Useful skills from crappy jobs

[HeadNinja]

My father worked at a dry cleaner for two years. The job featured noxious chemicals, uncomfortable heat no matter the time of year, and terrible pay. The upshot? He can iron a pair of pants, a shirt, or a jacket with the cheapest iron on earth, and it looks professionally pressed. Useful skill for out of town weddings, funerals, and everyday life in his later career.

I flipped burgers, stuffed tacos, and made pizzas. I did all of this on the ass end of the payscale. But as a result I can make sure all the food is done for a small to medium party at exactly the right time. If it all has to finish together it will. If it has to arrive in stages it will. And it will be ready when I say it will be, so showing up on time is not optional. This is a useful skill twice or so a year, but on those two days it is usually appreciated.

So what is the good you have distilled from the crap?

[lieu]

The summer of my senior year in H.S. I worked as a packer in cantelope sheds from McAllen to Presidio to Pecos. They're graded by size and each requires a certain ordering for a box and always stem print up. You're paid by the box (14 cents back then) so it behooves you to pack fast. Essentially you become an expert at lifting an object with your left hand and flicking it to your right hand waiting inside the box and having it land perfectly oriented for placement.

Where could that be applied now? Heh, you should see me unload the grocery shopping cart onto the belt. Most everything flies from one hand to the other, one after the other and without looking. Cracks the kid right up and gets a big smile from the cashier.

[apollonia]

Scooped ice cream at a nightmarish establishment. Terrible job. But damned if I still can't produce perfect scoops of ice cream and masterwork sundaes. I do this a lot at birthday parties and other occasions where ice cream is present, and it gets a lot of oohs and aahs. I don't know why.

[Miss Woodhouse]

I waitressed for three years. I can carry four plates at once, sometimes five, multiple glasses at once, and I can deal with people being stinky, picky snots about food with no trouble at all. It's very useful now as I serve up dinner every night to multiple children who like to be stinky, picky snots about their food.

I also worked as a line cook in a restaurant so I can do the everything done at the same time thing as well. I'm used to having my dinner ready all at once, and it drives me crazy to go to dinner somewhere where they haven't figured that one out yet. No part of a dinner should be room temperature. blech!

[sitchensis]

I painted houses one summer and for the most part I have lost my fear of heights.
I washed dishes in a restaurant for a couple of summers and now I can pick up anything bare handed.
Last time that came in handy was after my friends bachelor party when he vomited in the shower at the hotel. I had to manually clean out the chunks or the vomit water wouldn’t drain, didn’t bother me at all.

[tdn]

I worked at a deli for a few months. For years afterward I had the ability to make a sandwich in mere seconds.

[lisacurl]

I've volunteered for years at a dog shelter, and like Sitchensis, the only time I'd consider gloving up for a nasty cleanup is if I had an open cut on my hands or similar. I'm fairly unfazed by various biological effluvia.

[The Devil's Grandmother]

I can make frosting, wrap it up and write your message on a cake with it. I can pick out the best ripe melon from a group, strip the meat out of a pineapple, and pick out exactly X pounds of fruit. I'm a whiz at alphabetizing, a skill that is probably not much valued here but impresses the heck out of people.

[cwthree]

Originally Posted by apollonia

Scooped ice cream at a nightmarish establishment. Terrible job.

Same here, but I learned how to scoop a hollow spiral of ice cream that fits perfectly into a parfait glass so that (a) the glass looks full but only contains about half the ice cream it can actually hold and (b) there's plenty of room for the toppings to run attractively down the inside of the glass.

[KneadToKnow]

Worked for a while in high school as a service station attendant. I can clean car windows with the best of them, even while looking down your blouse.

[Captain_C]

Mall cop for 4 years. Since mall cops can't really do shit, I learned to talk anyone down from an unstable situation with just my words and without violence. I no longer get an adrenaline rush from dangerous situations (after having a few firearms pulled on me while I had nothing better from pepper spray, you get used to it). Also, since I was in charge, I learned how to inspire people to do their job for the fun of it instead of having pay be a factor. (to be honest, I yelled like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket and my guys loved it)

For all the shittyness of that job, the skills I learned there have proved to be invaluable in my current position with Children's Protective Services.

[wheresmymind]

Originally Posted by apollonia

Scooped ice cream at a nightmarish establishment. Terrible job. But damned if I still can't produce perfect scoops of ice cream and masterwork sundaes. I do this a lot at birthday parties and other occasions where ice cream is present, and it gets a lot of oohs and aahs. I don't know why.

Me too! I once amazed (well, mildly amused) some friends with my ability to plop scoop after scoop onto a kitchen scale, each one weighing almost exactly 6 oz. Also, we were allowed one "scoop" of ice cream at the end of our shift - I can still manage to fit well over a pint onto the end of a scoop.

[Enginerd]

I was an "assistant" at a construction company one summer in college. If anyone ever needed anything trivial but time-consuming (running machine parts to a mechanic, delivering contracts to a client or sub, or moving piles of crap around the yard), I was the guy who did it. It was a lousy job, but I learned to prioritize tasks and say "no" to people when I wouldn't be able to do the things they were asking for.

[Cat Whisperer]

Most of my secretarial work has given me the ability to turn my brain off (or send it off to daydreamland) and do repetitive tasks accurately and quickly for hours on end.

I can also fold a sheet of paper to perfect thirds instantly.

[Alpha Twit]

Skill 1 - I worked one summer at a beef processing facility, you know, a slaughterhouse. I came out with a new immunity from obnoxious smells and sights. You have anything gross, smelly or nauseating to get rid of, call me. As a side benefit of the job, I have a large collection of stories that can clear a table in thirty seconds flat.

Skill 2 - In my youth, I spent several years delivering newspapers. Folding and throwing a hundred or more papers every day for years on end gave me forearms like Popeye and I developed pinpoint accuracy in my throwing. With no wind to screw up my aim, I could get the paper in the mailbox at twenty yards.

[Hilarity N. Suze]

I worked as a telephone installer many, many years ago.

I have fixed phones in various offices--usually simple problems. Rewired rooms to accommodate computer setups at home. When the cable guy said he couldn't put it downstairs and we should hire an electrician? I don't think so.

It's very useful to know how to fish a wall.

I used to do actual electricity, too. But nowadays I hire an actual electrician for that, because I like stuff to be done to code (although it never is, in the houses I buy, for some reason; I seem attracted to houses with weird electricity).

I may have learned useful things in other jobs, but they didn't carry over into real life.

[Rilchiam]

I worked retail at a theme park. The uniforms belonged to the park. Good: We left them to be cleaned instead of being responsible for them ourselves. Bad: At shift change, you had a couple hundred people all changing into or out of uniforms at once. You learned to skin out of one outfit and into another in about thirty seconds, with another thirty seconds to arrange either your street clothes or your uniform in the garment bag. I may be exaggerating a bit.

[Nava]

That job where the boss greeted me with a look up and down and a "let's see how long this one lasts" was made a bitch by the bitch in question and by the upper level management in general (of which she was the lowest rung), but I learned a lot about rubber and rubber-like products; it is also a neverending source for examples of How Not To Do Things, which comes in handy in my current job teaching people how to do their own jobs (they explain to me how they do it now, I design the new processes using the system they're paying me to install, then I teach them these new processes).

The short internship in a hospital wasn't crappy as such, but I wasn't officially there and I knew that most people would rather I hadn't been in at all. Dad worked in that hospital; I was studying ChemE and the lab manager (double degrees in Medicine and Chem) wanted to see whether the reputation of my school was deserved or not. I learned a lot about my own capabilities (greater than I'd thought going in); I also learned that what's considered "nasty, stinky and dangerous" by someone with a certain background is "routine and uninteresting" to someone else (the assistant tech I shadowed treated poo and pee as routine and I didn't; I treated concentrated acids as routine and she touched the bottles like they would grow spikes if held tightly).

The job trying to teach math to people applying for government jobs (specifically as firemen, EMTs and cops) went a long way towards helping me be better at explaining things to the Really Slow, but I'm still working on it. They were supposed to be able to perform the four basic operations on fractions and word percentiles: only one could give a decent explanation of what a fraction is and add them up. For the rest, I had to say "ok, forget about the book for a while, you can't cram for the test if you don't even understand the questions in it". One asked "but how can I learn anything without the book?" "From what I explain" "But how can you explain without the book?"...

[Hello Again]

From working in a toy store, I can wrap any object of any shape or texture in a neat and tidy manner. I don't have any particular flair for decorative or craftsy gift wrapping, but if you want that plastic brontosaurus wrapped without putting it in a gift box first, I'm your woman.

[Motorgirl]

Originally Posted by lieu

The summer of my senior year in H.S. I worked as a packer in cantelope sheds from McAllen to Presidio to Pecos. They're graded by size and each requires a certain ordering for a box and always stem print up. You're paid by the box (14 cents back then) so it behooves you to pack fast. Essentially you become an expert at lifting an object with your left hand and flicking it to your right hand waiting inside the box and having it land perfectly oriented for placement.

Where could that be applied now? Heh, you should see me unload the grocery shopping cart onto the belt. Most everything flies from one hand to the other, one after the other and without looking. Cracks the kid right up and gets a big smile from the cashier.

I think you just solved a mystery for me. I am uncoordinated and clumsy. Can't catch a ball or a frisbee most of the time, trip on smooth sidewalks, etc. BUT I can toss something from my right hand to my left hand without looking and without missing, and I do this constantly without even thinking about it. I was always mystified about why I could do this when I can't do anything else that requires that type of instant unwavering physical accuracy. It must come from bagging groceries - something I did for years in HS and college - back in the paper bag days. Unfold the bag, stick your left arm in, toss things from the belt into the bag using your right hand, catch them with your left and place them in the right spots in the bag to produce a fully loaded, well-balanced bag of groceries.

Thanks for clearing that up!

[GargoyleWB]

From crappy restaurant/bakery/deli dishwashing jobs...

I can knock out the nastiest highest pile of domestic residential dishes quickly and systematically. I don't care how big a party you've just thrown and how hazardous a zone your kitchen has become, I've seen worse And I can do so without the slightest wince or complaint, and find a nice zen calm from the activity (toasty water on my hands, steam in my face, citrus scent in the air...bliss.)

[cwthree]

Originally Posted by Alpha Twit

As a side benefit of the job, I have a large collection of stories that can clear a table in thirty seconds flat.

I smell new thread fodder!

[Bosstone]

Originally Posted by cwthree

I smell new thread fodder!

I smell something, anyway.

[Rocketeer]

I can wire a trailer's lights in nothing flat. And I know how to sharpen a lawnmower blade.

[The Devil's Grandmother]

Originally Posted by Cat Whisperer

Most of my secretarial work has given me the ability to turn my brain off (or send it off to daydreamland) and do repetitive tasks accurately and quickly for hours on end.

Dear Og, I try never to admit this in public, but I can stuff envelopes with astonishing speed and neatness.
I'm also really good at fixing paper jams in printers and copiers, another skill I do not admit to in my current job.

[even sven]

This is kind of a useless skill, but from a job as a photo assistant from a company that did senior portraits, I can tell any man's suit jacket size just by looking at him.

[Alpha Twit]

Originally Posted by cwthree

I smell new thread fodder!

Oh no one wants to hear my stories of...

SPOILER:

...picking up skinned cow heads with a hook through the lower jaw and having the eyes turn to look at me

or...

SPOILER:

...just exactly how hard I laughed when a hundred and fifty pounds of fresh, warm entrails landed on my supervisor

or...

SPOILER:

...just exactly how broad the definition of "beef" is when you're talking about pet food ingredients. (hint - what do you think they do with the hooves and horns?)

[ZipperJJ]

I worked as a stocker at a grocery store for one year. I am really good at breaking down cardboard boxes.

I am also good at pushing heavy carts with casters, like a pallet jack. You know, like where two wheels are stationary and two swivel around? People have trouble with this. But if you have to push a huge heavy pallet full of laundry detergent through a crowded store and down a small aisle, you get good at it.

[Bookkeeper]

Originally Posted by Hilarity N. Suze

I worked as a telephone installer many, many years ago.

I have fixed phones in various offices--usually simple problems. Rewired rooms to accommodate computer setups at home. When the cable guy said he couldn't put it downstairs and we should hire an electrician? I don't think so.

It's very useful to know how to fish a wall.

Ditto on this, plus what do do if the cable plow turns up a dud mortar shell*.


(* Clear the area and radio for the base engineers' EOD unit.)

[Ranchoth]

Originally Posted by Alpha Twit

Oh no one wants to hear my stories of...

SPOILER:

...picking up skinned cow heads with a hook through the lower jaw and having the eyes turn to look at me

I'd kinda like to hear that one.

[cuberdon]

From my catering days, I can flip twenty hot dogs at once.

I can also make meringue, mayo, and whipped cream by hand.

That last one especially induces the most amazing displays of abject slobbering gratitude. You'd think I'd cured cancer or something.

[Budista]

I don't know if this skill counts as useless, but it's always met with a certain sort of impressed awe whenever I perform it.

5 years of working irrigation has left me with the skill to dig a perfect 5" deep trench in grass in minutes; removing soil and sod in one chunk and leaving a level base.

Dirt also doesn't bother me at all (biological effluvia, yes). I've reached up to my shoulder into stinking rotting vegetation in muddy water to open valves before. Your sifted loam in the garden is a treat, thank you.

- Budista

[Maiira]

I got really good at putting juuuuust the right amount of mayo in tuna salad when I was making it in bulk for two different food service jobs. At the first such job, one of my coworkers said she liked it best when I made it.

I also discovered the joy of mixing such things with my hands. It's so much fun! Not so much when the meat's cold from being in the freezer, though.

[Joey P]

Originally Posted by lieu

The summer of my senior year in H.S. I worked as a packer in cantelope sheds from McAllen to Presidio to Pecos. They're graded by size and each requires a certain ordering for a box and always stem print up. You're paid by the box (14 cents back then) so it behooves you to pack fast. Essentially you become an expert at lifting an object with your left hand and flicking it to your right hand waiting inside the box and having it land perfectly oriented for placement.

Where could that be applied now? Heh, you should see me unload the grocery shopping cart onto the belt. Most everything flies from one hand to the other, one after the other and without looking. Cracks the kid right up and gets a big smile from the cashier.

I spent my HS days unpacking those cantaloupe and putting them on the shelves (I still do if we're short crewed)...what can I do now you ask? I can spot a piece of fruit rolling off a counter out of the very corner of my eye while immersed in a conversation with someone else. 99% of the time, I can grab it before it falls without ever breaking eye contact. When I miss, I can usually catch it with my foot so it doesn't hit the floor. Oh, and at one point I could juggle said cantaloupe.

[Waxwinged]

After being an art-supply-person for an after-school program run by a very disorganized art education department, I can now organize un-organizable piles of junk!

[Shirley Ujest]

Some of the lessons from the craptacular jobs don't make themselves apparent for years.


From working at a summer camp, I learned to manage large groups of kids ( use to be kinda like the guy from Full Metal Jacket, but girls don't respond to that kinda talk. ponies! ) . Here is a clue: Girls need "You are pretty and dress nice and ooooh, sparkles!" and boys ...Half Full Metal Jacket Half Weird Al Yankovic. (Then I make the boys more sensitive and toughen up the girls.)

From working at a MegaStore, I perfected my patience and poker face from the wandering herd of humanity. Their inability to find what was right in front of them is/was my job security. [size=1]"Do you know where the Stalin is?" " Stollen. Yes, ma'am, right over here." Politeness and walking them to the product, lest they get lost by some shiny endcap display.

[lieu]

We're twins, Motorgirl.

Originally Posted by Joey P

Oh, and at one point I could juggle said cantaloupe.

Did you use any kind of gloves for your produce work? Since speed was key and the melons were wet from washing we took cotton gloves, cut bicycle tire innertubes into 1" lengths and sewed them over the fingertips. It gave you excellent grip, this back in the '70s before the advent of ubiquitous specialty products.

In the peak of the season we might work 20 hour days to process all the harvest. You'd pack and stack 1200 to 1400 boxes, get a few hours sleep and start all over. The sheds, especially in West Texas, didn't have AC and the temps were over 100. After a couple of hours of work your shirt, then your pants and finally your shoes were drenched with sweat. When the wind shifted and came past the onion dicing shed next door we'd have 40 people out in the open crying like babies. So that's another thing I learned from a crappy job, to get a couple of degrees and make a living with your mind instead of your back.

[Joey P]

Originally Posted by lieu

We're twins, Motorgirl.

Did you use any kind of gloves for your produce work? Since speed was key and the melons were wet from washing we took cotton gloves, cut bicycle tire innertubes into 1" lengths and sewed them over the fingertips. It gave you excellent grip, this back in the '70s before the advent of ubiquitous specialty products.

No, no special gloves for putting up produce. Speed may be the key for packaging them, but when you're putting them on the shelf it's just a matter of keeping up with the customers.

As for juggling them, all I needed was a second person to toss one over to me since I couldn't hold two in one hand to get started.

[MeanOldLady]

I can giftwrap like a motherfuck!

[Sattua]

In high school I worked at a stationery shop that also sold various trinkets on to which I would paint people's names in fancy scripts. The job is a distant memory, but the lettering skills linger on.

I've also got Crane's Blue Book pretty much committed to memory.

[KneadToKnow]

Originally Posted by MeanOldLady

I can giftwrap like a motherfuck!

9.5

For full credit, should have said "I'm giftwrapping like a motherfuck!"

[Sigmagirl]

From a college job typing order forms on a keyboard without a number pad I can enter long strings of digits very quickly with high accuracy, using the keys at the top of the keyboard. I never use the number pad.

[MeanOldLady]

Originally Posted by KneadToKnow

9.5

For full credit, should have said "I'm giftwrapping like a motherfuck!"

I see. I also learned how to park cars perfectly from working at an auto dealership. Ahem, I mean, I am parallel parking like a motherfuck!

[KneadToKnow]

10!

[Ol'Gaffer]

Originally Posted by lieu

Did you use any kind of gloves for your produce work? Since speed was key and the melons were wet from washing we took cotton gloves, cut bicycle tire innertubes into 1" lengths and sewed them over the fingertips. It gave you excellent grip, this back in the '70s before the advent of ubiquitous specialty products.

In the peak of the season we might work 20 hour days to process all the harvest. You'd pack and stack 1200 to 1400 boxes, get a few hours sleep and start all over. The sheds, especially in West Texas, didn't have AC and the temps were over 100. After a couple of hours of work your shirt, then your pants and finally your shoes were drenched with sweat. When the wind shifted and came past the onion dicing shed next door we'd have 40 people out in the open crying like babies. So that's another thing I learned from a crappy job, to get a couple of degrees and make a living with your mind instead of your back.

Interesting. I grew up in the Central Valley of California and worked in the fruit packing sheds (peaches, plums, nectarines, oranges, apples, grapes) all though junior high, high school and the first couple of years of college. You'd never catch a guy actually "packing" the fruit, i.e. putting the fruit in the box. That is woman's work. Men pick, bring the fruit in from the field, drive tractor, dump the fruit into the sizer/sorter, stack the finished boxes, strap, palletize, drive forklift and truck, etc. But they do not pack. Ever.

[lieu]

Really? I wonder why the disparity. This was as mentioned back in the '70s but when the fruit came in from the field (I've no idea of the pickers' gender), men drove the trucks but it would be washed and then culled and if memory serves that was entirely by women. Then it would come down a conveyer and into 8 sections sorted by size from I think 8 large to 28 small cantelopes per box. Each size had its own specific packing arrangement. You worked for an hour at each station, then moved to the next because some sizes pack faster than others. All the packing positions without question were filled by men. And yes, I think men did the pallets and forklift into the coolers after.

Like I said though, the packing was hard, hot work, long hours and heavy boxes. Perhaps the gender distinction was due to the filled box weight. Or maybe is was because of the Latino culture in place. The oldest man, a "patron" if you will, definately ran the show, called the starts and breaks, etc. I was one of only two non-Latinos in the entire operation and we both knew the owner.

[orderfire]

Originally Posted by LouiseE

I can also make meringue, mayo, and whipped cream by hand.

That last one especially induces the most amazing displays of abject slobbering gratitude. You'd think I'd cured cancer or something.

QFT. Many of the day to day tasks I did for 18 years in various foodservice positions completely send non-foodservice people into shock and awe. OMG 10 gallons of vinaigrette - from memory! In fact, doing most food without a recipe is the norm for me. This continually flummoxes some of the ladies I work with. I'm not hiding recipes or concealing trade secrets, really, I just do it all by eye and usually in great quantities.

Boning out & skinning fresh fish still comes in handy, especially when the fish aren't 4 feet long and weighing 50-odd pounds.

Talking peace & calm into animals, and the wretched chore of bathing cats - from my stint as a veterinary technician.

[Ol'Gaffer]

Do they get washed by hand? I wonder if that's it. I never worked a shed that didn't have an automatic washer/sorter and the culling gets done as the fruit is being packed. I wonder if the weight also had something to do with it. The biggest boxes we packed are around 35# and those were special order lugs from a few specific distributors. Mostly they were around 28#.

I do know that when they field pack, like with table grapes, men and women will both pick and pack together.

[Infovore]

I worked, very briefly, at Merry Maids (I think I lasted a week) during one of my college summers. Hated the job, but I did learn how to use a pumice stone to scour the mineral deposits out of showers, sinks, and toilets. Okay, maybe not a terribly useful skill, but since when I was growing up I never learned to do any cleaning stuff (my mom was very much the "if you want something done right, do it yourself" type person), it was kind of helpful to know.

[Teacake]

I can carry an abnormal number of plates at once without tipping any of them, perfectly fillet a cooked fish with a spoon, and my silver service skills impress almost everyone. I can unjam photocopiers and printers without burning myself or hurting the machine. I can fold A4 paper into thirds and put it in an envelope at tremendous speed. My four times table goes up much higher than most people's (because our basic unit price was 4p). I can mow perfect stripes into the most uneven lawn. I'm sure there are others.