Q: Please list every single job you have ever held.
A: Roughly in order:
1. Volleyball & softball referee
It is enormously pleasurable to throw loud-mouthed asses out of intramural games. Especially because these tend to be the same testosteroney jerks I've detested all my life. Also, blowing a whistle as part of your job? Not as much fun as you might think.
2. Concessionaire/usher/ticketseller at a movie theater
A glorious first real job; fun co-workers, free popcorn, that time we all adopted fake accents and weirded out the patrons. Good times. Hmm, I think I might have to blog about that. Thanks for a mental kickstart Joolie!
4. Pharmaco guinea pig (off and on for the next three years)
The worst thing about Pharmaco is having to eat everything they serve at exactly the time it's on your chart. The best thing about Pharmaco was the money. A close second is the time I started the totally bs rumor that they would pay $10,000 for people's big toes, and then had the same rumor repeated back to me as if it were true a year later. Score.
There's more....
6. Grocery store night stocker (held simultaneously with #5 for 2 weeks)
I've said all I could about that hell here.
7. Radio DJ for the next four years (w/ a stint as program director)
College radio is a blast to do, even while so much of it is unlistenable. By that I mean the DJs, not the music, though I personally loved throwing Merzbow and Diamanda Galas on the air. You know, just for grins. This is where I met a large number of my current friends, many of us are still in Austin.
8. Cashier at Best Buy
You'd think that odiferously drunk people wouldn't stand in weekend-before-Christmas checkout lines to buy presents. You would be wrong. Twice wrong, at least.
10. Entertainment writer at The Daily Texan for the next three years
I got into this for the free CDs and the chance to interview people I like. I had no idea I would find myself getting so frustrated for not being able to write better. It's never quite good enough, which is both a burden and a motivation to keep working.
11. Music department person at Best Buy
Our favorite question was, "Are these CDs in any kind of order?"
Well yes, idiot, alphabetical with the different genres indicated by the huge signs at eye level.
Here's a paraphrase of a rant I went off on one time in the breakroom: No, no order at all. We just thought we'd let you wander around til you got frustrated and left. We're thinking of putting them in numerical order of the UPC symbol, would that help? No? How about we take out the shelves, dig a big pit, and dump all the CDs in it? That would make my job a lot easier and you could have fun prospecting, "Oh yes, I think there's a vein of Eagles Greatest Hits over there near the Celine Dion gusher."
12. Office temp
You know it's bad when, after working one day in the office of a pesticide and lawn care business, they violate their temp contract by offering you a full-time job managing a crew despite the fact that A) you have no experience, and B) you don't speak Spanish. I turned it down and moved on to working at a law firm where clients sometimes left the office in tears.
13. Customer service rep at a credit card company
Eeeeeeviiiiiil. I did enjoy the time I explained to a wife that all those charges she didn't recognize were for "adult businesses". Oh yeah, and the time a guy threatened to bomb us and we called the cops. Caller ID doofus.
14. Investor communications rep, then supervisor at a mutual fund company
My best job in terms of pay and work environment. When they closed the Austin office and laid us all off, we got three months of pay, a year of medical coverage, and a bump up on our retirement account vesting schedule. Coolest lay-off evah!
15. Coordinator of campaign finance reform petition drive
Often frustrating, yet I felt so passionate about it. We succeeded and it felt so good to know I'd made it happen.
16. Clerk/typesetter/layout/graphic designer at AISD print shop
One day while my boss was off on vacation, I arrived to work to find the shop smoking and fire trucks all over the place. An electrical fire had started and done odd things like melt the plastic covers on the overhead lights into weird shapes while failing to ignite the huge stacks of paper or chemicals.
17. Volunteer coordinator of campaign finance reform ballot initiative (held at the same time as #14 for two months)
Of course I wanted to follow up to make sure it passed, so I worked two jobs while taking some ACC classes. We didn't win, but it was a great experience.
18. Cancer information specialist at American Cancer Society
Very mixed feelings about this job. It was great helping people, but the glorified receptionist part of the job was grim. It wasn't fun to work there the last six months and I was deliriously happy to quit and go back to school. Like many non-profits, they do good work, but the office politics can be vexing.
I didn't list it above, but from the Fall of 2000 to the Fall of 2004, I worked many hours in the Green Party holding various leadership positions at the local, state, and national level; too much work to detail here, often frustrating but I wouldn't ever ask for that time back.
Oh yeah, then there was the period of time I rented porn videos out. Sorry Joolie, I'm saving that story for my blog.
Q: Please tell me as graphically as possible why I should quit smoking. You've told me before, but I was always drunk and probably accidentally blowing smoke in your face as you did.
A: I could describe the terrible state of smokers' lungs in detail, but honestly, the most piercingly awful thing is telling someone the terrible prognosis statistics of most lung cancers and having to remain supportive yet emotionally calm as they totally lose it. When you do that every few weeks for two years, you have little sympathy for clubowners who complain that a smoking ban is going to hurt their business. Smoking's bad, mkay?
Q: I'm sorry if I blew smoke in your face. I know you hate it.
A: I try to gently goad my smoker friends now, rather than angrily confront them.
Next post: Mursing school!