[snopercod]

You're just trying to piss me off, aren't you?

Did I relate the story about the job as an electrician that I had two years ago?

My boss got paid $120 per hour for my services and that of my helper (he paid me $14 and my helper $8), so he always had us dig trenches by hand rather than renting a trencher - he got paid more that way.

So one day my helper and I were digging a particularly difficult trench through rocky soil, and we got to talking. Somehow it came up that I had earned a BSEE in the sixties. He suggested that I was probably into the drug scene back then, to which I responded, "No, I was studying ten hours per day so that someday I could have a good job like this one".

After we stopped laughing, he got more serious. He told me, "Myself, I dropped out of high school. I moved furniture and drove 18-wheelers all my life. I have been in jail several times. But look, here we are doing the same job!"

[Alberta's Child]

Sounds like you should charge $100 per hour for your services, $80 per hour for your assistant's services (while paying him $35 per hour), and drive your old boss out of business.

[JoeSchem]

As a BSEE of the University of Washington, I recently got to work as a landscaping digger on my alma mater. I was making $8.63 an hour as a temp, and I only get work about half the time. I was working alongside an illegal immigrant making $13/hr under the table (which is like $18 an hour above the table) and who got hired his first day as a temp (even though that's probably a violation of the rules of his temp agency . . . but he'll never tell!).

Actually, 'working alongside' is a misstatement. They hired me because the weather was really hot and the work was really hard and they couldn't hire an illegal immigrant willing to do it. So basically, at age 47, I was doing the work that illegal immigrants won't do.