The Parade Of Past Jobs!!!

Approximately two eons ago, I asked you to respond to a little survey concerning jobs. The questions were as follows:

1 - How many paying jobs have you held in your lifetime? I'd say include all full-time positions, as well as those part-timers that were held for a significant length of time; maybe a couple of months or more. For instance, I would include "paperboy" as one of mine. It was certainly part-time, but I did it for more than a year.

2 - What was the highest-paying gig you ever had? Any length of time on this one.

3 - Finally, what is the longest length of time you've been employed at one place?

Here are all of the answers you gave:

Barbara said...

1. About 14, although I could be forgetting a couple.
2. Probably my current job
3. 8 years and counting

Mushy said...

1. 14
2. Communications Manager - 8 years
3. 29 years

Jen Stewart said...

Oh geeze....um....

and then she also said...

1. At least 20. Between age 25 and 34, I worked a minimum of 2 jobs, at most 4 (although that only lasted 3 grueling months) concurrently. A lot of my jobs were for companies where I worked more than once, or where I had more than one position with the company, so I'd say at least 20, but probably more like 28.

2. Overall, my current job. But per hour? A place I used to wait tables in Hawaii. I'd come home with $150 in cash tips, after tipping out the bartender (unless the bartender was me), kitchen staff, and host, after 3 of work. It was only part-time, though, and the owner was volatile, and they went under anyway, so it didn't last.

3. Current job - 8 years, and I quite frankly hope to retire with them.

David Sullivan said...

1. 2 Full Time, 2 Long Term Part-Time, 12 Short Term Part-Time,2 under the table, 1 selling illegal substances between '84-'86.

2. Salary: Current Job

One Days Work: $300+ bartending a 150 person wedding with me and one other bartender.
One Minutes Work: $600, gained illegally and no it wasn't prostitution.

3. 10 years, current job is in 9th year.

DJ Big Mick said...

1. About 20, although one of those was recurring over about 8 summers.

2. One night in October of last year I made 1000.00...
Get your mind out of the gutter! I AM a DJ after all.. it was a wedding. Other than that, my current position is the best paying I've held

3. 8 years with a company you might be familiar with (since you still work there) and the summer job in Maine

While I certainly appreciate the time these folks took to answer the questions, five responses really isn’t a heck of a lot. When you consider that I get more than 100 visitors a day here, it actually kind of sucks. However, I understand that these were questions that you might have been reticent in answering. Who knows what pair of prying eyes might stumble upon the answers? Giving full and complete disclosure about your past jobs – and, more important, about the amounts of money you earned doing them – sets you up for all sorts of ugliness from the IRS, law enforcement agencies, ex-spouses, identity thieves, nosy neighbors and all other manner of troublemakers. In order to be completely comfortable in answering, you either:

1 – Have to have a past as clean as a whistle.

-OR-

2 – Be dumb as a post.

Paging Mister Suldog! Paging Mister Suldog! Please pick up line two!

Here is a list of all my past jobs, somewhat in chronological order.

(You may think that one or two of the “professions” listed below couldn’t rightly be considered jobs. If the qualifiers are making a profit and devoting many hours of work, then you can believe me when I tell you that they ALL qualify as jobs.)

Paperboy

Blackjack Dealer

Carnival Barker

Shoe Salesman/Stock Clerk

Dishwasher

Musician

Drug Dealer

Cab Driver

Gambler

Courier

Bowler

School Bus Driver

Street Cleaner

Mail Room Clerk

Warehouse Worker

Security Guard

Order Packer

Ice Cream Truck Driver

Proofreader

Fruit & Produce Delivery Driver

Order Picker

Purchasing Clerk

Customer Service Agent

Catalogue Writer

Voice-Overs & Commercial Production

That’s 25 jobs. Yikes!

That’s a whole lot of work to get to the middling position in life I now hold. If I had stuck to any ONE of them – except maybe paperboy – I’d probably be better off financially than I am. Oh, well. All of those experiences add up to make me what I am today – a complete and utter failure.

No, that’s not true. I’m fairly successful, I guess. I’m not rich, but I’m certainly not starving. I make enough scratch to keep me comfortably in peanut butter and crackers, and I occasionally have enough put aside to splurge on chocolate milk. I also have a job that involves very little heavy lifting, so that’s a plus.

(In addition, I have a lovely wife, caring relatives, good friends, nice co-workers, blah blah blah. We’re talking jobs here, so who cares about any of THAT twaddle?)

Now that you have the list of my past jobs, you pretty much have a roadmap of where this blog is headed for the next month or two. I’m going to bore the hell out of you by writing up some stories concerning my experiences in the workplace. We’ll start tomorrow with “paperboy” and work our way up my very rickety corporate ladder. See you then.