I thought it might be interesting to have a thread discussing jobs/work we have held/done during our lifetimes. I have held more jobs/ done more types of work than I can now remember. Here are the ones I can, along with a few comments on some of them:
– Sold tickets to carnival rides at 5 years old. I was able to make change for any denomination bill at that time, and could accommodate any number of tickets at once. I became a draw card due to the novelty of it. I of course could only work but very short stretches, but remember enjoying it. People would line up to test whether the kid could make change for fives, tens, twenties.
– Assistant at carnival games from age 5. I would collect the fees and generally assist.
– House to house soliciting odd jobs from age 8
– Picking berries, beans, fruit from age 10
– Neighborhood lawn mowing from age 12
– Winter roadside coffee stand from age 12
– Summer lemonade stand at carnivals from age 12
– Boxboy age 15
– School Janitor age 16
– Landscape worker age 16
– Stock clerk age 16
– Landscape crew supervisor age 17. This was summer work. I supervised a crew of adults.
– Lawn mowing business from age 16 (landscape business did not offer that service, so I solicited the landscape customers I knew and built up a weekend run of 10 lawns at premium rates)
– Cafeteria worker age 18. Working my way through school!
– Oversaw demolition sale of large building age 19
– Shipping clerk age 19
– Asphalt worker age 20
– Sold watermelon and cantaloupes door to door and roadside
– Research assistant age 20
– Restaurant worker age 21
– Pumped interstate rest area septic tanks age 21
– Assistant manager retail store age 21
– Industrial engineer multinational corp age 22
– Senior research assistant age 24. Once again working my way through school!
– Alumni office staff age 25
– Manufacturing management age 26
– Plant superintendent very large factory multi-national corp age 27
– Plant manager large factory multi-national corp age 28
– Financial analyst and manufacturing ops, extremely large multinationally owned plant age 29, and beginning of my career as a turnaround specialist. Closed one of US’s largest midwestern unionized factories and relocated production to southern state. Union refused to renegotiate unsustainable contract, resulting in loss of thousands of jobs, and decimation of small local community.
– From age 30, I specialized in turnaround management of failing manufacturing businesses and plants. Jobs lengths were no more than 18 months, usually less. The companies were a mix of private and public, and plants were large, very large, and medium sized, every one of which was returned to profitability by time I departed.
– Business owner age 40
I have missed a few, I suspect. But as you can see, I have worked nearly all my life. The thought of a break, as some snowflakes now seem to have, is foreign to me – I always needed to make money. I did what I had to do. There was no other option. I have worked for money uninterrupted since I was 5. But I work less now than I used to.
What jobs have you monkeys done?
My first real money paying work was helping my Grandfather scrape and paint the house every Summer from the age of about 8 or 9. Everything else on the list was what I did outside of my family obligations, at first for neighbors, then for whoever was paying.
Washing cars and raking leaves, shoveling snow or mowing lawns depending on the season from the age of 10 to 18.
Splitting and stacking firewood and babysitting my school teachers kids, age 12- 13.
At 14 my best friend and I had our own firewood business and we’d pay his older brother to deliver it for us in his truck. We did this year round since we didn’t have a chain saw- we used an ax, a maul and a bow saw to harvest firewood from our property and would offer to clean up wood from neighbors property whenever there was a storm. In the Winter of 1973/74 there was an oil crisis and they rationed gas. In NJ you could only fuel up on odd or even days depending on the last number of your license plate. There were always lines at the Citgo station in our town so we would get up at 4am and brew coffee and fill large thermos bottles and then buy day old donuts from the bakery and head out with a red kids wagon and walk the lines selling coffee in paper cups with a donut for a buck a cup and a buck a donut before heading off to school. Back then it was considered highway robbery prices, but we sold out every morning and made enough money to buy our own chain saw, gas cans and an old Willys truck to haul our firewood. I remember having rolls of cash I kept in an old Chock Full ‘O Nuts coffee can in my closet, and never having to ask my parents for money for the things I wanted- mostly books and albums back then.
My first paycheck job @ 15 was at the local bookstore, unpacking new boxes and stocking shelves. That job both rocked and sucked because I built an impressive library but even with my employee discount I usually owed money at the end of every week.
I worked my first retail job at a frozen yogurt place in Princeton the next summer (because girls loved frozen yogurt) and it gave me an opportunity to interact with people.
– Transport canoes up the Delaware River and pickup canoeists down river age 16
– Stock boy at a health food store age 17
-Repo man for a TV rental company in North Philly age 17 (The very same 30 Blocks)
-Sold my paintings and painted logos and album covers on the back of people’s jean jackets (yes, that was a thing) age 17-18. Sorry to say I also sold pot back then too. Hey, it was the 70’s.
-Landscaping and koi pond installation in upscale neighborhoods, sold paintings at flea markets age 18-19
-Airborne Infantryman ages 20-24
-Started a construction company right out of the military ages 24- 27 building additions and pre-fab houses. Continued to sell landscape paintings and won jury awards in numerous shows.
-Construction Superintendent for a large commercial/industrial construction company in Philadelphia age 28-29.
-Stand-up comic at night (local to Philly) age 28-29, full time touring road comic age 29-40 also wrote for several magazines, did some commercial work, voice overs, etc.
-Business owner age 40-48
-Farmer age 48-?
Great thread. It was fun to try and remember all the things I have done, makes you understand the path you’ve taken and where all the skill sets come from.
Would do it all again in a heartbeat.
HSF – very cool. Maybe more in common than we thought!
Newspaper delivery, burger joint, started tarring and chipping gravel roads on my 17th birthday, currently an artist with the same company for over 29 years. Well I’ve been called an artist and every thing else in the book good and bad but that’s my favorite compliment ever. (heavy equipment)
Not once did I quit a job without finding another one first.
Some heavy equipment operators are indeed artists! Some, though, are ham-fisted neanderthals. Glad you are the former!
I started at age 5 or 6 working the farm with my grandfather. We lived across the street from a gravel pit and I set up a lemonade stand that racked in the dough (at that time no a/c in trucks ((mostly B Model Mack’s’-made in Allentown, PA)) and didn’t need any friggen permit. Caddying at age 9. I thumbed rides to and from the club (can you imaging your 9 year old thumbing rides today)? Worked in my dad’s plant at 16. Sold weed through college. All sorts of great times. I wouldn’t change a day of it.
Thanks for the memories.
CC – in the day, just be home before dark was the rule. Otherwise, we were on our own. Sometimes we were in the next county.
No shit. We’d get up, fight over the last half cup of coffee dad left on his was top work, eat cereal, watch an hour of cartoons before mom booted us out for the day. We had to be home for dinner at the table and then by the time the streetlights came on. Apart from that we ran like a bunch of heathens and quite often one or two counties away. Good times!
Lightning bugs coming out before I got to the dinner table meant I got a wooden spoon upside the head. Made me a quick learner.
I had all the glamorous jobs when I was young. Let’s see, cleaned cages in a pet store. Bushhogged orange groves. Dishwasher. Busboy. Waiter. Installed septic tanks. Construction laborer. Roofing laborer. Dispatcher. Airboat driver. And the only job that ever really suited me, bartender in a really nice joint. Other than that, with one little exception of about 2 years, I’ve worked for myself since I was 22.
Star – rather install septics than empty them!
It was new construction. On my last day, we had a repair. I was instructed to put a five gallon bucket on each foot and crawl down in the tank. I declined, and walked ten miles home. Edit: even though that was just a summer job the best thing was that was where I learned to operate a backhoe and a transit. Once you start seeing how things work, and are built and understanding how much equipment can do it changes your perspective on what is possible.
Another thing that changes perspectives is working in a large industrial facility. I have worked in oil refineries, chemical plants and specialty operations, and the size and scale you see open up your imagination.
I worked in the Texaco Port Arthur works, an oil refinery rated at 420,000 barrels per day. It covers hundreds of acres, has miles of pipe racks and tank farms larger than football fields. The actual units processed the crude oil into every kind of product imaginable (my favorite was the tiny Sewing Machine Oil unit; it ran for a few weeks every six months, and made enough in a few weeks to supply the year’s demand). Three and four FCCU were WWII units; six stories tall, nearly an acre each, steel and concrete and pipe and steel vessels and controls and cables and pumps and compressors; a twenty-something engineer could get lost for a few days before learning the way around.
Working in a massive enterprise unlocks the imagination.
James. Totally agree
Picking celery, age 13-15
Deliver papers, age 14-17
The contacts I made delivering papers brought me to more side jobs.
Helping to install sod in lawns, age 14-17.
Helping to roof houses, age 14-17 I hated roofing.
Cut lawns, age 14-17
Shovel driveways, age 14-17
Shovel roofs, age 14-17
Wash and wax boats at the marina, age 15-18, lots of hot rich girls, and moms.
Install Seawalls in Lake Michigan during man caused high water times, age 15-18 The lake is a lot lower now, also man caused. Fucking man.
Wash dishes in restaurants, age 17-18
Bus tables in restaurants, age 17-18
Worked as a runner for a bank. My “office” was the main vault, I had a million dollars at my feet once, age 17-18. Also was seduced by the bank vice president’s daughter, she loved to have sex in the strangest places and give head while I drove her around or in parking lots. Warped me for life.
Met my future bride in a campground while we “boys” were getting kicked out by the rangers.
Her dad owned a local union painting company. He really liked me and I became a union apprentice painter at 18.
My future father in law did not paint residential, at 19 I started a residential painting gig and worked nights and weekends painting houses while I sandblasted and sprayed epoxy for him during the day.
I was four days into 21 years and my wife was 20 when we got married in 1980. She was a dental assistant, we worked the side painting gig together and we also cleaned offices on the weekends. We called our side business M&S Painting and Janitorial, S&M Painting had a funny sound to it……
We had two beautiful healthy babies in 1982 and 1984, and my bride stayed home to raise them. She also started a day care business to replace the income she lost by quitting her day job to stay home.
I also lost my painting partner so I hired two, then three, then four painters as my side gig was really taking off.
Started my own commercial painting company in 1987 after my father in law got the goddam fucking cancer and succumbed.
We do $1.2-1.7 million a year in sales. Not huge but we are in a once manufacturing powerhouse of a smaller town in Michigan. Most of the large factories are long gone and empty fields now. Medical and facility painting is where it’s at today.
My bride bought an ice cream store last year. So while she doesn’t work with me at the paint company I help her at the store.
I’m 58 and I’ve been actively working towards selling the paint company, plan to be out in 2-4 years, sell ice cream on the shore of Lake Michigan in summer to be near our four beautiful healthy grandchildren, RV to Arizona, Utah, etc during the winter where we can hike and I can expand my life long hobby of photography.
Wow, my life posted on TBP, the years sure went by fast. Thanks Llpoh!
Interesting exercise considering that I could be in midst of another change. The wheels are coming off and might be time for retread.
12-15 Newspaper route
15-18 Stock boy at Grocer store
I might miss a few as I went to University interspersing it with
19 Picking Blueberries and Planting Trees
20 Prospected for Gold in the Cape Breton Highlands. Awesome job!
21 Worked at Dept. of Fisheries. Painting and helping build Fish Weirs
22 Employed as Geologist at Open Pit Gold Mine.
23-26 Stocked Vending Machines and eventually worked into being a technician of sorts.
26 Worked in Lab. I have covered that before.
27 Fisherman. Lobsters and Crab. Once I got over sea sickness it was and still is the best job I have ever had. I go out every setting day.
28-34 Milkman. Why one might say. Simple 3 small kids and a wife.
35-38 Production at a Tire Plant. Quit because it had highest incidence of Cancer of Any workplace in Nova Scotia. The lifers there took some pride in that Stat. Still can’t understand why.
Did that while going to school.
38-40 Mechanical Draftsman. Worked with a team on maintaining S-61 for RCN. They used a lot of acronyms there. Good people but not great pay.
40 to Present Rebar design using Cad and Cursing… I am getting tired of it. Too much sitting around. Might be time for a change.
Wish I could say I would do it all in a heartbeat again but that would be a lie. There are a couple of things I would rather skip. Still it has made me who I am..
Likely would never have risen to Manager of anything significant other than my life but could have done much more if I had of chosen to go down the road years ago like so many of my friends.
Sometimes wonder why I stay but then I go as I did last night to the Cove on the ocean near where I live. Watch a beautiful sunset on Northumberland Strait. My mind is put at rest once again. I am happy to not be living in a concrete paradise.
I have to laugh looking at all this on paper. My career meanders and has often strayed. I often ask myself why. The simple answer I suppose is that I vary from means to end and back. Often it seems. So the only thing to do is have a chuckle or two. And maybe a beer.
Anyways got a lawn to mow. Thanks lloph! This was a good exercise.
Paper Boy (4 am in the morn)
Picked Strawberries, beans, raspberries
Mowed Lawns
Washed Dishes
Crane Maintenance (non mechanical)
Farm Hand (potato irrigation)
Tree thinner / planter
Nuclear Navy
Plastic Injection operator (While in school – BS)
Thermal print head researcher
Process Control Engineer
System Admin (While in school – MS)
Designed tools for Neural Network Computer Chip
Designed process control user interfaces
Designed computer security products
Living with wife 24/7
J – living with wife is not a job, it is a sentence.
Ya. One you’d have gotten out of earlier if you’d just killed someone…
Both a job and a sentence.
8-12 Stocked shelves at my grandfathers grocery. Also mowed lawns and shoveled drives based on the season. Groundskeeping crew at local sports park.
12-15 Washed dishes at my dad’s catering business
15-18 Janitor at my old elementary school
18-21 Working my way through school working at a convenient store, delivering pizzas, etc.
21-Present Worked in construction equipment rental business. Started on the wash rack, moved up to mechanic, then shop foreman. Eventually moved to the rental counter, into sales, then management. (With some small gaps here and there)
25-28 Worked as a mechanic on an Indy Car team in the mid 90’s. Spent the month of May in Indianapolis. The team won a couple of poles for the race, but never took the Borg Warner.
28-29 Mechanic and pit crew for a stock car team. We ran ARCA and some Winston Cup races.
32 Ran a 110″ bearing race grinder at a machine shop.
44-Now Starting a new job this Tuesday as the asset division manager for a large development company.
Free – ever get to drive those things? That would be unreal.
The stock cars…yes. Indy car…not so much…I wanted to, but it was frowned upon.
Paperboy 13
Clerk at an AM/PM minimart 16
Drexel Co-Op jobs:
1. Mail/copy boy for insurance company in Philly 19 ( I had to take a trolley to 69th street and then the EL to 8th street for a $5.50/hr job for six months)
2. Ledger clerk at a manufacturer in Concordville 20
3. Junior accountant at Asher & Co. accounting firm in CC 21
First real job out of college – Asher & Co. Auditor 22
Assistant Controller – Waste Management – 24 ( The week I started the Controller informed me he was leaving and I was now the controller. I was clueless, didn’t know their systems, was managing 6 staff, and it was a takeover so they hated me. I also think the mob was involved in this particular division. The Regional VP yelled at me and told me to fix the division or I’d be fired. After a year of hell I had everything figured out and they were sending me to other fucked up divisions to fix them. I wanted to get my MBA and realized quickly it would not benefit me at this shady company. Top management was indicted a few years later.)
Reporting and Tax Manager – IKEA – 26 (Worked like a dog six days a week. Went to Villanova at night to get my MBA)
Treasurer & Tax Manager – IKEA – 30 (Saved the company millions in bank fees, taxes, credit card processing fees, debit card fees, and check losses. Got fed up after 4 years because CFO wouldn’t put me in charge of overall financial operations.)
Treasury Manager – Centeon – 34 (FDA shut down their one plant for making hemophilia drugs because of the Aids epidemic. IKEA decided to do a major North American expansion and the top financial guys in Sweden told the US CFO to get me back as the lead financial person)
Real Estate Controller – IKEA – 36 (Best few work years of my life. We built 12 stores and spent over $2.0 billion. I was responsible for picking the locations, figuring out sales, figuring out costs, figuring out ROI’s, convincing Sweden to say yes, and making sure we hit our budgets. Then in 2001 they promoted the fucking female HR manager to President. And my life went to hell. My boss left. She hated everyone he hired. I eventually negotiated a two year severance and left.)
Most embarrassing job story:
As soon as I left IKEA my headhunter snagged me a great paying job as Accounting manager at Nobel Learning Centers. I hadn’t been on the accounting side for 15 years, but I figured it was a stepping stone. I felt totally uncomfortable during my first two days. I realized I was going to hate the job and couldn’t sleep at night. On the third day, I concluded I couldn’t do this. I called my wife and told her. I then walked into the CFO’s office and told him I made a mistake and walked out the door and never came back. I even left my lunch in the refrigerator.
Assistant VP for Forecasting – Toll Brothers -41 (Even though I was there during the peak of the housing bubble and got paid very well, it was a soul crushing place to work. I hated every minute. When my forecasts of a huge downturn were ignored, I knew it was time to go. After I left they had 14 consecutive quarters of losses.)
Senior Director for Strategic Planning – prestigious university – 43 through 54
Very nice indeed, Admin. Thanks!
Women CEOs – the few I know are evil.
CEOs (male or female) in my lifelong experience are evil!
Laughing at the lunch left in fridge ??
It might still be there.
Good lord Admin it seems like the heaviest thing you picked up is a pen or maybe a pencil.
Best,
Bob
I’ve had to make the grueling walk from the parking lot to my desk for 32 years. And I’ve had to deal with uncomfortable desk chairs too.
Admin,
You are the best, there is a reason so many people comment here. Some of those desk chairs suck.
Bob
Llpoh, Looking at your resume at 21 one could conclude you couldn’t hold a job. LOL
10-14 paperboy
15 -18 retail sales
18 – door to door encyclopedia sales
19 -24 worked nights at the racetrack paying off winners while going to university
25- 29 continued working nights at the racetrack
27 -28 worked days picking orders in a warehouse
28 – 29 worked days as the buyer for different warehouse
30 – 61 owned a retail/wholesale business
61 – present — happily retired
I couldn’t tell you the name of the boss when I was a paperboy but could tell you the names of the other 5 bosses.
16-18 flipping burgers at Roy Rogers; Howdy Pardner!
18 -21 Air Force combat crew ICBM.
21 -24 Electronic tech mine communications, VCR TV, CD repair
24-38 Electronic tech gas detection equip.
38-54 Field Service Engineer, with a 1 year sabbatical in there to study bible, visit churches, learn to listen/follow the Holy Spirit.
54- Repair tech for metro transit.
Nice to reflect on where I’ve been!
Odd jobs from 12-16: babysitting, taking care of people’s lawns and gardens when they were on vacation. At 16 I got a real, part-time job in a gas station and parts store. When I went to college I worked at the desk at a dorm, then resident assistant, then on the campus police. During the summers I worked residential construction, at a Greek fast food place, selling books for Time-Life books over the phone, as an intern in the US Senate, and keeping a cotton yard clean at a cotton gin. At graduate school I worked as a legal intern and as an interbank foreign exchange broker. One summer I worked in the bar department of a Reno casino and for a parking lot cleaning service. First job out of grad school was a municipal bond trader at a SF bank. From there went to on to trade at the LA office of a Wall Street firm and eventually managed the office. Switched and went to an LA based regional firm, where I ran the fixed income department and eventually was put on the management committee. I worked there from 1990-2012. During that time I self-published my first novel and began working on my second. In 2012 I began blogging and writing novels full time. Have published my second and third novels and am working on number four. I am also involved as an investor and part-time executive for a firm commercializing a spraying technology. There you go.
At age 8, I had two paper routes complete with a 5-speed Schwinn with dual baskets.
Odd jobs thru age 14 when I began my first job at a grocery store. To get the job, I stopped in for several weeks until one day the owner shook his head, before laying it on his arm on his desk and saying: “You’re hired. Come back on Monday.” I wore him down.
Worked there all through high school and over 60 hours a week during the summers, including my 1st two summers home from college. I was the owner’s best employee and he would often let me run the place. I remember waxing and buffing floors until 3 AM. Never got to attend HS football or basketball games because I worked every weekend; but I did get time off for wrestling.
In college, I took a job one semester as a janitor for some extra money. I had a black lady for a boss who hated me at first, until the professors complemented her for my work. They said they never had their rooms so clean. Soon she had me show all of the other janitors my secrets including using a damp cloth to wipe down the chalkboards so they looked brand new every morning.
They say sales is the highest paid, and lowest paid, profession in the world. I guess I was just lucky. Bought my first house at age 22 and had it paid off in 7 years. The 1990’s were very good to me. Started my own business at the age of 38 and went Galt years later, in 2011.
Now I do consulting for a few select companies who pay me generously. I still drive a 10 year old car, mainly because I am thrifty, and loyal. But my kids have zero college debt.
Thanks America! You were awesome.
“complete with a 5-speed Schwinn with dual baskets”
Sweet! I bet that baby could really move!! 🙂
Yeah, I thought I was the shit back then. My rig even had a banana seat.
All the guys wanted to be me, and the chicks just wanted me. ?
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My work truck and chick mobile from the 80’s. It got me everywhere and it was always a piece of cake to find a date on the weekend with it. It was bitchin. Totally rad.
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Only on TBP would two middle-aged businessman, from separate countries show off their first, sweet rides on a fine Sunday afternoon.
First paid job age 14 swept floors and cleaned stuff and racked steel and did general labor at a structural steel factory for a summer.
Age 15 started working after school as a night janitor at the local grade school, swept all the floors, mopped all hallways and cleaned every toilet and urinal in the building every night. Every summer and winter break worked days with the main janitor, an old WW2 vet, and learned to paint, scrub and wax floors, and listened to war stories from a master storyteller. Did this job all through high school.
Started working for a garage builder after high school, walking was not allowed at a job site, you had to run or walk damn fast. Got docked 5 minutes every time you stopped to take a drink of water.
Worked for a Finlander building houses, where every damn person spoke Finn, except me, and some didn’t even speak English. Stepped on some old Finlander’s folding wood rule the second day and broke it, that didn’t go over to well.
By age 20 and no house building in the winter, went to a steel factory and learned to weld and make steel stairs and railings.
Age 22 back to construction as it paid better. Working at whatever project I could hire on at. When job was over and out of work, I’d just get up in the morning and pack my lunch and drive around to construction sites and try to hire on. I made it my job to find a job, and never seemed to have a problem with it.
With the skills I had learned in construction and steel (and high school drafting class), I ended up learning how to prepare shop drawings for steel fabrication shops.
Worked in my 30’s as a draftsman for a Fab shop.
Eventually started my own “freelance” steel shop drawing business, nights after my day job, using paper and pencil, and a used drafting machine set up on a board on the kitchen table.
After a couple years of this moonlighting, I gave up “the illusion of security” that was my day job and began working for myself full time, doing drafting work for several Fab shops.
Eventually my son came to work for me, and dragged me kicking and screaming into the computer drafting world.
Presently I work for my son, the best damn boss I ever had.
Common theme here: TBP monkeys are hard workers! No parasites around here.
Damn,
Not sure I could remember them all. These are the main ones I can think of:
Started with a paper route at age 8. Did that till I was 11.
Always shoveling snow in the winter. Made good money at it.
Casual farm labour over summers every year until I graduated high school. Favorite jobs were cleaning grain bins (I still spit black shit out of my lungs from that one!) and roguing crops which is weeding section upon section of organic and pedigree crops by hand. My favorite was pulling sweet clover out of alfalfa crops (a thick nasty vine of a crop) in ninety plus degree heat in amongst leaf cutter bees all day long. Got paid extra if we picked up deer sheds because they were hard on tractor tires. That was a double win because I would keep the sheds and make things out of them
Have cut, split and stacked more firewood than I can recall – we heated our homes with it up until about ten years ago. Gas was back up. My old man was cheap. So am I. He also thought it was a good activity for sixteen-year-olds that came home late and drunk on Friday nights. “Suns up in the swamp!! Move your ass – wood needs to be split and stacked.” I love you too dad.
Apparently, the payment for that job is room and board. My kid has it easy by comparison.
Painting. Sanded and painted the house, the garage, and the fence one summer. In return, my folks paid for me to go to a Boy Scout jamboree that year half way across the country. A good time was had by all. And the house looked great. I think was 11.
Working in the garden. Garden was about a quarter to half an acre in size and had to be weeded constantly. It was a pain in the ass but the payoff was great. We were poor by most people’s standard but ate like kings.
Janitorial from age fourteen to grad. I was the only kid in town with keys to the local Co-op butcher shop and one of the local banks. I cleaned them five days a week under contract. I am now a clean freak as a result. I hate a mess.
After high school:
Poured concrete and general construction labour.
Drove delivery truck.
Worked in a lube and wash bay.
Cleaned dishes.
Short line cook.
Various social work jobs during university and for a short time afterward. Too many details here to list. Hated it all and found out quickly I wasn’t cut out for government work of any kind as I expect people to use their heads and smarten the fuck up on their own accord.
Ran my own little data analysis company on the side doing work for said government and private agencies, surveying employees and the public etc with regards to work satisfaction and service delivery issues etc. Also hated that. It was a waste of time and money and I knew it. Was happy as a cat in a hat when I shut it all down.
Shipping/receiving. I went to work for a small ma and pa sporting goods business at the time I had quit social work (didn’t want to be on employment insurance and didn’t want to sit around and find myself – just wanted to work). I learned the business starting in the back. I taught myself a lot and was given a huge amount of free reign to do as I pleased. The owners were smart people. We worked hard together and built a small family owned business into a fifteen thousand square foot internationally renowned business over the period of a decade. I ended my career there as the buyer/importer and sales manager as well as being a part of the marketing team.
In the end, I started asking myself why I was generating millions of dollars in revenue for someone else and not myself. It was a good question – one I could not get out of my head no matter how hard I tried. So I found a partner, scraped together the pesos and the rest is history. Now, a decade later I am a hamster on a wheel just like my old bosses/mentors were! 🙂 Good times…
8-11 Blueberry picker. 5 cents a Dixie cup. To this day all my best recipes for blueberries are measured in 5 oz. Dixie cups.
11-17 Babysitting, children’s party planner, camp counselor
16-28 Various restaurant; pizza maker, line cook, waitress, bartender, hostess
17-32 Various retail; clerk, stocking, order pulling, dept. manager
30-45 Intermittent adjunct faculty; math, stat, CS
32-35 (and 47 for Y2K) Computer programmer (old school style in FORTRAN and COBOL)
35-55 Government contractor; biostatistics, epidemiology, statistical programming, public health, actuary
55-65 Property management, landlady, general contractor, house flipper
Throughout – all the usual family stuff: elder/child/home care, etc.
Have been a student all my life, both formally and not.
My grandfather owned a large mechanical engineering company, and a wholesaler, attached to it.
When I was 10 or 11, I began to repair refrigerators / ice makers / window A/C’s. Replace compressors, evacuate and charge systems – no all that hard. It was a great background – soldering / electrical / working with various gases.
Around 14 I worked at the city desk. Learned how to cross-reference parts.
Intermittently when I was in college, repaired refrigeration systems for larger restaurants / small grocery stores. Fixing beer coolers in the basements of bars – really sucks.
I went to Lehigh Univ when I was 16, graduated in engineering. Went to Penn State and graduated with a MS in Comp Sci, at the age of 22.
First job was at NASA, Langely Research Center.
Raytheon Submarine Div.
Electric Boat
Finally CDC in Mls – worked on the F-16, interplane communications for fly-by-wire.
Became a consultant, and eventually started a small company with a sales force to sell my own software.
Dutchman,
I could tell you were smart, but really. Very cool.
Bob.
This is really weird, since my husband and I were just talking about the kinds of things we did to earn dollahs as kids versus what millennials seem willing to do (nada).
Picked blackberries all summer to sell for $1.75 per gallon. (My mother had a quarter mile row of blackberry vines planted between fields on the farm. NOT thornless, by the way.) By getting up at daylight, I could pick my one gallon required for Mom and move on to pick until the sun came up. The summer I was 11, I earned a couple hundred dollars and my arms and hands were purple from scratches and stains.
Lawnmowing the church yard, which was 2 full acres and had to be mowed with a push mower. My sister and I shared the job and the pay, which was $20 per mowing. That was in the early 1970s.
Grocery store cashier… at age 16, I purchased my sister’s POS Vega for $300 and got a real job at a grocery store. Back then, the registers weren’t automatic and being a cashier involved having to count your till at the beginning and end of a shift, being responsible for shortages (but not overages) to the manager. I rarely had a perfect till and to this day, I don’t understand how 37 or 43 cents difference came about when I tried to be so careful. I was never off more than a dollar or so.
Age 17… Meat department assistant. The butcher took a liking to me and asked I be transferred to the meat department. It was a good move, since I learned a LOT about how to pick a good cut of meat, as well as how to cut and store meat. The lecherous butcher was harmless.
Age 19… having performed poorly at my first year of college, I traipsed off to Texas and worked at a convenience store for a few months, then landed a job as a lab technician at an oil refinery. Since it paid a whopping $10.75… $12.75 (shift differential) depending on which swing shift I was on, I considered myself to be “in the money” and rode that job all the way to the oil bust in 1983
Age 22… worked at a burger barn in a local small town making waitress wages where no one tipped EVER while returning to college. Some weeks, my paycheck would be less than $20, but at least it contributed to groceries for myself and my sister and her son. Bad, bad times.
Age 23… joined the USAF in order to help my sister finish college, but it turned out to be one of the best decisions I’d ever made. Active duty for 10 years, then separated and finished college.
Age 35ish… government contract work, which gave me a bad attitude about a lot of things. However, it paid well and my husband and I resolved to save all the money I made so we could get out of Dodge.
Age 50 to present… working for ourselves on 40 acres in the hills… WAY outside of Dodge.
Youth through High School
12 or so…picked strawberries and string beans
12 or so…early morning paper route
15, worked in a fruit cannery. Got fired.
16-18…worked in several frozen veggie packing plants/canneries. Most important job I attained was Broccoli line sanitation supervisor.
College years-
Sold pot
Painted houses (had my own business). Being a budding libertarian I called it, “Laizzez Faire Painting Co.” The guys at the paint store called me the lazy fairy. Fuckers.
Worked as a waiter. Got fired.
Sold insurance door to door (worst job of my life).
Sold yellow page advertising
Journalist for a muck raking tabloid. I was inspired by Woodword an Bernstein. Fun times, lousy pay.
Post College-
Designed custom homes for a construction company
Consulted with a new company that made architectural products out of compressed straw.
Draftsman/Industrial designer in the snack foods/frozen potato products industry.
Outside salesman/engineer for processing systems in the food/beverage/dairy industry. I was 28 and this was the first job I really enjoyed. I worked my ass off doing sales, engineering, project management, installation supervision and start-ups. It was also the time I started pissing off worthless lazy fucks who had been around for years usually by ignoring them, which means it was the time I started understanding how the old boy system works when I was fired six years later.
34 Consulting engineer. Same industry. Got some revenge by inadvertently (really!) causing ex-employer to lose over 10 million in contracts over the next two years. Ha ha!
45-55 Accredited auditor for a national standards company. Same industry. Inventor of several complex and expensive processing systems including a system to accelerate the hydration of legumes (worked with Oregon and Michigan State University who helped me with the process and analysis end) and a continuous curdforming system for cheese. Also an improved hygienic connection for pipes.
54-55. Toyed with being the resident engineer/facilities manager at a collective farm in the middle of nowhere to prepare to observe the end of the US empire with a mixture of fascination and horror. Bunch of lazy old hippies; not a good fit
55-56 Senior engineer for a design/build French conglomerate. Big mistake. Fuck the french.
56- present. Senior engineer for a design/build German conglomerate. Much better. Beer > Wine.
Future- Don’t see retirement anytime soon. I suspect I would just sit around, drink too much and piss off neocons on the internet, plus I’m still paying off the ex-wife.
Z – nice stuff (save for the standards auditor – I hate them.).
Never trust someone who has never been fired (really!). You seem very trustworthy! ?
Yeah, I get it. Some of the enforcement group had a cop mentality, but they were usually from an FDA or USDA background. My attitude was different. I was more of a consultant in that I believed my job was to help get them in conformance. I never rejected any manufacturer I visited. Some dropped out of the program after deciding the costs weren’t worth it, but otherwise I waited until they had implemented any mandatory changes before submitting my report. It was boring and tedious work though. I liked touring manufacturing plants, but going through all the documents, drawings and such was awful. I also refused to deal with any asian companies.
We are quality certified. We used to get Asian Indian auditors, year after year. They are administrative pricks. I called the company and told them never to send another Indian auditor. They sputtered and carried on. But relented. They sent a Polish auditor next. He was our auditor for years. When he died, we went with a small firm where the auditor is the owner. Why no native born Americans? Hell if I know.
Conveniently, left off that brief stint with the IRGC….
:^)
Funny. It reminds me that I left out an important part, as far as my TBP identity is concerned. I did work in Iran a dozen years ago. It was an eye opener and I’ll never be the same as before. I came back with a mission to do what I could do to bring our respective people closer together and to ridicule everyone (and every country) who stands in the way. I came back to speak the truth about that country and it’s extremely complex society. I am not an ethnic iranian, female or otherwise but rather a son of the pioneers from Oregon.
khoda hafez!
I appreciate your honesty, devotion and determination, and I have no hatred for your adopted country, and more and most especially, its people. ( We should have left well enough alone there.) To the contrary. Go in peace..Complex indeed.
Zara, Iranians identify as Persians don’t they?
ID,
Iran is about 50% ethnic Persians (more if you include other related Aryans). In fact, Persia is a province of Iran (Pars). Really Iran is what is left of the last Persian Empire and encompasses many ethnicities, including Armenians, Ajeris, Turks and other indo-European ethnicities. Because of this there have been and continue to be furtive attempts by certain foreign governments to foment ethnic tension in Iran. These attempts have failed because the ethnic minorites have been a part of Iran for so long that they see themselves as Iranian first. Not long ago a Jewish member of parliament said that exact thing (“I am an Iranian first and a Jew second”). Consequently as unpopular as the central government is over there, it is also quite stable. I would say that there is tension with the Kurds which appears to be rising as it seems that the possibility of a Kurdish state emerging from the ruins of Iraq is rising. The Kurds are also under some persecution in that they are “discouraged” from using their own language in schools and the like in favor of farsi. Most Kurds are also sunni muslim although in Iran there is very little tension between islamic sects. The sufis occasionally face some discrimination. All of this is to my awareness…
Z,
You worked in Iran what a surprise.
Bob.
Well this is weird. I spent the time to post me curriculum vitae, edited it and now it has disappeared.
For some reason it got caught in the spam filter.
ahh, thanks.
Oddly, someone with your same name has a long list of stuff right before your comment …..not sure if it is “curriculum vitae” or not but it was a pretty good read anyway.
Oddly enough I’ve done just about everything in the above comments.Give or take a few . My most interesting job as a young man was working as a bartender in a nude bar for a summer.Eye opening experience .Drugs were everywhere.Anything you wanted you could get.By the time summer was over I was still broke.I had not saved any money.I finally realized it was time to get out while I still had my sanity.
I’ve been a farm boy my whole life. Dropped out of college (music) my first semester to help my father save the family farm and have been here ever since. I haven’t regretted any of it. I’ve expanded the operation over the decades to keep it interesting, over the years raising hay and grain, mint and sugar beets. I run cattle, have a vineyard and winery and am developing a distillery to distill the local rye. This in So. Oregon/N Calif.
I did bitch work out in the yard for my parents for money since my childhood memories began. I was ALWAYS made to earn any money my parents gave me. Starting around 10 or so, I started doing things for other nearby family members and neighbors. Did anything people wanted me to do, including cleaning out gutters (my least favorite by far). I did all of this in my immediate biking/walking distance until I could drive.
At 16 I got my first real job at a nursery. I sat out back with a radio, and loaded heavy shit like pine straw, bags of mulch, sod, etc into people’s cars and trucks in the hot sun. Also, during christmas season I was one of the guys tying trees to the top of your cars. Great job, paid me 6.45 an hour, I believe. Nursery let me go shortly after christmas, went out of business a few months later.
16-17 worked as a busboy at a restuarant.
18-21 while in college I worked in various restaurants. I was busboy, waiter, dishwasher(preferred this weekend mornings since i didn’t have to deal with people and I could be hungover as hell), cook, and my favorite, bar tender.
After college, while waiting to join military, I did landscaping for a while. We did mostly residential lawn upkeep, but also planted a ton of shit, and had several commercial properties as well. I ran a crew 0f 2-4, depending on if I had to drive to the gas station near the mexican part of town and pick up a couple illegals for a day.
Joined the military, saw some parts of the world, now I work in the marine industry.
Millennial reporting in.
9-17, farm boy. I was big for my age, so I had to do the “brute” work while my younger brother actually was the one on the tractor. Anyway….typical farm stuff. Built fence, split wood, dug ditches, raised cattle, raised hogs (feeders to finish, no farrowing), rehabbed and broke horses, harvested eggs, and tended the garden. Probably some other stuff I’m missing. I used to get “subbed” out to do manual work for other farms.
17-19, laid pavers, built retaining walls, and built fences. I had a knack for the vinyl and wood fence, I led the crew on those jobs. I also worked the company store on the weekend and did odd jobs like buck bales and the like on sundays. No small wonder I wrecked my shoulders when I did lol
19-20, Worked in a lumber yard. Measure, cut, stack. Helped people load up. They always made me move the railroad ties because I was the only one who could do it without help and we were always short laborers.
20-25, tech at hospitals. To this day I miss working with my hands, but this job had benefits and I often could squeeze in some homework on my night shift. Both nightshifts and spare moments didn’t exist in outdoor work.
23-25, grad school. Taught classes, tutored, maintained labs and such, inventory, and ofc, research
23-25, unpaid internship for a lab.
23-25, unpaid work at non-profits.
For those keeping track, the hospital gig was friday and saturday nights from 6pm to 6am. The grad-work was about 20 hours a week of assorted teaching and other hours. The unpaid internships was 40 hours. The non-profit work was about 10 hours a week. During my interview for my current job the CEO expressed disbelief. We tallied it up and it came out to about 120-140 hours a week of work during school semesters, about 90 a week during summers. I typically slept from 3-7am during the week, and from 6:30-10:30 on weekends.
After that I still had my masters.
I won’t go too much further into it. I got my degree, and landed a good job thanks to my internship and non-profit connections.
30, Now I’m working outside the lab, primarily in the land of production and management.
Age 14-17 caddy Inverness Golf Course Toledo Ohio. Was a forecaddy for the 80 Us Open.
19-20 A&P mechanic Crowe incorperated. Then a law was passed throwing about 300,000 avation techs out of business. More that a few Aviation names went bancrupt.
20-23 Night Manager Point Place Ammoco. Manager meant I could count and did not steal. First job where I carried concealed.
23-31. Auto service technician various employers. ASE master cert at age 26 and ever since. Then started to have back problems.
32-38 Auto Instructor. From basic to Advanced auto tech. Tried to start a company to train technicians for the IM240 testing and repair in Ohio due to the very poor classes then available. Found out Snap on tools had gotten a sweet deal from the State on training and I would not be able to certify any students. This was my first eye opening experiance on the whole snake eating its own ass form of governmant.
38-49. Auto center management for stores from 1 to 3 million in sales. Included a 1 year sentance ar Sears where I found out that productivity was placed behind bean counting and wether my shop was diverse or alternative lifestyle friendly.
49-present. Faced with Burn out and a health crisis I have been a well paid service adviser at my current employee who limets my stress level. Absent 6 little numbers I will end my working career here.
As a kid I did it all from lemonade stand to washing cars, mowing grass, shoveling snow, babysitting kids, collecting cans and bottles, selling fishing worms, etc. First real job I had was shoe shine boy in a military barber shop. I made a small fortune there and got good enough to do boots and shoes for the resident base honor guard.
Next up was a series of 8-10 jobs after school and during the summers as a high school kid. Warehouse worker, asphalt road repair, tool crib attendant, janitor, painter, parts runner for aircraft parts and a few I can’t recall.
After high school I worked as a mechanic/service station attendant and warehouse worker. I had several secondary and tertiary jobs during that time as well. After getting married I worked as a contract stocker in a military commissary, Royal Mail Postman and I cleaned and sanitized a butcher shop daily. All those jobs were worked concurrently. Made a real nice fortune there due to being paid in British Pounds and then making a killing on converting them back to dollars. I even started my own currency exchange bank on the side making even more money. To top it off, all income I earned during that four year stretch was tax free.
Coming back to the states I reinvented myself as a concrete mason. Because concrete work dries up in the winter I had winter jobs washing and detailing semi tractors and trailers and doing most kinds of residential construction. Over the years I did everything from foundations to framing, roofing, insulating, plumbing, drywall and landscaping. About the only things I never did was HVAC and electrical as those were pretty specialized but I did learn enough that I can do my own HVAC and electrical work around my house. I can operate all kinds of heavy and small equipment.
After that I started my current job working in the fab department of a semiconductor manufacturer. I moved to the polishing department and finally moved into crystal growth where I have become one of only three people in the world capable of doing my job. Throughout this job I’ve been doing maintenance and repair of the equipment involved.
I’m currently working with local business owners through the SBA to determine the viability of a business my brother and I want to start. This venture will appeal to home owners, car owners, property management companies, grain silo operator owners and hunters. It has the potential to quadruple my current salary and I can still keep my current job as well as finance the entire venture out of savings for less than $15,000.
I’m always looking for work to do. I still shovel snow and mow grass for neighbors although that’s mostly for free these days. Opportunities abound and you never know where the next one will pop up so keep your head (and mind) on a swivel and never burn any bridges.
I can’t even imagine being stuck in one job or career track for my whole life. That would be like jail in my mind.
Just remembered a few more. Picked fruit as a kid, mostly peaches. That job sucked ass until I learned about baby powder…..same trick worked when insulating houses. Paperboy delivering the Stars & Stripes door to door in my Spanish neighborhood throughout high school. Worked in a private junk yard locating and removing parts as customers requested them. Got paid extra to build and maintain an inventory of what was in the yard.
Bought, repaired & detailed and sold used cars to finance a race car habit. Built high dollar, high horsepower racing engines for drag and circle track. Street racing engines were more lucrative.
That contract stocking gig I had was my own business and the first time I hired anyone. That allowed me to gobble up all the contracts keeping the best and most lucrative contracts for myself and farming the others out. Having all the contracts meant I had to coordinate all the store displays and food/product demos as well. This was when I worked as a postman and cleaned the butcher shop. I worked ALL the fucking time!
Like others, I would do it all over again a heartbeat!
I started working at twelve, doing ironing for the lady next door. Babysitting came along and kept me busy for several years. For three summers in high school I worked at A&W Root Beer washing mugs, cooking fries, and waiting on customers at the walk-up window. My most memorable customer threw two small root beers in my face because I charged him 1 penny tax! I also worked at Christmas time wrapping presents for a clothing store.
I spent summers and Christmas vacations during college working for my stepfather’s butcher business and meat market, where I waited on customers, stocked shelves, and wrapped thousands of packages of meat for his custom cutting business, usually a half or whole animal at a time, beef, lamb, and pork. (Maggie and I could reminisce.) My last summer in college I worked at a camp in Connecticut which had as clients Jewish kids, mostly from Manhattan and New Jersey, who were dispatched for 6 weeks to fun in the sun.
My first post college job was in San Francisco at a company that designed and administered pension plans for small businesses. I think I was called an “actuarial technician.” It was fun as I recall, and I commuted to and from work by cable car down and up steep California Street.
Then I got the bug to be a teacher so went back to school for a year, then moved to a small town in Wyoming where I taught for a year and then was interrupted by babies that began to arrive. Back in California, I began to teach English classes part time at a community college and also founded and administered a cooperative home school with some other families. I did that for eight years. I also did curriculum work and administered a vocational education grant and continued to teach classes at the college. Eventually, I also commuted 85 miles one-way twice a week to obtain a Master’s Degree in teaching English as a second language.
Then I got a job teaching in a prison school, first with lifer Mexicans to improve their English skills. (I know, I know, your tax dollars at work.) These guys had committed some heinous crimes but never gave me a bit of trouble. Then I was moved to a lower level yard to prepare guys to take the GED test, then was made the person in charge of all the intake testing and GED testing. I enjoyed my time there immensely.
After moving to Southern California I worked for 11 years in an inner-city middle school teaching Language Arts until I got tired and retired. Someone just asked me to teach some guys in a drug rehab program some basic math skills for one morning a week, which I am considering. Also homeschooling grandkids three days a week (mom does other two) and substitute teaching now and then. Some days I wonder what it is like to be retired.
Every job is a school in itself, the best education there is. I’m sorry today’s young people don’t have near the opportunities for the variety of work experience most of us did.
Gayle, sounds like you have a great opportunity to start a business augmenting home schoolers in some way.
I_S
Thank you. There was a time when that had more potential. Home schooling has gotten so big that there are lots of support groups offline and on, as well as a plethora of free materials and advice online. If anybody who reads TBP wants help or advice, though, I would love to be of assistance (no charge of course).
I might just take you up on that. My best friend, who I’ve mentioned here a few times, adopted his grandson and despite being in a shitty neighborhood with poor schools has managed to keep him on the straight and narrow and interested in school.
The kid is turning 15 next month and he loves math and music. We are both looking for ways to keep his interest up in these areas by perhaps showing him the potential careers that might be open to him in these fields. We need to know how to find good tutors in these areas and how to identify and arrange a little one, two or three week hands on ojt experience where he can see what the work is like in real world businesses and situations.
Come to think of it, a business providing exactly that kind of service might be worth investigating as a niche job.
Any ideas?
I_S
[email protected]
This was fun to read everyones comments.
As a youngster 10-12 I had a paper route. I started cutting grass around 11 using my dads mower. By the time I was 12 I bought my own mower for cash and continued to do different kinds of yard work until I started high school. Managed to save a nice little stack of cash.
Summer of my freshman year I worked on a landscape crew, Learned how to do rip rap and rock walls from a old Yaqui Indian, also learned flagstone patios, redwood decks. In addition to being a master stone mason he was a masterful story teller. Did this job with him for three summers. Learned a little Spanish and much about central america.
When I was 15 -16 I got a job running a concession stand at firebird raceway. My booth was near the finish line. I loved watching the jet dragsters for free. Was also the first job where I made a wage plus commission. Was not unusual to come home with 3 or 4 hundred dollars on a Friday or Saturday night.
Senior year I grew and slung weed.
18-22 U.S Army paratrooper.
22-25 went back to landscaping with small family firm. Did terracing hillsides with railroad ties. More rock work. Installing sprinklers and sod on numerous football fields. Learned to run backhoe/ loader. Had a side business plowing snow from upscale subdivisions when the winter slowdown came.
25-26 Moved to las Vegas and sold water treatment equipment door to door.
26-27 went into installing, repairing H20 treatment Equipment.
27-46 Started my own water/plumbing business. Became the best at what I did and made top dollar. Also sold three houses between 35-45 making a nice profit each time.
47-50 took a part time job running a waste tire recycle facility ended up moving up to running the landfill. Got a Cdl, learned to operate a 10 wheel dump, transport backhoes on 40 foot trailers. Also learned how to pull and drop 40 yard boxes on a roll off. Also bigger backhoes with Grapples.
50 decide to try our hand at homesteading full time rehabbing our 60 year old stone/block house with the wife. Thoughest job yet.
Now keeping my eyes open for new opportunities that will work with our new lifestyle.
What great stories. Hard-working, one and all. My kids would not be able to list things from their younger years – they worked in the family biz when on breaks. Honestly, they had it much easier then I did, or all of you who have posted. My demands of them were few – chores, work on breaks at the biz, do well in school. They always received an allowance. They really never had to work, as the rest of us obviously did. But in the end, I demanded just enough of them, it seems.
Great topic llpoh! I love recalling all of the things I’ve done. Although a number of the jobs did suck, when I look back on it, all I really remember is the fun I had. I’ve always found a way to make work fun, a challenge or an adventure. You get to learn and observe so many things along the way both good and bad. I’d absolutely do it all again.
Age 5 – 8 My father owned two businesses at the time I was 5, grocery store and a vending machine business. Us kids helped count the money and package coins in the coin wrappers and at that time although we didn’t work the register we were taught how to make change. We helped stock shelves and part of that was to rubber stamp the price on items as we put them on the shelves.
Age 10 At that time we were living in the country – in the summer we picked strawberries and prunes to buy our own school clothes. From that time on, other than the Christmas gifts or birthday gifts of a shirt or pants, we kids bought all our own clothes.
Age 11 helped my father build a barn in addition to other chores such as feeding and caring for and butchering various animals.
Age 12 my father started “the egg business”. It began small with buying a few hundred dozen of eggs from local farmers each week and then transporting them in to suburbs in the city. As my father drove the station wagon thru the streets of various housing tracts, we kids would walk door to door selling “fresh from the farm eggs”. We did this on the weekends. How many miles we walked every weekend, I have no idea.
This business grew to where we were delivering mostly to grocery stores and restaurants, no longer doing the door to door delivery. THANK GOD I hated doing that. At that time the labor intensive part of the business was the candling of the eggs. That was a process of checking EACH and EVERY egg by holding it up to a light to check for blood spots inside the egg and also to check for cracks in the shell. Everyone in the family spent several hours two days during the week plus Saturdays in addition to us kids doing our homework for school. This was an extremely labor intensive part of the business. I eventually (invented?) designed and built some equipment and developed a process to where we were able to do the candling process about 10x more efficiently. This allowed the business to grow to the point where when my father sold the business (because us kids grew up and moved out) we were shipping about 50 thousand dozen eggs a month. At that time I was also driving one of the trucks on the delivery routes. Father sold the egg business when I was 19.
Age 14 in addition to working in the egg business I worked part time as a dishwasher at restaurant at a local golf club.
Age 19 worked at a local cannery driving forklift and driving truck. (Big trucks) I was driving trucks that require a CDL and I didn’t have a CDL – that’s another story.
Age 20 worked as a draftsman in electronics. I was taking various engineering/electronics classes at night school which Led to becoming a Designer which led to becoming an Engineer.
Age 29 worked as a Quality Control Manager at a Printed Circuit Board Manufacturing Co. When I first took that job their failure rate was horrible and the company was headed for bankruptcy. They would start a production run with 10% overage and ship short the majority of the time. When I left that position there failure rate was below 3 % and were extremely profitable.
Also when that company became successful and grew out of their existing facility I was tasked with designing their new facility. I took what was a drawing of only the shell of a building to be built and designed everything that was to go inside. The electrical systems, the pollution control system I did the engineering on the ventilation system, the vacuum system (yes two different systems), the entire inside of the building. I was then in charge of overseeing the construction of the building.
Age 36 – 52 Owner, ran my own Engineering/consulting service. I did work for many of the well-known electronic companies, Hewlett-Packard, National Semi, Stanford Telecommunications and many more. I would get work that was overflow to their capability volume wise, or cases where they didn’t have the technical experience needed for a project. It was not uncommon for me to take on projects that were considered impossible. — That’s another story – many stories actually.
Age 53 – 63 Contract/Consultant Electronics Engineer. Worked at companies such as Cisco, Sun, Apple and …..
There’s more but these are the main jobs I’ve had.
In parallel with my working career I’ve owned rental property from the age of 22 on.
Retired at 63 but still working, spending most of my time remodeling and maintaining my rentals.
ASIG, you should write up a few of those “impossible stories” and send them to admin as main articles. I love troubleshooting and problem solving so those would make excellent topics for me.
I’d love to see llpoh elaborate on his most interesting business turnaounds.
ASIG – interesting how a person’s background shows through in their views of the world. I have always admired yours.
Would love to hear more, per IS’s comments.
some of the most important, the most basic of lessons to learn about work, I learned in that first job that I worked picking strawberries and prunes the summer I was 10. These are lessons some people never learn their entire life. Why? Because those jobs I worked that year were “Piece Work” jobs, a situation not very many people ever experience.
In a piece work environment some things are abundantly clear, so much so that no one needs to tell you.
1 ) Just showing up is of no value to the employer.
2 ) The more you produce, the more value you are to the employer and the more you’re going to get paid. The more you produce is linked to you getting paid more.
As I said some people never figure those two things their entire life.
As a result of #2 above I quickly realized that if I could pick twice as much I’d make twice as much, or better yet if I could pick three times as much I could make three times as much and so on. So at the age of 10 I began a lifetime of striving to become more productive, intuitively understanding there is a link between being more productive and an employer willing to pay me more.
So at the age of 10 I was studying my every motion, trying to figure the most efficient movements that would get me to picking more strawberries in less time. I was doing TIME MOTION ANALYSIS when I didn’t even know it was called that.
Constantly trying to increase my productivity became a habit I carried throughout my entire working life
In the mid 1980s the miniaturization of electronic components was a development that made it possible to create computers that are hand held. One of the first to do so was a company by the name of Poqet Computer.
http://oldcomputers.net/poqet-pc.html
The problem at that time was that no one had the experience (that I had) of designing these miniature components into products. The first design (do I need to mention done by someone else?) of the Poqet Computer was a manufacturability disaster. IIRC only 1 out of 4 of their first design would work.
Poqet Computer called me in to quote on doing a redesign of their Printed Circuit Board to fix the manufacturability problems. In that first meeting with them I ask to see a copy of the design specs they wanted me to work with. They handed me a design spec that was clear to me they had gotten (stolen?) from some other company. I looked it over and tossed it back on the desk and informed them that if they were to follow that spec they would never fix their problem. I explained to them what my experience was and told them to let me determine the specs and I would design a manufactureable product. They gave me the project. I did just as I promised and my design was successful.
Now here’s the rest of the story. What I didn’t know at the time but was told after I completed the project (and they were able to manufacture successfully) was that at the time I quoted the project they had six other companies quote the same project that’s a total of seven companies they submitted quotes to. That’s unusually high. Four of the other companies no bid the project saying it wasn’t possible to design and be manufacturable. Three companies submitted bids, myself and two others. NOW here’s the thing – They gave the project to ALL THREE COMPANIES! Then right about two weeks into the project the other two companies dropped out saying IT WASN’T POSSIBLE TO DESIGN. Again I didn’t know this at the time. I completed the project and it worked great!
How was it possible that I could accomplish what others had failed at? I had a rare combination of job experiences that had exposed me to the right set of skills that all came together at the right time. Beyond that the explanation becomes rather technical.
ASIG – on another thread, in response to advice someone gave that folks should under-promise and over deliver, I called utter bullshit.
My advice was to promise the impossible, and deliver.
Your story illustrates perfectly what I mean. Anyone can under-promise. But delivering the impossible takes a different breed. Maybe you were better, smarter, more experienced. But maybe you just had self-belief and utter determination. Or maybe it was a combination of all these things. Because I have met many highly skilled and experienced souls who would never have stuck their necks out like you did. That is special. Whatever it was – that is what I strive for, and encourage in others.
Give me one bull-neck man and I will move the earth.
Terrific story.
Great story. A huge breadth of experiences like those mentioned by most on this thread exposes one to countless situations and observations.
I can quite often see and design solutions to problems but the fun comes in working with others that have the same abilities. I’ve never done more than tinker with my own interests in this regard. I lack enough business experience to turn it into a career.
Thanks for the story! Keep ’em coming.
Poqet Computer failed because of one “executive decision” ,mistake, made by some idiot manager that cost the company tens of millions, and instead of admitting the mistake, eat the cost and correct it, they doubled down on the mistake and tried to make it work, and just continued to make things worse.
Too bad I believe they would have been a big player in the hand held computer market.
ASIG – I pointed out recently that I do not believe in mistakes: “but everyone makes them” is not an attitude I accept. It becomes the culture.
Do not make mistakes. Especially do not make big ones.
One thing I try to do to kinimize big mistakes is to keep a massively lean overhead structure. Businesses I run have very few managers indeed – commonly I run a business with 1/4 of the supervisors and managers as do opposition or businesses in general of similar size.
This does many positive things. It limits the number of people making big decisions. You get fewer career middle managers, who gum up the works, and can tend to get higher caliber people in the few senior level positions.
The other thing it can do is empower the rest of the workforce in their daily work. No one is looking over their shoulders. Because there is no one to do the looking. If they complete tasks on time, on budget, at the right quality, they get left alone entirely. If not, well, things happen.
Surprisingly, high character people flock to a business where they are left alone to do their work. It is more important than their wages. I have a lot of employees that can make a lot more elsewhere. But they will not be left alone. That is priceless.
“Surprisingly, high character people flock to a business where they are left alone to do their work. It is more important than their wages. I have a lot of employees that can make a lot more elsewhere. But they will not be left alone.”
I’m not sure if it’s more important that wages but it ranks right up there. If I’m doing the job well, leave me the fuck alone unless I need to make some improvement. If I have questions I’ll seek you out. My immediate supervisor if far to lax IMO but he has three guys working for him that are self starters and take pride in their work so it works out great. Within six months of starting there I was given a key and alarm code so I could show up early or stay late as I chose. I crank up my Bose stereo and have a blast working alone at night. I rarely even see my boss for more than a few minutes and sometimes not for weeks at a time.
ASIG: Did the same at Texas Instruments in Dallas. HMOS, NMOS, PMOS, CMOS, Low Power shottkey and a host of others. Could not make CMOS worth a damn as any particles of dust ruined them. Good days…….transferred to their High Speed Anti Radiation Missile program and loved it……
LLOPH
Nothing motivates me more than for someone to tell me that something is impossible. I’ll find a way to prove them wrong.
“My advice was to promise the impossible, and deliver.”
I understand that completely.
Reading through this comment chain, three things jump out at me:
#1 – A varied background early makes a more complete person later on. I imagine many of you, like myself, routinely draw on those early experiences when tackling the challenges of the work day.
#2 – If the shoe doesn’t fit, move on. Rusting in place is the easy way to do things, but it takes courage to stand apart and above.
#3 – You will end up working for yourself if you follow the previous two. 🙂
I can remember most in almost chronological order, but how old I was at various jobs in the early years will not be accurate. I grew up in NJ, still live there despite jobs that have taken me 1/2 way around the world at times.
I think the first job I got paid for was digging holes in the yard to plant trees or shrubs for my mother. I think the going rate was $0.25 per hole, $0.50 for a big one. Winter was snow shoveling in the neighborhood with one or more of my brothers. Some time around 1966 or 67 my old man bought a new lawn mower – Ariens – that could change from a reel machine in summer to snow blower in winter. By this time there was only one other brother left at home (oldest in the air force during viet nam war, second oldest in college) and he and I would rake in some dough when it snowed – we would get as far away as maybe 1/2 a mile from home, knocking on doors to get the snow blowing work. Around that time a guy who was a youth leader in the church hired me to start cutting his lawn in the summer – it was a bike ride to his house. When I was 15 or 16, the Livingston mall opened and my friend and I got our first jobs that had a real paycheck to stock shelves in a “Jeans West” retail store. I had to go to school to get some type of “work papers” because I was under some magic age. After that, I got a job at a toy store on Route 10 in East Hanover that I could walk to after high school. I would stock shelves, assemble bicycles, clean up – then after I got my drivers license I would drive those big old steel swing sets to customer houses and assemble them. The owner had a second store in Middletown that he closed and the summer of probably 1973 a history teacher from high school, me and some other kid spent several weeks traveling to Middletown in the biggest rental box truck they could get (probably a 20 foot box) to load up all the inventory and haul it up to East Hanover. Somewhere around this time and before I got my driving license I worked at a Roy Rogers, running the grill, closing at nights, etc. everything except running a cash register (they hired cow girls to run the registers). Other high school jobs included delivering prescriptions for the local pharmacy, driving a truck a dry cleaners. About the best job I had was summer of ’75 working on the greens crew at a local golf course, the pay was about $0.25 per hour more than minimum wage and we got overtime (paid at straight time, but 50 or 60 hours per week resulted in an awesome paycheck for a kid at that time).
Then in college I worked as a weekend night security guard at a rehab place, at a McDonalds because I could get hours that worked around my course schedule, and as a technician in the chemical engineering department pilot plant, then part time at a small manufacturer of distillation tower packings running distillation simulation software that I wrote myself in BASIC. Summer in between junir & senior year of college I got a job driving a truck for a rental center. After 2 weeks I got a phone call at lunch on a Thursday informing me that I had a job offer as an engineering apprentice in a paper mill in Millinocket, Maine – starting the following Monday. The boss at the rental center was very undestanding about me quitting with virtually no notice. On graduation small manufacturer of distillation tower packings changed me to full time with promises of a salary that never materialized so I send out a few bazilian resumes and landed a job with a very big A&E firm in the process design department in the heavy oils group. My specialty was delayed cokers, crude & vacuum units and ultimately lube oil hydrofiners. I worked there through the oil price bust of 1982-83 and watched a department of 160+ chemical engineers get reduce to about 50. I decided to look for something else before I got called into the big boss’ office on a Friday afternoon. My girlfriend was a pharmacy major and she helped me uderstand that NJ was the nation’s medical cabinet – home to Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Schering-Plough, Warner-Lambert and a host of other “big pharma” companies. I got a job in the maintenance department at one of these places, worked my way up to the plant engineer, then got involved in construction projects. Then one day my boss asked me if I’d be interested in a 6 month assignment in Shanghai to help out with a project that wasn’t going well. After 5 months they put me in charge of that and one other project so my 6 month assignment turned into 2-1/2 years. I also met my wife during this time. Once the China projects were done I continued in construction for the same pharma company on projects in NJ and overseas. Then I transitioned to an engineering job supporting a bunch of the international manufacturing plants. Finally ended up leading a department of “technical experts” supporting a bunch of manufacturing plants in Europe, Asian and South America before an early retirement package came along that was too good to pass up.
Your girlfriend introduced you to a new career where you later met your wife. Like career moves, sometimes “course corrections” are necessary for personal advancement as well. The right one will make ya, the wrong one will break ya.
I wish my parents had pushed me harder when I was a kid. Do well in school was about all that was asked of me and school was always a bit of a joke. I drank and skated my way to a Mechanical Engineering degree. At the time, sorry to say, I was proud of that, now I’m disgusted. I got a portion of my dad’s work ethic via osmosis, but I lament all that I could have done.
Got laid off from my first engineering job after college. Helped my friend first remodel, then manage a small restaurant. When he had to shut down, I drifted in the restaurant business for a few years, all the while pretending to write (I do have two dreadful novels “in the trunk”).
Five years ago (today actually) got a job as a mechanical engineer for a small company. Cool place to work, but they don’t need a full-time mechanical engineer. Starting to do some consulting on the side–pure mechanical design and prototyping. I genuinely enjoy it and I can make a SolidWorks seat sing.
I don’t usually tell my life story, but when I do I drink Dos Equiis
LLPOH this was an interesting idea, that obviously got a lot of us thinking back, fascinating responses with a common thread – all hard working, independent, and self- sufficient.
Sometimes I feel that people are hopeless, and then I see this and there is hope.
12. paper delivery. used to get paid $.05 per customer weekly
13-17 car washing, lawn mowing, babysitting, fishing guide ( dad had boat rental business but you had to take a guide, 3 boats, me , my younger brother 12 years old, and my dad)
18 at university washed dishes in a hotel restaurant for $1.00 per hr
19 got a bookeeping job at a welding supply shop
19 got married young , took a government job with Liquor Control Board–WTF is the Gov’t doing in that business? Anyway lasted 3 months and knew I could never last. People had their limited amount of work stretched out to perfectly fit the day and were standing in line at the door at 4.49 waiting for the buzzer to go at 5PM so they could leave. Being young and eager I finished by noon and would ask others if I could help them with anything. You can imagine how that went over!
19-20 moved to a new city and got a bookkeeping job at a meat packing plant
20-21 went to work pumping gas with a co-worker from the meat plant who opened a Texaco garage and promised me an opportunity for equity that never materialized
22 went on the road selling life insurance products
25 opened a pizza restaurant beside a hotel bar 6PM – 4AM. 7 days a week for a year
26-46. took the Canadian Securities Course as a private student by correspondence than went out and got Brokerage house to hire me..Became the top paid broker in Canada after 5 years. Kept that standing for a couple of years and then the banks didn’t like the fact that brokers were making more than the Bank President so they starting reducing commissions and making you turn over your high net worth clients to the Wealth Management Group.
46-60 bought out the shares of the President of a publicly traded mining Company and became President and CFO
61 -66 created a private company with 5 equal partners and went looking for iron ore properties in
Brazil.
66- now. I trade some stocks online and am just now learning about BTC and the cryptos from my son, fascinating stuff, keeps my brain working even thought I don’t have any technical knowledge
Thanks for making me take this trip down Memory Lane
Willy – thanks. Glad it was fun. You had quite a ride yourself!
TBP is a collection of astonishingly accomplished individuals, not the least of which is our Admin. On almost any given subject, there is an expert floating around.
Memory lane makes for a good walk every so often.
Great thread that I have had chance moments to scan since it started (life intrudes) but have now finished. Very enjoyable, so thanks Llpoh!
I see a lot of commonality with other commenters especially that of coming to a self-determined work schedule after kicking around various C-suite positions and boardrooms as a “temporary executive”. (I don’t do “consulting”.)
Probably where I differ most is how I started out. From my 16th birthday to just past my 21st, I worked in a hospital (9 floors, 800-900 beds). Though titled an “orderly”, I was six months in and was pulled off floor duty and turned over the the Nursing Supervisor’s office as a “float”. Upon clocking in for the shift, one reported to the NS and got assigned to whatever unit needed the most help. I had a disproportionate time spent in ER and ICU/ICCU just because I could follow the precise instructions given without getting too excited in the middle of a bleed-out or cardiac arrest.
After college, I parlayed my technical side into a range of research jobs and moved further and further into agriculture. There are not many major row or fixed crops that I have not dealt with over the years. I’ve done troubleshooting in grain elevators, flour mills, rice mills, bakeries, malthouses, breweries, hop processing facilities and I think that there must be others but are too far in the rear-view mirror to recall.
Since “Corporate” accounting and finance departments could never give me (more like, did not want to!) what I needed to effectively manage bottom-line performance, I had to teach myself accounting and finance. That effort allowed me to move on up pretty fast.
I’ve since slowed down with the occasional troubleshooting problem (“No successful solution, no fee!”) and spend most of my time on the integrated finances of 7 companies within a regional family’s enterprise. I expect to wind that down over the next year because, they just do not seem to be listening to good advice or watching the numbers presented.
Next up? Don’t know, I’ll be spending some time away in the Fall to get my breath and creativity back.
Pretty boring considering a lot of the above comments but not bad for a city kid who traded dress shoes for work boots on most days.
Da P
I bet LLOPH flies this airline
In approximate order of chronology (not 100% precise) and some activities cross multiple times and stages of life but starting as a child, I’m sure I missed some:
• Selling junk at a flea market (age 7-9)
• Returnable bottle gatherer to turn in for the deposits (ages 5 to 15)
• News paper and circular delivery (11-13)
• Yard work / lawn mowing (ages 6 or so all the way up!)
• Service station attendant (16)
• Painter (odd interior and exterior jobs) (paid – ages 16-17 / for myself off and on since!)
• Busboy / Dishwasher / Many many 50 gallon trash can of restaurant plate scraps (slop) grinder where I had to take the slop, dump it into a stainless steel massive tray and push it with my hands down a garbage disposal only about twice the size of a home one (17-18)
• Aluminium can gatherer to take to recycling (18-25)
• McDonalds’s kitchen cook and general mostly all around back of counter non-customer duties although a small amount of counter/customer work (20)
• Coin shop retail clerk (14-23)
• Coin shop manager (23-24)
• Collectible record (music) store manager (24-26)
• Expo/show, mail order, mail bid auction (pre-internet), internet seller mostly auctions of collectible comics and coins (mostly 1980s to early 2000s)
• Consultant on the committee grading very expensive comic books at Sotheby’s (NY) annual comic book auctions, 6 or 7 of the annual auctions from 1993-2000 or 2001
• Basic accounting and book keeping (15 and up)
• Volunteer on the board of local chapters of the Institute of Internal Auditors (about 1997-2010) and ISACA (Information Systems Audit and Control Association) (about 1998 to date)
• Internal and external auditor (operational, process, compliance, some finance and then increasing information systems and information security)
• Information security consultant for a major U.S. health insurance company
• Chief Information Security Officer for a major U.S. University for almost 6 years immediately prior to moving to New Zealand
• In New Zealand, all part of two different jobs – Internal and external auditor and manager, advisory and assurance manager / information security advisory and assurance / project and programme assurance / independent project and programme QA
Didius – comic book valuer? Damn, I think you win the prize for most unusual job. That is just another example of how diverse TBP viewership is.
NZ – land of the long white cloud, where men are men, and sheep run scared.
[img]https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTmIbEhATlb9TQ4UFsf9G9zCDHEAj94evD4ZAUnTCJ0DYwkfQzv[/img]
Hi Llpoh,
Yeah, that was fun in truth it was a volunteer job. It was cool though going to NYC and shmoozing with all the comic book big wigs (there are big wigs in all human activities) and getting my photo in the fancy Sotheby’s catalogs.
The craziest part is how it is a microcosm of the debt money we have. For example, one of the comics we graded was a specific example of Detective Comics #27 (the first appearance of Batman) which, at the time was worth about $50k. Fast forward 20-25 years later and that exact same copy is over $1,000,000!!! Another cool one was the “pay copy” of Marvel Comics #1, which we graded and was estimated at about 25k I think back then, now over $300k.
See this link for examples including a pic of that Marvel Comics #1 pay copy I held those many years ago… http://www.cbr.com/the-10-most-expensive-comic-books-ever-sold/
Apparently the current owner of that comic is looking for the next sucker er investor and is letting Heritage Auctions try to sell it… https://comics.ha.com/itm/golden-age-1938-1955-/superhero/marvel-comics-1-pay-copy-timely-1939-cgc-vf-nm-90-off-white-pages/a/825-42219.s
Better watch it on New Zealand, that’s supposed to be a state secret, you must have a channel to wikileaks or something!
Cheers,
Didius
DJ, I recently saw an ad for the first appearance of Batman in 1939. the Batman is rescuing a gentleman from two would-be assassins on an adjacent roof-top.
Hi El Coyote,
Yes indeed, here’s a pic:
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11-15 Mowed lawns in summer, shoveled snow in winter, occasional dishwasher for my Dad’s nursing home when one of his quit.
15 Laborer for a roofer (still hate the smell of tar)
16 Laborer in a slaughterhouse. Mostly hung up sides of beef on hooks.
17 Tire shop for mining equipment (300# minimum tires)
21-26 Naval Officer
26-Present Software Engineer
Llpoh, Reminds me, we need to sip some good whiskey next time I am in Oz close enough to you or you make it over to the Wellington area of NZ. One of my favs is Laphroaig!
Doctor’s Assistant
Waitress
Concert Promoter
Prudential-Bache account rep
**Animal Trainer for stage, TV, and film
**NLP Trainer (animals are easy, figuring out humans took a bit more effort)
**Commercial fisherman (unusual for a woman)
**Architectural Design and Drafting firm
**Aquaponics Farmer and Trainer
**Lumbermill operation to create value-added products from tropical hardwoods
**Commercial boat building and Tiny House construction (utilizing said tropical hardwoods)
**Indicates self-employment. I have worked for anyone else since I was 22, and I consider myself unemployable. I am an entrepreneur, through and through, which I define as being willing to work 80+ hours/week to avoid working 40!
And now, thanks to you, Llpoh, and your recent “Homestead Update”, I am researching Boerboels, and have contacted several breeders in Oz, as I can ship directly from your island to mine, as both are rabies-free. I want to develop a breed presence here in Hawaii, so THANK YOU for mentioning your dogs!
Friendly – the best breeders are of course South African and the Dutch, as I understand it. Get from them if you can.
Nice resume there!
I am constrained by the rules that only allow the importation of dogs from the UK or Australia, both being rabies-free islands. From whom did you get your dogs, if I might ask?
Again, my thanks. I am in love with this breed already…after years of Rottweilers and Neapolitan mastiffs, I recognize something is very special here. And it all fell into place literally within minutes of first reading the word “boerboel” in your last missive.
THANK YOU!!
PS My name is Susanne Friend. I’ll dox myself, in case using my company name isn’t enough!
Friendly – check out Pine Ridge Boerboels.
We think boerboels are incredible dogs. Reputedly only dog ever bred specifically to protect the family.
Check out Pine Ridge Boerboels.
Fun little exercise. From roughly 8 through 12-14ish:
– Mowed lawns
– shoveled snow
– delivered newspapers
From roughly 14 through 18ish
– janitor (typically office buildings)
– managed a stock room for a home building company
– ran the nasty machine that copied sepias onto special paper to make blueprints (ammonia was the chemical used… like I said, nasty)
– pumped gasoline during that summer (and winter prior) that Hardscrabble mentioned above
– loaded trailers, then sorted incoming packages, for UPS
– sold Italian ice from truck on a defined route (briefly)
– attempted to sell preposterously expensive vacuum cleaners to poor people (VERY BRIEFLY)
– ran a tugger in a warehouse to select orders for a grocery chain
From Roughly 19 – 23ish
– was a tanker in the US Army
– was a unit armorer in the US Army
– pedaled hundreds of miles and walked many thousands of staircases to deliver advertising fliers (pretty much an urban paper boy) and damn was I fit back then.
– janitor (one never forgets how to clean toilets, empty trash, dust desks and filing cabinets, and clean and shine floors)
From roughly 23 to recently (many years)
– was a student
– made printed circuit boards using a silk-screen machine and then various NASTY chemicals
– was a technical writer for a computer manufacturer
– worked technical marketing for a computer manufacturer (analysed, and converted various software from different operating systems to the manufacturer’s proprietary OS, documented and demonstrated that software)
– worked technical sales for various computer manufacturers for many years
– managed technical sales for various computer manufacturers for many years
– managed large, technical accounts for an integrator.
Now I’m retired. Fine with me.
Neglected to mention busboy/barback in that 14-18 range
Llpoh
I am going to read a few of these lists to my grandsons in order to show them all the opportunities there are if a person is willing to work hard. Also, to discuss how people use all the work experiences they have to become knowledgeable about many things (which makes a more versatile employee or readies him/her to run a business).
I suggest others use these fascinating lists as a teaching tool.