Spotted in downtown Auckland during a downpour.
Hard work to stop boredom
Keith Burgess says the best job he had was when Farmers had the bright idea to get into the car-parts business and figured they needed a van and a delivery driver. "I was about 18 and on my first day of work, I realised there wasn't a job. I had a round and maybe five parcels to deliver a day and rather than hang around work and make it painfully obvious there was nothing to do, I stayed away. My daily schedule was pick up van, go home for breakfast, take girlfriend to work, deliver solitary parcel, return for expected second parcel, park up and do correspondence course work and read novels. I got so bored I offered my delivery service to the public library for older folk who couldn't get out. Got caught in the end and warned. Quit soon after."
Tender touch needed for pea sorting
Neither best nor worst, just odd. Chris Dwyer writes: "In 1960, when I was saving to go to Australia (by boat), I had a job in quality control for Birds Eye, Hastings. In the pea department. Every 10-15 minutes, as the cooked peas came along the conveyor belt, it was my job to take a small sample and subject them to a pressure test to determine how firm and tender they were. If tender, I diverted the flow for freezing, and if firm, for canning. My belated apologies to all those people who ended up with cans of extra-mushy peas or bags of frozen-solid ones."
