Previously I’ve written about the easiest $100 I ever made, but today is time to talk about the day I made the most difficult $100.
Actually, it was such a grueling job that it spanned 2 almost full days of work. When I was 16, I got a job making $7.25 as a farmer. I would bike to work at 6am and immediately start picking whatever the vegetable of the day was. Sometimes it would be corn (ever have fresh corn on the cob? The sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted), sometimes it would be strawberries (pick 3, eat 1), and other times it would be sugar snap peas.
But in August, it becomes planting season, which means a lot of weeding in the hot and humid field. And when things haven’t grown yet, it’s not really a field. Just a big brown area many acres long and wide. And I’d stand there weeding around the pumpkins for a few hours, making my way up the line. When I got to the end, I’d move one row over and work my way back.
Obviously this wasn’t the most interesting work, but the time managed to tick by just a little bit faster because I was working with a few friends from school. At noon, we’d go back in for a two hour break when the sun was hot and grab some cold water and usually some bread and jam. At 2pm, we were out the door and back to weeding.
It was brutally hot, 100+ degrees at times, and in New England, it was pretty humid, too. I would come home and shower and the dirt and mud would come off, but I was left with a mighty fine farmer’s tan that summer.
The reason I hated this work was because it involved no thought whatsoever. Every minute was the same as the last one and the same as the next one and there wasn’t much to look forward to. Why? Because the next day was going to be exactly the same. The only thing to look forward to was that I’d be picking an actual vegetable and would be able to grab a healthy bite to eat every few minutes!
Readers, what was the hardest $100 you ever made? Any horror stories from your teenage years?
I don’t know if it was a $100 because it was so long a go! I had a summer job as a handyman in a summer camp. The owner was a woman who wanted everything done in a very particular way. To make a long story short, I was fired after 2 weeks. She hired 2 of us and never intended to keep both of us. We were competing for the same job.
The hardest $100 I ever made was working at a auto part store shelving all the auto parts. It was just hard work and wasn’t fun at all. It did help me earn some money during summer when I was in high school but I quit before I even reached 2 months. I’m glad that I never have to do that kind of work again.
The hardest hundred dollars I earned was when I was when my father paid me $3 an hour to sweep the shop floor of his business.
However at that time I was only 11 years old and thought $3 an hour was a lot of money. I don’t know if I ever earned a $100 that summer but it taught me a lot about working hard.
2 hour break?! That’s one nice farmer. I don’t mind doing farm work because it isn’t mentally draining and gives you time to think about other stuff and plan out what you want to do when you get home etc. My parents are produce farmers so I’ve done years of it. When it would get frustrating I’d just think about the money I was making. Literally, I knew exactly how much I was making every second I was working. If the day went long I’d just think about how much extra I was making and what I was going to do with it. I thought about money a lot…