My first job was part-time, during the summer, working at a softball park near my house. For $3.80/hr. My responsibilities included:
1. Sitting in a small cinder-block pillbox taking peoples' money and giving them tickets. No AC, one small oscillating fan, with a metal door that faced the direction of the Sun. In 100 degree (F) weather. Also, I couldn't leave the box. So people would routinely ignore me and just walk past without paying me. Especially when they were drunk, late in the day when there was a tournament going on.
2. Taking those big orange coolers around to each of the 8 dugouts (there were 4 fields). Games took an hour. It took me about an hour to fill and distribute 8 coolers, at which point I'd just start back at the beginning and do it again.
3. Emptying out the trash cans at the end of the day. They'd been sitting in the sun baking all day, so when you'd take the lid off at night steam would literally come out. It was a mixture of hot dogs and nacho cheese, sodas, and tobacco juice. They'd often bring in ex-cons to help us who were doing some sort of work-release or halfway house thing. So, me, the 14-year old middle-class white kid, and these guys straight out of prison. Was hilarious. They were super-hard workers though. Much more so than I was.
