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- Elon Musk said on a podcast that his least favorite job was a short-term position at a lumber mill when he was a teenager.
- The job required him to shovel "steaming" sand and mulch out of a wood-pulp boiler.
- The job was dangerous, Musk said, since it would be hard to get someone out of a boiler in an emergency.
- Workers in and outside of a boiler would have to switch positions every 15 minutes so they wouldn't get hyperthermia.
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But Musk's most unpleasant job came years before
As a teenager, Musk wanted to move to the US from
The position required him to shovel "steaming" sand and mulch out of a wood-pulp boiler, Musk said. A worker outside the boiler would then remove the sand and mulch from a tunnel leading into it.
Musk said the job was dangerous, since each boiler had just one small tunnel as an entrance and exit. If the tunnel was full, it could spell trouble in an emergency.
"It'd be really hard to drag somebody out," Musk said. "It does not seem safe because if the tunnel gets blocked, trying to unblock that tunnel would be very difficult in a short period of time."
Musk added that the workers inside and outside of the boiler would switch positions every 15 minutes to avoid getting hyperthermia.
The job lasted just four days, and paid around double the hourly rate Musk's other options offered.
Musk would $4 a few years later to attend the
You can watch Musk's full interview $4.
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