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  1. #76
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    truckee
    Posts
    23,120
    I want to change my answer. I was a doctor before I found my true calling--being retired.

  2. #77
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    50 miles E of Paradise
    Posts
    15,570
    Picked berries, Pumped gas & light auto repair in HS
    Then two seasons setting chokers in SE AK
    Then six months in a sawmill in Haines
    Then two seasons setting chokers under helicopters

    Then with BS in hand, engineer in a plywood mill and planner for logging operations in NoCal. Oh yea, and developer of cannabis futures market...

    In grad school I worked as researcher for two profs - using an IBM 360 that was cooled by canal water - would shut down at ~1000 on hot summer days

  3. #78
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Posts
    19,215
    Quote Originally Posted by papapoopski View Post
    For sure the panic attacks are from the viewpoint of running the business as well as wanting a better life for my kids during covid. My wife and I have been through harder times than this - fire, flood, some harder years in our marriage. We have persevered through it all so far.

    Mopping the floors is a zen moment for me. I take pride in it and treat it like a core value. I don't look at it as shit work. That first family treated me like their own blood. I grew up under their wing and learned not just how to work but to create beauty from the chaos. I had some dark shit to deal with that noone should ever experience but growing up in this restaurant helped me to see the beauty in regular things and tasks. I learned how to work like a badass motherfucker because that's what I was surrounded by - loving, caring badass motherfuckers. I held that pride close to me everywhere I went and proved myself through my work, because of that first family that took me in. I like to think that I am a reflection of what they taught me and that I can best honor that by carrying that on to others.

    When I was helping my boss clear trees on the property and I got cut with his chainsaw on my kneecap, blood everywhere, bone exposed, lots o stitches. I still went to work that night because that's what I thought people did. That was a painful night of work. They wanted me to go home but I worked as long as I could.

    There is work time and then there is play time.

    One night after work we took GHB, spray painted my car silver and cut the roof off with a sawzall, then drove to NYC, met some friends, got roofied by a hot bartender that was way out of my league, woke up sleeping on a sewer grate at 10am and had to get back to work by noon. I didn't sleep that weekend.
    I was cheffing in Southampton and only had 1 day off the entire summer. Used to hit the island to pay for my next year in college. I was 17 and had no car. In the middle of a summer working 2 jobs (5 am - 1 was 7-11) (2-2) was on the line, I just pedaled that montauk highway till I hit the lighthouse. Scammed 5 beers, ate 2 dozen clams, a dozen oysters, passed out on the beach and peddled back to make it back on the line the next day. Crazy times. Bitch community college manager accused me of stealing a drop during the morning rush at the 11, so I said, fucking shove it up your cunt and take my paycheck, I don't need two jobs anymore anyway. That was a good 5 years into my restaurant tenure at the time. I started running glasses, doing coat check, and making salads when I was well into my single digits; dish washing at 10, and then it just became a cash game all the way up to sous in various joints.

  4. #79
    Join Date
    May 2002
    Posts
    33,440
    mtm - would you grace me with the recipe to your hatch green chili whatever you make that was so good?

  5. #80
    Join Date
    Jun 2020
    Location
    Tremontaine
    Posts
    124
    That is some wild growing years Papapoopski!

    When I was 13-17 I was working with my dad on window and siding jobs; I used to lug giant windows up and down stairs.

    After that I had an internship with the schools computer department where they had me running CAT-5 cables through the ceilings. I am sure there was a ton of abesotos and other shit up there. We’d tie the cable to the end of an old broom stick and launch it like a javelin so we didn’t have to pop as many tiles up. I also used to drive around a 1970s/80s suburban and deliver/remove old computers from the rooms.

    Around the same time I also waitered; that was good money as I’d work some long shifts a real popular bar/restaurant. That was a fun job and there female to male ratio was off the charts. Made for some fun beach days.

    Then worked at a call center in college slinging VoIP boxes and doing some light tech support. Then got an internship and entered the realworld. After 15 years at the same company still haven’t found my calling.

  6. #81
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Posts
    17,749
    When I was 15 my friend and I delivered mattresses. His dad owned a bunch of furniture stores. People would buy a king size mattress and it was our job to figure out how to deliver it up two flights of stairs through a doorway it was never intended to fit thru. Delivered a mattress to this gay guy once and he offered us beers and wanted us to sit down and watch porn with him. We declined.

    From 16-18 I was the assistant to the assistant groundskeeper at a AA baseball stadium. The head groundskeeper was an alcoholic with a penchant for buggery, hence his nickname "Tomcat." He would clock in in the morning and head to the local bar across the street at 11:30 each day to drink and pick up the ladies. We started work at 10AM which was great as a teenager. Once I got rid of the peanut shells from the seats, I was responsible for dragging the infield and mowing the pretty patterns you see in the infield and outfield grass. The games began at 7PM. Tomcat would show up around 6PM to paint the foul lines. I usually had to straighten them out after.

    Besides the baseball, the best thing about a baseball park is there are lots of young ladies looking to hook up with a minor league baseball player. The 9s and 10's get scooped up pretty quick by the players, but for a 17-18 yr old HS baseball player, a leftover baseball park 7-8 is not a bad score.
    "timberridge is terminally vapid" -- a fortune cookie in Yueyang

  7. #82
    Join Date
    Sep 2006
    Location
    Truckee, CA
    Posts
    8,785
    First legit job I had in college was at Lauren's Cookies, a small gourmet cookie bakery. I was hired as a packager/delivery boy. Shortly after, everybody quit and I was promoted to head baker. I remember them asking if I had ever baked before. I replied "No, but I can follow a recipe." Got promoted on the spot!
    Made my own hours, which was cool with school. The owner's husband would come in on weekends sometimes and help me out. He always brought a case of Miller High Life that we would share (not my personal choice of brew, but it was nice to sip a cold one whilst batching up brookies, these brownie/chocolate chip cookie hybrids).
    Out of college I worked as a hot air balloon crew member (setting up and inflating the balloon and then chasing it), Airborne Express delivery driver, and eventually a Senior Editor at an online magazine.
    Now I am a ski instructor, but still haven't found my place in the world.
    "Man, we killin' elephants in the back yard..."

    https://www.blizzard-tecnica.com/us/en

  8. #83
    Join Date
    Mar 2019
    Posts
    2,100
    -paper boy
    -grocery bagger
    -line cook
    -chef
    -auto tech
    -heavy equipment transmission R&D tech
    -pipefitter/millwright
    -service engineer
    -still trying to figure it out

  9. #84
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    General Sherman's Favorite City
    Posts
    35,251
    Quote Originally Posted by papapoopski View Post
    Dishwasher at 14, led to prep cook by 15, by 17 I was running the kitchen.

    The waitresses would take me out with them to bars after work. I was 15 when this began. To roll into a bar with 8 hot older women at 15 was heaven. I went with them at every opportunity. One morning I missed my school bus for final exams because I was hung over. I took my dads road bike and pedaled 12 miles through the rain to get to the exam. I puked on myself on the way but I passed.

    Lost my virginity in the restaurant parking lot with one of the hot older waitresses while listening to slayer in my car. By older waitress I mean like 27.

    The kitchen always had pitchers of beer, hunting rifles and ammo on the kitchen counters, dead game animals hanging somewhere, the bosses baby crawling around and many, many black labs. The place was wild but the food was really fucking good. They let me cook whatever I wanted. I worked my ass off for them. Those were great years. And holy fuck there are soooo many stories to tell. Tractor jousting with potato guns at 3am with the crazy dairy farmer down the road, hanging out with a pig in a hot tub and cooking said pig a few weeks later, driving a deuce and a half around with me grilling in the back of it on the highway and on and on

    After high school the owners helped me pay my way through cooking school. Worked for them all through cooking school and stayed with them for a year after graduating to pay off my debt to them.
    moved to Hilton Head to cook

    moved to aspen to cook

    moved to nyc to cook

    moved north of nyc, bought a place to cook at

    still cooking at that same place, was managing a few others as well until covid

    My current place is the place that I began at when i was 14. Bought it from the owners that I worked for.

    I am the only one here at the moment. I make all the food and cook whatever I want, making everything from scratch. I set up a fermentation room where I experiment with god knows what at times - charcuterie, LAB fermentation, koji, , beer etc. I forage in the woods on my property and the surrounding farmland. I am working on the building solo as well, painting, carpets, fixin shit. This is my happy place. I ended my night last night mopping floors, just like I did when I was 14. The tiles were put down by me in high school. Some of this may sound shitty to some but I find it to be satisfying work. I take pride in every task in this building. I get a few panic attacks at what I am undertaking but fuck it, onward I go.

    I'm looking forward to rebuilding after this covid mess. I miss mentoring young chefs. When they come back to talk about what they've been up to, the food discoveries they've had, the insane chefs they've worked for, the Michelin stars they won, that lights me up on the inside. This place has been a springboard for many young chefs. It's been here for over 250 years, over 70 years as a restaurant. I'm only the fourth owner in those 70 years. I'm doing my best to hold the place until the next right person comes along.
    This is amazing. Thank you.
    I still call it The Jake.

  10. #85
    Join Date
    Aug 2008
    Location
    Central VT
    Posts
    4,806
    - worked in a local grocery store collecting carts, bagging and stocking shelves
    - painted houses
    - landscaped and mowed lawns while home from college
    - detailed cars part time my senior year in college
    - sold cars for the first summer out of college. Fun side story - I had to appear in court because the dealership I worked at was doing all kinds of illegal shit. The owner of the dealership were giving employees coke (not the soda) for sales incentives, selling cars without titles and some loan sharking. The owner was a slimy guy who also lived in Miami and I'm pretty sure he was handling drug money too. There were a host of other fucked up things that went on every day but I don't have time to tell those stories right now. Long short, the owner and sales managers went to jail and my testimony certainly helped.
    - joined AmeriCorp and traveled the country doing natural disaster relief
    - ski and bike tech
    - finally got sick of retail and working on skis/bikes at age 27 and got my teaching license, then went on to grad school.

  11. #86
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    The Mayonnaisium
    Posts
    10,467
    Is there a Take Your Internet Friend to Work Day for those of us still trying to figure it out?

  12. #87
    Join Date
    Oct 2005
    Posts
    11,740
    Working for a concrete company just into high school:

    - Abandoned house on the property needed to be cleaned out. I had to roust out the junkies and then clean up their shit, piss and needles.
    - Weedwhack entire fields of 5 foot tall shit that would kill my sinuses. For days on end. Saw weeds in my dreams. Much of the land was in a bog and I would fight off all sorts of wild life
    - You know those concrete blocks that separate roadways? Well, I fill the forms with concrete and then had to sledge hammer out the pins that were always caked with concrete and then sledge off the steel forms. Rinse and repeat for 9 hours a day
    - Pick up the boss at his house to drive him to work because he was blind as a bat. He had a huge GSD that roamed his property and I had to hope I could get to the front door before getting my ass chewed. Boss told me not to worry about it because he was friendly but that guy would have eaten my sack with a smile on his face if he was able
    - There is a huge conveyer belt that pulls the aggregate up into a large bin above the concrete truck loading area. The belt is about 2 feet wide and doesnt have a walk way on either side for maintenance, so when its time to get out the grease gun and lube up the rollers, you just need to make sure the belt doesnt get activated to load a truck. So I put a "do not turn on" sign over the switch and started shimmying up the belt, greasing as a I go. I am about 10 feet from the top and maybe 20 feet off the ground when one of the drivers comes in and backs up his truck. No problem, they wont turn it on. And then the low buzz of the mechanism firing up starts to emanate. The troglodyte in the office must have removed the sign and fired it up. I'm crawling backwards slower than the belt is advancing towards the bin, screaming at the office guy, Toss the grease gun at the office roof to make enough noise to get some attention. Nothing. Decide to make the jump and fall a few stories to a pile of gravel.
    - At the end of a shift, left over concrete gets filtered into an industrial sized drum of sort with an auger blade in the center that sifts the water from the aggregate to reuse. The optimal way to use this machine is to dump the leftovers in and then TURN IT ON, The suboptimal way is to not turn it on and have the concrete harden around the blade. Some genius opted for the second option and it was my job, being spry and making 7 bucks an hour, to climb into the drum with a mini jackhammer and chip away the concrete around the blade until it would free itself up. This was after the grease gun incident so I had a good talk with the office guy about, you know, not turning on the drum because it may literally chew me into pieces. I put make shift fencing around the unit, duct tape over the activation switch and squeezed into the pringles can of death. Chipping away for hours. Every time I needed to get out to get some air or have an existential crisis, it took a good 60 seconds of squirming. Well they tried to fire it up while I was in there, I had chipped away enough that I could see parts of blade and the the auger started to barely move but was under major pressure. I started panicking backing out as fast as I could and made it out before the machine broke free. I literally got in my car and left. never received my final pay check, no clue how Stevie Wonder got home. Told my Dad about the experience thinking he was going to tear into them and he just said "better learn how to use your head instead of your body going forward."

    Roofed in Spokane summers once and that was nothing compared to the concrete company. Eventually landed a job teaching tennis lessons and working in the pro shop stealing snapples. Then it was on to hawking suits at Nordstrom over the summers back from college.

  13. #88
    Join Date
    Sep 2010
    Posts
    2,248
    I worked at a country club's tennis courts in high school and for some college summers. I mostly swept clay courts and did minor scheduling/retail, but sometimes the old guys would need someone to fill out their doubles game, which was my favorite part. When I went to college, I ended up teaching tennis lessons to the children of the wealthy Republican residents of Bush era McLean, VA.

    I spent a summer teaching English in Sinaloa, Mexico, in a small town outside of Culiacan. Technically I was only paid room and board, but I needed to learn Spanish and the immersion method worked for me a lot better than the classroom had. I also had long hair at the time and the Mexicans were the only group to ever think it looked good, so I think fondly of them.

    I spent another college summer working at a sea turtle conservancy off the cost of NC, where my main job was to drive a side by side up and down the beach all night and look for incoming turtles. When they arrived, I'd wait for them to start laying, then measure them, tag them (if they weren't already), and after they're returned to the water, put a cage up over the next so people/raccoons wouldn't dig up the eggs. The vehicles spent a decent amount of time in the shop so I put in a ton of miles on foot. 9 of us all lived in a beach house that was part of the conservancy and there was very much a "Real World" dynamic to the drama, which I thankfully stayed pretty clear of. As part of that job, I also spent a week basically on loan to a sea turtle hospital a bit farther up the coast. That was also really cool. We'd also go counting gators on other parts of the island with the wildlife guys, which was fun as well. Overall the pay was low, but given that housing was a beach house I wasn't paying for, I wasn't complaining. I made more than I spent. Also, it's unclear how I was hired as it was a somewhat coveted position and everyone else was a bio/marine bio major/master's student. I studied international relations and send the full page of the application reserved for "Relevant Coursework and Grades Received" back with "N/A" on it. I think they interviewed me just to see what I was thinking.

    After college I worked at a government transparency non-profit that reminded me why I didn't want to be in government.

    Then I worked at a non-profit that did atomic history stuff. If you ever give into KQ's propaganda and visit SW Washington, you can book a tour at Hanford's B Reactor and check out the interpretative panels I designed for that job.

    Then I went back to grad school.

  14. #89
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Location
    I can still smell Poutine.
    Posts
    24,509
    Quote Originally Posted by Art Shirk View Post
    Working for a concrete company just into high school:

    - Abandoned house on the property needed to be cleaned out. I had to roust out the junkies and then clean up their shit, piss and needles.
    - Weedwhack entire fields of 5 foot tall shit that would kill my sinuses. For days on end. Saw weeds in my dreams. Much of the land was in a bog and I would fight off all sorts of wild life
    - You know those concrete blocks that separate roadways? Well, I fill the forms with concrete and then had to sledge hammer out the pins that were always caked with concrete and then sledge off the steel forms. Rinse and repeat for 9 hours a day
    - Pick up the boss at his house to drive him to work because he was blind as a bat. He had a huge GSD that roamed his property and I had to hope I could get to the front door before getting my ass chewed. Boss told me not to worry about it because he was friendly but that guy would have eaten my sack with a smile on his face if he was able
    - There is a huge conveyer belt that pulls the aggregate up into a large bin above the concrete truck loading area. The belt is about 2 feet wide and doesnt have a walk way on either side for maintenance, so when its time to get out the grease gun and lube up the rollers, you just need to make sure the belt doesnt get activated to load a truck. So I put a "do not turn on" sign over the switch and started shimmying up the belt, greasing as a I go. I am about 10 feet from the top and maybe 20 feet off the ground when one of the drivers comes in and backs up his truck. No problem, they wont turn it on. And then the low buzz of the mechanism firing up starts to emanate. The troglodyte in the office must have removed the sign and fired it up. I'm crawling backwards slower than the belt is advancing towards the bin, screaming at the office guy, Toss the grease gun at the office roof to make enough noise to get some attention. Nothing. Decide to make the jump and fall a few stories to a pile of gravel.
    - At the end of a shift, left over concrete gets filtered into an industrial sized drum of sort with an auger blade in the center that sifts the water from the aggregate to reuse. The optimal way to use this machine is to dump the leftovers in and then TURN IT ON, The suboptimal way is to not turn it on and have the concrete harden around the blade. Some genius opted for the second option and it was my job, being spry and making 7 bucks an hour, to climb into the drum with a mini jackhammer and chip away the concrete around the blade until it would free itself up. This was after the grease gun incident so I had a good talk with the office guy about, you know, not turning on the drum because it may literally chew me into pieces. I put make shift fencing around the unit, duct tape over the activation switch and squeezed into the pringles can of death. Chipping away for hours. Every time I needed to get out to get some air or have an existential crisis, it took a good 60 seconds of squirming. Well they tried to fire it up while I was in there, I had chipped away enough that I could see parts of blade and the the auger started to barely move but was under major pressure. I started panicking backing out as fast as I could and made it out before the machine broke free. I literally got in my car and left. never received my final pay check, no clue how Stevie Wonder got home. Told my Dad about the experience thinking he was going to tear into them and he just said "better learn how to use your head instead of your body going forward."

    Roofed in Spokane summers once and that was nothing compared to the concrete company. Eventually landed a job teaching tennis lessons and working in the pro shop stealing snapples. Then it was on to hawking suits at Nordstrom over the summers back from college.
    Heh. Lock out, tag out.

  15. #90
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    General Sherman's Favorite City
    Posts
    35,251
    Quote Originally Posted by Art Shirk View Post
    Working for a concrete company just into high school:

    - Abandoned house on the property needed to be cleaned out. I had to roust out the junkies and then clean up their shit, piss and needles.
    - Weedwhack entire fields of 5 foot tall shit that would kill my sinuses. For days on end. Saw weeds in my dreams. Much of the land was in a bog and I would fight off all sorts of wild life
    - You know those concrete blocks that separate roadways? Well, I fill the forms with concrete and then had to sledge hammer out the pins that were always caked with concrete and then sledge off the steel forms. Rinse and repeat for 9 hours a day
    - Pick up the boss at his house to drive him to work because he was blind as a bat. He had a huge GSD that roamed his property and I had to hope I could get to the front door before getting my ass chewed. Boss told me not to worry about it because he was friendly but that guy would have eaten my sack with a smile on his face if he was able
    - There is a huge conveyer belt that pulls the aggregate up into a large bin above the concrete truck loading area. The belt is about 2 feet wide and doesnt have a walk way on either side for maintenance, so when its time to get out the grease gun and lube up the rollers, you just need to make sure the belt doesnt get activated to load a truck. So I put a "do not turn on" sign over the switch and started shimmying up the belt, greasing as a I go. I am about 10 feet from the top and maybe 20 feet off the ground when one of the drivers comes in and backs up his truck. No problem, they wont turn it on. And then the low buzz of the mechanism firing up starts to emanate. The troglodyte in the office must have removed the sign and fired it up. I'm crawling backwards slower than the belt is advancing towards the bin, screaming at the office guy, Toss the grease gun at the office roof to make enough noise to get some attention. Nothing. Decide to make the jump and fall a few stories to a pile of gravel.
    - At the end of a shift, left over concrete gets filtered into an industrial sized drum of sort with an auger blade in the center that sifts the water from the aggregate to reuse. The optimal way to use this machine is to dump the leftovers in and then TURN IT ON, The suboptimal way is to not turn it on and have the concrete harden around the blade. Some genius opted for the second option and it was my job, being spry and making 7 bucks an hour, to climb into the drum with a mini jackhammer and chip away the concrete around the blade until it would free itself up. This was after the grease gun incident so I had a good talk with the office guy about, you know, not turning on the drum because it may literally chew me into pieces. I put make shift fencing around the unit, duct tape over the activation switch and squeezed into the pringles can of death. Chipping away for hours. Every time I needed to get out to get some air or have an existential crisis, it took a good 60 seconds of squirming. Well they tried to fire it up while I was in there, I had chipped away enough that I could see parts of blade and the the auger started to barely move but was under major pressure. I started panicking backing out as fast as I could and made it out before the machine broke free. I literally got in my car and left. never received my final pay check, no clue how Stevie Wonder got home. Told my Dad about the experience thinking he was going to tear into them and he just said "better learn how to use your head instead of your body going forward."

    Roofed in Spokane summers once and that was nothing compared to the concrete company. Eventually landed a job teaching tennis lessons and working in the pro shop stealing snapples. Then it was on to hawking suits at Nordstrom over the summers back from college.
    Heh. I immediately had this image come to mind reading that.

    I still call it The Jake.

  16. #91
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    11,149
    Quote Originally Posted by Art Shirk View Post
    Working for a concrete company just into high school...
    Shit - your stories are anxiety provoking

  17. #92
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    a poop plant
    Posts
    3,363
    First real job besides neighbor lawn mowing was at 15 in a shoe repair shop. Finishing and shining shoes. You'd be surprised what people hide in their shoes- or maybe you wouldn't.

    Got a part time job as a custodian at a small, rural school district my senior year of HS. Turned into a full time gig with benefits. Worked swing all through college. A guy gave me his lawn accounts so I had about 12 yards I maintained as well. I was a busy dude. Took me 7 years, but I got a degree.
    (Re: mopping zen. Besides mopping as part of daily duties, I became the strip and wax guy at the school district because I was good at it. I stripped and waxed 3 schools and 2 gyms every summer. I've spent hundreds of hours with a mop in my hand. I was very proud of my work. And it is like meditation. To this day I love mopping floors.)

    Fell into a GIS job after college. Was fun for a while, but got old. Did a 4 year stint as Land Development PM during the housing boom. Now back in gov doing IT related crap. Hate it.

    So I'm still looking for my place. In 8 months I'll be 55. Thanks to the 7 years I did at the school district, I'll have 29 years in the retirement system. I'm retiring. I have consulting gig waiting, but I don't know if I want it. I could live ok on my retirement money, but I'll need something to do. Honestly thinking about buying a pool route, lawn service or getting a job at the LBS. Feeling like Lester Burnham.

  18. #93
    Join Date
    Nov 2014
    Posts
    1,026
    I worked at a restaurant in high school and had similar experiences as others posted: partying with older waitresses, lots of shenanigans in the store. My best friend worked there too, but he made worse decisions than me. He had redneck husbands looking for him.

    I spent a summer working as a Boy Scout camp counselor. Two summers in college painting houses. During school I was a part-time dispatcher for the campus police. Campus cops granted me a *bit* more credibility than the average student as a result

    The best job I had was 3 summers as a teaching assistant for a geology field camp while I was in grad school. We traveled across the country from eastern PA to central Idaho. Lots of half-remembered nights in Jackson, Pinedale, Mackay, and Ketchum.

    After I started professional work, I did environmental inspections for a major NYC planning firm. That’s an interesting way to learn the city. I saw lots of stuff most people don’t. In a windowless room in the back of an abandoned factory in the Bronx, we found a chair with rope around it.

  19. #94
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    in a box on the porch
    Posts
    5,215
    Does coke dealer in the mid eighties count as a job?


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  20. #95
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Not Brooklyn
    Posts
    8,319
    -McDonalds
    -Waiter
    -Exterior Painting
    -Roofing
    -Then I went into business with a friend. Name: The Workin' Guys. Slogan: We'll do anything legal for $10/hr. Had more work than we could do. Hired a couple friends the second summer.
    -Research assistant for management professor- He was experimenting with non-linear case studies and I knew enough about the philosophy of language to be occasionally almost helpful.
    -Then I built a website for that same professor when he started a consulting company as a side gig.

    That was during high school and college.

    -Did evening and overnights at residence for people transitioning out of psychiatric hospitals.
    -Led therapy groups at a psychiatric day treatment center.

    Then I started teaching and coaching wrestling. I guess that's my calling even though I now do more research/ writing than teaching.

    At one point I started up an educational consulting business in China as a side gig. I fucking hated that. Constant string of Chinese "partners" trying to scam us. I gave up early. My friend made a decent living at it for a decade before he sold the company for a nominal amount to a competitor, who then hired him as a partner.

  21. #96
    Join Date
    Dec 2011
    Posts
    290
    Man there is some good stuff in this thread. holy shit @Art Shirk

    Some more

    As a young cook in Aspen I worked my way up from the lowest position in the kitchen. I go the job by calling every day until they got sick of me.

    One of my first rungs of climbing up the ladder was breakfast shift. There were two of us on plus a sous chef doing expo that did not want to be there at 5am. We served about 150 meals during the snow season of some really nice food. House made pheasant breakfast sausage. Lobster omlettes with caviar. One day the other cook came up behind me in the walk in and grabbed my junk, said he’d give me a bag of coke and cash to let him blow me, which thinking back was weird - wouldn't he pay me to blow him? That's just shitty bargaining. Anyway I punched him in the balls and left him on the floor of the walk in. It was a quiet shift after that. I was afraid to lose my job so I never told anyone.

    That same guy flipped out and punched the sous chef in the back of the head one day and got fired. Sous asks if I can handle breakfast alone that day. Fuck yes I can. That shit with Cokey Mcblowjob lit the rocket fuel in my veins. Fuck that guy. I’m going to do your job and my job mother fucker. They moved me onto dinner service shortly after that.

    I had never cooked and assembled food with that many components before. The pressure and intensity was turned all the way up. I sucked at first but found my way, then excelled. I stayed on the dinner line as saucier after that which put me at leader of the line guys which felt strange being the youngest in the kitchen. I just kept my mouth shut, did my job as best I could and made sure to observe everything around me. Each day I was responsible for up to 30 different sauces for both AM and PM crew, multiple sides that changed a lot as well as my entree items which changed with each season. The place was getting a lot of media attention and it seemed every table was VIP. I made 8.25/hour but I didn’t even think about the money as I was living the way I wanted. All the sous chefs were ass holes.

    In my time there I cooked for Julia Child, watched one of the few Master Sommeliers in the world and was on the crew behind the exec chef winning a James Beard award. I was hooked. I started reading through cookbooks when I wasn't drunk or stoned. I was starving for knowledge. I went riding every day with the line crew before work in the winter and mountain biking any other time. The line guys and I were as tight knit as could be. We were inseparable, always had each others back at work and after work we let loose like wild animals.

    Coming back to my apartment from work one night during the christmas week (in which the place almost doubled the covers we did). I was thoroughly worked over. It was insanely high pressure. I walked in and my roommate was playing strip twister with a bunch of nannies from Sweden, New Zealand and Australia. They all gave a drunken cheer when I walked in the door, and all were at various states of undress. My roommate's shit eating grin was priceless. I immediately forgot about work and woke up the next day to 3 of the foreigners in my bed. One of them told me that Hunter Thompson paid her and a few others to was his car in a bikini. He lived nearby at the time.

    During the company xmas party I ended up riding lunch trays with a female couple down buttermilk mountain. They gathered some of their friends and we made our way into town to keep the party going. Most of the people dropped away as the night went on leaving just myself and a guy that I just met that night. We got really fucked up and went to his place to smoke. As soon as his door closed the dude jumps me trying to kiss etc. Oh fuck no. I thought we were just hanging out. I am so fucking naive. I was pissed and told him so. He tried to block the door to prevent me from leaving. I threw his TV at him. I threw a chair at him. Then I left and walked for what felt like forever through the snow with nothing but a collared shirt on in February in the rocky mountains. God damnit I can be dumb. The guy tracked me down at work and tried to patch things up. The line crew threatened to kill him for me. I just let it go, I had sauces to make.

    I had to leave that town. So much sin. I saw some of the guys that never left, looking haggard and worn, doing the same thing over and over and over. That would've been me. I had no self control at that time. I wanted more for myself than that. The exec chef left the restaurant making it the perfect time for me to go. We all left. My friends and I scattered across the country. I went back to NY.

  22. #97
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Location
    Posts
    15,781
    Quote Originally Posted by papapoopski View Post
    Man there is some good stuff in this thread. holy shit @Art Shirk

    Some more

    As a young cook in Aspen I worked my way up from the lowest position in the kitchen. I go the job by calling every day until they got sick of me.

    One of my first rungs of climbing up the ladder was breakfast shift. There were two of us on plus a sous chef doing expo that did not want to be there at 5am. We served about 150 meals during the snow season of some really nice food. House made pheasant breakfast sausage. Lobster omlettes with caviar. One day the other cook came up behind me in the walk in and grabbed my junk, said he’d give me a bag of coke and cash to let him blow me, which thinking back was weird - wouldn't he pay me to blow him? That's just shitty bargaining. Anyway I punched him in the balls and left him on the floor of the walk in. It was a quiet shift after that. I was afraid to lose my job so I never told anyone.

    That same guy flipped out and punched the sous chef in the back of the head one day and got fired. Sous asks if I can handle breakfast alone that day. Fuck yes I can. That shit with Cokey Mcblowjob lit the rocket fuel in my veins. Fuck that guy. I’m going to do your job and my job mother fucker. They moved me onto dinner service shortly after that.

    I had never cooked and assembled food with that many components before. The pressure and intensity was turned all the way up. I sucked at first but found my way, then excelled. I stayed on the dinner line as saucier after that which put me at leader of the line guys which felt strange being the youngest in the kitchen. I just kept my mouth shut, did my job as best I could and made sure to observe everything around me. Each day I was responsible for up to 30 different sauces for both AM and PM crew, multiple sides that changed a lot as well as my entree items which changed with each season. The place was getting a lot of media attention and it seemed every table was VIP. I made 8.25/hour but I didn’t even think about the money as I was living the way I wanted. All the sous chefs were ass holes.

    In my time there I cooked for Julia Child, watched one of the few Master Sommeliers in the world and was on the crew behind the exec chef winning a James Beard award. I was hooked. I started reading through cookbooks when I wasn't drunk or stoned. I was starving for knowledge. I went riding every day with the line crew before work in the winter and mountain biking any other time. The line guys and I were as tight knit as could be. We were inseparable, always had each others back at work and after work we let loose like wild animals.

    Coming back to my apartment from work one night during the christmas week (in which the place almost doubled the covers we did). I was thoroughly worked over. It was insanely high pressure. I walked in and my roommate was playing strip twister with a bunch of nannies from Sweden, New Zealand and Australia. They all gave a drunken cheer when I walked in the door, and all were at various states of undress. My roommate's shit eating grin was priceless. I immediately forgot about work and woke up the next day to 3 of the foreigners in my bed. One of them told me that Hunter Thompson paid her and a few others to was his car in a bikini. He lived nearby at the time.

    During the company xmas party I ended up riding lunch trays with a female couple down buttermilk mountain. They gathered some of their friends and we made our way into town to keep the party going. Most of the people dropped away as the night went on leaving just myself and a guy that I just met that night. We got really fucked up and went to his place to smoke. As soon as his door closed the dude jumps me trying to kiss etc. Oh fuck no. I thought we were just hanging out. I am so fucking naive. I was pissed and told him so. He tried to block the door to prevent me from leaving. I threw his TV at him. I threw a chair at him. Then I left and walked for what felt like forever through the snow with nothing but a collared shirt on in February in the rocky mountains. God damnit I can be dumb. The guy tracked me down at work and tried to patch things up. The line crew threatened to kill him for me. I just let it go, I had sauces to make.

    I had to leave that town. So much sin. I saw some of the guys that never left, looking haggard and worn, doing the same thing over and over and over. That would've been me. I had no self control at that time. I wanted more for myself than that. The exec chef left the restaurant making it the perfect time for me to go. We all left. My friends and I scattered across the country. I went back to NY.
    4.7 stars. Would read again.

  23. #98
    Join Date
    Mar 2006
    Location
    General Sherman's Favorite City
    Posts
    35,251
    Two things:

    1) I'd read your book Pappapoopski

    2) If someone doesn't take Cokey McBlowjob as their new alias, then this place is slipping.
    I still call it The Jake.

  24. #99
    Join Date
    Dec 2012
    Posts
    17,749
    They don't call it Ass-pen for nothing.

    Quote Originally Posted by BmillsSkier View Post
    If someone doesn't take Cokey McBlowjob as their new alias, then this place is slipping.
    I nominate Buttahflake.
    "timberridge is terminally vapid" -- a fortune cookie in Yueyang

  25. #100
    Join Date
    Oct 2003
    Location
    OOTAH
    Posts
    3,939
    Quote Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper View Post
    4.7 stars. Would read again.
    Agreed, although, I might bump it to 4.8 stars! Papapoopski, I occasionally travel to New York, the city and points north, I would love to check out your place if you dont mind sharing the name (you can PM me if you would rather)
    Plus I would love to swap some Aspen stories, I taught at the Highlands for a season in the late 80's, talk abut an education.
    Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnfield: Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration?

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