A good job for mindless physical activity: cart-pusher at Walmart. I did this in high school, and it is still easily the best job I’ve ever had. You work at your own pace, you’re outdoors, the managers usually ignore you (so you don’t even have to obey dress code). Mostly I just screwed around with my coworkers.
Basically you just spend all day walking (with occasional bursts of hard physical exercise). I lost 40 pounds in the first 6 months and got into the best shape I have ever been in. There’s also a kind of pleasant exhaustion after putting in 8.5 hours.
ETA: These jobs are extremely easy to get: even though I lived in an economically depressed area, I was hired without even an interview. A woman from HR called 90 minutes after I submitted my application.
A good job for not even that: in high school I worked summers as night-watch at a local suburban pool. 40 hours a week, $9.20/hr, or ~$4000 a summer. There was zero demand on my time during it since I worked overnight. I got a lot of reading done.
The only downside was that it was seasonal (so you couldn’t just do that job), and you could be profoundly mentally screwed by the sleep schedule.
I think I could do better now than I did before with melatonin, modafinil, blackout curtains, etc.
It doesn’t seem like the seasonal basis of the job is inherant in night-watchmen idea—there must be lots of warehouses, etc., that need nightwatchmen. I can imagine worse things than being paid to read.
Right. In my case, the seasonality came from it being a pool—it was only worthwhile to pay nightwatchmen when it was actually filled and multi-million dollar liability existed for accidental drowning (read: middle-class teens holding drugged parties).
In a more ‘real’ nightwatch job, seasonality might not be a problem. On the other hand, you might have more supervision than I did. (Which was none. I saw my nominal boss once at the beginning.)
In any event, the free time was what you made of it. Akrasia was a major issue.
A job in a similar vein which I know of but haven’t personally held: Night shift at a funeral home. Someone needs to do embalming prep for bodies that show up at 2:37 AM, and they’ll generally pay well for you being on-site and on-call.
Is it possible to put in enough hours at WalMart to get enough pay to rent an apartment with internet access and have a healthy diet? Also, can you specialize in just cart-pushing and not something annoying like customer relations?
My brother works at WalMart at nights. He stocks shelves and the like.
He has zero debt besides the house he owns. He doesn’t own a car, and walks to/from work 5 days a week making a little over $10/hour.
He has plenty of money to do anything he wants (within reason). He has thousands in the bank and spends his time surfing the internet and playing video games.
When I started at walmart I was making $8/hour. I quickly was moved up to 8.50 (I think) within the first 6 months. This was several years ago, so wages may be higher now (of course it varies by region).
Working close to full-time, I could easily make $1200 a month (take-home), which was plenty to live on where I lived at the time (greater Detroit area). If you live somewhere where the cost of living is higher, you might not be able to manage it, but of course, wages will tend to be higher in places with high cost-of-living.
Yes, usually recently built walmarts (which are much larger), will have a dedicated staff of “courtesy associates” (the corporate euphemism for “cart-pusher”). Courtesy associates only do the highly specialized task of retrieving shopping carts. Sometimes you have to do the door-greeter’s jobs while they are on break, but I usually got one of the other courtesy associates to do it, since I preferred to remain outdoors, and they liked the opportunity to get out of the sun/cold/rain.
Thanks for the info. Did you get much chance to think about things during work hours, or was the job slightly too cognitively costly for real contemplation?
For me, at least, it was in that sweet spot of cognitive demand that allows for deep reverie, but is demanding enough that I didn’t become bored with just thinking.
Personally, I find I can’t slip into deep thought while just sitting on the couch, I need some kind of other stimulation to meet my optimal level of arousal. When I really need to think about something, I always wind up pacing, cleaning, running errands, playing minesweeper, etc.
Of course, this is after you get used to the job, which takes several days to a few weeks.
Story: Eastern European accountant dude moved to the US, took a 4 hour accounting job and a 4 hour stacking heavy boxes at DHL warehouse kind of job, he said getting paid for practically going to a gym was the best idea ever and 4 hours of bookkeeping is really enough a day.
A good job for mindless physical activity: cart-pusher at Walmart. I did this in high school, and it is still easily the best job I’ve ever had. You work at your own pace, you’re outdoors, the managers usually ignore you (so you don’t even have to obey dress code). Mostly I just screwed around with my coworkers.
Basically you just spend all day walking (with occasional bursts of hard physical exercise). I lost 40 pounds in the first 6 months and got into the best shape I have ever been in. There’s also a kind of pleasant exhaustion after putting in 8.5 hours.
ETA: These jobs are extremely easy to get: even though I lived in an economically depressed area, I was hired without even an interview. A woman from HR called 90 minutes after I submitted my application.
A good job for not even that: in high school I worked summers as night-watch at a local suburban pool. 40 hours a week, $9.20/hr, or ~$4000 a summer. There was zero demand on my time during it since I worked overnight. I got a lot of reading done.
The only downside was that it was seasonal (so you couldn’t just do that job), and you could be profoundly mentally screwed by the sleep schedule.
I think I could do better now than I did before with melatonin, modafinil, blackout curtains, etc.
It doesn’t seem like the seasonal basis of the job is inherant in night-watchmen idea—there must be lots of warehouses, etc., that need nightwatchmen. I can imagine worse things than being paid to read.
Right. In my case, the seasonality came from it being a pool—it was only worthwhile to pay nightwatchmen when it was actually filled and multi-million dollar liability existed for accidental drowning (read: middle-class teens holding drugged parties).
In a more ‘real’ nightwatch job, seasonality might not be a problem. On the other hand, you might have more supervision than I did. (Which was none. I saw my nominal boss once at the beginning.)
In any event, the free time was what you made of it. Akrasia was a major issue.
A job in a similar vein which I know of but haven’t personally held: Night shift at a funeral home. Someone needs to do embalming prep for bodies that show up at 2:37 AM, and they’ll generally pay well for you being on-site and on-call.
Is it possible to put in enough hours at WalMart to get enough pay to rent an apartment with internet access and have a healthy diet? Also, can you specialize in just cart-pushing and not something annoying like customer relations?
My brother works at WalMart at nights. He stocks shelves and the like.
He has zero debt besides the house he owns. He doesn’t own a car, and walks to/from work 5 days a week making a little over $10/hour.
He has plenty of money to do anything he wants (within reason). He has thousands in the bank and spends his time surfing the internet and playing video games.
When I started at walmart I was making $8/hour. I quickly was moved up to 8.50 (I think) within the first 6 months. This was several years ago, so wages may be higher now (of course it varies by region).
Working close to full-time, I could easily make $1200 a month (take-home), which was plenty to live on where I lived at the time (greater Detroit area). If you live somewhere where the cost of living is higher, you might not be able to manage it, but of course, wages will tend to be higher in places with high cost-of-living.
Yes, usually recently built walmarts (which are much larger), will have a dedicated staff of “courtesy associates” (the corporate euphemism for “cart-pusher”). Courtesy associates only do the highly specialized task of retrieving shopping carts. Sometimes you have to do the door-greeter’s jobs while they are on break, but I usually got one of the other courtesy associates to do it, since I preferred to remain outdoors, and they liked the opportunity to get out of the sun/cold/rain.
Thanks for the info. Did you get much chance to think about things during work hours, or was the job slightly too cognitively costly for real contemplation?
For me, at least, it was in that sweet spot of cognitive demand that allows for deep reverie, but is demanding enough that I didn’t become bored with just thinking.
Personally, I find I can’t slip into deep thought while just sitting on the couch, I need some kind of other stimulation to meet my optimal level of arousal. When I really need to think about something, I always wind up pacing, cleaning, running errands, playing minesweeper, etc.
Of course, this is after you get used to the job, which takes several days to a few weeks.
Story: Eastern European accountant dude moved to the US, took a 4 hour accounting job and a 4 hour stacking heavy boxes at DHL warehouse kind of job, he said getting paid for practically going to a gym was the best idea ever and 4 hours of bookkeeping is really enough a day.