November 22, 2009

• Doin’ it for the dough

  Hat threw down the glove and I am taking it up.  Here is my list of things that I have done for pay.  Not comprehensive by any means but interesting, I think.

  1. arranging flowers.  An old lady gave me $1 for arranging flowers in a vase for her when I was a little girl.

  2.  milking cows.  That was my work study when I was in college.  I was a nursing major and that was all they had.  Go figure.

  3.  babysitting.  I have babysat more kids than I care to count.

  4.  short order cook, the title has nothing to do with my actual stature.  I worked at a lunch counter preparing lunches for guys on the day shift in a factory near us.  It was one of the crappiest jobs I have ever had.

  5.  dead heading flowers in an old ladies flower bed.  A neighbor lady paid me $5 and a glass of lemonade to pull all the dead blooms from her flowers.  Hot sweaty work.

  6.  boning chicken for huge amounts of chicken salad, it took a long time before I would look at a cooked chicken.  I helped my grandmother with this job and she gave me $3 from her pay.  I must have been about 12 at the time.

  7.  tutoring mentally challenged kids to read.  This was a lucrative job.  I made $20/hr.   The kids were great but the parents were pains.

  8.  changing beds in a nursing home, there were 150 beds in that place and all I did every day was to strip all of them and remake them.  I can make a bed faster than any person I know.

  9.  Ironing shirts for a restaurant owner.  I ironed 75 shirts twice a week for this man a $1.00/shirt.

  10.  Cleaning houses.  I found that people who can hire their house cleaned have no regard for the hard work of others.

  11.  house sitting and cat sitting while a couple went to Cancun  The perks of that job was that I got to drive their Jaguuar while they were gone.

  12.  Waitressing cocktail parties for executives in the homes of local business owners.  I was a teenager in high school and thought it was cool to wear the short black skirt and frilly white apron.  It was even cooler to bring home $300 and $400 in tips per night.

  13.  mend mens underwear.  (a bachelor near here found out I could sew and brought me his tattered boxers to fix rather than buy new ones)

  14.  Make bedding for doll beds   Sounds strange but I got paid some serious money when the American Girl Doll craze started.  People wanted accessories and didn’t want to send away for them or they wanted things that matched their little girl’s rooms. 

  15.  Alter a wedding dress while the bride was waiting to walk up the aisle.  She gained a little weight and busted out of a seam.  It put some new meaning to the term “crunch time” and I charged overtime and double time.

  16.  Make a complete baptismal set for a child in utero that wasn’t going to survive it’s birth only to have it survive.  He is now 6 years old.

  17.  Alter a wedding dress for a bride who never wore it.  She left the guy at the altar.  I made $250

  18.  Acting as a vet for a pig who was having it’s first litter of piglets.  Did I mention that I am not licensed to be a vet?  The farmer was so grateful that he insisted on paying me for having hands small enough to help the little ones out.  The old guy gave me $15.

  19.  For taking pictures of a neighbors little kids.  The grandmother was so impressed with the pics I took of the little ones that she hired me to take some candids of the two older girls.  She gave me $10 for each picture.

  20.  Testing milk for excess white cells.  My father-in-law gave me $20 for standing on the barn floor during milking to test every quarter of every cow for mastitis.  He hated to do that job.

  21.  I was paid by a neighbor for helping to unload a load of oat seed while he stood by and talked to my husband.  My son and I got the load done so fast that he couldn’t believe that I was that strong and paid me $20 for doing the job.

  22.  I once made $500 for making a quilt for a woman who wanted to attract a man.  She gave it to him as a birthday gift and he thanked her but married another girl.  Quite an expensive bribe.

  23.  Picking strawberries in the rain.  This job I didn’t get paid in money though.  I brought home one quart for every quart that I picked.  The unusual thing about this one is that I am allergic to strawberries.  I was making jam for my family.

  24.  Picking tomatoes.  I loved this job.  I would take the truck out loaded with empty boxes, an MP3 player and a jug of water and spend my day in heaven.  I could eat all the tomatoes I can hold, sing as loud as I liked and I picked faster and harder than anyone that the owners had ever hired before.  It was a plummy job.

  25.  Picking squash, cucumbers, and pumpkins and washing them.  This was not my favorite job.  It was hot, dirty and scratchy.  But the owners paid well.  And I got paid in all the produce I could bring home to my family.

  • 8:42 pm
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