I work, you jerk.

[Fetzenfisch]

i nearly took every possible work i could get. As a helping hand on a construction site, as a paperboy, tutoring, gardening, chopping down a tree, buidling a terrace. I guess i do know what work is.
Now im just a supporting teacher when i'm not at the university. But in the summer brake, i again will do whatever i can to earn some money. Perhaps i can upgrade my system then. Its damn about time.

 

[drakanwolf]

I'm a bit far from my teenage years, but I have been working since I was 14. I remember being ecstatic when I turned 14 because it meant I could finally get a part-time job. I started out as an usher in a hole-in-the-wall movie theater. This job taught me one of my first fundamental life lessons: people are ****ing disgusting! Seriously. People will go through the trouble of ordering a cup of water so they have a place to spit the chewing tobacco they snuck in, and then, when the movie is over, they'll just throw the dam thing on the ground & let it get everywhere! And don't get me started about having to interrupt a middle-aged couple's coitus because I needed to sweep the aisles before the next show.

I've come a long way since then, and I largely regard that as a terrible job. But I will not deny that it taught me to value all workers, even those performing jobs that some might consider beneath them. To this day, I always make sure I neatly & properly dispose of my trash at public venues. I've been there, I know what hell those employees have to see, and I refuse to be part of the problem.

[I'll gloss over the part about how much I detested call-center work and move onto more interesting fare]

I've never shared the distaste for blue-collar workers that many seem to have. My dad was blue-collar his whole life, and he's the one who helped instill me with what I consider to be a pretty damn fine work ethic. He always pushed me to succeed in school, though. He said that he at least wanted me to have the choice to do something other than physical labor. After spending some of my college years paying tuition & rent by running network cable in "under-construction" office buildings, I can see why. But, as bad as that job was, it paved the way for my current career.

I'm currently an IT professional, and I love it. I do some physical labor (moving/installing new equipment), and I do a lot of mental labor (some of those off-the-wall issues can be a real pain troubleshoot). At the end of the day, I like my career, and I enjoy my work. I never forget the jobs I had leading up to this career, though.

I think a lot of kids today could really benefit from working. I'm not going to lie: the work is hard, and you won't make much money. But you will learn a lot about life, and you will learn some great everyday skills (Best Buy wanted to charge my brother $300 to send someone out to mount his new TV for him... I did it faster & better, and all I charged him was a double-cheeseburger combo meal). And those are the types of things that no one can take away form you.

-DW

 

[Spinozaad]

I've been working physical-demanding jobs next to my eduction since I was 14 (although I'm currently without a job, sadly), and I agree that it can be a really good experience. Mostly because a) you get out and around and b) it's basically healthy excercise, and you're getting paid for it.

 

[RanD00M]

I only work in the summer time when there is no school.So I work around 2-3 months a year.But the work that I do is no joke.It's hard,it starts early and it is really satisfying to see that paycheck each week,knowing that you earned it.

 

[Keava]

Untrained physical work is easy. Trained is not.

People in physical fields risk things office brats never have to: health and life. They strain and snap muscles, break bones, and determinately damage their locomotive skills, in addition to the life time of illnesses many will suffer due to poisons materials they handle and decades of breathing in hazardous materials. All of this, and it can STILL be mentally straining. You have no idea how much math and creativity goes into something as simple as, say, adding a room to a house, or building highways.

Actually i do. But at least from my own expierience, the guy who makes plans is not really the guy making the physical work. He makes plans and makes sure the rest does it properly, and this is mental work.
Sure there are those few handymans that do both the planning/thinking and actual work but its usually for much smaller projects. Any construction site or factory work is divided between those that do the manual labor and those who plan how to achive it best way.

As for risks that are bound to many types of physical work, in most cases there are ocunterweigths that come either in form of better salary or earlier retirement.

Also, not all mental work is lounging in the office browsing the the internet when your boss isint looking

 

[Skratt]

There is a lot of psychological mumbo jumbo that goes into the thinking of a person who says you aren't really working if you aren't digging ditches or some other form of hard physical labor. That being said, I think the smaller your paycheck, the harder your work is.

 

[tjarne]

I worked 4 weeks at a hospital. Leading patients here to there and similar tasks. And 1 week as practicant at a museum. That's it, it's kinda hard to get a job without contacts or experience. Also I'm 18 years old.

 

[Matt King]

im 14 and i've had a paper round for a year and a half and i do odd jobs like babysitting and car washing so basicly yeah

 

[Nikajo]

My job isn't physically hard but it is mentally fairly taxing. The repitition is a ***** aswell. As are the occasional 13 hour shifts that I have to pull. I enjoy my job though and give it my all. I get to start night shifts soon, not sure if I'm looking forward to that or not...

 

[Shadowkitty777]

I work as a housekeeper. My job involves a lot of physical work. I have to scrub floors and shower bottoms while I'm on my knees a lot so I wear kneepads. Because of that, strangers that see me in my work attire ask if I'm a volleyball player. I think it would be nice to have a non-physical job someday.
I start college in August. LOL So here is hoping!

 

[afaceforradio]

I work 38 hours a week as a legal secretary, and let me tell you it's just as hard mentally as a builder's job is physically and very rewarding to see that nice fat pay cheque at the end of the month. I wouldn't be out of work I wouldn't know what to do with my day.

 

[matt87_50]

I can't help but get the feeling you're over valuing physical labour as though mental work isn't hard. I don't do any physical work, granted, but I still get that feeling of "ahh, home after a hard day's work" after college, which is shortly followed by "...And you have homework and revision!".

mental work is actually usually more straining than physical labor, some of my fellow programmers at work actualy said they saw a study that suggested the ideal work day should be 6 hours, because the original 8 to 9 hour work day was based around physical work that was less on the mental side.

though it may have been programmers just finding yet another thing to complain about...


case in point:

when I was at uni I had no trouble staying up all hours, i was already good at programming so I didn't really find the course all that taxing. I then started doing night fill at the local kmart equivalent right after uni for 5 hrs. I would be at uni at 9am, and wouldn't get home until 11 to 12pm after night fill.

my point being that after I finished uni, and ditched night fill for a 9 to 5 programming job, I find my self MUCH more drained after each day and at the end of the week than when I was doing 9 to 11 with uni + physical labor... some of that may be down to not getting the exercise I was getting free from doing my night fill job (seriously, its great!), and thus I feel drained due to being out of shape. but they might still be onto something...

 

[Marter]

I used to have a babysitting job, but that only lasted about a year, as the kids grew too old.

I'll be getting a job this summer, and I hope to keep it into the new year.

 

[Sennz0r]

I worked at a garden centre for about a year and a half before I went to uni. It was all physical labour and helping customers, the latter of which wasn't even that bad because people that frequented the centre were usually quite kind. Of course there are some jackasses between them but it didn't put me off my job that much.

When I went to uni I started tending bar voluntarily. Every faculty at that university had their own bar that was managed by students. Cheap alcohol and lots of fun. The downside of it was that a lot of people were being pretty rude, especially when the place was packed. They'd shout their order at you when you were busy fixing someone else's order, then had the audacity to call on me when I still didn't have their's done. It pissed me off especially because I wasn't being paid to get them their drinks. I was in fact a student just like them, and they knew it, or should have known it.

Upside though: Students get VERY drunk, and one of our bartenders once got a 48 euro tip because the guy who ordered forgot he was supposed to get change

 

[historybuff]

Just because work isn't overly physical doesn't mean it's not work. When I was sixteen, I held a job for two and a half years working in a computer tech department. Let me tell you that nothing makes you want to kill yourself more than doing phone support.

But I've also done physical labor--we have property with a lot of trees, it's a lot of maintenance. And I've worked at Wal-mart, which is like a mix between physical labor (because I was back in the warehouse quite often) and soulcrushing despair.

While I do value a job where I can just let my mind sit back and let my body work--managing to land that sort of job that will actually pay the bills is sort of not always doable.

As far as young people having jobs--most definitely. I held my first job for over two years. I'm in college now--and most of my peers have never held full-time work, while I have five full and part time jobs that I've had in the last 8 years to pull experience from. It's good self-discipline and it helps you manage money. I paid for my first car myself and I always paid for my own insurance.

 

[JEBWrench]

And I've worked at Wal-mart, which is like a mix between physical labor (because I was back in the warehouse quite often) and soulcrushing despair.

Somewhat like working at McDonald's.

A job wherein you get constant disdain from customers, and then have to pretend that they're not morons when they ask for their drive-through order "To go".

 

[TheDoctor455]

I can't help but get the feeling you're over valuing physical labour as though mental work isn't hard. I don't do any physical work, granted, but I still get that feeling of "ahh, home after a hard day's work" after college, which is shortly followed by "...And you have homework and revision!".

Same here.
Only... I tend to curse more than that.

 

[brodie21]

i have a ton of work experience, i am a raft guide, i work at a pizza place, i have worked at a ski shop, an ice rink, and a park.

 

[Ubermetalhed]

Jobs do teach responsibility and do have some good benifits towards social skills and others. It should be good for kids to at least work in one job before they go to college, uni, employment etc.

Oh btw Merry and Pippin are alot older than they look, so they aren't kids by any means let alone around your age.