Looking back on all the part time and summer jobs that I had throughout high school and college, I learned a lot about what I wanted and did not want to do with my life.
My mother tells the story that she worked one summer between college semesters as a seamstress in a South Carolina textile mill in the 1970’s. That experience alone motivated her to spend the next two summers in summer school and graduate college a year early.
I have worked summers sweeping the floors of an auto body shop, as a video poker parlor attendant, gas station clerk, newspaper reporter, grocery store cashier, shelf stocker, and call center phone operator. While some of those jobs were great, others just plain stunk! And, every single one of them taught e that I wanted to stay in school and earn my degree.
By far, my favorite job was working with all my friends in the cubicle farm at the 1-800 call center for a nationwide car rental company. Thankfully, all we had to do was answer the phones and not make cold calls to people during dinner time.
The weirdest job that I had was basically hanging out at a local video poker parlor as a runner before South Carolina outlawed the games. It was amazing to me that people were so addicted to gambling with those games that they could not even be bothered to cash in their winning ticket stubs. That was the biggest part of my job.
What was the craziest job that you had growing up?
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I have to pick one? My first job was probably my craziest. At 15 I started working as a lifeguard for the public pools system. In my first week I had to save someone. That was in and of itself amazing. The next day a guy was stabbed in the park just outside of the pool. It was my job to make sure he didn’t bleed to death while police and EMS arrived. First week!
Perhaps crazy, but I loved that job and worked at that same pool for the next two years after. Yes it was in a ghetto.
Singer at the funeral. I need to earn extra money so I can have a working fund while looking for a job after graduation. I usually call my contacts ( who work in funeral parlors ) to ask whether they need a singer for the wake (Filipinos usually would like someone to sing during the entire wake, part of our culture) so there goes my share. 🙂
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