cto
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It's so slow around here that I thought I'd start a totally worthless thread: Your worst job ever.
Mine was a babysitting job during the summer I was 14 years old... taking care of four little girls under the age of five for an entire week. Their father was in a near-fatal car crash 150 miles away, and their mother decided to be with him, rather than with their four daughters ... who were 5, 3, 18 months and six weeks old. She asked me to babysit the day after the accident, without telling me she would be gone for a week.
There was no cable tv, no internet, no video games, no dvds, no VCRs and no kid programs on the small black and white TV. So all I did all day, every day, was try to play with the two older kids ... and feed and change the two younger ones. (There was also no way to get in touch with her, but fortunately I did not have to). And they all cried most of the time because they missed their mother, and I couldn't tell them when she was coming home.
There was no store within two miles, and I obviously did not drive. Fortunately my mother lived a few miles away... so she did my grocery shopping, as best as I could figure out what it was. (Actually, the two older girls and I lived on cold cereal, bananas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, milk and store-bought baked goods for a week because I didn't know how to make anything else). My mother kept telling me this woman was insane to leave me with the four kids, especially one that was only six weeks old, given that I had never cared for an newborn and literally had no clue as to how to do it (aside from feeding her formula and changing her diapers -- which were real cloth diapers with safety pins and not Pampers). At one point, my mother offered to spend the night with us, but I told her: "No, this is my job, and I'm going to do it."
In retrospect, it is amazing that all four girls survived... with none of them scarred by the experience.
When the girls' mother finally came home, she decided to pay me 50 cents an hour for the time she deemed the kids were awake .. which she decided was 12 hours a day for seven days. I therefore earned the munificent sum of $42 for what was essentially 175 hours of taking care of her four kids.
And PS: she didn't reimburse me (or my mother) for the groceries.
Mine was a babysitting job during the summer I was 14 years old... taking care of four little girls under the age of five for an entire week. Their father was in a near-fatal car crash 150 miles away, and their mother decided to be with him, rather than with their four daughters ... who were 5, 3, 18 months and six weeks old. She asked me to babysit the day after the accident, without telling me she would be gone for a week.
There was no cable tv, no internet, no video games, no dvds, no VCRs and no kid programs on the small black and white TV. So all I did all day, every day, was try to play with the two older kids ... and feed and change the two younger ones. (There was also no way to get in touch with her, but fortunately I did not have to). And they all cried most of the time because they missed their mother, and I couldn't tell them when she was coming home.
There was no store within two miles, and I obviously did not drive. Fortunately my mother lived a few miles away... so she did my grocery shopping, as best as I could figure out what it was. (Actually, the two older girls and I lived on cold cereal, bananas, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, milk and store-bought baked goods for a week because I didn't know how to make anything else). My mother kept telling me this woman was insane to leave me with the four kids, especially one that was only six weeks old, given that I had never cared for an newborn and literally had no clue as to how to do it (aside from feeding her formula and changing her diapers -- which were real cloth diapers with safety pins and not Pampers). At one point, my mother offered to spend the night with us, but I told her: "No, this is my job, and I'm going to do it."
In retrospect, it is amazing that all four girls survived... with none of them scarred by the experience.
When the girls' mother finally came home, she decided to pay me 50 cents an hour for the time she deemed the kids were awake .. which she decided was 12 hours a day for seven days. I therefore earned the munificent sum of $42 for what was essentially 175 hours of taking care of her four kids.
And PS: she didn't reimburse me (or my mother) for the groceries.
