Hand-sorting haystacks to find needles... damn heroin addicts kept getting into the barn.

Traveling Youth Sales Crews

Wasn't there also an article about how that's largely a scam on top of everything else?

I don't know...I enjoyed using a forklift at my summer job.

My only injury that summer was from a customer who decided to unstick a wet, 12' 2x4 by pushing it...while I held the other end in my hand. Squish went my middle finger into the next stack). Nevermind that we'd turning the entire stack together for 5 minutes (lifting each piece up, not pushing). He just decided to try something different.

I did landscape work all through high school...but I worked independently, not for a company. That is probably the key. $20-30 a pop under the table to mow a lawn about once a week seemed like an awesome job to me.

My first summer job was working for the Parks and Recreation department. We were clearing a ski trail through a stand of birch trees, and I was chucking birch logs off to the side after they were cut down to size with a chain saw.

One dumbass on our crew comes around from behind me and walks in front of me, as I am chucking a log, horizontally, lengthwise, at head level. I missed him by maybe 3 or 4 inches.

At a minimum it would have broken his neck. Might have taken his head off.

Also I had an incident with wasps crawling in my hair and stinging me on the scalp.

Yeah, groundskeeping can be pretty dangerous.

@Rectilinear Propagation: A scam of the workers, pretty much, as well as the "customers." I imagine that's why it's dangerous--it's not like selling magazines is inherently a treacherous occupation, but if you're being shoved into cheap motels in dangerous areas and being encouraged to alter your consciousness with whatever you can find, it's pretty easy to get yourself damaged.

Gee, working nights at a family-owned dollar store at age 17 in a fairly sketchy part of town with no managers in the store...does that count as dangerous? PS: I'm a girl.

I did golf course work through college, and it was a great job. Great tan (it was the 80s, when this was safe), great physical condition, and got to work with power equipment most of the day, which only required some common sense to operate safely. So c'mon NCL, give today's teens a little credit!

It beats "convenience store clerk" hands down because no one is trying to steal from you or rob you.

Fast food wasn't quite as dangerous per se, but it was definitely not as glamorous as one of these jobs, where at the very least you get a tan and get in shape. Going home after a long, disheartening day of flipping burgers, where you smell like fries and have green fingernails from pickles and burns from hot grease, made me wish for a job as a landscaper...

The attitude this article has about all these things being dangerous would have pissed me off when I was at that age. It worries about the vast dangers of operating a trash compacter... Lets see, put crap in big metal box, don't have it stick out, push button, stand back. Hard, right?

@summerbee: Only if you ate any of the food or used the toothpaste. Otherwise, no.

Aren't a few of them technically illegal for underaged workers?

@floraposte: Not to mention being shuttled across the country in decrepit high mileage clunkers held together by duct tape and bailing wire.

I think the 5 best teen jobs are:

1) Stealing from other kids and/or the school
2) Getting involved in school fundraising for the purpose of skimming bakesales / car washes.
3) Stealing audlt materials from stores and selling it to other kids (the internet has pretty much made this a dead industry)
4) Stealing stuff just to break it
5) Vandalizing stuff that is to big or well protected to steal.

@Rectilinear Propagation:

[www.houstonpress.com]
[www.travelingsalescrews.info]

They recently came to my dad's house, claiming to be local high school students, fundraising for their senior class trip. I'd heard about the magazine crews, so I was already suspicious...but the line they opened with: "Your neighbors said you're nice." That would have set off alarm bells regardless. NO ONE in my dad's neighborhood would call him "nice."

I saw the logo..."Love Communications" or something like that, looked them up, found out that yes, they were with one of those crews. When I came back into the living room, I saw my dad writing a check, and one of the guys is saying to him "You can deduct this from your taxes."

"I'm pretty sure you can't," I interrupted. I filled my dad in on the scam, and that the form they used had confirmed it. He started grilling them, asking them what school they went to, if they could produce a student ID...they started backtracking, saying they were with a private school...then that they were home schooled...then that they had graduated but they didn't get a senior class trip.

Yeah, they're the biggest victims in the scam. But they cooperate with the scam in a manner that precludes sympathy.

@friendlynerd: I did that too. The really big hazard there is heat injury. I would do two lawns in a row, and come home light-headed. That's what I get for pushing a mower for two and a half hours without a break in the summer heat. The spending cash was nice, though.

@TechnoDestructo: Dear God, I cannot stand those magazine salespeople. They always open with the patronizing "Are you the lady of the house?" to which I reply "No, I'm the bitch of the house so get the hell off my porch".

Nothing about caddying? That was my first job. I got hit in the thigh once by an errant golf ball while fore-caddying. It was a miserable experience.

Ahh the 10 hour days of seed corn detasseling at 13 and 14 years old..

Although I heard potato pickers up north had it worse.

Thanks ag labor laws intended for family farms but applied liberally to giant corporate operations!!

@docrice: I had the worst acne when I worked fast food as a teen. Before I took the job my face was always super clear but afterward... ugh. It didn't matter what I used to wash with, or how often, I always had a greasy face and hair from leaning over the fryer. Free meals though, if you worked closing shift (which I did at sixteen). Nothing like getting propositioned by wasted guys twice your age at twelve-fifty-five in the morning.

When I was in college, I dated a guy whose dad ran a family business, a moving company. His four sons were the crew. They were, IIRC, the guy's older brother (26), the guy himself (22), and their younger brothers (17-year-old twins). Yeah, they were all pretty buff by the end of the summer; my boyfriend used to think it was hilarious to pick me up from a dead standstill and run off with me in a random direction while I laughed and shrieked. (Good times.) But the work was hard and intense, and there were pulled muscles and jammed fingers and such. (And unruly pets, unruly children, and other household vermin.)

"Because we took a lot of seasonal jobs/were easily bored, we had quite a few jobs as a teenager."

I'm guessing this article was written by (a) conjoined twin(s)?

@bubbledumpster: I was thinking the Queen.

@Newmy: Best. Reply. Ever!

@docrice: oh. yeah. especially if ketchup gets spilt and breaks down to vinegar in an inaccessible area in the drive through. Some smells are firmly lodged in my subconscious.
On another note, hubby worked in a chicken slaughter-house as a teen. Only thing that struck me about that was his recounting that the company employed three different religious employees there to bless the chickens (Muslim, Catholic & Jewish).

@yagisencho: I'm with you. I LOVED my lumberyard job (though it was during college).

I still have never found an activity as soothing as unloading a flat of cedar with a forklift.

I had plenty of bruises and scratches, but that's how you know you deserve the beer in your hand at the end of the day.

@Kd McEntire: Yep. I was just a few months shy of jail-bait, and would have loved to reminded them of that if it had been the case. I musta been pretty ugly because it was only one obnoxious regular that wouldn't take no for an answer and implied uncomplimentary things about yours truly.

Who is the "we" in this article?

I feel like a lot of teens who are harvesting crops don't really have a choice. Pa owns the farm and that is how your family makes a living. Of course, I live in the midwest and went to college in Iowa, so I have a biased mind.

@umbriago: true ... I survived two months as a convenience store clerk. No one tried to rob me, thankfully (although part of that was from having off-duty cops sitting in a patrol car just up the street), but there was plenty of theft and mischief. Karma, I suppose.

Then again, the most dangerous equipment was probably the hot dog warmer, and not due to its operation, but rather what it held. Working in a cafeteria at a college dorm ... slicer, deep fryer, convection oven, steamer, all kinds of fun stuff.

@Galactica: Me. As far as I know, we haven't gotten rid of that part of the Gawker style guide, and I kind of enjoy how awkward it makes personal anecdotes (e.g., "our fiancee").

Paperboy! There, I said it, so what!

@umbriago: I can't get to the linked source from work, but this quote "every ten days, a worker under 18 dies from a workplace injury; every ten minutes, a worker under 18 has to go to the hospital for a workplace injury." leads me to believe it is based on actual data from accidents rather than just perceived danger.

I guess I had pretty cushy jobs as a teenager. My first real job was working at a hotdog place in the mall. Only hazard there was overdosing on free coca-cola and hotdogs.

As a teenager, I thought having ANY job sucked. But I'll add:

Putting up 180' radio towers on farms.
Roofing in Arizona.
Drywaller.
Steel worker. (exceedingly dangerous)
Any form of door-to-door or phone sales.

@Alex Chasick: We like "our fiancee"...it's the closest some of have come to a date in a long time.

@HiPwr: Add being sometimes beaten, starved or abandoned if absurd sales quotas aren't met.
But hey, turning a blind eye to their being occasionally raped is considered a perk!

@veg-o-matic: "Although I heard potato pickers up north had it worse."

Potato picking in North Dakota was tough, but we didn't know any better. It had to be done. Wasn't so much a "job" as a fact of life.

No comments on the stripper pic? Dollars bill cuts on the thigh can be quite painful.

@friendlynerd: Landscape work -- even for a company -- can be either really nice (if you're outdoorsy) or really, really exploitative.

@veg-o-matic: My kids are totally going to detassel corn because THINK HOW MOTIVATED they'll be to go to college!

@pupu: Pimping. Don't forget pimping.
Don't forget, if you're stuck in a single-sex school w/ no off-campus privs, incoming freshmen will usually suffice. Not ideal, mind, but (shrug) close enough.

@bubbledumpster: My first thought was demonic possession.
Then I realized we were talking about adolescents. Who'd know how to tell the difference?

@Alex Chasick: "our peen" is even more awkward.

I started working for my dad building houses during the summers when I was 11. I did it until I graduated from college. It was great fun to be working with power tools and getting to learn stuff from my dad. Few kids get to work with their parents anymore. I also shot myself in the hand with a nail gun, dropped a Sawzall blade first down the back of my leg, hit myself in the thumb with a hammer innumerable times and found other ways to beat myself up. It was good money and I wouldn't trade the experience.

@bufftbone: 8+ years, 200 daily papers, hard work but great money

@HurtsSoGood:
Very true. I rarely did more than one a day though, so it was never much of an issue. Plus, all but one of them had self-propelled lawnmowers.

@floraposte:
"being encouraged to alter your consciousness with whatever you can find"

That part sounds like it would be ok...
Seriously though, I did encounter these guys my freshman year in college. My friend bought a subscription, and realized it was probably a scam and stopped payment on the check, but he did end up with a yr subscription to whatever he signed up for.

@TechnoDestructo: I did a summer groundskeeper gig for parks and rec too. I destroyed so much equipment working for the city...I was surprised they wanted to hire me back.