Have you ever had a job that 'Americans won't do'?

I have, I was a short order cook, a dishwasher, a bus boy, a janitor, and a day laborer, which covered a lot of hard, physical work. I was young and hearty, and I had a family to support, and I admit that while I was doing many of these types of jobs, I felt like a schmuck, like it was beneath me.

Have you ever done what 'guest workers' do?

What is the deal with bush and his guest workers? We often think of Mexican immigrants bending over cabbages and cotton, but this is a stereotype. Is it true that Americans consider themselves too good to do certain types of low paying jobs?

How do the assholes always get away with their many racist, elitist code words and lies about immigration and human rights?

Feeding directly into that *myth* of the American Dream.

... pick lettuce if he paid them $50/hour.

At that point the crowd started chiming in with things like "I'll take you up on that!".

:rofl:

The issue isn't the job, the issue is the pay.

If local high school kids picked lettuce, they'd have OSHA breathing down their necks, and they'd have to do something about the pesticides before Johnny Highschool would be allowed in there to pick anything. That's the impression I get from the article I read in Time this past week.

**

during the insane heat of Arkansas Summers of 70, 71 and 72. Although I wouldn't classify that as work Americans won't do because we did and continue to do.

I look forward to flag waving conservatives scratching their heads and trying to figure out why the price of lettuce has gotten so high.

for the whole day..that was in 61-62..hell kids won`t do that today..

made about the same money

Up that to $50 a day and they'd do it just fine.

As was stated above - it's not the job, it's the pay.

getting your body scratched all to hell with hay and breathing the hay dust, then unloading it all in a barn full of wasps and the occasional copperhead slithering about. So Much Fun.

And came home black every evening, I can't imagine working in all that charcoal dust.

That is hard work.

go to high school for the better part of the day then over to the gas station to fix flats, change oil etc then come nighttime and off to the hay fields to haul hay. It was too hot in the barns to do it in the daytime or so we thought. the last 20 years of my working life was finishing concrete so I don't think there is any work Americans won't or can't do.

But I never felt it was beneath me.
At that time they payed the employees in those places a livable wage, Long hours, damn hard work but never felt it was beneath me.
When I was kid, I work the fields, walking bean in Iowa, putting up hay and other farm labor, never once felt it beneath me, never once felt it was demeaning.

I am not sure there are any jobs americans won't do for an honest wage. Trust me, cleaning up after JR. high and High school restrooms thats about as low as a person can get without being a sewage collector. The key word being an honest wage, most of the jobs illegals do are not well paying jobs.

I was chief cook and bottle washer for a cafeteria. I've been a waitress and a salesclerk. I was never ashamed of working hard. That's how you use to work your way through college.

That's what always galled me, that I had a boss you made 5 times what I made for doing all the hard work.

I don't have to do that type of work anymore, but I would if that's what it took to feed my family and keep a roof over our heads.

That was many years ago.

I grew up on in a small farming town and did many things as teenager/high schooler to earn money. I know lots of kids who would do the same.

I have been a short-order cook, a dishwasher, a janitor, a laborer in a garden nursery.

Those experiences taught me that no work -- NO WORK -- is "beneath" anybody.

But I fell for the stereotype myself for years.

Now certain work by certain politicians certainly is beneath human dignity and honor, and it pays EXTREMELY well.

I just hate it when someone says something like, "I'm just a secretary", or "I'm just a technician".

NO ONE who works is "just a" anything.

All work has diginity.

I was a maid at several motels, and also worked in a few laundry rooms at other motels. I don't think there are ANY jobs Americans won't do. We just don't want to do them for $4.00 an hour, or whatever it is these poor immigrants are paid.

I guess that's how they got so stinking rich.

:puke:

And, I have sympathy for anyone doing the drudge work, whatever their nationality or "legal" status.

I quit when some freakshow decided to flash his you-know-what at me. I was 15.

money than I did, but they worked a lot faster and harder too.

I did it for one season. Many of the Mexicans had been doing it for years, and they were a lot better at it than I was. It seems simple enough, but there is a right way to pick a tree, and there are all the other ways....

Child care, walked beans and corn, pulled hay bales off the combine with a hook (yip, little female me at 5'0" and all of 110 lbs at the time), sorted mail with a freakin' kid with an attitude younger than my adult children and who thought that alphabetizing mail was a high science a few years ago, sorted index cards for the post office in the day. Scut work on all jobs where employers try to save money trying to get you to do the work of the job they "hired" you for plus one other position they don't want to hire for.

I know what you're talking about, though. Probably lawn care and general labor in construction were my most-"guest worker" paychecks. The shittiest jobs I had, though, were at convenience stores. I never got robbed personally, but I think that was more luck than anything else. One of the damn places had no security cameras at all.

From Wikipedia ---

Detasseling is the act of removing the pollen-producing tassel from a corn (maize) plant. Fields of corn that will be detasseled are planted with two varieties of corn. By removing the tassels from all plants of one variety, all the grain growing on those plants will be fertilized by the other variety's tassels. Detasseling is done to cross-breed, or hybridize, two different varieties of corn. In addition to being more physically uniform, hybrid corn produces dramatically higher yields than corn produced by open pollination. With modern seed corn the varieties to hybridize are carefully selected so that the new variety will exhibit specific traits found in the parent plants.

Mechanized detasselers exist, the largest producer of which is Hagie Manufacturing Company of Clarion, Iowa; however, detasseling by hand is still necessary due to the variation in height of corn plants. Detasseling work is typically performed by children in their early teens; as such, it serves as a typical rite of passage (for many, it is their first job) in rural areas of the Corn Belt.

The Bible told me otherwise.:sarcasm:

I worked in a plant nursery for minimum wage where the owner drove to Morristown, NJ every morning before dawn to collect a truckload of Mexicans who he hired for day LABOR at $2.50 per hour.

It was a high-class establishment; no bathrooms (we had to cross the highway & use the gas station down the way) and we weren't allowed to answer the phone because of the bill collectors. I didn't last long, but the Mexicans were still truckin' in every morning when I left. Does that count?

I worked in a nursery too for a while.

and especially not in a union town like chicago.

I loaded industrial washing machines with 600lbs loads of hospital bed linens, surgical linens and blood soaked sponges, and new-born baby diapers.

Literlly shoveled shit for a job. I was in HS and was working as a dishwasher for $2.85 an hour when I got a call from the guy at the stockyards asking if I wanted to go to work at the concession that cleaned out the big semi trailers that they hauled cows and pigs into the auction in. The pay was around 5$ an hour plus the truck drivers would flip some good tips, killer money for a HS kid back then. I ;eapt at the chance to make that kind of dough.

It was hard, hot, nasty, stinky work and it helped me develop the work ethic I carry with me to this very day, which is: I'll bust my ass working, to the point you could wear yourself out just following me around, BUT you better damn well make it worth my while if you want me to do it. My Dad had two sayings I always remember, especially when
I am out looking for a job.

1.) " Son, there is dignity in any work as long as it is honest"

and

2.) "Son, you can get all the work you want if you work cheap enough"

He was a hardcore old-school union guy who believed in working hard as long as you got paid well to do it. We need to bring that kind of thinking back to the forefront in this country.

But that was back when you could actually live on min-wage.

I worked there for 10 years. At holiday gatherings, I would grit my teeth together while I listened to my mother rant about how unions were ruining the country. One day I finally let her have it. I reminded her that she gladly accepted monthly checks from me & she should remember that those checks were made possible because of my good paying union job & maybe if she wanted to see another one next month she should keep her views to herself. She took the hint but I know she hates unions.

The year I quit that job, corporate started a major union busting campaign. I think the clerks who were there at the time continued to get their pay, but they restructured the workers & top level pay went from approximately $12.5 per hour to $7 per hour. I can only imagine what they did to the benefits program.

I have done ag work, housework, assemblyline work, busing tables. The only thing I haven't done is stand outside a U Haul offering myself as a day laborer.

I worked on farms; logged; did foundations and septic systems. Low pay and hard work, all.

It was an internship thing.

Folks in my family have done the whole range ... from farm field labor to construction to 'hospitality' workers.

I just don't get this whole guest worker label, and the way bush is always talking about the jobs Americans won't do. All the while sending our jobs overseas, using the Mexicans like dogs and throwing them out.

I guess we were all guest workers and didn't even know it.

It's inherently immoral, imho, since it treats human beings as a means to an end and not an end in themselves. As such, it's the bastard sibling of prostitution and other forms of objectification.

We have an extensive catalog of disenfranchised workers - workers without a voice and without a vote.
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/TahitiNut/386

I ate flys every single day.

White guy, mid-20's, just returned vet, no money, no education, no training that was any use at all to any employer other than the military and not a prospect in the world.

You think its any different today?

... if employers are allowed to buck the prevailing rate in wages.

I've had a lot of shitty jobs in my life: melon picking, corn detasseling, horse stall/pig bin cleaning, bus boy, short order cook, roofer, line work, etc. Sometimes I was working more than one of those jobs at a time. I don't consider myself a hard worker by any stretch of the imagination, but I worked those jobs because (for that time in my life) they paid a decent wage. I find it incredibly insulting when anyone tells me that there are jobs that Americans won't do, like we are too frail to handle actual manual labor.

Anyone that uses that line is a lying piece of shit, and anyone that believes it is a fucking idiot.

Probably wouldn't do 99.9% of the jobs most Americans would do, either. Yes, I've been lucky in being able to save enough while earning to keep me afloat while I looked for what I wanted. And no, I wasn't born with any material advantage, far from it. But I don't see anything wrong with leaving jobs to others. And if it's newcomers getting their feet on the ladder while they get the hang of the language, culture & job market, that's fine by me, so long as they enjoy the appropriate pay, conditions and opportunities.

that if all the brown people went away, then jobs like the ones you describe would suddenly pay $30k a year

The min. wage wasn't that much different than today, and no, I wasn't living high on the hog.

I dare any politician to raise 4 kids holding down two min. wage jobs full time. They'd die whining.

Either way, its impossible.

The freak who is pushing the so-called "fair tax" has a new book out, where one of his choice quotes on the jacket talkes about Republican-style family values. To paraphrase: People say you can't raise a family on minimum wage, that its becoming harder to make it. Well, to them, I say you shouldn't buy a luxury car if you can't afford it, and likewise you should have a family if you can't afford one.

Compassion at its finest, I tell ya

it's fairly stupid for a person to have 4 kids if you're working two minimum wage jobs.

yet lettuce was 1.79 at the store yesterday. I think that if all the exploited labor went away, those jobs would stop paying 3-4 dollars an hour and start paying 10-12.

The construction industry around NC used to pay framers 15-18 bucks an hour. Now its 9-12, what has changed? An influx of workers to be exploited.

It is truly simple supply and demand.

seem to have the most basic and limited grasp of economics?

Then they'd have to be paid at least a minimum wage. I fear in NC that's not happening a whole lot to be honest, especially in the big farms (corporate owned) down east.

All the bigger barns around here have Mexican help to clean the stalls, mow fields, etc. Hell, even the small barns usually have at least one hispanic helper. Since most of the horses in my barn are mine, I don't pull in enough extra income to have the help to clean stalls, so I do it myself. But I don't think I have EVER seen an American work as barn help as their job. I have seen rich people do it as an outlet, but not anybody who actually did it as their job.

I used to get paid $40/hour for cleaning rich peoples' homes. Now I see home maids being offered $15/hour on craigslist. And I never felt like it was beneath me; after all, my grandmother and great-grandmother supported their families on the exact same work.

Lots and lots. Dishwasher, worker on a tomato processing line, nurse's aide, night cleaner....

It's good, decent, necessary work: sadly, it never comes with INSURANCE or DECENT WAGES so it is very, very hard to survive with a family doing that kind of work. I did it before I had a family; now, you have to be desperate to try to raise a family that way -- and immigrant workers are desperate.

As long as there are desperate people, there will be Republicans around to exploit them.

Don't see a whole lot of immigrants in the sewers or on garbage trucks. Do you suppose it is the glamour of wading through feces for those Americans who won't take work that is beneath them? Or could it be the ease of lifting 100 lb garbage cans all day that appeals to all us lazy Americans?

It sure as heck isn't the money. Conservatives have told us time and again that money only provides an incentive to investors, not workers. Worse yet, these are union jobs, and the Conservatives have been telling us for years that union workers are too lazy to do a real days work.


To your question, yes, I grew up on a farm and did all those jobs: tractors (what moron decided to put tractor exhausts directly in front of the driver?), digging ditches with pick and shovel, climbing down spring well to clean it out (remember which rocks had snakes so you don't get bit again on the way up), stacking hay, dousing fence rows with Agent Orange, shoveling shit, wrestling hogs and cattle, etc. After college I got away from all that shit and just had to bus tables and wash dishes for awhile.

People from more impoverished wipe the asses of our grandparents cause we won't. They do tons of low paying crap jobs. They pick berries, they are security gaurds... lots of things. And many of them are doctors in their homelands.

I dunno, i've had thick headed people continue to tell me that jobs such as dishwashing are ones that americans simply don't do, after i tell them i was a dishwasher for years, along with plenty of other middle class kids from my neighborhood.

I think its a bunch of bullshit. There are no jobs that americans wont do, there are just employers that don't pay them enough.

I've done housekeeping been a prep-cook, a ditch digger, a dishwasher and several others before. I've also done new construction clean up, which I've recently heard labeled as one of those jobs "Americans won't do."

Part of the problem is there are some people who don't want to admit to ever having been in a position to do this type of labor. They go along with the pretense out of a sense of misplaced shame that they've picked up along the way. I know a person like myself who worked two or more jobs like this to survive, and later got lucky and landed a good position. They now act as if they never did such work and never would.

I hope the replies on this thread aren't the typical elitist pile of crap comments that normally crop up when this topic is mentioned.

I think a lot of Americans currently just worry about paying their bills and will do whatever they need to do to eat--but WTF do I know!

Also Convenience Store clerk.

...They called it the "night porter." The amount of grease is unreal.

Worked all night long then went to class in the morning.

I have worked in factories packing tractor parts and building crates and boxes and banding and driving a fork lift , so were aweful conditions . I have worked in factories shipping orders and worked side by side with whites and PR's .

I have worked on construction sites as a brick laborer . Even motorola building radio base stations sent to Vietnam . I drove a truck delivering air compressors and copper tubing for robertshaw controls co .

I worked as a carpenter with my father which is now become a job for immigrants .

I have dug ditches and worked for the bell telephone co climbing poles and installing phones , all back in the 60's and most were white workers at all these jobs . I knew many females who worked fast food places or waitress jobs and in these factories .

Just as eerie.

American jobs need American labor.

but the shittiest job I ever had was caddying when I was 12. It didn't help that I don't care about golf.

I love the Philopino nurses that work with me.They are excellent nurses,and hard working.We work with long-term patients on ventillators.I would be lost without them.

;)
Everybody wants to be a nurse...nobody wants to take care of the difficult patients.

count as one of those jobs that Americans won't do? Also worked at the dimestore lunch counter and scraped the grill each night w/those huge grill stones. It left one reeking of grease and grit!

if they need to. Wants becomes needs. Haves make more have nots.

I was 19 and made manager the same day I quit (5 days after starting). Once I found out why the person I replaced had "quit", I started figuring out how soon I could make enough to pay a months rent and quit. I picked berries part of 1 summer also, along with immigrants. Did some carpentry along with immigrants also once.

The hamburger joint job was pretty crappy, though didn't mind picking berries. Carpentry was ok, but am too old and feeble now.

What job would "americans not do"? Any job that is very unsafe, pays minimally minimal, involves manipulation and power plays, all these to an extreme?

...short order cook, day laborer and various things politicians now say I was too lazy to do because I was born in the United States.

I never felt that those jobs were "beneath me", but in the burger flipping jobs, I was treated badly at times, as if I were the customers' personal punching bag.

I went with some friends whom were making some money, when I was about 12, out to the fields to hoe beets. I knew how to weed. My family had a summer garden each year. BUT. These rows were a mile long, the sun brutal, and the bent over a hoe position, backbreaking even for a kid. Needless to say, but I will, after a couple of rows, I 'barked at the ants' on the ditch bank because I had heat exhaustion. Plus, I might add that the migrants we were working along side were waaaay faster and waaaaaay more accurate and cleaner in weed chopping. I know 'cuz I was checking out the work, figuring that if they were passing me at lighting speed, they must be leaving stragglers. Oh, uh uh, those rows were pristine. Dammit. No wonder they get all the good fruit pickin' jobs.

Those are the two physically hardest jobs I've ever had. Mostly because I was doing them in the summer in Kansas City (HOT, HOT, HOT!) Both jobs paid just fine, but that was before people started to hire illegal immigrants for that type of work. I mostly worked with blacks and other white folks then (mid-90's).

One thing about those jobs, I was in the best shape of my life then, 5'10" - 155lbs. and maybe 5% body fat. There's no way I could gain weight no matter how bad I ate (we ate a lot of fast food then) I would just sweat it all off.

There's no way he could take trash like I can...

...I was once waiting tables in a little gourmet market, a place that catered to snotty little Southern "lunching ladies," Scarlett-wannabes who came in and traded gossip about their "friends" and neighbors while nibbling their salads and sandwiches. They treated us all like we were their personal footservants and tipped about as poorly as you would expect.

One day I was running some food to a "four-top" of these women. As I approached the table, their conversation continued unabated and the topic was (I kid you not) "how hard it is to find good help these days."

As I placed the food, I heard one say, "And another thing they're always asking you for is more cleaning supplies."

The others hummed along in agreement and nodded, "They sure do."

Another voice arose. "They're always asking for more soap and window cleaner." More agreement came forth.

A third woman spoke. "Well, one thing I do with my girl that works..." The others leaned in, eyes bright and ears perked. "...I told her she had to start bringing her own cleaning supplies, and you'd be surprised how far they can make it stretch when they have to pay for it."

Her dining partners all nodded and looked at each other, "That's a good idea! I'll have to try that with my girl!"

It was disgusting. I wanted to scream, to ask them how they would like to try and raise kids on a maid's earnings while some rich bitch pinched every penny from them she could. I said nothing though because I needed the job to help pay the rent.

They left the establishment, tipping like paupers, throwing half of their meals away and climbing into their luxury sedans to go for an afternoon of shopping on their husbands' dimes.

Real earners, that bunch. Top of the food chain.

Many Americans would do those jobs, just pay them a decent wage.

At one time my folks had 200 hogs, and I did some work there that I'd much rather leave to the refugees.

Or are you just a polyester kind of guy?

Edit...Mind if I ask...Which hand do you wipe your butt with?

Janitor, painter, trim carpenter, commercial electrician, pipefitter, roofer, offshore construction.

The only job I've ever had that I really enjoyed was as a restorative silversmith, and I started out in the polishing room there. Broke my leg and couldn't stand up to polish so I got promoted to repairing antique metalware of all sorts. Did my first job literally laying on a cot, restored a huge bronze chandelier that had fallen from the ceiling of a large auditorium (no, I don't know if anyone was underneath it at the time :) ).

In one chrome shop I worked on a ten horsepower polishing machine, if something got snatched out of your hands it made at least four laps around the room. You learned real quick like not to put your fingers through any holes. :crazy:

People think you just dip stuff in the chrome tank and it comes out shiny. Not so, if it looks rough going in it will look rough coming out, everything has to be polished to a mirror finish before it goes in the copper tank and then into the nickel tank (that's where most of the plating takes place) and then a quick thirty second or so dip in the chrome tank.

Oh yeah, all the plating tanks have literally thousands of gallons of cyanide solution in them.

Not exactly the healthiest place to work.

For a working class kid from Brooklyn who was obsessed with horses, the only way to learn to ride, I mean really learn to ride, was to work for my lessons.

I shoveled manure, fed and groomed horses, treated various equine ailments and led trail rides for eight hours a day in 90 degree heat.

Admittedly, I did it because I wanted to gain knowledge--money was secondary.

Particularly in agricultural areas. This thread proves (with humor) that there's just about no job an American won't do. So to save money, businesses exploit people who are afraid of being sent back to horrible conditions.

When the European & American shipping industry imported "guest workers" from Africa to pick cotton & support the Southern economy, we fought a bloody war over it.

I'm not addressing legal issues about immigrants or immigration. All I'm saying is that every business in this country is required to pay minimum wage and if they were held to that one little standard, we'd all be better off - particularly the guest workers.