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Sheri Lynch, radio personality on
107.9 The Link:
During high school, I worked as a busboy on the graveyard at a diner in New Jersey, and it was pretty heinous. My shift was 11pm to 7am Friday through Sunday. Every night it was drunks, cokeheads and perverts. What would usually happen is that before I showed up for my shift, I would go to some high school party, have about five too many sloe gin fizzes, and show up for work wobbly and nauseous, with a big hickey from my boyfriend. Those sloe gin fizzes would start wearing off around 2 or 3am, and I would just feel like dung. Because the diner drew from nearby clubs, there were a lot of really drunken guys who didn't understand I was total jailbait, and they would hit on me big time. Also, drunken people at 3 in the morning are only funny to themselves, and they're lousy tippers. There's nothing more repulsive than the smell of stale coffee, cigarettes and greasy food, and having some drunken asshole trying to grab your ass. Just talking about it makes my skin crawl.
Tim Newman, President of Charlotte Center City Partners:
My worst summer job ever was picking strawberries from sunup to noon for a few weeks each summer while in college. On the ground, nasty, and sweaty after five hours of picking, but a strawberry still tastes sweeter to this day from that experience.
Wayne Weston, Director of Mecklenburg County Park and Recreation Dept.:
When I was in elementary school in Virginia it was a requirement of my father's that I mow grass during the summers. And it was with an old rotary mower, a hand sickle and hoe. I was also required to have a certain amount of contracts for a quarter a yard. On one occasion, I had done such a good job for an elderly lady she gave me a 50-cent piece. I was so proud, and when I showed it to my dad, he said, "You can't take that money from her." He gave me two quarters for the 50-cent piece and made me take a quarter back.
Darrel Williams, County Commissioner:
My father was a bricklayer, and as soon as I was old enough to pick up a brick, my father had me out there working. All through junior high and high school, during the summer and on the weekends, I had to haul bricks and make mortar. This was in Louisiana, so you can imagine what it was like in the middle of the summer. We used to do rain dances hoping we could knock off early. That was one of the reasons I went to college and majored in architecture. So if something ever happens and I can't do architecture, I can go and do construction work.
James Woodward, UNC-Charlotte Chancellor:
Between my sophomore and junior year at Georgia Tech I put down flooring, specifically tile, in a building at Lockheed, a big aircraft manufacturer in Marietta, Georgia. We started in June, and when I went back to school in August, we were still going at it -- it was a massive space. It was a mindless job that was bad on the back, bad on the knees, and it sure helped me appreciate college. It was interesting for about the first two hours, but for the next 400 it was not. One of the problems was that you couldn't bring it to a conclusion. With most jobs, you start and then you finish. With this one, we started but it just never ended.
Tony Zeiss, CPCC President:
My worst job was de-tasseling corn in Indiana while I was in high school. I had to get in this big machine and go down the rows of corn and pull all the tassels from the top of the corn. Otherwise they would cross-pollinate from one field to the next. And we had to do it in the summer before the corn was ripe. I got corn poison all up and down my arms. It was a hot, thankless job. It took two people. The guy in front was supposed to get at least 50 percent of the tassels, and the guy in back was supposed to get the other 50 percent. I always got the laziest guy in front of me, and I always ended up getting berated by the boss for not getting them all. That caused me to recognize real quick that I needed to go into any profession other than agriculture. *
