re: What paying job have you held in your life on which you had to work hardest physically?

One job paid the other job not paid:
Paid: picked tobacco (local term is primed tobacco) and hung it in kilns to dry, I did this all thru HS in a small town. Money was great – working for 4 yrs in tobacco paid for my college (my mom worked in a bank and made me save or I would have blown it like any other 17 yr old).
Basically wet in the morning till the dew dried than hot sweaty and nicotine tar stuck to everything. Hanging the kiln was ok but they are 2 story and every one falls – fall protection ...... nope . I fell but caught myself after 10’ or so.
Last 2 yrs I worked in tobacco I was the straw boss and got everybody going in the morning and supervised 2 crews – one from Antigua, the other from Quebec ... ya they loved each other. An Antiguan pulled a knife on a Quebecois .... no stabbing but cops showed up and deported the Antiguan. Take home message was I don’t want to be 35 and doing sh** jobs like that.

Non Paid – fence work at my wife’s grandparents place – its on the Canadian shield which is all granite ... to put a fence in you jackhammer a hole into the granite w/ a big a** pneumatic jackhammer and then pound in a t bar ..... I had put in miles of fence before but always w/ a posthole digger on a tractor.. the jack hammer su**ed balls. Plus once grandpa showed me the ropes he said giddy up the fence needs to go from here to there and put a post in every 20’

Local electric company's tree crew. It was a Summer job, paid pretty well, but hauling limbs and logs to the wood chipper was exhausting in the July sun. I did get a pretty good tan that year, but I also got chiggers so...

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Worked in a tool warehouse loading trucks with boxes of assorted tools for delivery.

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I know where that is

I loaded trucks one summer at an aluminum door and window factory. It was all the encouragement that I needed to finish school and find a desk job.

There were a lot of sharp corners on those windows. After a few weeks at the factory, I looked like a guy that bagged tomcats for a living.

Jeanerette Mills (Fruit of the Loom)
I was a bundle boy. Each section of sewing ladies had a 4x8 foot cart about 5 feet tall. They loaded the t-shirts in them when finished. I start a day with an empty cart and walk till i find a loaded cart and swap them out. I had like 8 carts to tend, spread over this huge arse building. Loaded, each cart weighed like 800 pounds. The worst part is I had to unload and stack the bundles by size. It was literally impossible to keep up.

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I worked for a roofing crew when I was in HS one summer.

I was the bitch boy that hauled the pack of shingles up the ladders all day. A pack of shingles weighs about 50 lbs.

By the end of the summer I could do 2 at a time.

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#gainz Roofing works sucks arse no matter what. Especially in the south. Did that for about a year with my pops I quickly told him let's do painting instead. Interior painting.

Either laborer at a steel mill or mixing refractory.

I worked maintenance for a college apartment complex one summer. Was pretty taxing at times.

Also worked in the kitchen at a restaurant. Working saute' was not easy. Especially cleaning out fryers and whatnot after we closed. It was a pretty dirty, exhausting job.

Also my dad owned a transmission shop for a number of years and I'd occasionally work with him. Hard work.

Did some landscaping stuff throughout HS too.

diesel fitter

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