daveg
Trail Wise!
Michigan
Posts: 565
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Post by daveg on May 11, 2017 17:19:27 GMT -8
I bottom painted my sailboat today. Covered head to foot in Tyvek coveralls, a respirator, and Nitrile gloves. Fortunately the temperature was cool so I didn't have to deal with overheating. Had to scrape off the loose paint first then roll and brush on a new coat of anti-fouling paint. Dusty, dirty, paint drips, splatter, on my knees half the time working the scraper/roller/brush at an awkward angle. Found myself thinking -- "I'm sure glad I don't do this for a living!"
My dirtiest job was when I was a teenager in high school. Spent a summer trimming/shaping Scotch pine and spruce trees on a Christmas tree farm. Physically demanding work, usually in hot weather. At the end of each day, my arms were covered in sap and irritated by contact with the needles. Occasionally, the trimming would disturb an unnoticed bee nest in a tree which usually resulted in being stung, often more than once. I think I was making about $1 an hour.
Surely some of you have dirty job stories to tell.
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zeke
Trail Wise!
Peekaboo slot 2023
Posts: 9,886
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Post by zeke on May 11, 2017 17:29:20 GMT -8
As an electrician, some jobs were dirtier than others. I had to replace a pump in a lift station once. For those of you who don't know what a lift station is, or at least this one was, I will explain. This lift station was in a sewer line. A large tank with a pump that lifted the sewage from one level to a higher one. Pump failed. We had to climb into the tank to replace it. Yes, the tank was pumped out first, by a large truck. Not hosed down before we went in. That would be asking too much. Instead, we donned suits much like the tyvek one dave had on, but before tyvek was widely available. Covered head to toe, face mask on. Down into the tank. Disconnect one pump, and hand it up to a waiting partner. He passes down the new pump so we can install it. Once all done, we climb out and the tank is partially filled with water so we can test the pump. All in working order, so the lift station can be put back into service. It didn't take all day, but I went home immediately and showered for about an hour. Couple of beers later, all was good.
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driftwoody
Trail Wise!
Take the path closer to the edge, especially if less traveled
Posts: 15,002
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Post by driftwoody on May 11, 2017 18:09:23 GMT -8
As a student at Southern Illinois I had a part time janitorial job at University Housing, cleaning floors & trash at dormitories. Monday mornings were the worst, hauling plastic bags of foul leaking garbage. I remember cleaning dried puke from a stairway. The Triad dorms had central garbage chutes that would get clogged with pizza boxes and the stuff that piled on top. My crew of 3 carried 2 shovels and long bent pipe, the latter for unclogging the jams. Then all the trash would overwhelm the big can in the basement, which we had to haul out to the dumpster several times after using the shovels to scoop all the trash off the basement floor. One time someone had dumped a very large dead snake which smelled so horrifically bad we had to take turns holding our breaths getting the can to the dumpster.
Minimum wage was $2.10 back then.
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foxalo
Trail Wise!
Life is infinitely stranger than anything the mind could invent.---Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Posts: 2,359
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Post by foxalo on May 11, 2017 18:51:55 GMT -8
Being a mom.
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Post by Lamebeaver on May 11, 2017 19:05:47 GMT -8
When I was 16, I worked at a hog farm. When I came home, I stripped down to my underwear and walked directly to the bathroom to take a shower every night.
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whistlepunk
Trail Wise!
I was an award winning honor student once. I have no idea what happened...
Posts: 1,446
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Post by whistlepunk on May 11, 2017 19:12:20 GMT -8
The dirtiest task I was ever given involved a septic tank filled with hardened residue and a high pressure hose to try and break it up. It didn't work spraying from the opening, so I had to do it from the inside.
The dirtiest employment is either fast food while style in high school (I couldn't eat fast food for several years after that), or being a lab tech for a company that made DDT. I worked in the quality control lab testing each batch.
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desert dweller
Trail Wise!
Power to the Peaceful...Hate does not create.
Posts: 6,291
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Post by desert dweller on May 11, 2017 19:17:51 GMT -8
All through college I worked in full-service gas stations. Busting down tires, oil changes, lube jobs, transmission fluid change out, light mechanical. My hands were always covered in oil/grease. Never could get it all off. Did it for 5 years.
But, I'd do all that again rather than work in food service. After getting out of the Army and before starting school, I managed a restaurant for 8 months. I had to give breaks to the all the positions. The worse was doing the back up cook stuff. After every shift I smelled of food grease. Especially deep fryer grease. Couldn't get the smell out by clothes or hair. Yucky stuff.
Give me car grease anytime. At least it's sterile. Food grease is nasty
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Post by Campfires&Concierges on May 11, 2017 19:22:12 GMT -8
The dirtiest employment is either fast food while style in high school (I couldn't eat fast food for several years after that), or being a lab tech for a company that made DDT. I worked in the quality control lab testing each batch. Yep, Wendy's in college for me - flipping burgers and fries is bad enough, but working the late shift in a frat town - 2 am when all the bars close and the drunks have the munchies? Ugh. My shoes and clothes reeked of grease so bad, I threw them out (and my backpack) before moving home for the summer.
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whistlepunk
Trail Wise!
I was an award winning honor student once. I have no idea what happened...
Posts: 1,446
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Post by whistlepunk on May 11, 2017 19:26:57 GMT -8
My wife had a job fresh out of college making electrical components that went into nuclear warheads. Not a dirty job, it actually was quite clean. Just seems a bit interesting in a weird kind of way.
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Post by hikinggods on May 11, 2017 20:12:04 GMT -8
The dirtiest job I have ever done was removing ancient vermiculite insulation from the entire attic of our house--shoveling it into garbage bags and lowering it through the 2 x 3 foot attic entry-- in June. It was about 200 degrees up there and the vermiculite dust made a paste when mixed with all my sweat. Good times, good times....
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Post by Lamebeaver on May 12, 2017 3:55:44 GMT -8
Yep, Wendy's in college for me - flipping burgers and fries I had a girlfriend who worked at A&W. She smelled like hot dogs. There are worse things...
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toejam
Trail Wise!
Hiking to raise awareness
Posts: 1,795
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Post by toejam on May 12, 2017 4:28:51 GMT -8
I'd help on farms for a few extra bucks in high school. Ankle-deep hog manure on my uncle's farm was the worst. Also did a lot of hay bale bucking, which was miserable, but we thought it was macho and enjoyed showing off our bale-lifting prowess to the other boys.
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kevin
Trail Wise!
Posts: 25
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Post by kevin on May 12, 2017 4:31:31 GMT -8
I would re-level old houses by lifting and/or repairing the foundation. Often there was clay and dirt, the occasional coal bin or water cistern...only one time we had to deal with the septic drain field being directly where we needed to dig, and it rained, and I had the joy of spending days on end under a house in the mud and all filth that was flushed. I wanted to burn my clothes, with me in them.
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tomas
Trail Wise!
Posts: 1,906
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Post by tomas on May 12, 2017 4:40:43 GMT -8
It would be either the summer I was hired as a general laborer by a crew building a Putt-Putt Golf (covered in dirt and concrete by the end of the day) or the summer I worked in a plastic factory (unbelievably hot standing next to a softening oven and then covered in shavings as I had to band saw the units apart). Both jobs encouraged me to continue my college education.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on May 12, 2017 5:04:21 GMT -8
Oi! Those are some good and dirty memories indeed, being on an Aircraft Carrier, in the ship yards, when the crew is to do 60 to 70 percent of the work. Dirty jobs are plentiful. The days of blowing out sewage lines with 150 or 250 PSI water hoses few for me but still experienced.
There is a machine, like a jet turbine, that has layers of spinning cutting blades. The blades start out with wide spacing, at the top layers, and spaced quite narrow at the bottom layers. All human waste from the ship gets pumped into the machine before the waste is pumped out into the wide and beautiful ocean. When someone flushes their underwear down the toilet, those blades get broken. In the yards someone has to go into the machine, take apart the layers of blades and replace the broken blades. Thank goodness I was not qualified to go into the machine but just being there to pass tools and new blades to the men working inside was enough to know into the belly of that beast was not a place I wanted to go.
Strangely, the dirtiest job was a very satisfying job. I worked in a shop that owned a space that held the transducer for a piece of underwater equipment. The ‘door’ to the space was a hatch in the deck. To lift that hatch up opened up into a 4 foot by 4 foot by 90 foot vertical shaft that led to a horizontal shaft that brought one to the transducer. Oh, there was a ladder in the vertical shaft.
Someone got the bright idea that it would be our job to paint the shaft, after stripping the paint down to shinny metal walls. The ladder was the first thing to go for this job. Each morning, for the next 3 months, two other fellows and myself would wear those Tyvek suits. We quickly learned that those suits were not enough and so we added in taped in layers to prevent the paint chips from getting into the suit and working their way down to the skin.
After suited up in Tyvek and tape we each donned a full body climbing harness, military style, and hooked into a rope. The man at the bottom layer went first. When he got into position we lowered down his equipment and air hoses. The same would be done for the 2nd man who took up the middle section. The 3rd man, at the top was left to his own devices as to how to match up his position of where he was working and getting his tools into position.
It was torment to be the bottom man where a constant rain of paint chips fell as the needle guns from above stripped paint from the walls. Before firing the needle gun I had to brace myself, I am dangling from a rope, so that the impact of the needles did not send me on a wild ride, and knocking air hoses of the person below me. I also took my turn at being at the bottom. Wow that was a dirty job.
Did I mention the noise? We wore ear plugs and then ear muffs over the plugs to dampen the sound.
We did get a bit of satisfaction from doing the paint job. One of the guys on the team was an artist. We got permission to paint the space using black and white colors. What harm is that they thought. We painted the walls in large 90 foot long triangles and the landing floor in matching triangles. The artist fellow painted, on the floor, a ladder. The ladder was painted to look like, from above, that it extended ‘forever.’ The illusion worked pretty good, as no one, after the paint job, would care to venture down there to inspect the space.
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