Jobs Jobs Jobs
M. and I were talking with our friend John the other night, and it came out that he’d only had three jobs, ever. Whereas M. and I have each had quite a few.. so we started trying to remember all the jobs we’ve had. It was hard! I still don’t believe I’ve remembered all of mine.
Babysitting was first, of course.
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Chrissy and Lissy, for oh so many years. They’re both married now. (Help me.)
The infant from next door with the nutball TMer mom.
Jennifer and Adam across the street (oh dear, that poor hamster). Occasionally I would babysit them across town at their dad’s house. He had them a couple days a month. And he had to hire a sitter. Nice.
Valerie, the ten-year-old who caught me watching scrambled porn.
The two-year-old who wanted to play with a big kitchen knife. There were a lot of bees in the yard, and I had to figure out how to not freak out about that.
Crystal’s little cousin. Spent most of that job watering the lawn by hand.
I can’t remember any more of those gigs at the moment.
The other jobs:
Picking blueberries — awesome job since I wasn’t doing it for a living
Flipping burgers at Gulliver’s (back when they operated out of a shack on one of the busiest corners in town — there’s an enormous hotel there now)
Cold calling for a market research company — only job I’ve ever walked out on
Packaging software — I think it was r:base but not 100% sure. They were competing with Microsoft (there was indeed a time when MS had competition)
The undergraduate library
Temporary jobs:
KC records and elections — a place full of silly-sounding legalese and lawyers with great big cell phones
Filing at a car dealership — after one day, decided not to subject myself to the harassment and declined to go back
Filing at a very tall building downtown
Inventory research for a recall at a major truck company — I was way young, poorly trained, and afraid to ask questions, and I did a horrible job. Fortunately the defect was not a life-threatening one
Doing something at an office park near my house — the job is completely forgotten, but the lunch hour was awesome. I’d sit on the curb in the parking lot and listen to the red-winged blackbirds singing their heads off, looking for mates.
Microsoft — some kind of warehouse work, not quite sure what. The supervisor was dating one of the other temps.
Microdi*k — software duplication company, entirely dependent on microsoft. Signed on for only three weeks, learned a great deal about how not to treat employees. Heh: just found an interesting article about how the company went under:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19971101/1349.html
Next: a large but independent book store, counting money all day — lasted over a year there, but finally couldn’t stand the co-workers any longer (there being but two varieties: crazy or cruel)
A short break, then the undergraduate library again (went back to school)
And the current library — ten years so far, woo hoo!
For each job, I will elaborate further in future posts.