once you’re going to have to go back and fix.
Yeah, I say I can multi-task, because telling people you have tunnel vision on a task doesn’t get you hired. But I don’t multi-task. I do each task individually to its end (if possible), and move onto the next. I just do it really fast.
I always figured that just meant being able to deal with a lot of varied things throughout the day
^ This. Being able to quickly assess and triage multiple demands.
This would be the charitable way of looking at it, but I’ve had a few employers who were stupid enough to think that one person can give multiple tasks equal attention at the same time. I didn’t last long there…
Not in my experience. See TOK below:
Also, asking me questions about X thing from two days ago–ESPECIALLY while I’m working on something else. Let me consult my notes. “Why do you have to consult notes? You should know this.” Because, you dumbass, I do a task and it’s finished and I sweep it out of my mind. It’s gone, done, kaput. I’m doing something else now. I’m not going to keep ancient history in my RAM.
I’m gonna start requiring robust immune systems.
Fucking sooo many “sick” call outs.
In your line of work isn’t that frequently the “Budweiser Flu”?
IME, real alcoholics tend to show up reliably.
I would not last a DAY in the dog eat dog world of warehouse management software!!!
I see it more of being able to stay cognizant and in front of multiple ongoing issues at a time. At any time, there’s a dozen tickets I’ll have open, all related to different things. I’m expected to be on top of, and able to speak to any of those tickets at any time.
I routinely need to repeat explanations on the same call, as people show up late, or were “working on some other items” when the details were shared.
but can you drive stick?
but can you drive stick?
Yes.
Coming up on 50 years now.
Yes.
Oh sir! Mr. Man! Do you have a license to practice unregulated euphemisming??
Good god, if that ain’t the truth. A previous manager gave everyone an impossible workload, then held meetings to chew everybody out about all the work not getting done. Her answer was “you have to multitask”.
Someone asked what priority tasks should be, and the manager’s answer was “Everything”. She would also reprimand people for “working on X when Y is more important”, yet somehow “everything is priority”. She was also trying to get internal candidates to transfer to that department, and she’d tell them in interviews that “there’s no mandatory overtime in this department”, but then tell the current employees at meetings that “this isn’t a job where you just roll in at 9 and punch out at 5”. We took it upon ourselves to discreetly get the word out that this department requires crazy hours and you’ll be told to just “multitask”, as though that somehow magically gets the workload down.
Pretty glad I’m not there anymore.
That’s a recipe for disaster. Clearly her managers were measuring the wrong metrics with regards to that department.
So, she was a woman?
*ducks and runs*
Sounds a lot like my last job. It was at a small company, the owner was a woman (looking at you Suthen). She was bleeding customers and employees, so I had more and more responsibilities. Every day she’d stop by my desk multiple times to have me stop what I was doing to look at an emergency, often before the previous emergency was resolved, then she’d ask if one of the previous emergencies in the stack was done (um no, that was 3 layers of emergencies ago). It was like 8 hours of I Love Lucy at the candy factory.
I swear I have lasting anxiety from that job.
Ugh, you’re giving me flashbacks of my time in accounting. I remember going up to Michigan with the family and bringing my laptop and still working like 3-4 hours a day despite being on PTO. I was fine doing that because I didn’t want people to work later simply because I wasn’t there.
Came back to the office after my vacation and as soon as I got settled in, the Controller reamed me out over some BS that wasn’t in my control. I mentioned that I did work during my time off but wasn’t able to be at my laptop at all times all day and he basically said in a passive aggressive manner that no one asked me to work during my PTO. He was absolutely right but after that until I left the company, you wouldn’t have caught me dead bringing my work laptop on vacation. He didn’t like it but by then I was mentally checked out and brushing up the resume.
Sounds like a slow paced work environment.
Well, that went well, I think. First interview. They’ll narrow down candidates for an in-person interview next week.
It depends on what you are doing. I spent most of my career in logistics, where if you can’t multi-task, you are not going to last. You will have 20 plates spinning, and while five of them are red hot, 10 will get hot if you leave them alone, five can be maintenanced, and it will change every 10 seconds.
My wife, on the other hand, can only laser focus, and will not leave a project until it is up to the second. Works well in university HR.
I know there are people who can SWITCH faster than I can mid-task, but I don’t believe “real” multi-tasking, the way I have always understood it as it was explained to me, is possible for more than a few people in any large population.
It comes from the environment. If the work you do comes at you that fast, you either go with it, or it breaks you. No, it isn’t for everyone, but I, at least, thrived on it.
I was an expediter at a restaurant when in college, and I had to know every ticket that a waitress brought in, the speed and style of every cook, each dish and its cooking time, and how it is timed with everything else.
Made the nights go by like no ones business.
If I don’t have an overload at work, I will get into trouble with something; I need that superfast, super-intense environment.
Correct, Mojeaux – when most people say “multitask” they really mean “time slicing”.
Very rare is the person who can truly do multiple things simultaneously.
Kitchen expo is a perfect example – you are rapidly switching between tickets and evaluating progress but not truly working them all simultaneously (even if it feels like that).
I call it wearing many hats…they all get dirty and eventually all the jobs get completed. Eventually.
My first paying job was at McDonalds. Flipping burgers for a while, then move up behind the counter taking orders.
Got that ambition, baby?
😔
My first paying job was as an IT intern where I went around and installed software updates from 3.5 disks onto people’s dekstops while they were out at lunch.
I also got to install windows 95 from floppy (or was it 98?). That took a lot of disk changes.
First paid job was delivering newspapers, starting in grade school (somewhere between 3rd-5th grade if memory serves). McDonald’s was willing to hire me at 16 though (I had dropped the paper route several years before).
I forgot about that. I delivered the Des Moines Register every morning, seven days a week, for more than a year.
McD’s was the first job I had to punch a time card.
First paid job was in the “Career Based Intervention Program” through the high school, which was a thing where you get out of school at noon, go to some kind of job, and get credits for doing that along with your paycheck (it’s supposed to be for “at risk” kids, but I just heard you get out of school early so I signed up).
The job was basically a janitor’s assistant at the school – pushing the dustmop through the hallways, washing windows, and delivering pallets of printer paper to the office and classrooms. But I liked it more than sitting in class.
My first job was at a Jewel Osco grocery store in the Chicago suburbs. It was an okay job but did not like being on my feet all day.
Fantastic read! Your early-years work collecting berries, perhaps especially so. Good on Romania for having a culture that puts kids to work in a mutually-advantageous way to instill the work ethic. The lack of it is IMO incredibly detrimental for America and the West. The detail of using a fork is enlightening. Keep it simple.
Am I correct in assuming the copper “evaporated” into black market alleys?
I’d love to know *why* you don’t recommend stowing in a sleeper train in Romania. I’m sure there’s a story there. I took one in Vladivostok and it was probably in the same vein. Soviet-uniformed police strolled through and got involved when that fuck tried to steal my tablet. I particularly remember the open pathway between train cars and the open ovens heating the place. The toilet, as well. Yeesh.
I wrote about it here (WOW. 7 years ago? Damn) Fun pics showing the state of the train lie within.
https://www.glibertarians2018.link/2018/10/30/evan-goes-to-kazakhstan/
Stories about how ‘we’ came to our careers is outstanding, also a fun way to make an ‘easy’ submission. It’s also remarkably interesting, especially by revealing some of the history of the author, especially so for our Romanian counterpart.
Special thanks for this, Pie.
thanks. it seems it sublimated into the black market 🙂
I’d love to know *why* you don’t recommend stowing in a sleeper train in Romania – not much of a story the type of second class sleeping cabin meant 6 narrow cots in a small compartment which you shared with strangers. it was cramped got hot the toilet was at the end of the cart and was not … good…
a first class you had your own room with own toilet it was not so bad.
I was expecting the triple-decker hammocks like in thr Navy.
If I wrote up my career path for a fictional character, you’d think I didn’t put any effort into the backstory.
We were too poor to buy new computers, but my dad wanted one, so he bought secondhand parts from flea markets and we would try to get something running. In high school I took three years of their ass-backwards computer science program that started with machine code and ended at C++ and ended up always going above and beyond the assignment because I could. I got a job as an IT intern with the money-begging division of the local University, then went to a real school for my undergraduate studies. (SU SUcks for anything that isn’t Law or Architecture, so I went to RIT).
I worked as a lab assistant in the campus computer labs at college, then on the helpdesk at Xerox before getting my forever job in the bureaucracy, where I have remained (despite internal promotions and transfers)
To be honest, the only part of computing I haven’t done is microelectrical engineering.
@Not Adahn got any good tutorials on setting up a micro-cleanroom and hobby photolithography bench?
Someone asked what priority tasks should be, and the manager’s answer was “Everything”.
When everything is top priority, nothing is top priority.
When everything is top priority, it is developer’s choice.
Yeah, everything about that manager screams “get me a transfer to another department”.
Illegal claims asylum, almost two years after getting caught for illegal entry, is denied, and arrested after the hearing. Retards think he/she should be allowed to walk out free as a bird. Fuck these people.
https://www.wweek.com/news/courts/2025/06/02/attorneys-say-ice-arrested-woman-seeking-asylum-after-her-portland-court-hearing/?utm_source=Master+Audience&utm_campaign=deaf5412c3-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2025_05_27_11_07&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-deaf5412c3-274846839&mc_cid=deaf5412c3
Merely being arrested is too kind.
because she is transgender and gay
Well, which is it? Bullshit that you’re both.
Of course she (he?) is.
“a job is not for liking. That’s why it is called a job and not “being in a hammock on the beach with a cold beer”. ”
I always hated that kids are constantly advised to “do what you love”. If you have interests that align well with a real-world job, that’s great – go for it. But that’s not reality for most people. That advice is probably at least partly responsible for kids taking out gigantic student loans and spending 4+ years of life in college for photography, music, or fine arts because they’re trying to do what they love. “What you love” may be an intensely competitive field that can only accommodate so many full-time professionals. Nothing wrong with pursuing those, but there should always be a boring, practical, in-demand profession as first priority (a 19-year old relative is dead-set on being a model and refuses to consider any other type of work; trying to subtly plant the idea in her head that this isn’t a good idea).
My advice would be “come up with a few careers that seem to match what you’re good at, and pick one that might be enjoyable sometimes”. It’s a little pessimistic, but sometimes pessimistic is just realistic.
a 19-year old relative is dead-set on being a model – on a scale of 1 to 10…. also pics?
Haha well sorry to disappoint, I don’t have any pics for you.
My main objection is that she’s already 19… Most full-time models started getting a portfolio together when they were in their 16 or 17 (as far as I know she has never done anything that would constitute a portfolio). The work kind of dries up once you’re in your early 20s because guess what? Nobody wants to take pictures of a 25-year old, and there’s always a fresh crop of 17-year olds who want to be models too, so move aside grandma.
If that pathway is available to you, it’s not a bad idea to cash in while you can, but it’s a “chew you up and spit you out” industry. She seems to imagine that it’s just a life of flying all over the world on the company dime to do photoshoots on exotic beaches and spend the rest of the day sipping champagne in the luxury suite.
My career choice was “What skills do I have that pay enough to live on”. I don’t think I’ve liked any job I’ve ever had, but I like having a roof overhead and food in the cabinets more than I hate my job.
Do what you love for a living, and you realize that you can get tired of that too. I recall when I was a teen I was told do “Do what you love, but have a back up plan when that doesn’t pay the bills.”
Yea that’s another thing. I love to cook at home, but I ignore the advice that I should become a professional chef because I’m pretty sure I’d end up with a strong dislike of cooking if I did that job.
It’s kind of like if someone liked painting pictures at home and you told them “You’d love this job where you spend 10 hours a day painting the same 8 pictures on demand – usually multiple at a time – and get screamed at if you fuck up one little detail, then spend 4 more hours cleaning the painting studio and washing brushes!”
I’m studying data science right now and hope to get a certificate or some kind and a few personal projects under my belt and – with any luck – land a job. I seem to catch on to the concepts quick enough, so I think there’s a possibility I could do well in that field. And if I end up loathing it from having to do it 9 to 5, well, I don’t do Principal Component Analysis for fun in my spare time, so nothing would be lost.
Agreed. My job is okay in that it’s indoors and in an Authorized Personnel Only sort of setting. Hobbies are for stress relief; if you add stress like deadlines and customer satisfaction requirements, the point of the hobby is gone.
My parents always told how dumb it was to pay all that money for a degree that won’t give you a proper return on that investment. I majored in Economics and decided to minor in accounting after getting some advice from a cool guy from an internship interview (that I didn’t get) and got a job right out of school as a revenue staff accountant at a cyber security company. I landed into accounting and realized after nearly a decade of working in that area that I absolutely hated it. I didn’t make a huge leap, but I went into financial analysis and have loved it ever since.
I freaking hate it when expensive FSEs are less competent than me.
I know that feeling.
Fire Safety Evaluation System?
I may have had paid gigs prior, but the first job I needed a SSN for was boy scout summer camp staff. $25/week.
https://gizmodo.com/pornhub-is-pulling-out-of-france-2000610486
Pas de porno pour toi !
Back when my kids were teens, I was talking with another father (quite conservative). The subject of violent slasher flicks came up (very popular in the 80s). So, I asked if he had to choose between his kids becoming promiscuous or violent, which would he prefer. He hemmed and hawed but eventually said promiscuous. So, I told him to rent porn for his kids and leave the slasher flicks on the shelf.
I would rather be hit in the face than the balls but I don’t think that means I should take up boxing.
If someone is hitting you in the balls during a boxing match, somethings wrong.
Uh, yeah.
Pulling out is risky. They should use a condom.
Back in the day (circa 1960) a (((buddy))) was assertive enough, at 16, to go into the local drugstore and buy rubbers in bulk. We were enlisted to resell them at like a 100 percent markup to all our friends. Split the profits, until his parents found dozens and dozens of them in a shoebox in his closet. Rubbers were, of course, those latex things designed by the fathers of teenaged girls to disintegrate in your wallet long before you could find another use for them.
The rubber had to last long enough to put a permanent ring in your wallet so the other guys would think you were carrying. A big washer would do the trick, too.
I was unfireable at my last job, I was the go to guy. I rarely took time off so I finally took a week’s vacation when I bought my little cabin that needed a lot of work. My boss had told me to call him at home on Sunday when my vacation was up. He told me to be ready on Monday morning to go to Berkeley (I was working out of the Twin Cities). “We bought a store there and there will be a check and plane ticket at the St Louis Park store, stay as long as necessary”.
Sure enough the check and ticket were there , I was gone 5 weeks until a manager showed up. When I left Berkeley the boss told me to stop by Seattle and take a look at the store there, spend a couple days with the manager. I had previously spent 5-6 weeks in Bellingham installing a store.
All in all, it worked out well when I retired at 55.
My first job-job was at Shoney’s (a diner) manning the salad bar (breakfast bar in the mornings on weekends). I was 16. Yes, I was required to work until 2 a.m. I HATED that job, but it taught me a lot, most of which was, “Don’t take Dad’s advice about confronting managers and in general, don’t act like he says he does at his job.”
Good new everyone! New franchise opportunity announced!
https://www.oregonlive.com/retail/2025/06/portlands-first-of-its-kind-womens-sports-bar-announces-four-new-locations-across-the-country.html?outputType=amp
This is just a lesbian bar.
Do they also have a U-Haul franchise?
U-Haul was started in Ridgefield, about twenty miles north of the Sports Bra.
wait, I thought they went bankrupt.
As far I know everyone can come in. You’re just going to find WNBA on the big screen.
I drove by a couple weeks ago and almost stopped for lunch to give a review here, but was too busy.
Crap, was supposed to be a reply to Mojo below.
Pikers. We’ve got a woman owned woman’s sports bar!
It took out a good poutine place. I miss the poutine place.
I went trying to find you the place where I had the best poutine. It was in Thunder Bay. It appears to have closed, it’s not on the map anymore.
I blame Trudy.
UCS:
They still have locations left.
the Caitlin Clarke effect
It’ll fail as soon as the first dude-in-a-dress demands entrance, is denied, and sues them out of business.
Sounds like that grifter in a wheelchair who purposely looks for places he can’t get into, and sues them. He’s made a career out of it.
What, you don’t have to be a woman to go in, you just have to be willing to submit yourself to tvs playing women’s sports.
TOK:
Germans have apparently elevated that grift to an art form.
Are you talking about that cunt who nearly got Manitoba’s in Alphabet City shut down? I hope he gets eaten by wombats.
Or is it the one who got the original Squeez-in shut down in Sacramento?
The wheelchair guy was the bane of the Twin Cities. Cost my employer a lot of cash making bathrooms handicapped, aisles wider, etc.
That fuckin’ guy needs to take a long trip off of a short pier.
But then, I hate most activists.
I agree with hating activists.
I don’t think those types are even activists, they are just assholes.
This movie line just popped into my head:
“Why are those assholes on our porch?”
“They’re not assholes dear, they’re azaleas.”
I bought my dream bicycle with money I saved from recycling cans. I bought my first car (1976 safety orange Ford Pinto) that way too. Every Saturday morning, Spring through Fall, I’d be walking the ditches near my town looking for aluminum cans.
I also de-tassled corn, weeded soybeans, stacked hay in a hot barn loft, thinned walnut trees, and dug graves.
My first real job (taxes paid) was as a cook at the town’s greasy spoon. I cooked 3 nights a week during school days and filled on weekends.* I also cleaned the restaurant after hours. The ladie’s bathroom was always worse than the men’s.
I taught swim lessons, lifeguarded the early morning lap swimmers, worked at group homes for developmentally disabled people, worked the IT help desk on campus, installed Microsoft and Word perfect product on faculty computers through college.
My first real job was automating propane tank farms. My PLC code for turning a vertical level measurement in a horizontal bullet tank is still in use!
Now I break airplanes.
* Jerry always came to the restaurant for lunch and dinner seven days a week. Every time he ordered a California Burger Basket.
You could get good money recycling cans. They paid by the pound and as I recall it got up to $0.35. When communities started collecting recycling with the trash the whole business dried up. Even back then environmental bullshit was a problem.
We get gleaners here, semi-homeless who make a circuit of the bins for the can days.
That’s why I always threw my beer cans out the window. Creating jobs for the kids and other folks. I was always ready to those in need.
because she is transgender and gay
Well, which is it? Bullshit that you’re both.
A lesbian trapped in a woman’s body?
“I’m trans but only want to date biological women. Why can’t I get a date?”
/probably
When I was a kid I did the usual things kids did to make money – look under the sofa and chair cushions for loose change, hunt for soda bottles, shovel driveways in the winter and cut grass in the summer. When I was 15 I lied about my age and got hired part-time at the little mom and pop store in my neighborhood. I made minimum wage, $1.35 an hour and would clear $15 – $22 a week. I remember feeling like I had made the big time making that much money!
I ended up working 6 years for the good boss, until the economy crashed and I rejoined the Marine Corps
SQUIRREL ATTACK!
First job? Dishwasher at the bowling alley, where my brother was the cook. Did. Not. Work. Out. But it got me a few dishing gigs in high school, where I also did summer maintenance for my mothers prop management company. First career? Used/New books. Went broke, loved every second. And that is why I jumped to logistics.
My son hated the Marines and once he got out he went to work as a barback/busboy at a restaurant a friend of his worked at.
He had no prior experience, but 3 years later he is a manager there.
I was impressed.
Ron, I don’t know if I saw you were having issues in a dead thread I commented on, but I hope you feel better soon.
Thanks
My wife is awesome.
She brought me clean clothes so I could take a shower.
I feel half human now.
Which half?
Nice. Having someone on the outside who can bring you stuff (like a giant cheesesteak) can make a hospital stay a lot more pleasant.
You read Ron’s predicament and think a cheesesteak can make his hospital stay more pleasant?
Having someone be your champion to the doctors and nurses while you are hopped up on narcotics is very helpful. I would have agreed to anything when I was drugged.
A cheesesteak makes *EVERYTHING* more pleasant.
Speaking of making money, today I’m earning my pay.
Lunchtime!
Wait! We are/were to supposed to earn our pay? Is this something new? When did they start this? I want to talk to someone, maybe HR? Hope it doesn’t catch on.
“You’ll hear from my shop steward!”
Uh, Mister Score, our records indicate that your dues payments are in arrears. We can’t do anything for you until you’ve paid that off.
Let’s see:
paper route
after school jobs:
– book store employee
– drug store stock clerk
summer jobs:
– on the truck for a microfilm company (drove around picking up hospital records for microfilming)
– vinyl siding
– general worksite gopher
Then college, co-op jobs:
– Bankers Trust corporate actions intern
– Bank Of New England / Fleet Bank, also corporate actions as I recall
– John Hancock IT helpdesk
Then:
– phone support for financial services back-office product
– jr. software developer (VB!) for early resume scanning company
– unix admin back at financial services company
– systems engineer at fintech startup
– systems engineer at State Street Bank (would not recommend)
– systems engineer/architect at current git
I’m not sure I’ll make it to retirement here, but it’s been a long run so far.