Can students be paid to excel

[dgriffin]

Hmmm. Let's see. Menial work I remember from my youth. Well, I suppose I should start with delivering papers. Then, standing at a printing press pumping the treadle and printing 50 zillion raffle tickets and business cards....one up! (The printer didn't have enough type for 2 or more up and he didn't have a motor on the press. Boy that puts a lot of the stress on the leg remaining to hold you upright!) Dragging a hand cart around downtown Utica delivering wholesale jewelry and toasters for my employer. Cleaning dog poop off the corner column outside the Fanny Farmer in the New Hartford shopping center. General help at Worden's music store, next to the Stanley..quite a lot of fun, actually. Polishing pianos, stocking records, delivering (or repossessing) stereos with the owners, helping Jimmy to rebuild old pianos (I got to buff the ivory on the keys.) Price marking stuff on the shelves at the (I think it was then a) Grand Union on South and Mohawk. General library help at MVCC (see: www.windsweptpress.com/virginia.pdf and www.windsweptpress.com/shepherd.pdf ). Stocking at M&L Electric (see: windsweptpress.com/theology.pdf ) Walking around Rome delivering samples of Zest soap. That experience absolutely deserves a story... from the old guy in the sort-of-mansion who offered me at 15 a bourbon to the woman in the bikini who wanted me to come help her in the attic. Digging holes for in-ground trampolines in the hot sun one summer for a milkman-turned-entrepreneur's folly at the top of Horatio St as the arterial was being completed. "Mr. Disney," as we called him behind his back, had a lot of big ideas. Clerking at Daw's Drug Store at Fairmont Fair in Camillus. Fixing film projectors, about which I knew nothing, at SUNY Oswego. "Stuffin' Papers" at the OD. We put the Family Weekly and ad circulars into the comics section every Monday night. Paid 15 cents a bundle. If you shagged it (the American sense of the word), you might make $12 for the evening. There were about 15 or 20 of us college kids. I'm sure there were other jobs that don't come to mind at the moment.

[dgriffin]

Well, now I'm embarrassed. Here I've bared my ... um, soul ... to speak of my menial employment history, only to find no one else on this board ever worked for low wages and low esteem?
I guess you all went to an Ivy League college and had servants at home and Dad dumped Mom for a trophy wife who was cuter than your girlfriend.

[thelma]

dgriffin said:

Well, now I'm embarrassed. Here I've bared my ... um, soul ... to speak of my menial employment history, only to find no one else on this board ever worked for low wages and low esteem?
I guess you all went to an Ivy League college and had servants at home and Dad dumped Mom for a trophy wife who was cuter than your girlfriend.

....................................................

Dave - When I was 16, I worked Saturday and Monday nights at Woolworths for 60 cents an hour!!!!!! How is that for "minimum wage" - LOL.

This was in 1952 - my take home pay was $7.50 and I had to pay my Mom $1.00 for my "room and board", and I still managed to buy my own clothes on the money I had left over. I thought I was so rich when I could finally pick out my own clothes and pay for them myself.'

Of course, this job only lasted a few months as I had eloped and was keeping our marriage a secret - until I got to be 5 months pregnant and couldn't keep it a secret any longer!

Then, my husband and I moved into our own place, I had my daughter, went back and finished my Senior Year of High School, and he supported me for the next 11 years until I divorced him!

[frankcor]

Geeze, Dave, do you know me?

Heh, well, you got the Ivy League part right, everything else was wrong.

My first real job, other than babysitting, lawn mowing and snow shoveling was the summer between my junior and senior years in high school. I worked at Griffiss AFB as a garbage man: a buck-ten an hour and all I could eat.

The following year I got promoted to the railway gang.

[Swimmy]

I mowed lawns, shoveled driveways as a kid. When I was in high school, those jobs were expected on a volunteer basis. I babysat until I realized parents let their kids go wild these days. I lifeguarded for several years. If I was a beach guard, it would be quite a good gig. But I lifeguarded at a nursing home and at a club full of rich diva-wannabes. I learned to be a janitor, landscaper, painter, babysitter. I also learned that stay-at-home housewives are very promiscuous. If only they weren't married... I earned $6.50 an hour (minimum wage then) during my lifeguarding career.

Since then, I've interned at various law firms and judicial chambers. Most this work has been "voluntary". I did not get paid, but had to pay for the credits I received. I worked extra hours outside the mandatory hours (40 per week) to make $8/hr for a total of 20 hrs a week. Currently, I'm working for free for another law firm. "It's the value of the experience that is important." The ABA can take that quote and stick it.

I'm probably the only 27 year old shmuck who is working for free until he learns whether he passed the bar. In the mean time, I have to swallow my pride and think about taking a job in retail or something just to make a buck. If I had my physique from when I swam, I'd go back to the clubhouse and pimp myself out to those promiscuous housewives. Since I don't, I'm thinking about running for state senate, they make a lot for doing nothing. Just my line of work until I pass the bar.

[frankcor]

You can count on my vote, swimmy.

Unfortunately, you can count on at least one of those sex-starved housewives to sell her story to a tabloid, effectively ending your political career. Oh wait -- what am I thinking?

[Swimmy]

I was too honorable back then and refused their moves. Now I realize how stupid that was, i.e. easy sex, from experienced women who could teach me volumes.

lol

[dgriffin]

Swimmy, I'd forgotten about internships. I did one only 6 years ago while gaining certification in a field in which I'm interested. Among other duties, I had to strip-search (male) crack addicts bused up from NY City streets. You'd be surprised what can be concealed up there, but luckily there are techniques to get them out without going in after them. Thelma, my Mom's first job out of high school was at Utica's Woolworth's in 1928. $12 for 40 hours each week. When she took me downtown as a little kid, she would be followed around from time to time by a "floorwalker" who she said had flirted with her as a teenage clerk. After that job, she went to work at Horrock Ibotsen's (sp?) winding the line guides on bambo fishing rods. I still have a miniaturized version made for her by a rod-winder and prospective but unlucky suitor. She then met my Dad at the Beach. Frank, garbage work is good, if you have a pair of nose plugs. And I'd also forgotten snow shoveling! Cheapskates wanting the entire length of their driveway shoveled for a buck after a 25 inch snowstorm. Ever notice the ones who were struggling with finances paid more?
Whle the miserly "suits" on the Parkway argued with you over a quarter.

[froggy]

Dave, right there with you delivering papers for the "Overly Disgraceful". Then all the years I spent at Great American. Everything from a bag boy, shopping cart fetcher, bottle counter (when it was still done by hand), cashier, stock clerk, produce, dairy, frozen foods, floors. I even once got mugged while grabbing carts on a Sunday evening. Now how messed up is that? I remember starting to work the store in '89 when minimum wage was $3.35/hr

Used to do boiler work with my dad for a few years. Pumping gas and working at a car wash.

[dgriffin]

froggy said:

Used to do boiler work with my dad for a few years. Pumping gas and working at a car wash.

Let's hear Jim Croce's "Working at the Car Wash Blues," "... and walking home in soggy old shoes."
I worked at Daws Drugs, too, in Fairmont Fair in Camillis outside of Syracuse, when I was commuting to Oswego State. No surprise that company went out of business. I may have been a menial clerk, but my eye for business told me they had neglected to move up into the (at the time) 20 th century. Their inventory system was a close cousin to the old "stripe on the wall" variety (order when you see it.) It was such a chore to accurately do each department's inventory each week, that most folks cheated and reported the wrong numbers. Their re-order system was such that if you needed two of a certain item, they would send you ten. Ergo, you lied. This caused a tremendous inflation of their perceived inventory value and when the family sold the business to that guy who later ran for governor (and who asked everyone in the company to take a lie detector test!) they over-valued the inventory by about 20% and were said to later have been sued mightily for it.

[dgriffin]

This is a great thread. Last night I started a new story about delivering samples of Zest to every home in the city of Rome, as I did (it seemed) in 1959. Frank what is/was the name of that housing area near the Base that was so labyrinthine with curving streets you couldn't sit in your back yard without being in some else's front yard? I think most of the residents were airmen's' families.

[dgriffin]

Swimmy, you could try this sort of work for a while. All of Clipper's neighbors down there might hire you.


This has been appearing below the Clipper's Corner nameplate the past couple of weeks.

[frankcor]

There were two: Woodhaven off Park Drive was outside the base proper, while Skyline was on base. Both had enlisted and officer families. We spent two days a week in each of them picking up household garbage. Fridays were easier, riding around in the truck picking up all the office and warehouse trash.

[Clipper]

Frank. were you the one that used to recycle all the playboy magazines off the base dump? When I first went to work at the base fire department, the guys would throw away their men's magazines, and they would keep coming back, via the well intentioned garbage man that would collect them off the dump and re-gift them to the fire department library, haha.

You could clean the TV room in the firehouse, throw away the magazines, and the next time you cleaned up the TV room, the same magazine would be back on the coffee table again. It was like they had legs and ran back across the runway during the night and re-established residency in the TV room.LOL ;D

[froggy]

dgriffin said:

Let's hear Jim Croce's "Working at the Car Wash Blue," "... walking home in soggy old shoes."

Very good song. I get a kick out of it everytime I throw on Jim's CD with it on there. Too funny.