Earlier this summer, when the kids were looking for what they were going to do and we were trying to get them "meaningful" internships that would help their resumes, one of them asked me what kind of jobs I had.
And that started me thinking.
I grew up in a different time, of course; a time when high school and college kids could get part-time and summer jobs because it was expected and employers actually counted on them. And when I think back, boy did I ever have some.
I write this for two reasons:
1) this is my blog and I can write whatever the heck I want, and
2) it is a way to communicate with my kids, and
3) maybe it sparks your own conversation about your jobs. Let's face it, it's pretty funny to look back at some of our early jobs, the things we did to make money while in school.
Looking back, I remember the "dream'' job when I was in high school was Fed Ex, which paid a then-princely sum of something like $3.25 an hour, when the minimum wage (which most of us got) was closer to $2.50 an hour (I can't remember exactly, but that's close). I never got that job.
I had a friend who worked at a movie theatre, a job a lot of us envied because he got to see all the movies for free. He was so enamored with one movie that he taped it for us all to hear ... that's right, "hear." This was well before the days of video taping of any kind, so my friend did an audio tape, which was absolutely as bad as it sounds. However, he thought he'd pulled off a fast one on the theatre (and I dutifully listened to the entire thing, while my buddy described the scenes in between actual dialogue).
Another embarrassing high school work-related story: a bunch of us went to apply for jobs at Six Flags Over Georgia. I'm not going to mention names, but we were sitting in the employment office, filling out the paper work, when one of my best friends said, "What kind of question is this: does my spouse work? It worked fine last night!"
I'm still not sure if he was being funny or being serious. Sad but true.
Needless to say, I didn't run with the brightest crowd.
But we had a lot of fun.
There was also the year we agreed to grow our hair long. This was the tail end of the Age of Aquarius, after all, and an act of some rebellion. However, one of the men of our church owned a car dealership and offered good jobs IF we cut our hair. Being a man of principle, I refused (I was 16, and at 16 this was a matter of principle). The other two went to the barber and got jobs.
Anyway, a sample of my early summer and part-time jobs:
Fabric warehouse: I think this was my first kind of 'real' summer job. I worked in the warehouse of a fabric warehouse, primarily boxing up rolls of fabric for shipping but sometimes getting to run the shrink-wrap machine. My boss could cowboy yodel. The company was not doing well, and every payday it seemed like we got our checks later and later, apparently to keep us from running to the bank to cash them that day. Long-time employees used to start looking for the most expensive fabric rolls they would take if they didn't get paid. However, we never missed a paycheck while I was there.
Auto auction driver: When someone bought a bunch of old cars to sell at auction, we'd get paid $10 a car to go drive them back to the auction. I learned to drive a lot of different style cars, and none were anywhere close to being new. The most fun? When we'd get to drive back old State Trooper cars that had been stripped of all the decals but still had the Police Interceptor carburetors on them. From 0-60 it was normal, but 60-to-120 was incredibly fast (as I found out quite by accident when I pulled out to pass a car in I-75, heading south from up around Rome, Ga., and floored it).
Building concrete sidewalks, curbs, and gutters: I was with this crew that was part of a company building huge industrial warehouse complexes outside of Atlanta. This job was hot, but fun. The cast of characters I worked with over this summer could fill a blog, including a member of a motorcycle gang who was working to get his bike repaired and told me "There are two books you should read: The Bible, and the Count of Monte Cristo. Both are incredibly long, but when you're finished both make a great point." I've read both. I don't count them as equal.
Reservations for Days Inn: I worked one Christmas at the Days Inn reservation center in Atlanta. A bunch of us sat in this room, answering phone calls from all over the country (this was obviously before out-sourcing to India!) While we were supposed to just book rooms for people, we also wound up planning trips for callers (helping determine a days' worth of driving to the next Days Inn), and even where the ice machines were located in their motels (some people thought they were calling the front desk, I guess). Best thing that happened: we got Christmas turkeys for a bonus! My mom was thrilled.
Coaching middle school football and basketball: In college, I coached football and basketball for 3rd and 7th graders. I was assigned to local elementary-middle schools, and we played other local schools. We were quite good, winning two championships. I was the only coach, and had to develop my playbook based on things I'd done in high school or learned from watching/reading about sports. One play I came up with I later suggested to a college coach that I knew - a tight end reverse that I designed (although I'm sure it had been done before) - and, sure enough, this guy adapted it and used it (but never gave me credit, at least not publicly).
Construction on a high rise: I was a "common laborer" who was expected to join the Common Laborer Union for this job. No one quite knew what to do with me. I wasn't allowed to do much other than be a grunt. Best part of the job was that the forms for each floor were built on the ground, then taken by crane to the next level of the building and put in place. I got to ride the floor forms from ground to building, and the higher the building got the more fun it was. The crane operator was crazy (several good stories about this guy), and he liked to see if he could get away with swinging me out wider each time as he brought the floor up and around to settle down on the building. I don't think this practice was actually to code, but what the heck .... it was fun.
Sportswriter: I did do a legitimate internship at a daily newspaper, in the sports department. I'd been the sports editor at the college paper for a year (and was not very good), but it led me to a big-time daily paper, where I fell in love with the business that I eventually did for over half my life. These were old-time sportswriters, and some of them would go to a nearby strip club during dinner break (it was a morning paper, so we worked nights). That left me to answer phones and handle the office until they got back .... also, the copy desk guys played a mean game of Jeopardy! when things slowed down. We all knew a lot about a little, and those Jeopardy! games were amazing.
Billboard company: I worked for an Outdoor Advertising company that owned billboards throughout rural Georgia. My primary job was to go out and cut the grass/bushes/trees that threatened to grow up and block the view of the billboards, but I also watched true artists who could "long-handle" old-style paper billboards. It would take too long to explain, but these guys were amazing. I also learned about double-selling side-by-side billboards (illegal, but apparently not uncommon) and this is the job where I learned first-hand that you can't cut trees on a Department of Transportation Right of Way. There I was, chain saw in hand, cutting trees on the side of a highway that were blocking the view of a billboard, when the state troopers pulled up and put me in the back of their car, taking me back to work where my boss said I knew better (I didn't; they only told me to cut down the trees) and it wouldn't happen again (technically it didn't, but these guys were creative and came up with a new scheme that was probably just as illegal, so I won't go into it because I don't know what the statute of limitations are on this kind of activity).
Church Youth Director: I was horrible. I completely let this church and the youth of this church down. This remains, to this day, one of those regrets that wakes me up in the middle of the night with tremendous guilt.
Door to door salesman: I don't know what else to call this. This business bought the end of the line products that were not going to be made again - silverware, glasses, frying pains, clock, lamps - and then sent guys like myself out with our cars loaded down. We could sell them for whatever we wanted, and got to keep everything over the base price that the company needed. I couldn't do the door-to-door thing, so I went around to small stores in the country to see if they would just buy my entire supply and stock their shelves (they didn't). I found the key was to go to factories on Friday (payday) and sit in the parking lot with my wares on display. Factory workers on payday were extremely loose with their money, and I sold my entire volume on Fridays when I learned this trick. Unfortunately, I also felt really guilt - these people weren't making enough money to be wasting it on the junk I was selling (and it was junk). I quit after about two months and swore I'd never do sales again.
Doorman/bouncer: This was much later, but my future brother-in-law managed some clubs around Birmingham's Five Points. I worked the door in one of them, which really meant checking I.D.s and keeping underage kids out. I did get to break up a couple of fight, and fortunately this was during my karate days and my instructor, Shihan Oyama, had given me a couple very valuable and common sense tips for breaking up a fight, based on some of his own experiences. Highlight: when the police called me outside to tell me there was a guy inside in a long rain coat who had several shotguns and handguns underneath his coat. They didn't want to go in and get him for fear he would start shooting, so they asked if I could talk the guy into going outside where they could grab him. I'd like to say I hustled the guy out, but I didn't really; I did start up a conversation with him, and I think I just bothered him into leaving, where the police were waiting.
There are more that I'm forgetting. I think from the time I turned 16, I always worked. I never worked fast food or restaurants or retail. I can't even say there was a plan; I just stumbled into jobs, through friends or classifieds or dumb luck.
Years later, I realized I should have been more focused and been building a true resume that could help me, but I did what I did. But there are a lot of good stories from each, I made some good friends for a short time, and I always had fun.
I think that's been the one constant: every job except the sales job that I've had, I've enjoyed.
And that's fortunate.
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