Shitty Summer Jobs

I was driving through Evraz Place today, quiet as a ghost-town with the Queen City Ex done for another summer. It reminded me of that point towards the end of summer when you were younger and grateful summer was almost finished because you were working the worst summer job ever.

I think back to some of mine. When I was 15, myself and another girl were hired to paint oil wells. We were transported from well to well, painted, then moved on. The upside was that at that age, I was making $10 an hour, which back then was some serious grown up money. The downside, it wasn't rocket science, it was rather boring, and you're around slimy rig pigs all day.

At 16, I took odd jobs, including packing sileage. For those who don't know what this is, you basically drive back and forth, up and down in a tractor, packing the sileage that's been dumped into the pit. The better it's packed, the better it keeps I believe is the reasoning. So here I am, in a small Massey tractor with no cab, in the summer sun, back and forth. Not the most aspiring job ever. The upside was, I had a lot of time to think...a lot!

When I was about 18, I made the move out to BC for the summer. At first I attempted to work as a cashier at a Shell station. It was on the main highway, busy as hell, and I had an incredibly impatient boss who insisted we count change back on every transaction. I think I worked two shifts and quit. I did gain a whole new respect for people at gas stations. Especially ones in high traffic locations. Can you say pressure cooker??

After the gas station thing didn't work out, I set out to pick cherries for the summer in the Okanogan. We lived in a tent, and shared a common pickers shack for showering, bathroom and kitchen areas. We met a lot of different people, as a lot of Europeans and Quebecers hit up BC to work the orchards in the summer and it was a pretty carefree gypsy lifestyle. The downside though was that the pay was the shits, you had to be up picking by 6am to beat the heat (once cherries are too warm they come off the stem), and physically it was hard work. Not as hard as picking apples or peaches from what I've heard. One should mention as well that you're often tempted to eat what you pick, and in the case of cherries, well they have certain laxative qualities if you know what I mean. Rarely do I ever eat a cherry now.

Tia