Getting to know me - 7

It's been ages since my last "Getting to know me"-post. I thought it was about time I'd get back to it.

The Random Integer Generator told me to answer question number 40 this week:

What was the most difficult paycheck you ever earned?

I don't think I've earned many paychecks that have been difficult as in having to perform something difficult. I think the ones I found difficult were the ones that were boring.

For six months in junior high I helped out in a print shop every other Tuesday after school to earn some money. I was going to England in the summer and the agreement was that I'd have to earn my own spending money before going. In the print shop I spent hours glueing covers on small notebooks. I'd take a note book from one pile and a cover from another. Fold the cover along two lines and then put glue on part of the cover. Place the cover in the right position on the note book and press firmly. Put in a pile with a heavy book on top. Repeat. :yawn:

One fall in junior high I "sålde jultidningar" for Christmas. I don't know if kids still do this in Sweden but when I was younger it was a way for kids and youth to earn some extra money around Christmas. Basically you knocked on your neighbours' door trying to sell them magazines, comics and books from a catalogue you showed them. They'd (hopefully) place an order with you and then you got the magazines, comics and books sent to you a couple of weeks before Christmas and you had to deliver the orders. Some parents would take the catalogue to their work place trying to get their colleagues to buy something. As a kid you'd earn accordingly to what you sold for. The more sells, the more you'd earn. The information folder you got sent to you before starting to sell was full of success stories from smiling boys and girls saying how much fun it was selling, how easy it was, how much money they had sold for and what they had gotten from their pay. But it wasn't fun. It wasn't easy. And I didn't earn much.

In high school and after, I spent many summers working mostly outdoors. I loved the job. Even though it forced me to get up every morning at 6am... I usually had fun with my colleagues. I also liked the amount of responsibility I was given. My bosses and the people who saw the result of my job, ususally didn't care about how I got things done as long as they were made before the end of the day. Some summers were more hard work than others. It depended on where in the city I worked, the people around me and definitely the weather. My first summer in the early '90s had a lot of rainy days. I worked a total of 35 days (7 weeks) that summer and I only had 5 days that were completely dry... On rainy days we had to be very imaginatory and sometimes come up with tasks to keep us busy for 8 hours. That was sometimes hard. Especially day after day... (On a whole I loved my summer job and kept returning to it. It was just difficult during rainy days and periods.)

After my university studies I got a "temporary job" that lasted for more than a year and a half. It wasn't the most ideal job for me. A lot of people in the company didn't understand my function and why I was there. Many of them thought the results of my work would affect the employees badly, so I constantly had to fight the negative image they had of me even before they'd met me. A lot of people also showed surprising stupidity when it came to understand the amount of time I needed to give them proper results. I was constantly chased. I didn't earn my pay checks with happiness during these months... (One of the happiest days in my life was going in to my then-boss to tell him I had gotten another job. A "proper one".)

What was the most difficult paycheck you ever earned? Let me know by leaving a comment or by making your own blog post about it. (If you do the latter, please tell me so I don't miss it!)