Work History

Maggie totally inspired this post and I hope you write one too, or tell me in the comments what your first jobs were. I ADORE hearing about everyone's first jobs. They're almost all comically horrible and I find it to be such a unifying topic.

Like a lot of teenage girls, the first job I ever had was babysitting. I babysat a LOT in high school, and I liked it quite a bit. It was pretty easy money. Most nights I'd earn $30 or $40, sometimes more, all for just watching TV and reading stories to small people. Really, I was shocked people paid me so handsomely for this.

There were a couple of families I preferred over the others and I remember at one point deciding I didn't like babysitting for a certain family because there were ALWAYS dirty dishes in the kitchen and they were smelly and the house smelled like dog and the children were just...odd. I remember feeling kind of badly about this but my mom told me if I didn't like them I didn't HAVE to babysit for them. This was an oddly empowering moment for me, realizing it was okay to decline for personal reasons, that I didn't have to justify or explain to anyone.

We lived on base so this didn't really hurt my business. Whenever that family called I just told them I was busy (watching The Simpsons with my brother and chain-eating Drumsticks with a fourteen-year-old's magical metabolism, OH THOSE WERE THE DAYS). I raked in the cash for a couple of years. I spent all of it on movies, clothes, shoes, milkshakes at the PX Burger King, lip gloss and a subscription to Sassy.

For my second job was a lifeguard at the O-Club pool the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. I think my mother is the one that suggested another girl and I take the course, because if we did we'd surely be hired. I'm not sure WHY she suggested this to us (or why she thought we'd be hired), but we took the class. (Perhaps she was envisioning a summer full of my teenage eye-rolling and whining and was looking to avoid that. CAN'T IMAGINE WHY.) We were hired and it was a pretty boring job. I never had to rescue anyone (though I was PETRIFIED that I'd have to and I would forget all of the training). I took chemical samples every hour and posted them on a whiteboard. I didn't clean bathrooms, even though it was TECHNICALLY part of my job. I think they paid us $7/hour, which was big, huge, giant money in 1996. 

My third job was in college. I was an Assistant Page Editor for my college yearbook. I was assigned a chunk of pages in the Athletics section and I had to assign photographers and writers to cover various events/clubs/teams and then take the materials they came back with and design layouts. I liked it, a lot! We worked on giant blue Mac G3s in the basement of the Journalism building. I think I was paid $15 or $20 for each two-page-spread that went to press. In the end, I think 50 or 60 pages went to press, but I didn't get paid until the end of the spring semester, so it was basically summer spending money.

The year after that, I became the Athletics Section Editor. The Aggieland was (at the time) the largest collegiate yearbook in the United States and the Athletics section was the largest section. I hired an Assistant Page Editor (she was the only one that applied) and we had a nice year making pages, looking at photos, bonding with the staff in the basement of the Journalism building and getting to a first-name basis with the Sports Information Director.

I applied to be the Editor-in-Chief the next year, but I bombed the interview. I had serious misgivings about even applying for the job, but for some reason I decided to submit my application. Toward the end of my stint as section editor, I had grown unhappy with the team and atmosphere and support from the department and I applied with heavy feet. And then, in the interview, I suddenly realized this was not a job I wanted. I heard some flippant things come out of my mouth and I probably made some faces and, whaddya know, they didn't hire me. (It was not very mature, I know, but I was also 20 and....immature.) 

The next semester I needed spending money so I worked at a sandwich shop. It wasn't SO bad, but the guy that owned it did not instruct anyone in how to work there. There were just a bunch of things to do and people did whatever! You basically walked in for your shift and got stuck doing what the person leaving had been doing or whatever you felt like doing. I liked making the chocolate chip cookies, making sandwiches, and taking orders. I did not like washing dishes, so I generally just refused/ignored them and that actually turned out to be a good tactic because I think I only washed dishes once. I quit after a few months because it was just so WEIRD and I didn't like people bitching to me about their sandwiches. (People have Very Strong Feelings about their sandwiches.)

After I graduated, nobody was hiring. I graduated in August, 2001 and after September 11, 2001 things were kind of locked down. I looked and I applied but NOBODY was hiring in my corner of the world. I substitute taught. I temped at a legal office, filling the hours with data entry on a class action asbestos lawsuit. I was a receptionist at a now-defunct telecom company that NOBODY ever visited so I read the internet all day. One day, a lady walked over to me and said, "THEY HAVE FIRED ALL OF US!"

Ah, well. Okay then.

I worked for a few months at an environmental engineering company as a "Designer." They never, ever gave me any work to do. Really, to this day I cannot remember WHAT I did there except read a few proposals and make sure they matched the RFP requirements. 

I was finally offered an actual full-time position in San Angelo, Texas at the city newspaper as a page editor. They were willing to pay me the grand sum of $17,500/year, but I knew that even in tiny San Angelo that was hardly enough to live on. Also, it was in San Angelo and....no thanks.

I commuted by bus, I lived at home with my parents in Austin, I wondered when my life was going to start. 

Then one day a woman named Sharon hired me to work at an advertising agency in Dallas. I had a friend that worked there and she thought I would like it. And, that's how I got myself on the Marketing and Advertising Merry-Go-Round. I stayed there for about ten years and immersed myself in all manner of buzzwords, acronyms and requests to make the logo bigger. 

So, spill your guts to me. What were your first jobs? (I am DYING to hear!)

Comments

[Life of a Doctor's Wife]

I loved Maggie's post and I love yours! This is so fun - I am definitely going to have to do a post like this, too. I also love hearing how you got into Marketing & Advertising. Seems like the next stepping point for an editor who isn't into journalism... which is kind of my thing, too.

And I definitely have Very Strong Feelings about sandwiches, so that part made me giggle!

[Holly]

Haaahaaaaaaaaa........... I too, babysat, from the tender age of 12. Seriously- for one family is was quite often, 3 boys, at the time, aged 1, 3, and 5, for entire Saturdays or Saturday evenings until nearly midnight. Holy Hell the parents were trusting! I mean, I never doubted myself, but yah. Anyway. After that.... didn't work in HS except for one time I helped a family friend with her catering business when she booked a really big event.

Didn't work in college, except during the summers. Then between freshman and sophomore years in college and again between sophomore and junior years I worked at the movie theater in Bonsall in the concessions stand. Because of this I LOVE movie theater popcorn freshly popped, but will not touch the "butter" with a 10ft pole. Heed that warning. I also got extremely good at multitasking during this job. Nothing like a Friday night rush and people harping at you for charging $1500 for a soda, while listening for the popper so you didn't burn the popcorn, and remembering the 6 different candies you needed from the back, to keep you on your toes. My favorite experience was when one lady paid for her stuff with a Susan B. Anthony and she goes "Honey, This. Is. Worth. A. Dollar..... A. Dollar." and I very slowly responded... "Uh, yeah, I know."

The summer between junior and senior year of college I worked at DISNEYLAND! Yah! That was super fun, even though my shifts were always 6pm-2am. I worked two Gradnights as well - 2am-6am. I was in the Store Operations category, and because it was just in the summer, I was shuttled between different Lands depending on the need that day. Wearing all the different costumes was super fun, though I mostly was on Main St so I looked like a 1900s shopgirl in a wool skirt and striped puffed-sleeved blouse 70% of the time I was working.

After college graduation, I went right into graduate school that summer, working in the labs, doing my rotations. Never left :)

[Rebecca (Bearca)]

Besides babysitting, my first job was working at a tack and feed store, which was extremely random. I am a former horse nerd, though, so it kind of made sense.

I worked at my college newspaper - first as news editor, then features editor. I applied to be editor in chief, but also totally bombed the interview! Which I ended up being grateful for in the end, because the editor in chief had no social life to speak of.

Then, my first real, post-college job was as a technical writer at a medical device company. That manufactured breast implants. Umm.

(p.s., I never took them up on the offer of free implants.)

[Melani]

My first job was working at our family bowling alley's snack bar. I was 9 years old (seriously) and would make burgers, french fries, and milkshakes. I had to stand on a stool to use the grill b/c I was too short. At the end of the night, cleaned the grill, washed the dishes and mopped the floor. All for $20 (I thought I was RICH). At 16, I got the lovely Walmart cashier position, I made 5.10/hr (1992) and hated every minute of it. Then, after graduation I thought I'd be smart and transfer to the Walmart home office where I took care of worker's compensation claims. Basically it entailed me approving bills, getting cussed out by angry associates and crying in my car at lunch time. I made it a year before quitting.

I had a few other boring jobs, but have been a stay at home for the last 15 years. My kids are getting close to no longer needing a chauffeur so I suppose I'll reenter the workforce in a few years.

[Ryan]

My first job was as a paperboy in Jr. High. It was one of those weekly community papers that always ends up on your lawn but no one pays for or reads. It paid well enough to support my weekly comic book habit. I get the same type of paper tossed on my lawn now, but its by a dude in a creepy van who drives the route at the wee hours of the morning. I don't read it either.

I went the lifeguard route too. My high school offered a zero-hour life guarding course I ended up taking after swim season was over my Freshman year. The high school pool was also the community pool & had open swim two nights a week. My glamorous job was locker room duty, which meant sitting in the locker room and making sure no one stole anything. I read a lot, and made the mistake of reading the Exorcist on a few shifts which led to a man in a towel asking me if I'd found Jesus. I was eventually promoted to lifeguard status and worked there through the rest of high school. Our head guard was out of college at that point and liked to flirt with the girl guards, spit juice from his lip full of dip into a commemorative muppets glass and bring in Playboys for the guys. He was kind of an ass. I taught swim lessons on the weekends and ended up working at a different outdoor neighborhood pool the summer before senior year. I did actually have to go in the water and do a rescue during the 4th of July weekend. Kid was okay, just scared, and the parents who witnessed it gave me beer after my shift was over.

I stayed in the lifeguard game during college. I worked at the Pittsburgh Y, and then at an athletic club in a high rise office building which also had a dining club. The pool was three lanes and was above the work-out floor. Easy peasey and we got one meal a shift consisting of whatever was cooking a floor up in the dining club. A lot of movies were filmed in Pittsburgh and the club used to give memberships to the stars during their time in town. I quit and a week later Katie Holmes was swimming laps in my pool. (We're talking 90s Dawson's Creek era, not Tom Cruise era...)

Later I become Student Activities Coordinator, which was sort of like being student body president combo'd with the guy who organized a lot of parties. Being a small art school we didn't have a student body government or anything like that (until some of us set one up) but we did have lots of parties. I also spoke at every quarterly orientation to all incoming students and parents, wrote a weekly newsletter and bribed people with pizzas. At some point in there I had a small job building life size replicas of animals for the Pittsburgh Zoo, but that didn't last long as the ID students in charge didn't care for us mouse jockeys and didn't let us do anything but lift stuff and mix resin.

After college I went back home to Michigan and worked contract in Steelcase's Treehouse Design Studio, which was in charge of all wood furniture design. I really liked that studio, but I wasn't a furniture designer and that was what they were looking for full time. I was interviewing too and got rejected from a number of video game shops and graphics houses on the east coast, which was where I really wanted to live.

I ended up getting a lead for a job in TEXAS, which wasn't even on my job radar. I was flown down to Houston for an interview with a company focused on NASA/aerospace 3D design, renderings and animations. When I was made an offer, I also had an offer on the table from a film/graphics studio outside of Detroit. Houston it is! I was at that shop for less then a year, but in that time I got yelled at daily, told how to vote and learned that it was okay to have a hand gun and tequila in your office. I also met a lot of scientists and guys who were backing commercial space flight start-ups. And I accidentally saw Buzz Aldrin in his boxers as he changed in our conference room.
I was invited out to lunch by a co-worker who had moved on to a new 3D Animation/Multimedia shop and knew I wasn't happy. I interviewed and 12 years later, I'm still here. I started out doing 3D work, then Flash, Html, Compositing and more 3D. Now I write SOWs, make spreadsheets and stress out.

Sorry - I wrote a lot but it was fun to do.

[Aferg22]

My first job was as a cashier at a local drug store when I was 14. I mostly worked in the Hallmark section, but sometimes I was in the movie rental section, and rarely the pharmacy section. I hated the pharmacy because I always forgot to ask the right questions when someone was dropping off a prescription and dealing with insurance terrified me.
When I turned 16, I got a job at a restaurant that also sold pies. It was a fun job because most of the other servers (all girls) were in high school, so we did a lot of chatting when things got slow. It was pretty good money because you were guaranteed two busy times each night, the dinner rush and the pie rush. On some Saturday nights, groups of square dancers would come in, and it was always easy to figure out who was on each separate check since they wore coordinating outfits. I worked there all through high school and college, and by the time I went to college, I had enough seniority that I could just tell them the weekends I wanted to come home to work and which shifts I wanted.
After college, I went to graduate school where I worked in the lab when I wasn’t in class. After 5.5 years of graduate school and two fellowships (7 yrs total), I am in my 3rd year as a lab director.

[Elsha]

I also did the babysitting thing, from 12 to 16 or so. It was really weird after we had Kalena to imagine hiring a 12 year old to watch her, but I definitely watched babies at 12.

After that my first real job was at a call center. So, if you dialed the number for reservations at a Comfort Inn? You might have talked to me! It was actually a great job, good pay, guaranteed 40 hrs a week, and overtime (including overtime pay) was pretty much always available. I worked there for several summers.

Other than that I did an internship with a drainage water company and then graduated college and went to work at my first (and only) "career" job as a chemical engineer for an oilfield service company. My job history is not nearly as exciting as my husband's- he has worked in like every field ever.

[Mouse]

I won't bore you with my entire employment history but I like this post b/c it's fun to see what other ridiculous & hilarious things people have done to make a living. In highschool I was a CNA in a nursing home. I loved it, and would do it today if it paid more than $10/hour. There's no glory in a job like that, but there's a lot of satisfaction.

In college, one of my many jobs was on a research study for obese children at my college's medical school. I had to prepare their meals, which included weighing each food item down to the n'th gram. I remember cutting raisins in half to make an oatmeal raisin cookie the right size. That was horrific.

[Erin G]

I love this post and I want to write one too!

Also we started off very similarly with sitting and lifeguarding.