A buddy of mine owned a video game store that I worked at for a bit. The pay was crappy and the hours were unstable and random, but I do miss working there.
I do miss stores like that. We had so many random stores like video games, comic book stores, record stores and things like that. Even then, they wouldn’t get rich there, but they at least seemed passionate about what they sold and their store was also kind of a hangout spot. Now rent has gone up like crazy and they got replaced by apple stores and other garbage shops.
I worked at a dial-up ISP in the late 1990s and it was the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had (it also helped considerably that we could smoke inside). Sadly it paid really poorly and they weren’t willing to make me full-time because of budgetary concerns, so I was ultimately forced to take a job that paid double and had great benefits but that I hated.
As a teen, I worked at a restaurant as a cook. The pay was terrible, the hours were unforgiving, the amount of cuts, bruises, and burns I got deserved hazard pay, and my coworkers were overly dramatic backstabbers. Liked the cooking and getting through a huge rush of customers, loved that when I left for the day my responsibilities and thoughts about work were behind me.
Yeah, I can see this. My analogy was working in a campus dining hall. Everyone else hated working dish room but I loved it. So satisfying to keep up with a lunch rush, feed the machine as fast as people got done eating.
The floor was always covered with slime and water, but once I learned to walk on it, I could walk on anything without slipping for years after. It was noisy and hectic and rushed, but we could skate in with a huge cart of dishes and gave the satisfaction of turning into clean dishes and going back out almost as fast. Speed was paramount so even if you dumped a cart of hundreds of dishes, that’s just teasing, clean it up and work even faster to catch up again. FOOD FIGHTS! Every day someone would start a food fight in the dishroom, but since we were all covered in mess anyway no one cared. I remember it as a fun break from studying, with side effects for great balance and handling slippery floors. I imagine my roommate remembers a lot more stench on me and my clothes than I ever noticed, and I’m sure it would have been a horrible job if it lasted longer or if I had to work more hours.
I worked at a fast food joint in the early 90s where often I was the only person running the kitchen during lunch rush because we were understaffed. It was hectic and utterly batshit and the pay was minimum wage, but those times when we were super busy I felt like a goddamned superhero because I would just get into the zone and be the eye of the hurricane managing the chaos with grace and elegance. It felt so damned good during but especially after. It was a shit job and I was glad to move on to something better, but it had its moments.
Right?! I totally understand that. The place I worked at was a diner, and weekend breakfast rush was always insane. Would go through hundreds of eggs in a single shift to the point the grill would actually cool off if we went through them too fast. We’d always get a few stacks out and ready for whoever was on the grill, because that was the one position that you had no time to do anything except attend to what’s in front of you. But if we went to fast, we’d be using eggs that came straight from the fridge. I loved being on egg grill duty because I had only one job, no other responsibilities, people brought things to you, and I was damn good at it.
A buddy of mine owned a video game store that I worked at for a bit. The pay was crappy and the hours were unstable and random, but I do miss working there.
I do miss stores like that. We had so many random stores like video games, comic book stores, record stores and things like that. Even then, they wouldn’t get rich there, but they at least seemed passionate about what they sold and their store was also kind of a hangout spot. Now rent has gone up like crazy and they got replaced by apple stores and other garbage shops.
I worked at a dial-up ISP in the late 1990s and it was the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had (it also helped considerably that we could smoke inside). Sadly it paid really poorly and they weren’t willing to make me full-time because of budgetary concerns, so I was ultimately forced to take a job that paid double and had great benefits but that I hated.
As a teen, I worked at a restaurant as a cook. The pay was terrible, the hours were unforgiving, the amount of cuts, bruises, and burns I got deserved hazard pay, and my coworkers were overly dramatic backstabbers. Liked the cooking and getting through a huge rush of customers, loved that when I left for the day my responsibilities and thoughts about work were behind me.
Yeah, I can see this. My analogy was working in a campus dining hall. Everyone else hated working dish room but I loved it. So satisfying to keep up with a lunch rush, feed the machine as fast as people got done eating.
The floor was always covered with slime and water, but once I learned to walk on it, I could walk on anything without slipping for years after. It was noisy and hectic and rushed, but we could skate in with a huge cart of dishes and gave the satisfaction of turning into clean dishes and going back out almost as fast. Speed was paramount so even if you dumped a cart of hundreds of dishes, that’s just teasing, clean it up and work even faster to catch up again. FOOD FIGHTS! Every day someone would start a food fight in the dishroom, but since we were all covered in mess anyway no one cared. I remember it as a fun break from studying, with side effects for great balance and handling slippery floors. I imagine my roommate remembers a lot more stench on me and my clothes than I ever noticed, and I’m sure it would have been a horrible job if it lasted longer or if I had to work more hours.
I worked at a fast food joint in the early 90s where often I was the only person running the kitchen during lunch rush because we were understaffed. It was hectic and utterly batshit and the pay was minimum wage, but those times when we were super busy I felt like a goddamned superhero because I would just get into the zone and be the eye of the hurricane managing the chaos with grace and elegance. It felt so damned good during but especially after. It was a shit job and I was glad to move on to something better, but it had its moments.
Right?! I totally understand that. The place I worked at was a diner, and weekend breakfast rush was always insane. Would go through hundreds of eggs in a single shift to the point the grill would actually cool off if we went through them too fast. We’d always get a few stacks out and ready for whoever was on the grill, because that was the one position that you had no time to do anything except attend to what’s in front of you. But if we went to fast, we’d be using eggs that came straight from the fridge. I loved being on egg grill duty because I had only one job, no other responsibilities, people brought things to you, and I was damn good at it.