The best detassling job I ever had was working on a large crew. One of my friend's parents would contract a slew of acres to be detassled and would hire a bunch of people to work the fields. We were paid a variable hourly rate depending on how quickly we got things done. Everyone on the crew started their lap at the same time and if you were done faster, you got to hang out at your vehicle until everyone had finished. The faster people would often dig the slower ones out, but that was your choice. (my younger sister was one of the slow people, I had to do a lot of digging out)
We made crazy money doing it and I'm sure my friend's parents cleaned up as well. If you needed a day off, you could just take it off. People didn't like to do that because the money was too good to turn down - either you could do the work or you couldn't. Really slow people were ran off by the group - it was a problem that fixed itself.
Being tall certainly was an advantage at that job.
