Originally Posted By: PimTac
I started out at 3¢ a minute back in the day.
When I was a cadet (in this millennium!) I got paid $0.05/minute, though that didn't include any of the free OT (wasn't always mandatory, but a lot of times it was fun, so we'd stick around to help out with cool operations or maintenance items).
When I was on a watch-standing ship (steam), it was ~ 12 hrs/day (two 8-hr watches and one four-hour period of work). Luckily, that ship paid OT past 8 hrs, but at straight-time rate. On top of that, we had sea projects to complete.
As an aside: The work-out area was back near the steering gear, which had a wide-view camera. If we were caught working out when we could have been working OT or doing our sea project, they would send someone back to yell at us! I had fabricated weight stands (they had all of the free-weights on the deck, sliding back and forth between frames and gear...), secured some of the equipment that needed it, and welded some round stock to the frame webs for additional storage, for crying out loud!
Because I was given [censored] for working out instead of working > 8 hrs (every single day, including weekends...for pennies), I was forced to sneak into the paint locker and lift five-gallon buckets of paint, and do pull-ups to the second level to keep from losing my mind!
