The Jobs I've Done

Permalink

Follow me via:

---

Text-to-speech support required

What jobs have you had?

Kind of a loaded topic to ask which jobs I've worked. I have my current job, and it's a company I've worked for on and off for a lot of my adult years. But that doesn't mean I'm not looking at potentially finding something in tech, that's remote, and something I can put my laser-focused brain in. But, that's an ongoing search, and I have a habit of rambling into different topics when I've already got one set.

Before I graduated from high school, I started working for a diner that used to be kind of medium-big. The place was called Eat N' Park. It was like a fake diner. Their food was made with assembly instructions and everything was frozen. Ramsay would've hated them. It was my first job ever, the first place I dropped fifty plates in front of a bunch of customers who were eating, and the first place one of the line cooks asked me to his car for a drink--At which point I finished my shift extremely drunk, and potentially poisoned.

I left that job.

Afterward, I went off and started working at a local Pizza Hut close to where I lived in Steelton, Pennsylvania (this was the time when I still lived in a haunted house). I kind of liked that job, mostly because I'm a big fan of pizza. Nowadays, Pizza Hut pizza kinda makes me gag a little. They use way too much pan grease on their dough.

I eventually left that job too, after the police raided the place and found out the franchise owner was using the delivery drivers to sell drugs.

I wasn't involved, don't worry.

After that, I started working for a steakhouse. Can't remember its name, but that was also a bit of a tumultuous job. I was still really young and naive, and my boss took advantage of that. I was the prep guy who set up everything for the salad bar every day. One day it rained real bad, and guess who got stuck on overtime mopping up the entire basement?

Me.

That's not the reason I left that job, though. I ended up leaving after a dinner rush when I was ordered to chop a bunch of lettuce as quickly as possible ... and nearly chopped off an index finger. I remember squeezing my fingers together, and my boss kind of laughing asking if I wanted an ambulance. I decided to let my girlfriend pick me up, and I went the hell home. For good.

Then, before I entered the company I currently work for, I went to work at a gas station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. That job was also ... strange. Nothing in the store had barcodes you could scan when a customer was buying something. You had to ... memorize the prices. That was all fine and dandy, if at least a little tricky, but then my boss stuck me on the night shift.

I think this was around the time I noticed my coworker, who got me into chewing tobacco for a short period of time, was doing whippets in the coolers at the back.

But the night shift, that was a completely different ballgame. I got to see the kids coming out late at night partying, buying up teas and cigarettes. You know, people who were my age. I also got a date from a girl who did figure-eight donuts in a Chevy Berreta around the pumps one night. She spent a few days with me until she decided to drop the bomb that she had ... an incurable STD (that wasn't the last time I saw her that year).

Those aren't the worst things that happened when I had this job, though. I'd say the worst things were probably the much older customers who would come in at night.

To say I almost got robbed would be an understatement. I'm pretty sure I did, but by two guys who were asking me for money from my own bank account, and totally not the guy who came in and stared at me for fifteen minutes. I had to call the police multiple times in this position, and I'm pretty sure it was my fresh-faced naivety that stopped me from getting a gun to the face.

The potential thieves who were asking me for money from the ATM? Yeah, I'm pretty sure the dudes just wanted me out of the building. Again, I didn't realize this at the time, because I was just a kid, with no real world experience whatsoever.

I ended up leaving that job after my boss got busted for stealing winning lottery tickets, while shorting my drawer every morning. She tried to pin that on me (she was arrested), and the new manager believed her. I got a lifetime ban from that particular station.

Believe me when I say this, I, in no way, ever stole anything from that place. I worked my shifts, I almost got robbed, I almost kissed a girl who had genital warts, and then I got terminated via never returning.

My first set of jobs were really ridiculous, and I got taken advantage constantly. I was just naive, not very aware, and that made me seem unintelligent. Things changed though, and I kind of became more aware, more vigilant. I don't let things get past me so easily anymore. I don't let customers give me the sleight of hand in retail settings, and I don't ask random girls on dates just because they know how to drift without exploding some gas tanks.

But that's how I entered the workforce, and I remember specifically trying to get my first job back (because I kind of actually enjoyed working in a restaurant), but my boss told me no. Not because I walked out the door, not because he probably knew I was silly-drunk one night, but because I didn't burn him a bunch of music CDs to replace what was stolen from his Jeep. Because ... I was totally responsible for that, right?

When I tell you I was seriously taken advantage of, I mean it. If you're around the age I was when I rifled through these jobs, keep this sort of stuff in mind. The corporate world, whether it be retail, or food service, it is not kind to high school kids, or people who have just become adults.