Freezing in the department storeDuring my first years of study, at a time without a laptop or cell phone, I worked as a saleswoman in four departments of a large department store: haberdashery, home textiles, accessories and women’s fashion. Once I had to spend three days promoting new plastic-filled duvets that were said to be cool in summer and warm in winter. As evidence, a switched-on freezer was placed in the bed department. I sat in this chest, protected by such a wonderful blanket. The department manager insisted that I wear a nightgown that I could choose in advance in the store. Even though I knew I could keep it afterwards, I chose a well-behaved, opaque copy. As soon as customers approached, I had to pull a thermometer out of the chest and show it, give information and patiently listen to all the sayings. The question that was asked particularly frequently was: “Are they included in the price?”Gabriele Förster, BerlinMore steam, boy! In 1980, shortly before my 14th birthday, I worked for Blouses Neumann in Bad Pyrmont for two weeks. A friend of my mother found out about it, so my mother signed me up at my request. The wage was an unbelievably high 7.30 DM an hour. To my surprise, I was assigned my field of activity on Monday morning: ironing blouses. So I stood with nine full-time women at an ironing table with an industrial iron that seemed huge to me at the time. The blouses, which were still made in the “low-wage country” of Spain in 1980, had to be “ironed” after transport. In the first week I, who had never held an iron in my hand before, only had to iron the cuffs and collar. After the lunch break, the foreman made her rounds. My “colleagues”, all of whom, without exception, were friendly and courteous to me, had warned me about her. And so what had to happen happened: the foreman whispered to me from behind over her shoulder, “More steam, boy!”, whereupon I increased the speed and immediately broke out in a sweat due to the weight of the iron and the high temperatures. After a few minutes the foreman came past our ironing unit again and from a distance called out “Boy! More steam! Otherwise it won’t work!” – and disappeared. I obviously increased my ironing speed so grotesquely and desperately that the entire remaining ironing team burst out laughing. One of my neighbors came over to me and took the iron out of my hand, “Boy, you shouldn’t iron any faster. This is a steam iron!”, and showed me the meaning of the little button next to the handle. Since then I have known what the word steam iron means.Daniel Schalow, Monheim am Rhein Delivering bread rolls in all weathersIn 1969 I was nine years old and had my very first business idea. I wanted to deliver fresh bread rolls in our neighborhood every day before school with my Bonanza bike. First, I found my first customers (“bell doorbell”) through a personal request, ordered rolls from the bakery every day and delivered them regardless of the weather. After a short time, I had many regular customers through recommendations and delivered around 100 rolls every morning.More on the topicOnce a week I came to the cashier and sometimes got a tip. My earnings were initially calculated at an additional 1 pfennig. It was the time when the price of bread rolls constantly rose and after a few months it was 13 or 14 pfennigs. The baker left my purchase price at a dime because he thought my idea was so great. So my income rose steeply and was almost sensational at around five D-Marks a day. I did that for a few years, found other jobs, saved my money and, when I was 16, spent six weeks traveling through the USA with a backpack and a flat-rate ticket for the Greyhound bus. Sören Rehmann, Wiesbaden On the hunt the woodfly In the spring of 1973, when I had just passed my high school diploma, the district veterinary office advertised in the newspaper seeking support in combating the woodfly. Dasselfly? Although I had studied biology until I graduated from high school, the common fly had not come up in class. The applicants should report to the Hotel Drei Eichen on the appointed date for instruction by the district veterinarian, Doctor Kater. The district veterinarian’s information about the wood fly was brief: The stinging flies mainly attacked cows and cattle in mostly moist meadows. Their eggs developed into larvae under the skin in the animals’ backs. These can be felt as small bumps when you run your hand over the back. Infected animals should be treated with 50 milliliters of an oily liquid, which must be poured lengthways down the back. The farmer has to pay ten pfennigs per animal examined and 50 pfennigs to the abdasser for each animal treated. There was a slight murmur from the Abdasslers gathered at the round table. The fee is meager, so it’s hard to make ends meet. On the first day, early in the morning, shortly after six o’clock, I set off for the first location. Since I was able to organize my own working hours, I had long working days. I didn’t have to settle accounts with anyone; the income was enough to fuel the vehicle. After a good week, I had combed through the towns assigned to me, examined all the cows and cattle and treated a few as prescribed. The final calculation was fun: During the holidays, as an Abdass student, I had earned a nice start-up capital to buy my first car.Thomas A. Wagner, Hanover drug courier on a bonus basis. The high school diploma in my pocket, the lack of prospects on my face. At least a driving license made my otherwise gray everyday life in the Hamburg suburbs easier. With the goal of saving money for college, I came across an organization through a contact that sold drugs on a large scale. With my driving license, I was the right person for the delivery fleet. Driving around in a car with cannabis and other narcotics in the trunk and all for minimum wage? What the heck, I thought to myself and shook hands with my grandparents’ pharmacist. But on the first day at work I realized that a relaxed stroll from house to house wouldn’t really be lucrative. My courier colleague or – as it later turned out – comrade-in-arms Hans-Jürgen explained to me: There was a certain pool of medication that had to be distributed every day. The pharmacy provided two cars for this: the comfortable VW Polo (built in 2018), which was of course reserved for Hans-Jürgen, and a Ford Fiesta from 2005, which inevitably suggested a dubious relationship between the pharmacy and TÜV Nord. Once all the deliveries had been made to the customer, it was time for work. After I found out how generous the mainly older customers were when it came to tips, it slowly dawned on me: Hans-Jürgen and I were in a race against time. The more I delivered, the more the cash register rang. Tactical considerations shaped the following days: the art of delivery driving lay in choosing the route. The aim was to distribute the 15 packages that were in the trunk as effectively as possible in a circular route and, in the best case, to collect the second load of medication before Hans-Jürgen and collect the associated tip. Hans-Jürgen, Ayrton Senna type with a degree in logistics, took every penny of tip from under my fingernails despite all my efforts. I was left behind for six long days, but on the seventh day God created the stopover function on Google Maps. The rest was Kurier history. Julius Schnebbe, Hamburg Pulling weeds in the vineyards I grew up in a winery on the Moselle. During the summer holidays it was my job, together with my younger brother, to walk three kilometers to our large vineyard on a steep slope in order to pull the weeds there and place them in the middle of the row so that we could then rake them We were able to pull weeds down to the path. We took a bottle of tap water with sugar to drink. That was the summer holidays. As a reward, our grandfather gave us a dime on Sunday and we were able to buy ourselves a ball of ice cream.Birgitt Roth, FrankfurtWith Liese to the horse clinicAs a 10- to 12-year-old, I was looked after by my parents during the summer and autumn holidays in the post-war period Country sent to Uncle Arno and Aunt Paula. I was supposed to help with the work on the farm and eat my fill every now and then. The farm included two large, strong field horses, the gelding Fuchs and the mare Liese. My job was to feed and water the horses and bring them back to the farm after they were done working in the fields. One day something was wrong with Liese; She didn’t want to go back to the village with me and looked at me very sadly. It took a long time for me and Liese to reach Uncle Arno’s house. He quickly realized that something was wrong with Liese’s right front leg. When we carefully lifted the hoof and looked under the horseshoe, we discovered the serious problem. There was a large bloody wound, and in the middle of the wound was a sharp piece of glass surrounded by disgusting fly larvae. The wound was cleaned and disinfected together with the veterinarian who was called to help. My job was to hold and stroke Liese’s head and to reassure her. On the way to the stable, Liese was obviously still in great pain in her foot; She also didn’t want to touch any food. I stayed with Liese in the stable that night. The next morning the vet and Uncle Arno decided that Liese should definitely go to Dr. Brehm had to be taken to the district town and operated on there. There was no horse trailer in the entire village, so Liese had to be taken to the clinic on foot. Because Uncle Arno urgently had to stay with the grain harvest, I was asked to take Liese to the clinic. We started hiking. We took a break every few hundred meters; Liese kept sniffing her bad leg and looking at me very sadly with her beautiful, big eyes. Halfway there we stayed overnight with a farmer friend who provided Liese’s leg with a new bandage and our car with provisions. After two days, Liese and I finally arrived at the horse clinic, Liese was operated on immediately. We then took Liese to a nice “sick room” with fresh straw and delicious food and a lounger for me. After two days in the hospital we were allowed to go home. I can still feel today how much Uncle Arno gave me an appreciative pat on the shoulder when we returned.Wilhelm von Carlowitz, TangerhütteCreative holiday jobI was in the 12th grade and worked in construction during the holidays, more precisely in civil engineering. Back then, in many small towns the houses still had “outhouses”. This is also the case in the village on the Fulda. But now it received a sewage system. The pipe network was built, and at the same time new toilets were installed in the houses next to the “outhouses” and connected to the network. The residents of the house were initially prohibited from using the toilets because the plumbing network was not yet finished. The toilet lid and seat therefore received a paper cuff with the inscription “Toilet may not be used”. In a sewer network there are shafts in which pipes from several houses or streets are combined into one pipe. These shafts are made of concrete pipes, and at the bottom, where the pipes open into the shaft, gutters are built so that the wastewater does not build up in the shaft but continues to flow. And now came my assignment: a bricklayer, a bricklayer’s apprentice in his second year of training and me The gutters should be built in such a shaft. We lifted the lid of the three meter deep shaft. But of the three meters only about two and a half were visible, the remaining 50 cm was full of sh….! The paper cuffs probably couldn’t withstand the urge of the residents. The bricklayer said “I’m not going in there”, the apprentice had to go into the construction shop very quickly, and I, the jobbing junior, … I was given a pair of very high rubber boots, a ladle and climbed down. The apprentice – now back from the construction shack – lowered a bucket on a rope, I filled it, he pulled it up and dumped the contents onto the neighboring field. And this process was repeated many times! What did I learn from this summer job? If you’ve been up to your knees in sh…., you should avoid contact with others afterwards and instead lie down in a bathtub for a very long time.Reinhard Kulick, BodenheimInsight into high societyMany of my fellow students in medical school worked as night guards in the hospital, and were then able to but the next day I just followed the lecture, exhausted. In order not to have to spend all night on my feet and to think outside the medical box, I applied to be a hostess at the newly opened Alte Oper in Frankfurt. It was the perfect job to practice the multiple choice questions for the state exam during working hours. We had peace and quiet between check-in and check-out, break service and admission control. If a performance was particularly interesting, you could request to be seated at one of the many hall doors and sit inside – paying 12.50 DM per hour for concert enjoyment! The absolute highlight was the annual opera ball. In the VIP dressing room I was able to help, among others, Mayor Walter Wallmann out of his coat – politicians you could touch. It was a lovely time with insights into the high society of Frankfurt, Germany and the world. Dr. med. Birgit Jelinek, MühltalWhich bird is singing?August 1955: my first semester break, my first holiday job: digging a trench by hand to lay a gas pipe along a federal road in the Wesermarsch. During the half-hour unpaid lunch break, a work colleague had the following conversation with me: “Oh, you’re such a student! What kind of bird is that that sings so beautifully?” “I don’t know, I’m not an ornithologist!” “You’re not an Orni, not an Orni? Instead of memorizing such a stupid foreign word, you should better know what kind of bird sings so beautifully!” Lesson for me: In my later professional life, I always tried to avoid foreign words when negotiating with citizens and to explain technical terms in an understandable way. Berend Meyer, Hanover Sewing quick buttonholes, March 1959. I had just graduated from high school. The head was empty, as was the wallet; A job was needed in order to use the time until the start of studies sensibly and, above all, profitably. We lived in the Zollernalb district, where in those years there were still numerous textile factories where people earned their money “in jerseys”. I got a temporary job and, to my surprise, I was offered 1.35 German marks an hour. So now I was standing in a factory hall where the women were making underwear in rows on their industrial sewing machines, “in piecework”; they were paid based on the number of pieces, although, of course, sloppiness was not tolerated. Hard and monotonous work. I didn’t have to do that, but I didn’t get my money for doing nothing either. Instead, I was chased around for all sorts of auxiliary services, which the manager and a number of foremen took care of – that was fine with me. At some point I was supposed to sew buttonholes into higher quality dresses and jackets. However, these weren’t quick buttonholes, but elaborate ones made by hand: patches of fabric were placed on the garment in the right place, right sides together, stapled, the buttonhole was neatly machine-stitched as a narrow rectangle, the slit was cut into it, patches of fabric were pulled through to the left and on the back cleaned by hand. Not complicated per se, but of course it had to be very precise. I tried hard, and the result was, well, fair. The experiment was ended after two days and I was allowed to stick sample cards again, prepare packages for shipping and much more for the rest of the six weeks.Ingrid Müller, CalwAt 14 “in office”In the mid-1970s I came to the realization that additional income to my pocket money would be desirable. From observing my own family, I had learned that the public service could be the best choice for a 14-year-old’s summer job in order to earn good money with manageable effort, regular working hours and without dirty hands. Quite naively, I applied to the local authority where I lived. To my great surprise, I was accepted, probably also because my father was active in local politics and the offspring was trusted. I was put in the public order office, or more precisely: in the passport office, and from then on I issued identity cards and passports when this was still the job of the police municipalities was. This was done using a special typewriter. If the data was inserted into the “Perso” and passport blanks, the passport photos provided by the applicants had to be pasted in. This was done with an adhesive that was similar in color and consistency to a wood glue known at the time. Beforehand, the white edges of the photos had to be cut off so that they fit exactly into the specified photo field. Many people in my community back then must have had ID cards with crooked edges and were surprised by them. An older gentleman applied for his passport with photos showing him wearing an impressive medal clasp. I had to cut it off for reasons of equal treatment. All reporting matters were also processed in the public order office. When things got urgent, completed ID cards were left on the applicant’s kitchen window sill on the way home in the evening so that they could go on vacation early the next morning. To this day, I am deeply impressed by the human knowledge of the two senior clerks in the office – in their late 40s and early 50s – who only took a quick glance to classify a person appearing as obscure. I remember that a man who had been put out for arrest was arrested in this way.Dr. Norbert EschbornYoung harvest helperI have a special memory of a work assignment as a young harvest helper in the countryside, in which all my classmates took part, together with students from two upper classes. During the autumn holidays, around 1960, when I was twelve years old, we helped an agricultural production cooperative (LPG) pick potatoes in a nearby village in the district. Also in the following years in other towns, up to the eighth grade. As harvest helpers in the fields – the classic holiday job. We were accommodated in the village school. Mattresses were laid out on the floor for the night. In the morning we washed at a pump. For breakfast there were thick butter sandwiches or a choice of large pieces of streusel cake, and there was malt coffee with lots of milk. That was common for breakfast in the country back then. Strengthened in this way, we then went out on a cart with horses harnessed to a huge potato field. We received a token for each filled basket. When the autumn sun was at its zenith, we drove back to the village and had our lunch at long tables under a light-flooded arcade. In the afternoon we went out into the field again for three hours. Afterwards we had free time until dinner. I always found myself at the side of a girl from the tenth grade who I would have liked to have had in our family as my big sister. I felt comfortable around her. One of her classmates always kept up with us as we walked through the village, which I didn’t like. In childhood, just a few years always result in a significant age difference. For me, therefore, both of them were almost adults, while I was still an inconspicuous person. At the end of our harvesting mission, there was a final evening together with the villagers in the large hall of the community tavern. A band was playing. It was happy and cheerful. A boy from the village joined us and had a lot to say about one or the other from the village. A young trumpeter sometimes got playful. “He’s still practicing. Next year he wants to start studying music in Weimar.” Music, dancing couples, thick clouds of smoke, thick yellow light and lots of beer in heavy mugs for the men, wine and liqueur for the women increased the exuberant mood more and more. We had lemonade. Cheerfulness and carefree exuberance determined the course of the evening.Hubert Appenrodt, Sondershausen Lending a hand on the concrete bridgeIt has been 69 years since I did my first of two holiday jobs during my student days. The Frankfurt construction company Holzmann built a concrete bridge over the Vechte in the Grafschaft Bentheim district in westernmost Lower Saxony in my home village of Hoogstede. With my heart trembling, I spoke to the manager of the Holzmann construction site on the banks of the Vechte. I was amazed when the engineer immediately agreed. My work on the construction site included several tasks. Popular holiday job: work on the Baudpa On the way there in the morning I went to the local Bentheim Railway station to ask about mail that had arrived for the construction company. The visit was repeated in the afternoon around 2 p.m. Almost every day I had to transport something, as far as the means of transport allowed. I lent a hand here and there on the construction site. I considered the task of opening the huge transport container hanging on the construction site crane and filled with fresh concrete on the bridge construction site with a long lever and letting the liquid concrete flow out exactly at the desired position, closing the container again and a few steps, to be very responsible continue to reopen. Can’t have done much wrong; because the bridge is still standing.Gerrit-R. Ranft, UlmOn the assembly line at VolvoIn 1972, I passed my Abitur exams and began studying psychology in Marburg in the fall of that year. During the summer holidays of 1974 I asked the International Student Employment Agency about a job opportunity in Sweden. I was offered a seven-week job at the Volvo assembly plant in Gothenburg. Of course I agreed. During the factory holidays there, a new production line was tested with reduced occupancy. Work was carried out in two shifts: from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. The work activity was organized according to the principles of job rotation and job enrichment. Similar maneuvers were not carried out monotonously; rather, there were six different “balanses” each lasting 1.50 hours. The process: Hang a stable frame on the base plate to subsequently fix the cardan shaft for assembly; check which model of shaft was to be fitted on the specification sheet stuck to each car (which varied depending on the transmission – manual, automatic, overdrive); sprint to a box on the assembly line, take out the correct shaft and hang it in the rack on the passing car; mount the central cardan joint with a profile on the floor panel – with four bolts and a compressed air-operated ratchet; fix the free ends of the shaft to the base plate with hooks (in order to be connected to the gearbox and drive axle further down the belt); Remove the assembly frame and attach it to the next cart. One of the hardest holiday jobs is assembly line work.dpaIt happened to me a few times that I was assembling the wrong shaft. Then there was a need: at the end of the band the call “fel kardan” rang out. An adjuster sprinted up and picked up the correct shaft, which he and a colleague at the end of the line quickly exchanged for the incorrect one. In the sixth week an adjuster, a bearish Dane, asked me: “Are you going to put the cardan shaft back on tomorrow?” Then I won’t come.” He said this in a friendly way, knowing that I would soon be saying goodbye. My conclusion: It’s not unreasonable to work on the assembly line. The big advantage: When the siren sounded at the end of the shift, the work was done and the head was quickly cleared. I rarely had that feeling in the 42 years of my later professional life.Norbert Schalast
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