Personal History - Figuring Out This Whole 'Work' Thing

What was your first job? 

I got a job at Baskin-Robbins in Las Vegas when I was 14 years old. The ice cream scooping sprained my wrist in the first week, and I wore a brace when I worked to be able to stand the pain of it.

I lost my job a week later, when they found out I was fourteen, and wearing a brace I shouldn't have been wearing because it was un-hygenic. Couldn't blame them on either count, and I was glad to go.



 How did you decide on a career?

I followed my nose, and followed my skills, though it wasn't really what I wanted to do. But anytime I sat down to 'plan my career', it inevitably fell apart.

I also eliminated those jobs I did that I didn't like, which included housekeeper, restaurant work and almost all forms of blue collar jobs. I found myself completely unsuited for them, which seemed strange.

It wasn't that I wasn't willing, or able, to do the work. The problem was in my difficulty in being able to connect with and communicate with the people, which I've never really understood. I would inadvertently offend them somehow, and not understand why.

I rarely had the same result in white-collar jobs, and whenever I did, it seemed to always happen with people from a blue-collar-type background. Weird.



 What jobs have you had?

I worked with my mom as a housekeeper while in high school, mostly during the summers. Nope - wasn't going to keep that going. McDonald's wasn't my life's ambition either.

While in New York City, I worked as a cashier at the Carnegie Deli. While I enjoyed the atmosphere very much (loved walking to work and meeting celebrities - best encounter was ringing up Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne), and most of my co-workers (the ones that weren't hitting on me), I wasn't good at making the register balance, and it upset my white, round, pasty-faced manager very much. Princess, a Jamaican lady cashier with fake fingernails as long as my fingers, was a whiz at it, but I could never do it myself.

After that, I did shift work cutting photos for a photo shop, which only lasted about three weeks because I was terrified of the photo chopping machine, which was like a little guillotine that cut hundreds of photos at once with a loud (CHUNK!) noise. Afraid of being too tired to remember to remove my arm from the machine one day and (CHUNK!).

Then I tried to get a job as a 'hostess' at a black box Asian nightclub...until I realized what 'hostess' actually meant. Then I quit school and came home.

After New York, I changed direction. I had learned to type pretty fast in high school and enjoyed that (it was the only class where I could make all the noise I wanted), and used that to start a series of receptionist and secretarial jobs.

I worked for Prudential Realty, and then I worked with my mom at the National Petroleum Refiners Association. It was with them where I first saw Texas, at the convention my company held in San Antonio. My mother got obsessed with Texas. Me, not so much. Then I worked a bunch of temp jobs...temp work was plentiful in DC in those days.

I moved to Washington State, where temp work was nonexistent, so I found a couple other receptionist jobs. Married, and really started hating receptionist work.

Moved back in with my mom and got work with the National Restaurant Association updating their member records - saved my life. My mom, and the job. When I had my first son, I continued working from home for them until I got pregnant with my last baby. Had to quit that, even though I didn't want to - I was running out of arms to hold babies and type at the same time. Oh yeah...and 9/11 killed the convention industry for awhile (no one wanted to fly).

When I came to Texas, I worked part-time in order to stay close to my babies. I wrote articles online for some extra money, and loved it, but couldn't live on it. Worked as a lunch aide in the public schools, which wasn't too bad, and as a lunch lady in a high school, which was very, very badly. (When my boss started saying things like, 'That was strike one...that was strike two...I promptly quit.)

Also worked a local buffet restaurant, where I found lots of colorful characters that ended up in the novel I was writing at the time to procrastinate my college homework.

After I graduated, I got a job at a local university working in the records department, and never looked back. A huge improvement for me over past jobs. Still working there today.

 Did you make enough money to live comfortably?

Only when I was single, and not even then, really. I never made enough money to live in my own place, and I really hated having roommates.

My husband and I together make just enough to keep ourselves comfortable (mostly comfortable, with a lot of careful spending). Grateful to be here now, and excited about future projects and their potential.


 How long did you have to work each day at your job?

 
Most jobs I held were from 8:30 to 5 or so, plus the commute from the city to whatever bedroom community I lived in, so I worked most of the day, in most of my jobs.

It was this factor that made it really important to at least find a job I could tolerate. It's one thing to make lots of money - quite another to spend your life on a job you hate. Time is the most valuable currency there is, and it's important to spend it well.