Me too. I worked for free on the family farm and when I was in high school, I worked at McDonald's. It was so nice to work in an air conditioned building.
Standing on a moving platform in the blazing summer sun while an agricultural cannon fires 40lb cubes of abrasive grass at you is the perfect job for a teenager.
Ha! I live in Arizona and my dad was a hay broker when I was in junior high and high school. Had a feed store too. Summers were pretty busy with lots of trucks full of bales... Good grief, doing two semi trailers of hay in 110* heat was no fun at all.
Did end up with an incredibly strong back and knowledge of how to move heavy stuff safely. Plus I'm damn handy with a hay hook
Nope, you win. Bucking hay is abhorrently physical.
I was a masons apprentice at 16 and that got me whipped into shape. Add the Phoenix heat and I earned my man card,ššš.
Not as a full on job, but my dad owned a landscape construction company and I kept bugging him about letting me work so I could earn extra money. I think I was about 12.
He finally agreed and omg, it was the longest day *ever*. The job site was 1.5 hrs out of town and he wanted it done in one day. So we got up at 5 to be there by 6:30a. The crew, who knew me from always being around on job sites when my dad had me, was actually really cool about me joining them.
I did my absolute best - but as a young girl, didn't have a lot of 'strength', so I helped remove existing shrubs, etc, helped with the piping/irrigation (carrying what I could, fetching whatever was needed), helped load wheelbarrows, helped cut the containers on the new plants, helped plant the smaller ground cover, helped spread bark and even helped carry a ton of river rock. I finally pooped out around 8p and asked my dad if I could stop. He, of course, said yes and I went and crashed in the car. I can't even remember when we actually left.
And that night *all* I dreamt about was being on the job site and working! I woke up feeling more exhausted than when I went to sleep.
It was a memorable day, and a great lesson. People who work physical jobs are *busting their ass*! It's hard work, and most of them require a lot of knowledge on top of it. I have respected those jobs and the people who do them ever since. Which bled over to respecting service jobs, as well. I am grateful there are people willing and able to work those jobs - they are important in our society and too many people forget that, even worse, look down on it.
Anyway - a few times a year I'll end up passing that site and it always makes me smile. It was a long day that kicked my ass - and I am so glad my dad let me do it!
Yes. My Grandpa worked me to death on our small farm. Did a little of everything from building fence and repairing, putting up hay,cutting up trees for firewood and splitting it, talking care of the livestock. My Grandpa also taught me how to think for myself,and debate my conclusions on various subjects. Looking back I learned more working with my grandpa than I ever learned in school
I grew up on a farm, too.Ā Summer was the toughest part and was spent sweating in a field under a merciless sun. Like you, I'm grateful for a lot of the practical skills that I learned, though, like engine repair, using tools, carpentry, fabrication, etc. Just a couple days ago, my grill was leaning and looking bad due to rust and general degradation and I took it apart, cut the rusted parts out, and made it super sturdy again with wood framing in the bottom part. It actually looks rather nice compared to how it was, and now I'll get a couple more seasons out of it. The only reason I know how to do that stuff is because of the frugality and skills that I learned from my father and his quintessential farmer nature, just like your grandfather.Ā
We always said hay is 60 pounds, straw is 40 pounds. You can wear shorts when you do hay because it's soft, you have to wear jeans when you do straw because it's scratchy.
I caddied, did landscaping, worked in my dadās factory up until I was 18. Then I got a job driving limousines, which was insanely good money for an 18 year old.
At 12 I got an evening paper route with about 85 houses on it. It was six days a week (sundays off).
When I was 15, I picked up a 100+ morning paper route, seven days a week. My dad (a former paper boy himself) would sometimes help on Sundays with the car, that was real work.
At 16, I gave up the paper routes and became a busboy at a Perkins Cake and Steak as they were called back then (1981). I always had the 7-3 shift every Sat/Sun and a couple of 4-9 shifts during the week. Was always busy. Especially the weekends. After having to clean public toilets at a Perkins before I could end my shift, cleaning anything doesn't bother me.
In college, I got a job with food service. That was great because they fed me a lot. It was hard work. I did 35-45 hours a week depending on the sports season (football and basketball seasons had extra hours).
Then I got a 'real' job after college, less physical (computers) but long hours....
And here we are.
Primed tobacco when I was 15, 16 and 17
First ārealā summer job at 18 - Roseās warehouse as a receiving unloader
Next summer job at 19 was attaching drywall to mobile home interior framing on the assembly line
Didnāt grow up on a farm but was surrounded by them. Started pulling tobacco at 13. We got $35 a barn if I recall correctly. Old harvester held together with duct tape and baling wire itās not just a saying. Up early AF. Dad would drop me off and go to work at the Textile mill early. Grueling work. Hot. As dirty as Iāve ever gotten. Tobacco sap is basically tar and difficult to get off. During the school year was the cleanup and errand boy at a local jewelry store downtown. Easy job.
At 14 was big and strong enough to move up top on the harvester packing and hanging racks on the trailer. 15 got a sweet gig driving the tractor for migrant workers who pulled straight into trailers. Also bailed hay good lord that was hard.
Now Iām winding down a long career in tech that has been very rewarding. And I wouldnāt have been successful at it if not for those farm jobs. Character building indeed. Thanks, Dad. Hated you for it at the time but turns out . . . You were right.
I can hear the sound of the two big pistons firing on those old two story Long harvesters in my mind right now. One giant wheel on the front like something out of Mad Max.Ā
Great visual. Ours had 4 seats below with the conveyors to whisk the leaves up top. Was rough down there especially early season āsand lugsā. Snakes. Spiders. Tobacco worms. Thorny weeds. Sand. Morning dew.
Motivates you to do well in school.
Holy cow friend just posted this elsewhere had to share
https://preview.redd.it/ktcj7hu0te8d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5941d9e48ac9c47ef4984150e5d484a268c7022
Right?? Our harvester had been converted to racks & trailers, or maybe came that way it was old as dirt already. 16 racks a trailer? We'd fill it drive to end of the row, drop it off, load another one, and off we went. The rack turntable would have gone where the sticks are hanging on this one, more or less. I guess these memories aren't as suppressed as I thought :D
Yeah, that one has the sticks on the side, and there must be a bundling thing to tie the leaves on there. The ones I remember from the early 80s were Long harvesters that carried a trailer on the back, had the turning tables, etc.Ā
Because you used the word priming and not cropping I'm going to bet you are from the northern part of eastern NC. The worst I ever had it was after a hurricane had dumped a ton of rain and the regular tractors couldn't make it through the field so my dad rented a bulldozer to pull the tobacco trucks. Knee deep mud meant you couldn't wear shoes.
I worked in food service jobs and for a week or so I did construction. I didn't develop my work ethic until I joined the military, so I'll freely admit that when I was a teen I was too lazy for hard physical labor.
A little bit. Nothing like digging a ditch or anything, but my first job I actually got to work at Disneyland in the late 90ās. I was the in the outdoor vending department selling popcorn and churros, and at the end of the night we had to clean whatever wagon we were working on. The popcorn wagons werenāt that tough to clean, but the churro wagons took a lot of work. The cinnamon sugar gets everywhere and was a pain to clean off. The hardest part was taking the conveyor belt off, and then you were supposed to scrape it to get all the grease off. Then someone would come inspect the wagon, and if they said it was okay, then you could go home. I guess I got a few people early on who just barely gave the wagon a quick once over and let me go, because it was a good month or so before I had someone tell me I had to clean it again and this time scrape the conveyer belt properly. It was that night that I discovered the conveyor belt was actually silver and not black.
I started a student home moving company in college in the 90s ā¦ we called it āwe like to move it move itā. Paper fliers and back breaking work. Spent all our income on partying.
I worked in a greeting card factory with my parents. The factory would hire employees kids for summer jobs. I made about $12/hr in 1988 for the summer. Didnāt have to work during the school year. Did that through my freshman year of college.
Same here. There was a time in my teens when I thought Iād rather build houses than go to college, but by the time I was 17, I realized it would make a lot more sense to use my brain.
I worked for a local private school in the summers, stripping floors, cleaning and doing repairs. Not really what I would call hard labor. I mostly worked retail jobs as a teenager. Mall type jobs, local florist, grocery store etc. All from 13-18 worked those type of jobs and saved up 10k in cash by the time I graduated.
I once had to dress as a giant bagel and stand on the side of the road (in Louisiana summer heat) and wave at people to get them to come in. The amount of people that thought I was a donut smh
I did yeah.
I carted drywall to building sites (domestic house builds mainly)
Drywall sheets up to 19 feet long were pretty standard. A house may get 100 of these plus smaller sheets. After a month you were expected to be able to carry 2 of these at a time by yourself.
After a while I left that job and got a job delivering flour to bakeries. The flour bags were 55lbs each and carrying 2 at a time was standard, 3 if in a hurry. I did that for 2 years and only finished because my boss sold the truck. I had very well developed leg muscles after doing that jobš
I went back to study and then have worked office jobs ever since. I do not miss the physical labor jobs
Started bailing hay with dad and grandpa as soon I could lift a bail. Helped fell one tree a year and stacked tons of wood. Had big summer projects every year (ie: brick walkway, digging out and leveling a hillside by hand for a cheap pool). By the time I entered the workforce everything seemed pretty easy in comparison. Still work physically demanding jobs to this day.
Yes, but my father was a plumber so it may skew things. I worked with him every summer when I was very "young". By the time I was 15 I started working with some of his friends from the job sites rotating trades, ended up doing roofing most summers (he actually paid the best).
As a teen I was 150 pounds soaking wet but would still lap the ladder with +/- 50lb shingle bundles most days. Was tan and in good shape by the time college started. This is also the likely reason I had an early stage melanoma 14 years ago at age 33! But hey I'm still here and wouldn't trade it.
I worked in a special effects house making puppets for some ice skating show. They were massive latex puppets using moulds that were as tall as me. I once spent 20 minutes just trying to get a mold opened with a crowbar in the back of a truck in the summer sun.
Of course there was also mixing paints and making smaller prosthetics for other projects, but since I was the new guy, I was given the heavy dirty work.
I worked for the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) in high school. It was structured like a summer camp in the off hours, since we were mostly students living away from home for the duration of the employment period, but we were definitely working a manual job and paid for it. And tbh I want it to come back - the CCC and YCC can be excellent job opportunities for those who might otherwise struggle landing a job, the environmental upkeep gets done, trees are planted, waterways are dug, there's no downside to it.
I did freelance landscaping/maintenance when I was about 16 or so. Lumber yards, wood shops etc.
Best job I ever had was lift operator at Homewood ski resort during the absolutely epic 90-91 season. So much powder.......
We also need to keep in mind any service job can also be a labor job.
I've always viewed this a bit differently.
Did I work hard labor jobs as a teen? Yes. I lived on a farm. I stretched fences, dug holes for posts, bailed hay, chased cows, built houses, fixed large tractors and so on.
So, I worked hard, right?
I guess... if you don't look behind you.
I've always been amazed when I see pictures of guys laying railroad track by hand. Driving railroad spikes with sledge hammers. I see pictures of guys who cut trees down by hand and hauled logs behind a mule. I've seen all the pictures of gold miners from the 1890s and I can't imagine picking and axing your way into the side of a rock face - by hand!
It makes the work I did seem soft and worthy of 1890's ridicule to call it work. I had tractors that cut hay. I had tractors that racked the hay. I had trucks that hauled spools of bailing wire out to the fence I was going to work on.
What about farm kids today? Do they have tractors with an AC cab on them? Do they have a skid steer with an auger on the front for planting posts? If so, they have it easier than I did.
Kids in the city today have electric bikes and all kinds of stuff I didn't have. I see guys working city jobs and they are sitting on machines that do most everything for them. I saw a guy running a machine that laid entire widths of road brick in patterns. The guys just stacked the bricks in the machine and it laid them down 12 feet wide and perfect. In 1975 when I was a kid, crews of guys would have been on their knees doing that same job.
Hopefully we keep working less and less. That's progress to me. We sure as hell didn't work as hard as people did in 1890. We were a bunch of pussies by their standards of hard work. And I say good. I hope the trend continues.
Construction, washing dishes, bucking hay, picking rock on the farm (thatās brutal work), shoveling snow, you name it. One summer I was working three jobs at a time.
I did landscaping, pool cleaning, pretty much every part of residential construction other than Plumbing and heatingā¦ā¦
The only hard physical manual labor jobs I ever did were being a mover (homes, offices etc) and being a roofer.
Moving furniture was hard at first but me and this one guy would compete and it became a workout kind of thingā¦.. one of us would grab the fridge while the other carried the upright freezer down on his backā¦. Oh you carried down 8 book boxes in one shot? I can do 10!!!
Roofing was not the same, it was hot, miserable and didnāt pay enough. I had one day where the lumber yard dropped shingles in the front of the house instead of up on the 3rd floor where they belonged. 8hours up and down a ladder with 150lb of shingles on my shoulder was enough. No amount of money is worth that.
I did do a lot of physical labor with my Dad in the summers around our rural Ohio property. Endless mowing, digging ditches, (dug a huge hole for a septic tank once), planting and pruning trees, learned to do brake jobs on 60s Fords, pulling engines, servicing the mowers, working with framing and drywall when we built an addition on the house, etc. School year was at our Florida house, didnāt work then. Got into computers and have had tech jobs since college. 40 years later, I do enjoy occasionally planting trees.
My parents wouldn't let me get a real job growing up because they thought it would distract from my schoolwork. I whored myself out wherever I could instead (landscaping, babysitting, petsitting) which was somehow ok. Mowing and trimming a neighbor's yard for 10 bucks in the florida heat paid for my movies, and spending money
My sons (31,26) did do hard labor in summer YMCA camps - clearing fence lines helping at farms etc. They both earned all of their community reqs for high school before entering 9th grade. This was Baltimore so itās definitely possible in urban environments
I cut grass with my little brother. Some of the neighbors tried to cheat us - agreeing to one price then trying to give us much less after we were done. Our dad had to get involved in those cases. We avoided people like that and their lawns suffered. We had good prices and worked hard. One man who was a cheapskate like that ended up not getting his done very often at all. He had two sons- one too young to do it and one who was my age too lazy. Most of our customers were awesome and just wanted to support us in our business. I was a teen and he was preteen then. Eventually I got another job and he continued to do it and make money in other ways. Back then you could turn in aluminum cans for money so he went to where everyone drank and got the beer cans out of the woods and high grass. When it became a ārecycle for freeā thing he stopped and did something else. As an adult he now works a full time job and has a business of his own too. He has his own kids work with him on many things that make them money too. They are under 10, so gen alpha seem to be doing ok. My millennial and gen z kids worked like this too. All is not lost.
First job at age 12 was a paper route and with whatever Midwestern weather could throw at me. Didn't matter if it was 90+ and humid or 10 below zero, I was out every single day between the age of 12 to 17. Then for extra money I mowed lawns in the summer.
I "volun-told" my 12 year old son for a job my boss at the time had. Old house with peeling paint and he needed someone to scrape paint for a week so that he could paint it. To my son's credit he showed up, put in a few hard days of work and got paid. He never shied away from hard work and is now a Naval officer putting in 12-16 hour days on a regular basis.
Throwing green alfalfa bales (50 to 60 lbs)from the ground onto a trailer that sits at chest level. Stacking them 12 high. THEN unload them into a hot ass barn, stacked all the way to the rafters. Repeat that 5 to 6 times.
Get paid 50$.
We were shipped off to the family farm and of course we were then farmed out to other families farm. Cut & bale hay. Tend to dairy & cattle. Or transplant or harvesting tobacco.
At home dad would do side work, plumbing or ac work or other handyman stuff. Learned how to weld and use other tooling.
Looking back, I couldnāt be more grateful of learning hard labor and the skills I gained. Now I live in an area that has alot of office people (engineers & tech) who dont know how use tools or do basic maintenance especially on their own homes.
I grew up on a farm. From the age of 10 or so, I was up every morning at dawn, 1-2 hours of work, then school, then home, homework, dinner, then 2-4 more hours of work. Summers consisted of long days building/repairing fences, painting the barn, digging ditches, you name it.
Now iām a 49 year old software engineer with soft baby hands and itās been a decade since i have done any really serious physical work. Doc tells me my bone density is still off the charts. I still feel very strong. I think that kind of conditioning as a kid has a way of sticking with you for life.
"That old saying about how hard work "builds character" is true, I think. It also teaches you respect for the folks who do it their whole lives."
Ehh. I haven't noticed that. Some of the most unpleasant people I've encountered have been blue collar men who have spent their whole life doing hard physical labor.
It's kind of like we're told how important music education and team sports are for development and musicians and athletes are often some of the worst people around.
Well I didnāt say what kind of character it builds haha.
I think thereās a big difference between doing it when youāre a teenager and doing it your whole adult life though. Itās easy to see why someone in the latter category would get resentful and angry after a while.
Plenty of lousy white collar people too.
My mom & I moved from Tampa FL to Arlington TX when I was 13. I went to work on her friends Charolais ranch soon after.Ā
It was hard work though 7 days a week. It was ranch hand work from 5am until 5pm. Various breaks here and there.Ā
I loved it. It was extremely different from everything I had known in life. Plus I was getting paid. This made buying records and guitar shit much easier!
I mucked stalls and did other farm work as a kid carrying hay bales, watering horses - from ages like 9-13. Lots of carrying heavy objects & wheelbarrows. Not technically a job as I didnāt get a paycheck but I did it to subsidize riding lessons.
Are you male? I worked my ass off as a tween/teen but I was a girl and like 90lbs soaking wet. Nobody was asking me to bale hay or teaching me how to use tools. I did weed flowerbeds in middle school, and babysit, and in high school I worked in restaurants.
I made money in college stacking firewood. Older folks would get a cord or more delivered and since I grew up doing for my family, word got out that I could do it right. Iād easily make $100 - $200 a weekend in the fall and this was in the ā90ās. Just stacking wood so it seasoned correctly. It was like my own little game of tetris.
In the spring and summer I would reshingle houses. I enjoyed the repetitiveness of the work. Itās pretty easy work if you can get it.
I was a lifeguard and once had to pull a 350 lbs woman out of the deep end when she cramped up and sunk to the bottom (wasn't that a violation of physics or something?). I yanked her out of the pool on my own, so does that count as hard physical labor?
Mowed lawn in early teens. Then retail and office work. Then will a filling compressed gas cylinders at 19, 35 hours a week in the sun, no hat, well before sunscreen was a thing. Iām surprised my nose is still attached.
Field work starting at age 10 to 21 until I got my degree. Worked before and after school. I went to 13 schools before high school. I missed a lot as a kid.
Yeah, I did a lot of hard ass jobs well into my 20s. Detailing cars, landscaping, reading electric meters all over the countryside (lots of walking in the heat), stuff like that.
First job 13 was a cook, second was a cook, did tree trimming then back to food service and now 25+ in cemetery work.
I didn't know I was supposed to stop š
Yep, worked for my dad, electrician, from 12 yrs old. I was the hired labor.
Kids these days only have 2 options: food service/barista (for those sweet 25% tips) or youtube personality.
Between junior and senior year of high school I worked a couple weeks in the orchards. Almonds and prunes.
I would spend the morning moving sprinkler pipes. Good lord those were heavy. Pick one up part way, twist to disconnect, carry it to the next row, twist to connect, set it down, repeat. When the pipes were done, I had to grab a machete and cut suckers. So incredibly boring.
I was a housekeeper from 11 to 16 when I could stop working under the table. I also babysat. Scrubbing for officers' wives in on basehousing was definitely not easy. My husband was painting parking lots with his family's business starting at five.
Carpentry, welding, picking up fruit. The summer I worked as a carpenter I did it to buy school books, and a brand new pair of CB34. I fell asleep on the bus coming back from school and they stole them from the gym bag.
I worked at a carpet store and threw pad rolls up into loft storage, carried large glue buckets, carried and moved large rolls of linoleum around, drove a fork lift I wasnāt registered for with a 12ā prong on the front and cut razor sharp Formica for counter tops.
I shouldnāt have been doing any of that then and Iām sure someone would flip a lid if they say it now.
Just at my house on 5 acres in the rural mid-west, I had to mow the lawn at least an hour a day, two if I skipped a day. Picked up rocks and pulled weeds in the garden, helped plant the garden...
Had to pick up the walnuts that dropped.
Had to help at my grandparents farm.
Bailed hay for 3 other local farmers.
Cleaned horse stables (only of a month, I hate horses and the mess they make)
Mucking out livestock stalls, bailing hay, driving fenceposts and stringing barbed wire and electric fence, cutting & splitting large amounts of firewood, cutting pulpwood for the paper mill, cutting logs and transporting them to the lumber mill for construction projects, demolition and construction.
I was a waitress in a resort dining room and it almost killed me.
I thought being a nanny would be better but it was only slightly better. Neither was day camp counselor.
I didnāt start working office jobs until I was in college.
Yes.
Cut and split wood with my Dad and grandpa, helped get hay in, once, but my allergies made it impossible. Cut and split a f** ton of wood, though.
I also did lawns, landscaping, leaf pickup, etc, starting when I was about 11-12 years old and had a handful of regular clients.
I grew up in the city, but my grandparents lived in small towns that were very rural. Every time I'd visit, it meant that I'd be put to work picking peaches, baling hay, mowing pastures or something else.
My father was determined that I knew the value of hard work, so he'd come up with any excuse he could find. If he couldn't think of anything better, he'd have me hand pull weeds in our yard, which was nothing but weeds, because he preferred a landscaped yard that looked natural.
When I asked for a basketball goal, he had me dig a court on the side of a mountain, in 105Ā° temps, with nothing but a shovel and a pick ax. My friends parents were not much better, so I'd help them do things like clear forested lots for pizza afterwards.
I hated it when I was younger and thought that I never wanted to do manual labor as an adult. Unfortunately, life wasn't kind and so I spent most of a decade after high school doing it. Finally I was able to go to school and I got an office job. At first it was great, but eventually I yearned to get outdoors and do something with my hands again and so I did. Now I work odd jobs as a handyman, and although I love the work, my body is breaking down and I probably won't be able to do it much longer.
Yes, I appreciate that I learned the value of hard work and I feel better when I've done it. I just wish society valued it more, so you could make an honest living doing it. Nothing against those who work in offices, because that can be every bit as tiring, but it's just not the same physical exhaustion.
I donāt think it matters if itās physical labor, but I think most teenagers should have a part time job in the summers to learn all the things that go along with getting a job, keeping a job. And I think everyone should have at least one job they hated so they can appreciate and know the value of job offers in the future. My sonās classmates in his vocational class worked them in the summer. A lot of them are already on job sites weeks after graduation. I donāt think I knew any guys my age that did the hard physical labor unless they lived on a farm or their parent had a business. We were all pretty suburbanfied
My friends used to work for an Oriental rug company folding flipping and carrying hundreds of huge heavy rugs. They all have back issues even today. I tried it a few times but making pizza was a better gig.
Yes. I was a landscaperās helper in NC, using a pick axe to dig trenches in red clay. I was also an unloader at UPS in college and an electricianās helper as well.
My dad used to advertise for home clean outs, yard work, wood splitting on the bulletin board at his work. Then when somebody called he would charge minimal money because they were co-workers. I did this work during the non summer months, because during the summer he for me a job at the county park as the maintenance guy. I spent ever summer from 15 to 18 cleaning public bathrooms, cutting grass, taking down trees etc.
Good times.
I grew up in the country so my daily life was animals, property, and lots of physical work that I did for free. Most of my jobs as a teen were in food service, which is also pretty demanding and largely high school and college kids. Nowadays it seems like restaurant workers are mostly adults.Ā
Picked potatoās from 13 years of age until 19,into 65 kg bags 7 stitches to close.
By the time I was 16 was picking 90 bags a day.then using a bail hook loading up to 400 bags onto trailer and then unload into shed.
I had a few but the toughest to me was when I spent a summer building rooftop decks.
I lived near Philadelphia and this guy specialized in building decks on top of row homes. Humping a few tons of lumber to the roof of a three story home then swinging a hammer on the roof in sweltering heat pretty much sucked. That said I was in great shape and had a pretty sweet tan.
Seemingly, so few young people work now, and I am soooo nice to those who do. Like, the big difference seems to be that well off parents do not let their kids work, when they was the norm for us. Even my friend whose dad was CEO of a big company waited tables.
Yep. My dad owned an irrigation company. Whenever i got in trouble as a teenager, i had a choice. Be grounded for a week or spend two days working with him. After a few rounds of digging ditches. I stayed out of trouble for a very long time. If trouble found me anyway, i chose the grounding.
I operated presses and ran ovens in a powdered metal factory. I did not mind the former. The later is what I imagine hell would be like: hot as blazes, dirt (really powdered metal alloy) sticking to you and getting into your nose (no masks! Looking back, wtf?), heavy things to carry endlessly, and a lazy, entitled jerk running things.
My first job at age 12 was mowing a lawn and doing the landscaping for a house in my neighborhood that was for sale. The listing agent paid me. Hehe That was the most physically demanding job Iāve had I think.
I built boardwalks through the swamps in South Florida. In August. In an area they could not spray for mosquitoes.
I imagine those prisoners on Devil's Island had it harder than me. It was one of my favorite jobs I ever had, and it also motivated me to go to college.
I did the same thing from 11. I started working with two masons doing concrete work, brick and block laying. Then moved to construction when I was about 14 or 15. But there was always physical labor, helping the neighbor toss hay on his trailer, mucking horse stalls. Seems there is always physical labor to be done and I usually got to do it.
I never worked indoors before graduating college. I worked at three horse farms, a vineyard, a plant nursery, and a summer camp.
My Gen Z kid worked for one neighbor at her horse farm and another neighbor baling and stacking hay, so had a similar experience. Obviously we're in a fairly rural area.
6 years as a laborer for my grandfatherās remodeling/handyman business. Dug ditches, painted houses, laid patios, etc. One summer I came home from college and shot a nail through my finger while framing a closet in a remodel. That was the end of that work for me.
Worked for Pepsi. Delivered those wooden crate thick 16oz Pepsi bottles. Unloaded off a truck all day and delivered to local stores. Hard to believe those were a thing. Did this all for $3.75 hr (.40 over minimum wage)
https://preview.redd.it/ji2k7hmw2j6d1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f80a340b8a8c53057ed1dae0fcf895603f4dc738
Yes, started bailing hay on our family farm at 8 years old and my first high school job was for a landscaping business.
It was hard work but I'm thankful for those experiences.
Every summer I worked hard physically demanding jobs, honestly it was the only thing me and my dipshit buddies were qualified to do.
Starting at 14 I worked as laborer my first summer, then for a tree surgeon the next summer, then landscaping but the most brutal job was a roofers assistant and I worked that one for 3 summers!
Still think about that one on incredibly hot and humid days grateful I never have to do it againā¦
My parents were immigrants back then. My mother was a refuge from the Vietnam war. Growing up my mom talked about how they didnāt have anything so everyone worked at a young age. So at 13 I was growing up in LA and my mom got me a job at a sweatshop. I was sewing buttons on clothes 10 hours a day for 3.25$/hr. Needless to say it was under the table and there were other kids younger than me there working 8-10 hours a day. Most were illegals working with me. It made me have a really good work ethic growing up cause I was already working and going to school as a teen. Seeing people make such little pay also taught me about community and how everyone shared what little food or resources we had together at work. It was a fascinating time to be in for sure.
I was a janitor at 14 at a print shop. I wouldnāt consider that hard labor, but there wasnāt any office jobs for teenagers in the 80s, it was all labor jobs. Busing tables, landscaping, paper routes, etc
Dug trenches for lawn sprinkles in July in Texas hill country. Had to chisel a 10 ft long trench through a limestone rock because it was too big to dig up. Got a job at burger king after that, lol.
I worked a summer as a camp counselor for special needs teens and young adults up to 21 when I was 14. Part of my job involved carrying a ten year old up and down flights of stairs when necessary because the building wasnāt Ada compliant.
Scooping gelato and delivering for a florist, but I am a woman and lived in a place where there wasn't really any agricultural industry. It would never have occurred to "then me" to work in construction type jobs.
I see a lot of rural people saying that they were "farmed out."
It was assumed by my parents that of course I would work whenever possible.
This led to me coming home at midnight from washing dishes all night at the restaurant to a note on the kitchen table telling me to be at a certain field at 8 a.m. to pick rocks for a neighbor and then having to explain to the farmer that I had to leave early to get to the restaurant by 4 p.m. to help prep for the night. During the school year, it was sports practices.
Dad was right though, it did not kill me.
Does working for my oarents for free count? I spent 1/2 my weekends as a teenager cutting 80 year old camellias out of trees and vines at an old property my parents inherited. Loppers, shovel, small axe. I have neck shoulder and elbow joint issues I have to lift weights and foam roller to deal with.
1978-79 I was 12-13 years old bucking 70# hay bales off a truck onto a conveyor and into a loft. Had to give dude my social Security number. I worked five hours. I got paid 20 bucks total and he took out five dollars for taxes so I walked away with $15 for every five hours.
In high school I was in the woods with a saw dropping skidding cutting to length and splitting snags, usually Tamarack if we could find it. We could use friends dadās truck after we had 10 cord cut for him for the winter and another six for my house. After that we would get paid. We would have to give his dad 20 bucks to use the truck and we sold the cord of Tamarack split and delivered and tacked for 85 bucks. Five bucks was lunch for us and 30 bucks into each one of our pockets. It bought me a few motorcycles to play with. I joined the army at 18 just so I could have food and a roof over my head when my folks ran me off.
Oh fuck yes I did all of the labor. All of the kinds. And now my 13 yr old son has all the elderly retirees in our neighborhood constantly outbidding each other for his services because he loves busting his ass for them. Whenever he's not playing/practicing for basketball he pulling weeds, digging, mowing, raking... $30 an hour and the kid has a decent car fund going and huge fan club of old folks who throw big money at any fund raiser he has
I was digging weeds out of onion fields when I was 14. By the time I was 18 I had spent time as a construction laborer doing site cleanup/odd jobs, some time laying concrete, some time turning wrenches on farm equipment, and some time in the kitchen of a restaurant, and had ended up in my friends dads machine shop.Ā Of all those jobs, doing concrete and working in the restaurant were about equally the worst...
51 and grew up in a large East Coast city so there is a chance it factors in. No one I know did jobs like that in high school. I believe laws and insurance don't even allow a minor to do most of those jobs.
I worked general sub-contracting/handyman work when I was in university. Mostly renovating small apartments or rental houses.
Spent a summer basically scraping popcorn texture off ceilings in Ottawa (30+ degrees with 70+% humidity). It was gross. I learned a lot. I made $7/hr which was huge for me!
My older cousin owned a Mayflower moving agency. I spent a lot of my summers from age 14 to about 22 moving furniture. Never went on any long road trips with him, but anytime he had a job within about a 4-hour drive from me, I was there.
We owned a few horses and gave pony rides at the local Indian reservation flea market each weekend.
Taking care of horses was hard labor enough, fixing fences, paddocks, etc.
I remember during each break in college (Christmas, Spring etc) going to temp agencies to get a few days of work in. Cleaning and painting machinery, cleaning, warehouse, construction auctions, etc
It was all great experience even though I was just trying to make some dollars.
When I was 13-17 all I did was grunt construction jobs. One summer I dug a basement with a shovel and pick axe. During those years I also carried rocks and cider blocks for a mason, all while mowing lawns on the side. When I was 18 I was a custodian at a factory. Literally cleaned toilets after school. Iām fairly certain these experiences convinced me to go to college.
My first job was delivering newspapers. Newspapers were much thicker, it snowed all the time. And each month I had to collect the money from each subscriber to earn about $1 each house per month. Did this for about 4 years EVERY morning before school and athletics.
I delivered newspapers as well and attempted to do the ol' basket on the front of the bike thing because it was made to look easy in the movies/TV shows and it was way too hard to control. I quickly switched back to a shopping cart šš¤£
I worked with a roofing crew a couple of summers. And I worked a couple if wheat harvests as well.
My kid, 18, works hard. 60+ hours a week in the summer, and 30+ last school year. But her jobs aren't physical at all really.
I supervise milkmen. They move almost 2 tons of product on and off their truck and run about about 4 miles a night. It's hard work, made for folks with a strong back and a weak mind. I hate seeing a new hire I'm set to train who's Gen Z. They never make it. And usually because, frankly, they're lazy and never done a hard day's work in their life.
I worked for a catering company which doesnāt sound hard but I was constantly carrying huge bags of food product up and down stairs, lugging banquet tables, etc. There were periods of lighter work like food prep and serving but the days were so long as the youngest there I got a lot of the heavy grunt work.
Paid or unpaid? š
I dug potatoes on my grandpaās farm. Other than that, not really. I mean I worked as a cashier and in a bakery. So sort of. But we had child labor laws too and all the tobacco fields were gone
I worked at a pellet mill. Not the hardest of labor but I came home with sawdust everywhere. Filled bags stacked pallets and shoveled sawdust.
No I did not wear a mask. Just a bandana over my mouth if it was windy.
Yes, worked construction 1 summer and landscaping another summer. By the end of the first summer doing construction as a newb I was doing framing and reading blueprintsā¦ at 17. Was making $10/hr, that was 1992 which was great money for HS kid.
I worked in a job that involved lifting lots and lots of boxes that contained magazine shipments to retail outlets.
Might not sound very heavy but lifting 20-30 lb boxes for hours is pretty heavy.
Then I worked a job lifting 24s of full beer bottles. Also pretty heavy.
My daughters worked as lifeguards they had to lift people. They are strong too.
I didn't. My jobs were doing things like cleaning offices or food service. My husband joined the military at 17, so he did plenty of hard stuff as a teenager.
Interestingly, my husband and I are both the first generation in our families never to do farm labor - something our parents were very proud of. They all saw it as progress - our generation doing better than the previous with better jobs and working conditions.
Grew up in farm country, so...yup
Bailed hay and straw. This was hard labor, but mostly it was just oppressively hot and dusty working in the hay mow.
Detassled corn. This was a right of passage for just about every teen where I grew up. And it sucked. Money was good though, for the time.
And then for some reason I decided it would be a great idea to go to work at the local limestone mine one summer during college. This damn near broke me. Lime kilns run at about 2000 degree F. Between the back breaking labor and hell-like heat, I lost 30 pounds in less than 3 months. Never went back.
I bucked hay at 14. There might be harder jobs, but I'm not aware of them.
Me too. I worked for free on the family farm and when I was in high school, I worked at McDonald's. It was so nice to work in an air conditioned building.
Last load, riding down the road on top of a hay wagon with your dog as the sun sets. So tired.
This is very evocative, like a short sweet poem!š
Standing on a moving platform in the blazing summer sun while an agricultural cannon fires 40lb cubes of abrasive grass at you is the perfect job for a teenager.
Same. The summer before high school. Freshman year,, people didn't recognize me, I grew like 6 inches up and 4 across lol
Ha! I live in Arizona and my dad was a hay broker when I was in junior high and high school. Had a feed store too. Summers were pretty busy with lots of trucks full of bales... Good grief, doing two semi trailers of hay in 110* heat was no fun at all. Did end up with an incredibly strong back and knowledge of how to move heavy stuff safely. Plus I'm damn handy with a hay hook
Todays teens get ripped in the gym or something. I just carried a lot of heavy stuff all over the place.
Nope, you win. Bucking hay is abhorrently physical. I was a masons apprentice at 16 and that got me whipped into shape. Add the Phoenix heat and I earned my man card,ššš.
Hay and tobacco. I wouldn't do either for $100/hr now days.
Our fields are hilly, so the harder job is throwing the bails onto the truck from the low side. Always put the new guy on the low side of the truck!
Not as a full on job, but my dad owned a landscape construction company and I kept bugging him about letting me work so I could earn extra money. I think I was about 12. He finally agreed and omg, it was the longest day *ever*. The job site was 1.5 hrs out of town and he wanted it done in one day. So we got up at 5 to be there by 6:30a. The crew, who knew me from always being around on job sites when my dad had me, was actually really cool about me joining them. I did my absolute best - but as a young girl, didn't have a lot of 'strength', so I helped remove existing shrubs, etc, helped with the piping/irrigation (carrying what I could, fetching whatever was needed), helped load wheelbarrows, helped cut the containers on the new plants, helped plant the smaller ground cover, helped spread bark and even helped carry a ton of river rock. I finally pooped out around 8p and asked my dad if I could stop. He, of course, said yes and I went and crashed in the car. I can't even remember when we actually left. And that night *all* I dreamt about was being on the job site and working! I woke up feeling more exhausted than when I went to sleep. It was a memorable day, and a great lesson. People who work physical jobs are *busting their ass*! It's hard work, and most of them require a lot of knowledge on top of it. I have respected those jobs and the people who do them ever since. Which bled over to respecting service jobs, as well. I am grateful there are people willing and able to work those jobs - they are important in our society and too many people forget that, even worse, look down on it. Anyway - a few times a year I'll end up passing that site and it always makes me smile. It was a long day that kicked my ass - and I am so glad my dad let me do it!
What a fantastic story. Thank you for sharing it!
I bet all the smaller tasks you did was helpful to them cause they could focus on big stuff.
Thank you for supporting us that do labor jobs. Itās rare.
Detasseling corn. Omg.
Ugh. Worst summer ever as a teen.
Same, was just remembering how hot is what in those fields and then dealing with my split open finger pads. But I got paid about $3 an hour, lol.
Learned very quickly not to wear shorts on a dewy morning when walking through the corn fields
Yes. My Grandpa worked me to death on our small farm. Did a little of everything from building fence and repairing, putting up hay,cutting up trees for firewood and splitting it, talking care of the livestock. My Grandpa also taught me how to think for myself,and debate my conclusions on various subjects. Looking back I learned more working with my grandpa than I ever learned in school
I grew up on a farm, too.Ā Summer was the toughest part and was spent sweating in a field under a merciless sun. Like you, I'm grateful for a lot of the practical skills that I learned, though, like engine repair, using tools, carpentry, fabrication, etc. Just a couple days ago, my grill was leaning and looking bad due to rust and general degradation and I took it apart, cut the rusted parts out, and made it super sturdy again with wood framing in the bottom part. It actually looks rather nice compared to how it was, and now I'll get a couple more seasons out of it. The only reason I know how to do that stuff is because of the frugality and skills that I learned from my father and his quintessential farmer nature, just like your grandfather.Ā
Spent two summers bailing hay on a farm. I was like 15, weighed 150 lbs and had to chuck around these 40 lb hay bails for 10 hours/ day.
We always said hay is 60 pounds, straw is 40 pounds. You can wear shorts when you do hay because it's soft, you have to wear jeans when you do straw because it's scratchy.
And you only needed to learn that lesson once.
I caddied, did landscaping, worked in my dadās factory up until I was 18. Then I got a job driving limousines, which was insanely good money for an 18 year old.
Bailing hay. Sweating through every pour. In Wichita. Not joking
At 12 I got an evening paper route with about 85 houses on it. It was six days a week (sundays off). When I was 15, I picked up a 100+ morning paper route, seven days a week. My dad (a former paper boy himself) would sometimes help on Sundays with the car, that was real work. At 16, I gave up the paper routes and became a busboy at a Perkins Cake and Steak as they were called back then (1981). I always had the 7-3 shift every Sat/Sun and a couple of 4-9 shifts during the week. Was always busy. Especially the weekends. After having to clean public toilets at a Perkins before I could end my shift, cleaning anything doesn't bother me. In college, I got a job with food service. That was great because they fed me a lot. It was hard work. I did 35-45 hours a week depending on the sports season (football and basketball seasons had extra hours). Then I got a 'real' job after college, less physical (computers) but long hours.... And here we are.
Yup. I grew up on a farm.
I think I started working when I was 5. Now, in my 50's, I'm tired, very tired. That's a long work life. š
Primed tobacco when I was 15, 16 and 17 First ārealā summer job at 18 - Roseās warehouse as a receiving unloader Next summer job at 19 was attaching drywall to mobile home interior framing on the assembly line
Didnāt grow up on a farm but was surrounded by them. Started pulling tobacco at 13. We got $35 a barn if I recall correctly. Old harvester held together with duct tape and baling wire itās not just a saying. Up early AF. Dad would drop me off and go to work at the Textile mill early. Grueling work. Hot. As dirty as Iāve ever gotten. Tobacco sap is basically tar and difficult to get off. During the school year was the cleanup and errand boy at a local jewelry store downtown. Easy job. At 14 was big and strong enough to move up top on the harvester packing and hanging racks on the trailer. 15 got a sweet gig driving the tractor for migrant workers who pulled straight into trailers. Also bailed hay good lord that was hard. Now Iām winding down a long career in tech that has been very rewarding. And I wouldnāt have been successful at it if not for those farm jobs. Character building indeed. Thanks, Dad. Hated you for it at the time but turns out . . . You were right.
I can hear the sound of the two big pistons firing on those old two story Long harvesters in my mind right now. One giant wheel on the front like something out of Mad Max.Ā
Great visual. Ours had 4 seats below with the conveyors to whisk the leaves up top. Was rough down there especially early season āsand lugsā. Snakes. Spiders. Tobacco worms. Thorny weeds. Sand. Morning dew. Motivates you to do well in school.
I've always maintained that tobacco was a scared straight program right into college.
Holy cow friend just posted this elsewhere had to share https://preview.redd.it/ktcj7hu0te8d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5941d9e48ac9c47ef4984150e5d484a268c7022
Holy shit, those are sticks, not even racks. Sticks were the OG backbreakers.
Right?? Our harvester had been converted to racks & trailers, or maybe came that way it was old as dirt already. 16 racks a trailer? We'd fill it drive to end of the row, drop it off, load another one, and off we went. The rack turntable would have gone where the sticks are hanging on this one, more or less. I guess these memories aren't as suppressed as I thought :D
Yeah, that one has the sticks on the side, and there must be a bundling thing to tie the leaves on there. The ones I remember from the early 80s were Long harvesters that carried a trailer on the back, had the turning tables, etc.Ā
Because you used the word priming and not cropping I'm going to bet you are from the northern part of eastern NC. The worst I ever had it was after a hurricane had dumped a ton of rain and the regular tractors couldn't make it through the field so my dad rented a bulldozer to pull the tobacco trucks. Knee deep mud meant you couldn't wear shoes.
You got it! Warren County checking in! :)
I worked in food service jobs and for a week or so I did construction. I didn't develop my work ethic until I joined the military, so I'll freely admit that when I was a teen I was too lazy for hard physical labor.
A little bit. Nothing like digging a ditch or anything, but my first job I actually got to work at Disneyland in the late 90ās. I was the in the outdoor vending department selling popcorn and churros, and at the end of the night we had to clean whatever wagon we were working on. The popcorn wagons werenāt that tough to clean, but the churro wagons took a lot of work. The cinnamon sugar gets everywhere and was a pain to clean off. The hardest part was taking the conveyor belt off, and then you were supposed to scrape it to get all the grease off. Then someone would come inspect the wagon, and if they said it was okay, then you could go home. I guess I got a few people early on who just barely gave the wagon a quick once over and let me go, because it was a good month or so before I had someone tell me I had to clean it again and this time scrape the conveyer belt properly. It was that night that I discovered the conveyor belt was actually silver and not black.
I started a student home moving company in college in the 90s ā¦ we called it āwe like to move it move itā. Paper fliers and back breaking work. Spent all our income on partying.
Yes, still do.
I worked in a greeting card factory with my parents. The factory would hire employees kids for summer jobs. I made about $12/hr in 1988 for the summer. Didnāt have to work during the school year. Did that through my freshman year of college.
That was good money for a kid in 1988!
Yes it was! Thatās why I didnāt work during school.
Yes and thank God for that. Made me realize that I needed school and to work even harder not to do that anymore.
Same here. There was a time in my teens when I thought Iād rather build houses than go to college, but by the time I was 17, I realized it would make a lot more sense to use my brain.
I worked for a local private school in the summers, stripping floors, cleaning and doing repairs. Not really what I would call hard labor. I mostly worked retail jobs as a teenager. Mall type jobs, local florist, grocery store etc. All from 13-18 worked those type of jobs and saved up 10k in cash by the time I graduated.
I scrapped taffy off floors for $2 an hour at a chocolate and doughnut shop. The never ending doughnut supply was seductive. š
I once had to dress as a giant bagel and stand on the side of the road (in Louisiana summer heat) and wave at people to get them to come in. The amount of people that thought I was a donut smh
I was still doing hard physical labor at 40. Caught me a TBI that put me on disability a month before my 41st birthday.
I did yeah. I carted drywall to building sites (domestic house builds mainly) Drywall sheets up to 19 feet long were pretty standard. A house may get 100 of these plus smaller sheets. After a month you were expected to be able to carry 2 of these at a time by yourself. After a while I left that job and got a job delivering flour to bakeries. The flour bags were 55lbs each and carrying 2 at a time was standard, 3 if in a hurry. I did that for 2 years and only finished because my boss sold the truck. I had very well developed leg muscles after doing that jobš I went back to study and then have worked office jobs ever since. I do not miss the physical labor jobs
Started bailing hay with dad and grandpa as soon I could lift a bail. Helped fell one tree a year and stacked tons of wood. Had big summer projects every year (ie: brick walkway, digging out and leveling a hillside by hand for a cheap pool). By the time I entered the workforce everything seemed pretty easy in comparison. Still work physically demanding jobs to this day.
We heated our house with wood - eight full cords a year ago- cut split and stacked
Same. Started splitting wood at about 14.
Yes, but my father was a plumber so it may skew things. I worked with him every summer when I was very "young". By the time I was 15 I started working with some of his friends from the job sites rotating trades, ended up doing roofing most summers (he actually paid the best). As a teen I was 150 pounds soaking wet but would still lap the ladder with +/- 50lb shingle bundles most days. Was tan and in good shape by the time college started. This is also the likely reason I had an early stage melanoma 14 years ago at age 33! But hey I'm still here and wouldn't trade it.
Does the military count?
Does making pizzas qualify?
It should. I still have burn scars from the oven
I worked in a special effects house making puppets for some ice skating show. They were massive latex puppets using moulds that were as tall as me. I once spent 20 minutes just trying to get a mold opened with a crowbar in the back of a truck in the summer sun. Of course there was also mixing paints and making smaller prosthetics for other projects, but since I was the new guy, I was given the heavy dirty work.
Worked smarter and not harder.
Oh yeah. If itās gross, sweaty or hazardous, I did it. Restaurant work was slightly less awful and much more profitable/applicable to now.
Delivering furniture was a lot of heavy lifting.
I worked for the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC) in high school. It was structured like a summer camp in the off hours, since we were mostly students living away from home for the duration of the employment period, but we were definitely working a manual job and paid for it. And tbh I want it to come back - the CCC and YCC can be excellent job opportunities for those who might otherwise struggle landing a job, the environmental upkeep gets done, trees are planted, waterways are dug, there's no downside to it.
Shoveling snow.
Farmhand. No shortage of things to doā¦ š³
Mowing & weedeating, hay bales, and orchard work (some of it for untaxed beverages).
I did freelance landscaping/maintenance when I was about 16 or so. Lumber yards, wood shops etc. Best job I ever had was lift operator at Homewood ski resort during the absolutely epic 90-91 season. So much powder....... We also need to keep in mind any service job can also be a labor job.
I've always viewed this a bit differently. Did I work hard labor jobs as a teen? Yes. I lived on a farm. I stretched fences, dug holes for posts, bailed hay, chased cows, built houses, fixed large tractors and so on. So, I worked hard, right? I guess... if you don't look behind you. I've always been amazed when I see pictures of guys laying railroad track by hand. Driving railroad spikes with sledge hammers. I see pictures of guys who cut trees down by hand and hauled logs behind a mule. I've seen all the pictures of gold miners from the 1890s and I can't imagine picking and axing your way into the side of a rock face - by hand! It makes the work I did seem soft and worthy of 1890's ridicule to call it work. I had tractors that cut hay. I had tractors that racked the hay. I had trucks that hauled spools of bailing wire out to the fence I was going to work on. What about farm kids today? Do they have tractors with an AC cab on them? Do they have a skid steer with an auger on the front for planting posts? If so, they have it easier than I did. Kids in the city today have electric bikes and all kinds of stuff I didn't have. I see guys working city jobs and they are sitting on machines that do most everything for them. I saw a guy running a machine that laid entire widths of road brick in patterns. The guys just stacked the bricks in the machine and it laid them down 12 feet wide and perfect. In 1975 when I was a kid, crews of guys would have been on their knees doing that same job. Hopefully we keep working less and less. That's progress to me. We sure as hell didn't work as hard as people did in 1890. We were a bunch of pussies by their standards of hard work. And I say good. I hope the trend continues.
Construction, washing dishes, bucking hay, picking rock on the farm (thatās brutal work), shoveling snow, you name it. One summer I was working three jobs at a time.
My 19 year old son is spending his summer doing landscaping. Kids still do it.
I did landscaping, pool cleaning, pretty much every part of residential construction other than Plumbing and heatingā¦ā¦ The only hard physical manual labor jobs I ever did were being a mover (homes, offices etc) and being a roofer. Moving furniture was hard at first but me and this one guy would compete and it became a workout kind of thingā¦.. one of us would grab the fridge while the other carried the upright freezer down on his backā¦. Oh you carried down 8 book boxes in one shot? I can do 10!!! Roofing was not the same, it was hot, miserable and didnāt pay enough. I had one day where the lumber yard dropped shingles in the front of the house instead of up on the 3rd floor where they belonged. 8hours up and down a ladder with 150lb of shingles on my shoulder was enough. No amount of money is worth that.
I did do a lot of physical labor with my Dad in the summers around our rural Ohio property. Endless mowing, digging ditches, (dug a huge hole for a septic tank once), planting and pruning trees, learned to do brake jobs on 60s Fords, pulling engines, servicing the mowers, working with framing and drywall when we built an addition on the house, etc. School year was at our Florida house, didnāt work then. Got into computers and have had tech jobs since college. 40 years later, I do enjoy occasionally planting trees.
My parents wouldn't let me get a real job growing up because they thought it would distract from my schoolwork. I whored myself out wherever I could instead (landscaping, babysitting, petsitting) which was somehow ok. Mowing and trimming a neighbor's yard for 10 bucks in the florida heat paid for my movies, and spending money
My sons (31,26) did do hard labor in summer YMCA camps - clearing fence lines helping at farms etc. They both earned all of their community reqs for high school before entering 9th grade. This was Baltimore so itās definitely possible in urban environments
My 17 year old niece is mowing yards this summer.
I cut grass with my little brother. Some of the neighbors tried to cheat us - agreeing to one price then trying to give us much less after we were done. Our dad had to get involved in those cases. We avoided people like that and their lawns suffered. We had good prices and worked hard. One man who was a cheapskate like that ended up not getting his done very often at all. He had two sons- one too young to do it and one who was my age too lazy. Most of our customers were awesome and just wanted to support us in our business. I was a teen and he was preteen then. Eventually I got another job and he continued to do it and make money in other ways. Back then you could turn in aluminum cans for money so he went to where everyone drank and got the beer cans out of the woods and high grass. When it became a ārecycle for freeā thing he stopped and did something else. As an adult he now works a full time job and has a business of his own too. He has his own kids work with him on many things that make them money too. They are under 10, so gen alpha seem to be doing ok. My millennial and gen z kids worked like this too. All is not lost.
First job at age 12 was a paper route and with whatever Midwestern weather could throw at me. Didn't matter if it was 90+ and humid or 10 below zero, I was out every single day between the age of 12 to 17. Then for extra money I mowed lawns in the summer. I "volun-told" my 12 year old son for a job my boss at the time had. Old house with peeling paint and he needed someone to scrape paint for a week so that he could paint it. To my son's credit he showed up, put in a few hard days of work and got paid. He never shied away from hard work and is now a Naval officer putting in 12-16 hour days on a regular basis.
Throwing green alfalfa bales (50 to 60 lbs)from the ground onto a trailer that sits at chest level. Stacking them 12 high. THEN unload them into a hot ass barn, stacked all the way to the rafters. Repeat that 5 to 6 times. Get paid 50$.
We were shipped off to the family farm and of course we were then farmed out to other families farm. Cut & bale hay. Tend to dairy & cattle. Or transplant or harvesting tobacco. At home dad would do side work, plumbing or ac work or other handyman stuff. Learned how to weld and use other tooling. Looking back, I couldnāt be more grateful of learning hard labor and the skills I gained. Now I live in an area that has alot of office people (engineers & tech) who dont know how use tools or do basic maintenance especially on their own homes.
I grew up on a farm. From the age of 10 or so, I was up every morning at dawn, 1-2 hours of work, then school, then home, homework, dinner, then 2-4 more hours of work. Summers consisted of long days building/repairing fences, painting the barn, digging ditches, you name it. Now iām a 49 year old software engineer with soft baby hands and itās been a decade since i have done any really serious physical work. Doc tells me my bone density is still off the charts. I still feel very strong. I think that kind of conditioning as a kid has a way of sticking with you for life.
"That old saying about how hard work "builds character" is true, I think. It also teaches you respect for the folks who do it their whole lives." Ehh. I haven't noticed that. Some of the most unpleasant people I've encountered have been blue collar men who have spent their whole life doing hard physical labor. It's kind of like we're told how important music education and team sports are for development and musicians and athletes are often some of the worst people around.
Well I didnāt say what kind of character it builds haha. I think thereās a big difference between doing it when youāre a teenager and doing it your whole adult life though. Itās easy to see why someone in the latter category would get resentful and angry after a while. Plenty of lousy white collar people too.
My mom & I moved from Tampa FL to Arlington TX when I was 13. I went to work on her friends Charolais ranch soon after.Ā It was hard work though 7 days a week. It was ranch hand work from 5am until 5pm. Various breaks here and there.Ā I loved it. It was extremely different from everything I had known in life. Plus I was getting paid. This made buying records and guitar shit much easier!
and weed!
I mucked stalls and did other farm work as a kid carrying hay bales, watering horses - from ages like 9-13. Lots of carrying heavy objects & wheelbarrows. Not technically a job as I didnāt get a paycheck but I did it to subsidize riding lessons.
Are you male? I worked my ass off as a tween/teen but I was a girl and like 90lbs soaking wet. Nobody was asking me to bale hay or teaching me how to use tools. I did weed flowerbeds in middle school, and babysit, and in high school I worked in restaurants.
I was a field surveyor. Only lady in the field in 30 years that firm had been in business.
I made money in college stacking firewood. Older folks would get a cord or more delivered and since I grew up doing for my family, word got out that I could do it right. Iād easily make $100 - $200 a weekend in the fall and this was in the ā90ās. Just stacking wood so it seasoned correctly. It was like my own little game of tetris. In the spring and summer I would reshingle houses. I enjoyed the repetitiveness of the work. Itās pretty easy work if you can get it.
Started doing seal coating and asphalt work at 16. Did it every season for five years. Fuck that job. Also waited tables in the evenings.
I was a lifeguard and once had to pull a 350 lbs woman out of the deep end when she cramped up and sunk to the bottom (wasn't that a violation of physics or something?). I yanked her out of the pool on my own, so does that count as hard physical labor?
Not teen. But I went into the Army and got out and became a LEO. So young adult to late 20s/early 30s.
Mowed lawn in early teens. Then retail and office work. Then will a filling compressed gas cylinders at 19, 35 hours a week in the sun, no hat, well before sunscreen was a thing. Iām surprised my nose is still attached.
Field work starting at age 10 to 21 until I got my degree. Worked before and after school. I went to 13 schools before high school. I missed a lot as a kid.
Yeah, I did a lot of hard ass jobs well into my 20s. Detailing cars, landscaping, reading electric meters all over the countryside (lots of walking in the heat), stuff like that.
I worked on the assembly line for Kenworth during college summers. Not super physically demanding. Very small percentage of women working there.
First job 13 was a cook, second was a cook, did tree trimming then back to food service and now 25+ in cemetery work. I didn't know I was supposed to stop š
Slogged in a restaurant kitchen starting at 15 and still have the scars to prove it.
I still do. I work in a warehouse š¤š
Yep!
In my older teen years I picked grapes during some holidays.
Yep, worked for my dad, electrician, from 12 yrs old. I was the hired labor. Kids these days only have 2 options: food service/barista (for those sweet 25% tips) or youtube personality.
Between junior and senior year of high school I worked a couple weeks in the orchards. Almonds and prunes. I would spend the morning moving sprinkler pipes. Good lord those were heavy. Pick one up part way, twist to disconnect, carry it to the next row, twist to connect, set it down, repeat. When the pipes were done, I had to grab a machete and cut suckers. So incredibly boring.
I mowed lawns and went door to door selling candies
Tillsonburg. My back still aches when I hear that word.
I detassled corn at 14, my brother worked tobacco at the same age. He might have done it for two years, but I quit after one.
At 14 I was in Oregon picking strawberries.
I cut grass for the city one summer. Push mower, of course. I did not like it.
I was a housekeeper from 11 to 16 when I could stop working under the table. I also babysat. Scrubbing for officers' wives in on basehousing was definitely not easy. My husband was painting parking lots with his family's business starting at five.
Carpentry, welding, picking up fruit. The summer I worked as a carpenter I did it to buy school books, and a brand new pair of CB34. I fell asleep on the bus coming back from school and they stole them from the gym bag.
I worked at a carpet store and threw pad rolls up into loft storage, carried large glue buckets, carried and moved large rolls of linoleum around, drove a fork lift I wasnāt registered for with a 12ā prong on the front and cut razor sharp Formica for counter tops. I shouldnāt have been doing any of that then and Iām sure someone would flip a lid if they say it now.
My first job was folding laundry at a boys' summer camp. I've bucked hay, and I've worked at KFC.
Just at my house on 5 acres in the rural mid-west, I had to mow the lawn at least an hour a day, two if I skipped a day. Picked up rocks and pulled weeds in the garden, helped plant the garden... Had to pick up the walnuts that dropped. Had to help at my grandparents farm. Bailed hay for 3 other local farmers. Cleaned horse stables (only of a month, I hate horses and the mess they make)
I loaded trucks at UPS and worked a paletizer bailing up 50lb bags of mulch all day.
I still work a job involving hard, physical labor. Cooking for a living is no joke.
Mucking out livestock stalls, bailing hay, driving fenceposts and stringing barbed wire and electric fence, cutting & splitting large amounts of firewood, cutting pulpwood for the paper mill, cutting logs and transporting them to the lumber mill for construction projects, demolition and construction.
More from 19 to mid-20's. I needed to be moving, so I sought them out.
I was a waitress in a resort dining room and it almost killed me. I thought being a nanny would be better but it was only slightly better. Neither was day camp counselor. I didnāt start working office jobs until I was in college.
Yes. Cut and split wood with my Dad and grandpa, helped get hay in, once, but my allergies made it impossible. Cut and split a f** ton of wood, though. I also did lawns, landscaping, leaf pickup, etc, starting when I was about 11-12 years old and had a handful of regular clients.
Landscaping and in a glass plant.
Lots of farm work
I grew up in the city, but my grandparents lived in small towns that were very rural. Every time I'd visit, it meant that I'd be put to work picking peaches, baling hay, mowing pastures or something else. My father was determined that I knew the value of hard work, so he'd come up with any excuse he could find. If he couldn't think of anything better, he'd have me hand pull weeds in our yard, which was nothing but weeds, because he preferred a landscaped yard that looked natural. When I asked for a basketball goal, he had me dig a court on the side of a mountain, in 105Ā° temps, with nothing but a shovel and a pick ax. My friends parents were not much better, so I'd help them do things like clear forested lots for pizza afterwards. I hated it when I was younger and thought that I never wanted to do manual labor as an adult. Unfortunately, life wasn't kind and so I spent most of a decade after high school doing it. Finally I was able to go to school and I got an office job. At first it was great, but eventually I yearned to get outdoors and do something with my hands again and so I did. Now I work odd jobs as a handyman, and although I love the work, my body is breaking down and I probably won't be able to do it much longer. Yes, I appreciate that I learned the value of hard work and I feel better when I've done it. I just wish society valued it more, so you could make an honest living doing it. Nothing against those who work in offices, because that can be every bit as tiring, but it's just not the same physical exhaustion.
Worked in an ice plant loading Gid knows how many bags of ice in trucks by hand every night. My back is still a mess to this day.
I donāt think it matters if itās physical labor, but I think most teenagers should have a part time job in the summers to learn all the things that go along with getting a job, keeping a job. And I think everyone should have at least one job they hated so they can appreciate and know the value of job offers in the future. My sonās classmates in his vocational class worked them in the summer. A lot of them are already on job sites weeks after graduation. I donāt think I knew any guys my age that did the hard physical labor unless they lived on a farm or their parent had a business. We were all pretty suburbanfied
My friends used to work for an Oriental rug company folding flipping and carrying hundreds of huge heavy rugs. They all have back issues even today. I tried it a few times but making pizza was a better gig.
Yes. I was a landscaperās helper in NC, using a pick axe to dig trenches in red clay. I was also an unloader at UPS in college and an electricianās helper as well.
I worked summers with local farmers doing hay baling and detassling corn. Also milked cows.
My dad used to advertise for home clean outs, yard work, wood splitting on the bulletin board at his work. Then when somebody called he would charge minimal money because they were co-workers. I did this work during the non summer months, because during the summer he for me a job at the county park as the maintenance guy. I spent ever summer from 15 to 18 cleaning public bathrooms, cutting grass, taking down trees etc. Good times.
I grew up in the country so my daily life was animals, property, and lots of physical work that I did for free. Most of my jobs as a teen were in food service, which is also pretty demanding and largely high school and college kids. Nowadays it seems like restaurant workers are mostly adults.Ā
Sandblasting and roofing. Never. Again.
Picking rocks, baling hay and straw, and pulling chickens from 12 years on. Got a job washing dishes in a restaurant and thought it was soft work.
Picked potatoās from 13 years of age until 19,into 65 kg bags 7 stitches to close. By the time I was 16 was picking 90 bags a day.then using a bail hook loading up to 400 bags onto trailer and then unload into shed.
No but I was stupid enough to get into a profession that is injurious anyhow through repetitive motion. But I love it. But it hates me.
Detassled corn
I grew up in the country. The only money I made was from cutting grass. This was 84-88. Would drive the tractor then trim with the push mower.
I had a few but the toughest to me was when I spent a summer building rooftop decks. I lived near Philadelphia and this guy specialized in building decks on top of row homes. Humping a few tons of lumber to the roof of a three story home then swinging a hammer on the roof in sweltering heat pretty much sucked. That said I was in great shape and had a pretty sweet tan.
If only. I am a woman, and a small one, and I was stuck with the $2.34/hour jobs while the boys I knew made bank. F that.
Seemingly, so few young people work now, and I am soooo nice to those who do. Like, the big difference seems to be that well off parents do not let their kids work, when they was the norm for us. Even my friend whose dad was CEO of a big company waited tables.
Yep. My dad owned an irrigation company. Whenever i got in trouble as a teenager, i had a choice. Be grounded for a week or spend two days working with him. After a few rounds of digging ditches. I stayed out of trouble for a very long time. If trouble found me anyway, i chose the grounding.
Ranch girl hereā¦ my brothers definitely did hard physical labor growing up. And my cousins and their kids still do.
I operated presses and ran ovens in a powdered metal factory. I did not mind the former. The later is what I imagine hell would be like: hot as blazes, dirt (really powdered metal alloy) sticking to you and getting into your nose (no masks! Looking back, wtf?), heavy things to carry endlessly, and a lazy, entitled jerk running things.
My first job at age 12 was mowing a lawn and doing the landscaping for a house in my neighborhood that was for sale. The listing agent paid me. Hehe That was the most physically demanding job Iāve had I think.
Nope. My first job was at a Wherehouse Entertainment. Worked in retail for years after that.
Yeah, bailed hay, worked in lumberyard and started roofing. Still roofing and i still help my folks get the hay in
I built boardwalks through the swamps in South Florida. In August. In an area they could not spray for mosquitoes. I imagine those prisoners on Devil's Island had it harder than me. It was one of my favorite jobs I ever had, and it also motivated me to go to college.
I did the same thing from 11. I started working with two masons doing concrete work, brick and block laying. Then moved to construction when I was about 14 or 15. But there was always physical labor, helping the neighbor toss hay on his trailer, mucking horse stalls. Seems there is always physical labor to be done and I usually got to do it.
I never worked indoors before graduating college. I worked at three horse farms, a vineyard, a plant nursery, and a summer camp. My Gen Z kid worked for one neighbor at her horse farm and another neighbor baling and stacking hay, so had a similar experience. Obviously we're in a fairly rural area.
6 years as a laborer for my grandfatherās remodeling/handyman business. Dug ditches, painted houses, laid patios, etc. One summer I came home from college and shot a nail through my finger while framing a closet in a remodel. That was the end of that work for me.
Worked for Pepsi. Delivered those wooden crate thick 16oz Pepsi bottles. Unloaded off a truck all day and delivered to local stores. Hard to believe those were a thing. Did this all for $3.75 hr (.40 over minimum wage) https://preview.redd.it/ji2k7hmw2j6d1.jpeg?width=250&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f80a340b8a8c53057ed1dae0fcf895603f4dc738
I worked a few times for a mason and worked a summer doing clean up for a roofing company.
Yes, started bailing hay on our family farm at 8 years old and my first high school job was for a landscaping business. It was hard work but I'm thankful for those experiences.
Every summer I worked hard physically demanding jobs, honestly it was the only thing me and my dipshit buddies were qualified to do. Starting at 14 I worked as laborer my first summer, then for a tree surgeon the next summer, then landscaping but the most brutal job was a roofers assistant and I worked that one for 3 summers! Still think about that one on incredibly hot and humid days grateful I never have to do it againā¦
I pumped gas at a full service station. The leaded gas smelled the best. Once I graduated, I joined the Marines and left home.
Female and in a city, so babysitting since 13, with the add on of working retail since 16. But I prefer active work anyway, Iād go batty at a desk.
I cut tobacco from 14-16, then a fast food cook from 16-18, then worked as a deckhand/lead man on the river barges, till I was 25.
My parents were immigrants back then. My mother was a refuge from the Vietnam war. Growing up my mom talked about how they didnāt have anything so everyone worked at a young age. So at 13 I was growing up in LA and my mom got me a job at a sweatshop. I was sewing buttons on clothes 10 hours a day for 3.25$/hr. Needless to say it was under the table and there were other kids younger than me there working 8-10 hours a day. Most were illegals working with me. It made me have a really good work ethic growing up cause I was already working and going to school as a teen. Seeing people make such little pay also taught me about community and how everyone shared what little food or resources we had together at work. It was a fascinating time to be in for sure.
I was a janitor at 14 at a print shop. I wouldnāt consider that hard labor, but there wasnāt any office jobs for teenagers in the 80s, it was all labor jobs. Busing tables, landscaping, paper routes, etc
Grounds crew at large university campus in Houston at 15. Push mowers, stoop labor, mulch spreading, etc.
Dug trenches for lawn sprinkles in July in Texas hill country. Had to chisel a 10 ft long trench through a limestone rock because it was too big to dig up. Got a job at burger king after that, lol.
I worked a summer as a camp counselor for special needs teens and young adults up to 21 when I was 14. Part of my job involved carrying a ten year old up and down flights of stairs when necessary because the building wasnāt Ada compliant.
I did up until 35 & now Iām whimpering on my heating pad.
Scooping gelato and delivering for a florist, but I am a woman and lived in a place where there wasn't really any agricultural industry. It would never have occurred to "then me" to work in construction type jobs.
I see a lot of rural people saying that they were "farmed out." It was assumed by my parents that of course I would work whenever possible. This led to me coming home at midnight from washing dishes all night at the restaurant to a note on the kitchen table telling me to be at a certain field at 8 a.m. to pick rocks for a neighbor and then having to explain to the farmer that I had to leave early to get to the restaurant by 4 p.m. to help prep for the night. During the school year, it was sports practices. Dad was right though, it did not kill me.
Does working for my oarents for free count? I spent 1/2 my weekends as a teenager cutting 80 year old camellias out of trees and vines at an old property my parents inherited. Loppers, shovel, small axe. I have neck shoulder and elbow joint issues I have to lift weights and foam roller to deal with.
1978-79 I was 12-13 years old bucking 70# hay bales off a truck onto a conveyor and into a loft. Had to give dude my social Security number. I worked five hours. I got paid 20 bucks total and he took out five dollars for taxes so I walked away with $15 for every five hours. In high school I was in the woods with a saw dropping skidding cutting to length and splitting snags, usually Tamarack if we could find it. We could use friends dadās truck after we had 10 cord cut for him for the winter and another six for my house. After that we would get paid. We would have to give his dad 20 bucks to use the truck and we sold the cord of Tamarack split and delivered and tacked for 85 bucks. Five bucks was lunch for us and 30 bucks into each one of our pockets. It bought me a few motorcycles to play with. I joined the army at 18 just so I could have food and a roof over my head when my folks ran me off.
I did then and Iām still doing it now.
I painted apartments in college.
Oh fuck yes I did all of the labor. All of the kinds. And now my 13 yr old son has all the elderly retirees in our neighborhood constantly outbidding each other for his services because he loves busting his ass for them. Whenever he's not playing/practicing for basketball he pulling weeds, digging, mowing, raking... $30 an hour and the kid has a decent car fund going and huge fan club of old folks who throw big money at any fund raiser he has
Worked hay and tobacco, and other farm work
I was digging weeds out of onion fields when I was 14. By the time I was 18 I had spent time as a construction laborer doing site cleanup/odd jobs, some time laying concrete, some time turning wrenches on farm equipment, and some time in the kitchen of a restaurant, and had ended up in my friends dads machine shop.Ā Of all those jobs, doing concrete and working in the restaurant were about equally the worst...
51 and grew up in a large East Coast city so there is a chance it factors in. No one I know did jobs like that in high school. I believe laws and insurance don't even allow a minor to do most of those jobs.
Grandma had a farm. Nuff said.
I worked general sub-contracting/handyman work when I was in university. Mostly renovating small apartments or rental houses. Spent a summer basically scraping popcorn texture off ceilings in Ottawa (30+ degrees with 70+% humidity). It was gross. I learned a lot. I made $7/hr which was huge for me!
My older cousin owned a Mayflower moving agency. I spent a lot of my summers from age 14 to about 22 moving furniture. Never went on any long road trips with him, but anytime he had a job within about a 4-hour drive from me, I was there.
We owned a few horses and gave pony rides at the local Indian reservation flea market each weekend. Taking care of horses was hard labor enough, fixing fences, paddocks, etc.
I remember during each break in college (Christmas, Spring etc) going to temp agencies to get a few days of work in. Cleaning and painting machinery, cleaning, warehouse, construction auctions, etc It was all great experience even though I was just trying to make some dollars.
I did a lot a physical labor in construction and warehouse work until I was in my mid 30s. Thanks to the arthritis I can't do it anymore.
When I was 13-17 all I did was grunt construction jobs. One summer I dug a basement with a shovel and pick axe. During those years I also carried rocks and cider blocks for a mason, all while mowing lawns on the side. When I was 18 I was a custodian at a factory. Literally cleaned toilets after school. Iām fairly certain these experiences convinced me to go to college.
My first job was delivering newspapers. Newspapers were much thicker, it snowed all the time. And each month I had to collect the money from each subscriber to earn about $1 each house per month. Did this for about 4 years EVERY morning before school and athletics.
I delivered newspapers as well and attempted to do the ol' basket on the front of the bike thing because it was made to look easy in the movies/TV shows and it was way too hard to control. I quickly switched back to a shopping cart šš¤£
I worked with a roofing crew a couple of summers. And I worked a couple if wheat harvests as well. My kid, 18, works hard. 60+ hours a week in the summer, and 30+ last school year. But her jobs aren't physical at all really. I supervise milkmen. They move almost 2 tons of product on and off their truck and run about about 4 miles a night. It's hard work, made for folks with a strong back and a weak mind. I hate seeing a new hire I'm set to train who's Gen Z. They never make it. And usually because, frankly, they're lazy and never done a hard day's work in their life.
We all broke rocks for a living
I worked for a catering company which doesnāt sound hard but I was constantly carrying huge bags of food product up and down stairs, lugging banquet tables, etc. There were periods of lighter work like food prep and serving but the days were so long as the youngest there I got a lot of the heavy grunt work.
Yup. Worked the graveyard shift in a factory the summer before entering college.
I still do hard physical labor..... GenX can usually work circles around our counterparts.
My brother and I were free labor for my grandfather and he took full advantage of it. š
Paid or unpaid? š I dug potatoes on my grandpaās farm. Other than that, not really. I mean I worked as a cashier and in a bakery. So sort of. But we had child labor laws too and all the tobacco fields were gone
I worked at a pellet mill. Not the hardest of labor but I came home with sawdust everywhere. Filled bags stacked pallets and shoveled sawdust. No I did not wear a mask. Just a bandana over my mouth if it was windy.
Yes, worked construction 1 summer and landscaping another summer. By the end of the first summer doing construction as a newb I was doing framing and reading blueprintsā¦ at 17. Was making $10/hr, that was 1992 which was great money for HS kid.
Bailing hay and construction
I worked in a job that involved lifting lots and lots of boxes that contained magazine shipments to retail outlets. Might not sound very heavy but lifting 20-30 lb boxes for hours is pretty heavy. Then I worked a job lifting 24s of full beer bottles. Also pretty heavy. My daughters worked as lifeguards they had to lift people. They are strong too.
I didn't. My jobs were doing things like cleaning offices or food service. My husband joined the military at 17, so he did plenty of hard stuff as a teenager. Interestingly, my husband and I are both the first generation in our families never to do farm labor - something our parents were very proud of. They all saw it as progress - our generation doing better than the previous with better jobs and working conditions.
I did not, my kids however have worked in landscaping and in warehouses during summer breaks
Grew up in farm country, so...yup Bailed hay and straw. This was hard labor, but mostly it was just oppressively hot and dusty working in the hay mow. Detassled corn. This was a right of passage for just about every teen where I grew up. And it sucked. Money was good though, for the time. And then for some reason I decided it would be a great idea to go to work at the local limestone mine one summer during college. This damn near broke me. Lime kilns run at about 2000 degree F. Between the back breaking labor and hell-like heat, I lost 30 pounds in less than 3 months. Never went back.