Best Job
What’s the best job you’ve ever had, or ever hope to have?
My first job was as a babysitter. I cut my teeth on the children in the daycare room at church on Sundays, an unpaid gig that got me out of having to worship something I didn’t believe in and could not get out of. My mother “encouraged” me to get into the babysitting biz, by putting ads in the paper with my name on it. Thanks, mom.
I was not fond of providing childcare, but when my mom’s friends had things to do and needed a slave to chase rug rats around, I was volunteered. I didn’t do that well in school, but somehow I was expected to do homework in a strange person’s home while chasing after little brats who could not entertain themselves. I got away with only having to change a diaper a small number of times, because I never changed them while the parents were out. I detested this work, they knew it, and employed me anyway. I rarely got repeat customers. So yeah, not my best.
At 14, my mom decided I needed a job, and got me employment at a local motel doing linen and cleaning service. As I hated doing my own bed, I wasn’t sure what my mother was thinking, but I was told to suck it up for a day and see how it went. A wirey latina lady was assigned to show me the ropes, which were few–if the sheets are tousled, throw them into the industrial sized hamper, grab new sheets, fold them a certain way and tuck them in, don’t worry about the pillows, nobody ever thinks those are dirty anyway, rinse the tub if you see stuff, otherwise just leave it, don’t worry about the floor, and don’t forget to empty the garbage. My gosh, I saw so many hypodermic needles… No gloves, just told to clean in a lackluster manner and move on to the next room. Ew. Yeah, that lasted all of a day, a very long day in which the lady swore at me in Spanish because I was going so slow. They called me later and told me not to go back. I was very happy to heed my advice. So yeah, not my best there either.
Then there was the paper route. I was the substitute for the girl who lived on the next block, who had 4H and Girl Scouts and sports and about 20 other things she did. She showed me the route once, and expected me to remember which had subscriptions, and which did not. The route was four miles long. do you know how many houses there are in a suburb four miles big? I was given no map, no other indication of paper vs. no except by memory. Riiiiiight. I received a lot of complaints over my attempts. And people started and stopped subscriptions all the time, and I was never told which had been changed to what, so yeah, that was a losing battle. I lasted six months there. If I’d been given proper guidance, I might have been a lot more amicable about it. Definitely not my best.
Again pushed by my mother to do something, my next job was working at a fast food place, after I graduated. I did okay there, I lasted about a year, though the management kept scheduling me for hours I could not work–after 5pm, the last bus went by and I would be stranded in a city 70 miles away from home. That would not fly with me. One of my last straws was when one of the squirrely-eyed assistant managers was running around with glasses of water, splashing everyone and thinking it uproariously funny. I did not enjoy getting soaked, because I was 70 miles away from home and could not change, and so had to wear my wet clothes until they were dry. Yeah, no. I was eventually asked if I were mentally deficient. “Are you retarded?” Mr. Splashy asked me caustically one day, because he loved picking on me. That job started well but ended abruptly.
My next term of employment lasted two years, at the bakery/deli in my hometown. I was hired as a cake decorator, though they eventually stuck me at dishes in the bakery section, then shifting me over to the deli, as apparently my cake decorating skills were less than stellar. The deli was a disaster, I was expected to memorize everything after hearing it once. Again, no manuals, no written instructions, just one of the other girls going, “Here, do this,” and doing something too quickly for me to follow, and then being called upon to have picked it up immediately and be able to contribute equally. I became a store closer, cleaning and prepping the kitchen for the next day’s work, counting the till, getting the pastries defrosted, cakes reorganized and rotated, fryer emptied, scrubbed, and freshly oiled, rotating defrosted chickens in buckets filled with water in the cooler behind. I actually enjoyed that gig, but it ended abruptly when they needed to save money and downsize. They picked up a new manager who didn’t believe in cleaning, prepping, or customer satisfaction, who started yelling at me whenever I washed my hands after handling raw chicken and the like, and let me go. I was also asked there if I were mentally deficient, and by then, I was beginning to wonder. *shrugs*
My next bit of employment came through an internship at the college. We learned programming, networking, all the major computery stuff of the day. My internship? A five-minute thing in which I made backups of files at a paper mill by typing in one command, made sure the printer wasn’t jammed, and left. Good use of my talents, there. My friends all bragged how they were being called upon to program, and network, and set up computers, and tutor people, and they were offered employment where they were interning. I was doing something that they could have hired any one of the three other secretaries to do. It was a joke. I let go of that when I moved away and got married. SOOO not my best.
For the next fourteen years, I wasn’t employed at all. My husband wouldn’t let me outside the house without his supervision, and any calls for me regarding employment were met with him grabbing the phone, yelling very loudly into it that I already had a job as his wife, and hanging up, then berating me for even trying. In his mind, if I had employment, then I could eventually save up enough money to leave, as by that time he was becoming not only psychologically but physically abusive.
Even with that, I got occasional gigs doing website design for friends who wanted such. I liked that, I didn’t have to leave the house, I could dork around on the computer doing what I usually did anyway, and get paid for it. Cool! I didn’t get too carried away with that, though, as I had taught myself everything, and there were some things I could not do because of my morals–I will not download software illegally, and since Macromedia Flash and such cost hundreds of dollars each, I let those opportunities to learn pass me by.
During those fourteen years, I started and maintained a dogsitting and housesitting business, registering a business name, paying taxes, the whole thing. I even kept doing that when I moved back to my homestate, at the height of the ex’s insanity. I had to let that go when I moved to Portland, of course, as such a business requires clients, and this area seems very sufficiently tapped for that. That was fun, though wrought with angst concerning my ex’s abuse.
I worked for a year at a 24-hour drug store doing an overnight shift of fourteen hours at a time, 5-6 days a week. It was a brutal schedule but very fun. I didn’t get overwhelmed with customers in the middle of the night, and enjoyed being trusted with freight, stock, and other duties. The gun hold-up, and watching two testosteronally wonky men duke it out by the pharmacy were interesting tidbits.
I was working there the night that I got a phonecall in which I was told that my sister had passed away from cancer. Like an idiot, I told my supervisor, who began telling all the other employees, one of whom made a daily habit of invading my space for a clingy hug, in which she spoke of how happy my sister must be, kneeling at the throne of Our Lord, and how thankful I must be that my sister had passed away so young. I had to work after these awful hugs, holding back so many tears and just wishing to go home so that I could cry myself to sleep. The next night, she would bring up her Christian God and make me highly uncomfortable all over again. Ugh.
I wanted to yell at her that the reason it was so painful was because my mom wouldn’t tell me how she was doing, didn’t tell me she’d passed until after the funeral so that I could not attend, and then to this day refuses to tell me where my sibling is buried so that I can see her grave and pay my respects.
Sorry, didn’t mean to get carried away in that rant. Anyway, as for that job, they abruptly scheduled me for hours I could not work, as the busses stopped running for the night about two hours before my shift ended. I spent many a cold winter night at the bus station (I lived 20 miles away, I could not walk home), being repeatedly approached by the homeless, the tweakers, and a few gentlemen who wished me bodily harm. I didn’t feel safe there, natch, and started going home when the last bus came, ignoring my posted hours. I was told one night not to return the following day if I could not complete my shift as scheduled. I left when the last bus came. I was called just a few hours later, and told not to bother coming in again. Okie then.
My friend the dreamer has been putting together his grand business idea, requiring a website and a bunch of other internet-y things I’ve been asked to do, to which he compensates me whenever he can. There hasn’t been anything to do lately, but I enjoy the projects when they come.
Out of all of these, I particularly enjoy the website design gigs I’ve had. I wish I could find full-time (or even part-time) long term employment doing such. The dogsitting/housesitting business was fun, too. I liked very much being my own boss. There were very few complaints from my clients.
Though if I could, I’d do podcasting for a living. I neglected to mention the live radio show I had for about 8 months. That was quite enjoyable. I was still living with the ex at the time, though, and had to contend with him barging into the room while I was live, to yell at me about yet another offense I’d done, such as not having all the canned good labels facing the same way and such.
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