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I spent my late teenage high school years working on small commercial fishing boats out of South Florida over weekends and long holidays and summers. Your co-workers are all alcoholics and drug addicts. Most of the them have long criminal histories and are violent. Most of them will find a chance to get roaring drunk while working. Upside, you learn where to get a case of poo poo beer for $2.50. It's usually very hot and humid and you are usually wet. Your skin turns a dark red from the sun and the wind burn and the sea. The boat is covered in fish poo poo and stink. You are covered in fish poo poo and stink. There are always mechanical problems so you are usually also covered in oil and grease as well. I've seen lots of injuries, missing digits are common, and once even an electrocution. You sleep on a stiff rubber mat that doubles as a flotation device for the ~4 hours or so you get to sleep. Fishing starts at 4am and ends usually after 10pm, although there is a lull in the middle of the day and while you move to new grounds but even then there is maintenance work to do. You just go to bed covered in fish, often while wet through with salt water. After you unload the boat you have to clean it. All of it, top to bottom, front to back inside and out. Yes, even the heads. The pay is minimum wage but since you work full 24-hr days for days and days at a time you get a relatively large paycheck. Which you then watch the older guys take to go buy beer/liquor/scratch off tickets and get blotto until the next time to take the boat out. After a while you realize that they are mostly dead already and are just waiting for life to finally kill them. Then, when I turned 18 and finished HS, I enlisted in the Marines, that was a massive improvement in quality of life. Got out and went to college, as an engineering junior I dropped out to start a tech-startup with some friends. That failed miserably, got depressed, got really fat and eventually went to work in retail for $9/hr when I ran out of money/friends/places to sleep. Eventually got held up at shotgun point and quit so took a job doing AOL tech support for 11.50/hr in an inbound call center. Lasted 3 months and finally got out of my funk enough to go back to school because gently caress working in a call center and gently caress ever going back to retail. I have a pretty great job now and am very thankful.
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Apr 18, 2016 14:05
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 22:28 |
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