OT: Jobs worked while in college

A summer job on an auto assembly line fell through so the only job I could get was stock clerk in the ladies wear department at the Kmart on Maple at Huron.

Lots of boxes from China containing clothing that tended toward large. I received my pay in cash in an envelope at the end of every pay period. Deductions were written by hand on the envelope. It was enough to pay for my rent and beer.

At the end of the summer, my manager said “We’d like you to stay on. Your future could be bright at Kmart.” In response, I said “No thanks. I think I’ll finish my BSEE from Michigan.”

Worked at New York Pizza Depot summer before junior year, and a little bit into fall.

4 PM to 4 AM shift on Friday nights. It was Pride Night at Necto, so I got good tips. I remember the night before the Penn State game in 2005 (Manningham), some drunk Penn State fans wandered into the basement of NYPD where I was taking phone orders. 

for the study abroad office for a couple years doing office stuff. I coached football for 3 years at a local high school. I did economic research during my last year and after graduation. My only real good story is that Steve Yzerman's daughter visited the study abroad office once while I was there. She was super nice, also got the VIP treatment from a few of us which I am sure helped her demeanor.

Worst college job I had was installing radon systems in basements during the winter. It was terrible ... Mainly because I was a drunk college kid who wanted to sleep and party and instead had to work 40 hours. Shortly after that I joined the military so idk.

I was a couple years behind you and I also worked in one of the arcades (although a different sort of place) - The Simulation Station on Liberty (is it still an Army Surplus store?)

Later I worked in the cooler at the Village Corner.  That was something.

Fingerle Lumber

The Museum of Art

The Union Arcade/Video rental place

And one day as a loft builder

I was a union carpenter for a couple years before going back to school, but once in college, my jobs were as follows, in chronological order.

Roofing job (weekends and summers, and it sucked, lasted about 2 months, roofs are hot)

Door to door salesman for a construction company ("want a free estimate on your sagging gutters?").  This gig lasted until the company owed me $2700 in commission (not including what was owed to the other 2 sales guys), then dissappeared.  Showed up to work and there was an empty building.

Delivery driver.  Lame.  Lasted about 6 months.

Armed security guard (Sig Sauer P239).  Awesome job.  Usually just sat in my car in a semi-trailer storage facility and did homework/studied.  Also worked in liquor stores in the "hood."This was when I started workign 40+ hours a week while taking 15 credit hours.  Did this job for ~2 years.

Assistant nuclear pharmacist (radiopharmacy).  Also full time.  Did this for the last year of school, right before grad school.  Great pay, 3rd shift etc.

I worked at West Quad Dining Hall Freshman-Junior years. I worked at the Dental School during the summer and throughout Junior year as a janitor. The oral surgeons were divas and refused to clean up the blood and tissue from their work. Dot com job senior year.

During school year shelved books at the brand new north campus media union and washed dishes at maize n blue deli. Over the summers worked in a factory and did concrete construction.

...at Ford Road & Sheldon in Canton in the late '70s.  Got tipped off that I was about to get robbed (3am) by a customer at the pumps who overhead some quaalude stoned guys in another car talking about it.  After both cars left, I shut down the whole station, locked the glass door, turned off the lights, called the police and waited in a back room. Sure enough, the stoner car returned, cruising in with its headlights off, and two guys jumped out and tried the front door. Finding it locked, they started helping themselves to everything stocked at the pumps (cigarettes, etc.) while I clutched a sawed-off baseball bat watching them through a small window grill in the back room. Increasingly agitated, they were preparing to break in when a car pulled in causing them to jump in their car and take off. Cops finally showed up 30 minutes later.

All summer jobs in Ann Arbor, 1986-1990

1) Security Guard, evening for Institute of Social Research, got to see the steam tunnel that connected to that building.  Mainly walking around an empty 5? story building for a few hours and listening to baseball games on the radio.  Tried to do homework when not patrolling around.

2) UofM ITS, unpacked and setup Macs all around Central Campus.  Met my best college friend there, we were the 2 hardest working students out of 5.  We became Euchre buddies playing our bosses during lunch time.

3) Art Fair, clean up crew -> working Art Fair food booth for Chinese Fast Food that was in Michigan Union -> working the salad/espresso making food court outet in the Michigan Union.

4) Local computure shop that was above Cottage Inn downtown, they bid out orders for cheap made to order tower pcs, and we laid out coax cable at companies like Borders when it first started doing a lot of mail order, Dominos Pizza Farms, many local schools, and a few other small local places.  Remember when Novell was a big networking company?  We grew enough to move to a business park near Briarwood.

Worked at the Daily for about a year, and it was a good experience, but I realized that I joined way too late. If you ever wanted to be an editor or a beat writer for football/basketball/hockey, you had to have joined right when you got to campus and really paid your dues. My fault for not realizing that, but I just was not passionate enough to keep writing about sports when all I could write about was the field hockey, golf and tennis. No disrespect at all to those teams, but I just wasn't motivated or excited enough to write about them. Tried writing for the Arts section as well, and that was a little more enjoyable, but I eventually looked at writing those columns as a chore. That told me it was time to leave. 

Also worked for a summer cleaning out Oxford Housing. I was by no means a clean freak when I was in college, but I could not believe how much some of the students living there were just flat out pigs with everything they left behind for us to clean up. Some things could just not be touched with bare hands. 

I sold advertising for a company that did the phone solicitations for the Fraternal Order of Police.  Word of advice if you get a FOP phone call.  HANG UP!!!  The company collected 90% of the fees and the FOP got 10%.  There were about 200 magazines printed quarterly and the ads purchased for the mag went to 200 people.  There was absolutely no payback for the subscribers.  I started an "Invitation to Worship" section and sold to churches - I'll truly burn in Hell for that.

I had no time for a job while in school.  Between my junior and senior year I worked the cherry crop in northern Michigan.  Thought it'd be great to spend a summer in Frankfort.  Stayed with relatives, go golfing, down to the beach.  Job was basically 7-7 7 days a week.  No beach, no golf.  Eventually it'd wind down and my work days got shorter.  Basically drove a forklift unloading bins of cherries and loading empty bins back on trucks.  It was me, two other white people, and the rest were all migrant workers from Mexico.  After the cherry season they'd all go down to Florida for orange season and just make their rounds back to Mexico.  Was the only time my two years of HS spanish came in to play.

worked as a bus boy at a couple of sororities. pay was terrible, food was great, girls were hot.

I was in computer science and had a  summer internship at Microsoft. Interns who were going to be graduating were invited to his house, so I got to walk through a long stairwell past a couple of rooms and out onto his backyard. There were a couple of hundred interns there, but I managed to be in the front of the group when he came out to greet people and answer questions. I was about the tenth person to introduce myself--by that point it had gotten really stupid that we were doing it, but I just wanted to shake his hand--so I shook his hand and said "Mr. Gates, it's nice to meet you. My name is ZooWolverine." He said, "oh." And that was my conversation with Bill Gates.

Kept tabs on patients, helped the nurses, make sure nobody escaped. More money to work night shifts as well. Saw a lot of crazy stuff.

I had summer internships all throughout college, but the best one was at NBC in New York at 30 Rock. I interned in the daytime sales department (totally boring work but the people were fun). I saw celebrities every day and got to see Letterman on the company dime, as it were. Howard Stern was the guest. They didn't talk to each other at all during the commercial breaks. Very awkward. 

in Detroit back in '72 and '73. They made Chryslers there. First summer on the line, second summer as a "materials handler"—which meant using jitneys and hi-los to load parts pallets onto huge freight elevators.

You haven't felt grimy, greasy, prickly industrial heat until you've spent 8 hours in an un-airconditioned concrete factory on a 98-degree July day with few windows open and fiberglass insulation fibers floating everywhere around you.

It was also an informative lesson on why I would never buy an American-made car from the '70s—I had a first-hand look at mechanical crap.

Since I'm short I was put down in the pit, which was a long trench below floor level with the cars moving above you. I had to put a clamp on the parking brake cable, and as I was struggling to get the motions down a car passed above me with a dead rat tied by its tail through the keyhole in the trunk lid.

I worked alongside ex-cons out on work-release who informed me about how awesome rim shots were, guys with no teeth who played the bass in jazz groups, guys snorting coke regularly on the job, and a foreman named Willie Horton who was a dead ringer for Flip Wilson.

During the second summer working the elevator, I frequently worked through my morning and afternoon break if there was stuff to load or unload—I was young, so why would I need a break, right? Pretty soon my foreman took me aside and told me to stop missing my breaks—it was pissing off the regular full-time union workers to see this college kid hustling while they were sitting on their butts doing nothing for 15 minutes.

Huron Valley Swim Club (a.k.a. "HVSC") west of Ann Arbor for a couple of summers a *long* time ago. Low pay, amusing co-workers, generally fun times ... especially the overnight watch (and associated low-key parties).

Scholarships covered half my tuition and parents and I split the other half, so I worked summers here in town. 

Spent three summers as a Rec and Ed umpire covering mostly baseball but also some girls softball and a little coach-pitch.

Worked two summers in Dexter for an auto supply company in their shipping department, essentially overseeing the box-making machine that made the boxes that fasteners were shipped out in.

Two summers I worked for an auto parts supply company that was based just across 94 from Briarwood. One summer i was basically just picking parts that the drivers would take out to shops around the area, which went from Brighton up down to east Ypsi/Willow Run. Second summer I spent as a driver. 

I had a lot of fun working there. The manager was only 25 and she was really laid back. On Sunday morning shifts, my friend and I would do 30 up/ 30 down so one of us would man the store while the other caught 30 minutes of snooze time on the couch. My brother had a tremendous trade ring worked out along south U. He had deals with the guys at Poncheros, Cottage Inn, and Brown Jug.  It all fell apart when a new guy tried to do a trade with a manager at one of the places.  

I'd love to make up reasons why I couldn't change the music or music level when customers asked. People make some weird requests when you are working there. 

...First as an Intramural Offical, then an Intramural Supervisor, and ultimately as a Building Supervisor at the IM Building.  I didn't pay off any debt with the job but I enjoyed it immensely.  I met some great people and the job involved being around sports.  Although it was just Intramurals, there were certainly some high level players and some competitive contests.  Also, as an IM Official and Supervisior, I would often see various Michigan Varsity athletes.  The IM rules prohibited varsity players from playing their respective sport in intramurals but they could play other sports.  It was pretty common for football players to play IM basketball, for example

A few memorable moments from the Rec Sport days:

• I officiated most every rec sport but I enjoyed soccer the most.  I was one of the more competent officials which admittedly isn't saying a whole lot as low wages, incliment weather, and late hours watered down the official pool. Anyway, I would often get assigned some of the contests that were expected to be more spirited either because of the experience level or the history of the teams involved.  One year, I was reffing a Fraternity "A" level game deep into the playoffs... it might have even been the final.  It quickly became apparent that the two houses didn't care for each other all that much.  The game was chippy from the start.  The other ref (only two officials were assigned to each game) and I issued several warnings... we pulled the captains aside... Didn't matter.  Eventually, there'd be another hard foul or overly physical play that would lead to some confrontation where we had to blow the whistle.  I think we made it to the second half but not very far into it and we ended up giving a Red Card to both teams.  Now... when I was there in the 90's an IM team would start each game with 10 sportsmanship points.  You needed 7 points minimum at the end of the game to advance in the playoffs.  A Yellow was -3.  A Red was -7 and instant disquailification...  so we ended the game and both teams' chance for coveted league championshp points.  
• Another soccer game... this one was a "B" level contest.  Many of the kids probably never even played soccer before Intramurals.  In some ways, this can be better than officiating skilled players.  These players generally don't think they are better than they are, nor do they bitch about every whistle.  A down side to the lack of experience is that the players can tend to be more out of control, which can lead to injuries... as it did in this particular case.  I was reffing on the far side of the field from where the ball currently was so I was standing about at the midfield line.  The ball went towards the goal.  From my vantage point, I see the goalie run out and jump for the ball.  I also see several other players jump towards the ball and the goalie.  All of a sudden, a player comes running towards me yelling that he heard it break.  Play has stopped and the goalie is on the ground.  I head over and the goalie has pulled his knee to his chest but his foot is just hanging limp to the side.  We've all seen gruesome injuries before.  This was the first I had been exposed to in person. This was beyond our first aid training but the kid needed help.  I ended up cradling his now unsupported foot while the other ref ran to the office to call for an ambulence.  When I was at U of M, the IM fields were on Fuller across from Fuller park.  You could see the U of M hospital from the field but it took the ambulence over 30 minutes to get there and it seemed much longer that.  The kid was in serious pain.  His leg was spasming...  I'm surprised he didn't pass out.  Somehow, the multiple fracture didn't go through the skin or I would have.  Terrible injury.  I heard that he had to drop out of school for a semester.
• As a building supervisor, you have to make sure to kick everyone out of the building at closing time, and then you walk around to make sure there isn't anyone lingering around.  I could see some people being anxious about a situation like that.  It's a big building and you are in there by yourself late at night.  I always enjoyed closing up though. The architecture of the building is amazing.  I'd always get chills walking up the steps to the lobby just from how impressive it was.  When closing up, you'd get to explore every floor and every room, including the corridors that connected the building to Cliff Keen and Canham.  Loved it.  Anyhow... I was closing up one evening and everyone was pretty much out of the building other than a couple stragglers.  One of the stragglers ended up being Marty Turco. He just wanted to shoot around for a bit so that's what I let him do.  

I worked on the circular saw.  Nothing made me want to study more than working there.

One summer, I had a fellowship to work at the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science on UofM's North Campus. But back then, we just called it the Ultrafast Science Lab. I had three main tasks I worked on there. The first thing they had me do was make coaxial cables. They gave me a soldering iron, some solder, a cardboard box full of coax connectors, and a few hundred feet of cable. They told me to make a bunch of cables of various lengths. I had never soldered before, let alone make cables. Many of the cables I made failed the "pull test." Basically, you pull the connector and if it comes off the cable, you fail the test.

Another task I had was to make a curtain to separate areas in the test lab. They were getting stray light from one laser experiment and it was disturbing tests in another part of the lab. So I had to go to a fabric store and buy some heavy, black fabric and grommets. I cut holes in the fabric and installed the grommets so we could hang the curtain between labs.

The third task was the most interesting. KMS Fusion (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KMS_Fusion) in Ann Arbor was in the process of shutting down, so they donated a bunch of optical equipment to UofM. My job was to go there with some grad students, identify anything of value, and bring it back to UofM.

KMS Fusion was dedicated to researching laser-based fusion. Basically, they would hit hydrogen atoms uniformly and try to get the pressure from the light to get the atoms to fuse together. Apparently, they were able to do this, but they could never do this in a positive generating energy sense. (It took more energy to get the atoms to fuse than was released by the fusion.) Anyhoo, this was like 1970's technology, so the computer that controlled the experiments was about the length of a basketball court and 7 feet high.

They would charge the lasing material for about an hour, and then they would get one giant freaking pulse of energy that used more energy than the rest of the U.S.A., but just for a very short time. So they had a room full of capacitors. These were more like car batteries. Stacked on rack after rack. We were cautioned to discharge the caps before disconnecting them because even though they hadn't been used in months, they might still have some residual charge.

The other eye opening story I heard there was we should remove any rings we were wearing, because if a cap discharged through your ring, it could heat up and slice your finger right off.

We rented this rickety old UHaul, and only one guy was old enough to drive it. Only one guy knew how to drive stick. They weren't the same guy. The truck stalled out one time on M-14.

We had the truck all loaded up and were ready to drive the stuff back to UofM. We showed up the morning we were scheduled to leave with the stuff to find out there was a major fire in the building. From wikipedia,

In the later years of KMS Fusion’s life they were known for being a tritium handling facility due to their focus on the development of laser fusion targets. When the company went under, it was not properly closed down in terms of radiation regulations. In 1995, the DoE selected LLNL to team up with the DoE’s Oakland Operations Office to decontaminate, decommission, and close out the facility. Livermore was selected because of its existing expertise in handling bulk tritium and low-level radioactive waste. The KMS Fusion facility was abandoned for almost two years before cleanup began. During this time, Michigan’s cold winters had caused some of the pipes to freeze and burst. This resulted in flooding in areas where chemicals were kept, spreading contamination. In addition, when firefighters were fighting a fire in a copier room, some tritium had spread inside the building.

The owners didn't want us to leave with the optical equipment, because they wanted it to be part of the insurance claim. We figured it was already in the U-Haul, so it was already donated. While the people in charge were discussing the issue, we were told to slowly move to the U-Haul, get in, and get out of there. I may be embellishing somewhat, this did happen 26 years ago. I'm sure the statute of limitations applies in case anything illegal was done.

It's nice to know after researching this story today that I was exposed to bulk tritium and low-level radioactive waste. That probably explains much of my posting history on this here site.

From 1983 to 1987, for the now-closed Ann Street store.  Found out early the secret was to be really bad at making pizzas so you would never get pulled off the road, as you made roughly 3X as much on the road as on the line.  

Once delivered a pizza to Bo's house, Schemy answered the door, but Bo came out and paid me.  I think I said something articulate like..."Coach?!  Uh... Hi!"  (This was also roughly what I said when I met Coach Harbaugh a year or so ago.)

Never had any hot girls offer alternate methods of payment for a pizza, though I kept hoping.  Did get a really big joint as a tip one time, and it was excellent.

 

I did computer work for the government. I knew a guy who got me in. student jobs were cushy as hell, they let us surf the Internet or do homework during down times. 10/10 would do again (for my current salary).

 

They made me work in the dilithium mines until some wookie rescued me.

As an undergrad at Michigan, I programmed ISR's VAX for Profs Jacobsen (late) and Johnson (econ head?) and copy edited legal articles for MICLE/law school - today I am a patent lawyer in the cs space, so apropos.

Summers I worked a nasty construction job - operated an air hammer and swung a sledge hammer in burned out buildings, this will eventually kill me because even by Octobers at school I was coughing up black phlegm since no respirators provided. And cancer loves my family line.

Worst job I ever interviewed for? Raking the beetle tanks underneath Ruthven Museum. My prospective boss resembled a petite witch, had an Austrian accent, a prominent wart on her nose, and she literally cackled after telling me "we would spend long hours together taking care of her babies (the beetles). University biologists would pouch dead animals to us and we were to feed them to the beetles to expose their skeletons. The interview lasted approximately 90 seconds. This was the highest-paying student job ($20+/hr) at the time - and they hadn't filled it for years.

Dish crew at the frat, sometimes. Swept Crisler sometimes with proceeds to vest in the Rugby program.

Those were lovely days, yes indeed (cough).

Worked at the Michigan golf course doing maintenance one summer when I couldn't land an internship. Might be the best job I've ever had. Show up at 6am, ride around on mowers all day, occasionally mild physical labor but nothing terrible, finish by 2:30, then play as much free golf as you can before it gets dark. Ran into Coach Carr a couple times on the course.

Lots of fun but couldn't hit on the women in my classes.

Several people may want to punch me after hearing my most intersting job while in college.

I mostly delivered pizza and valeted cars all through school. They paid fairly well and I could still work during the semester. One summer though, I responded to an ad in the paper and landed a job selling speakers out of a van. I had actually heard about that hustle prior to that, but I went with it anyway and made a boatload of money over the few months I was working there.

While there were plenty of interesting/funny stories that came from that job, the coolest was when I went to work at the company's Cleveland "office," and one of the "veterans" took me to work Pittsburgh for the day. We ended up pitching George Romero, and he took us back to his office and bought a few sets from us. He also threw us some cool zombie swag.