Recently Phil and I have been experiencing a lifestyle of almost complete freedom, enabled by the good folks at Student Job Search.

Whitby: Shifting an old deck to a dumpster, digging postholes and creating new flowerbeds.

I have cleaned ceilings, hauled gravel, wrapped Christmas presents, moved cabinets, cleaned fish ponds, assembled shelves, built retaining walls, weeded gardens, cleaned a penthouse, stripped paint, dug ditches, maintained coffee machines, shifted entire dumpster loads of wood, made fences, loaded trucks, entered data, emptied dishwashers, set up rooms and mixed concrete.

There are many benefits to being a freelance labourer, such as the ability to pick up as much work as I wish, fit work around other events, choose where and when to work, meet many wonderful people (employers and students) and being paid to learn how to do various bits and pieces (such as building retaining walls and fences and maintaining coffee machines). It is interesting exploring the many suburbs, valleys and ridges of Wellington, and many of the places I work at have amazing views.

Whitby: The view from a lookout in the early morning before we started work.

I have been paid by cash, check, direct deposit, and been given ice blocks, lunches, morning teas, bottles of coke and beer, crockery, chocolate, 90 condoms and even a fridge (which we sold for $150!)

Here’s an overview of the different jobs I have been on. Red is home, Yellow is our regular job at The Training Space.

Best Job: $50 for hanging out with a neat old man, helping him put together furniture, wash a few dishes and iron 2 shirts, 4 hrs, Oriental Parade.

Worst Job: $60 for hauling bags of gravel up approximately 5 stories of ramps and steps, on an empty stomach, with no real break for 4 hrs, Melrose.

Update: 2 days after writing this post Phil and I started a job tidying up a house (painting, cleaning, gardening and a bit of carpentry) and I was a given a genuine Armani suit. “Where should I put this?” “Oh, that, don’t worry about it. It’s a bit tired … needs dry-cleaning. I was going to throw it out. Do you want it?” “Uh … yes. That would be great, thank you.” $24 of dry-cleaning later, I have a sweet genuine Armani suit (the jacket fits fairly well too, just need the pants taken up).

Phil was once went along to a job in Kingston, an obscure little suburb out past Brooklyn. He rang the employer’s cellphone and got everything sorted, hopped on a bus and rode to Kingston. After searching for the street for 45 minutes, he rang the employer and they realised that SJS had incorrectly placed the job in Wellington – it was actually located in Kingsland, Auckland. Oops!

Posted by Luke H on Thursday, February 14th, 2008 at 11:31 pm.