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Working with mentally disturbed individuals while dodging what they threw, their kicking, sometimes bites, lifting them, transporting them, and hauling wheelchairs.
Working at Feed Mill Unloading and Reloading Box Cars when everything came in 100# Burlap bags.
Pulling wet Bull Hides out of Salt Brine in middle of Winter.
Mixing Bread Dough in Commercial Bakery, lifting hundreds of pounds all day long, odd hours, 7 days a week, no Holidays, Weekends or Vacation Days off, 135 degree heat.
Combat medic with the First Infantry Division 20 miles northwest of Saigon in Vietnam.
We would take hikes up to 12 clicks (7 miles) carrying 40 to 60 lb loads on a near daily basis. Always very hot and humid with sometimes very tough terrain. To make it harder we always avoided the trails.
Another one that I had was in home care. In a typical day, I would be lifting 150 lb of dead weight in and out of the bathroom. I was about 22 at the time, so my back was good for it. I honestly loved that job though. I hate having to see people stuffed into the nursing home.
I loaded pallets on the back of an electric pallet jack.
You stick two pallets on your jack. Grab you manifest, and go into the freezer. (Bigger than your average walmart)
You select the items on the list and stack them onto the pallet, then drive to the next spot until the order is filled.
Some of the orders end up over 6 feet tall.
There are items that weigh 150 pounds. The average item weight was 35 lbs. I was moving 200 items per hour.
When the order was filled, you had to separate the 2 pallets from each other, wrap them in plastic, and drop them off in front of the semi trailers. Then go get 2 more pallets to start the whole process over again.
I did this 6 days a week for 14-16 hours a day.
I ended up hurting my back moving a 120lb case of shrimp. They wouldn't let me take a single day off to recuperate. They insisted I go back to work on light duty. It sucked.
My second hardest job was at an auction house in southern Florida.
I had to unload antique furniture during the week, and set it up onto the auction stage. If you know anything about antique furniture, you know how insanely heavy that stuff is.
During the auction, myself, and a few others held up the items for all to see whilst they bid on it.
Some of the bidding wars went on for a long time.
After the auction, we had to load the items sold into people's trucks.
In southern Florida, no one has a standard height truck. NOO, they have trucks so high you need a step ladder to get in.
I'll never forget trying to pick up a 200 year old piano, over my head, into the back of a Chevy 3500 on 44 inch tires.
In college one summer I refinished floors (strip, buff, wax). The floors weren't bad, but moving the furniture was. Me and another guy would move and stack 100+lb drafting tables all day long. They left the AC off to conserve energy so it was really hot, too. Best shape of my life, though.
I've got nothing on my dad, though. He grew up on a farm in the 40's and 50's and my grandfather was from a German immigrant family and quite the taskmaster with the males in the family. He told me when he joined the Marines and hit boot camp at Parris Island it was a lot like farming but he slept in later, it was physically easier, the Drill Instructor shouted at him in English, not German, and he only had to shoot targets and not dinner...
Working tobacco is easy in the beginning, but come harvest time?
Let's just say I wouldn't do it now for $25/hr, I did more than my fair share for $8/hr in my teens (that was when min wage was a bit over $4/hr!), don't wanna do it again!
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