I was thinking, the other day, about all the different jobs I’ve had. Apart from four months off after having a baby and a couple of months after university when I moved cross-country, I’ve worked pretty much continuously since I was fifteen.
So here, in no particular order, are all the different paying jobs I’ve had:
McDonald’s server
Strawberry Picker (a low point)
Retail Sales: Clothing, high-end shoes, leather goods
Visual Merchandiser – Full time and freelance
Fashion/Promotions Model
Admin Manager
Design Studio Manager
Golf Course Social Club Manager
Accounts Receivable
Signage Designer
Banquet Server/Bartender
Barista
Martial Arts Instructor
Hair Salon Assistant Manager
Print Production Manager
Talent booker
Art Buyer for an Ad Agency
Photography Producer
Gallery Assistant
Receptionist
Freelance Artist
Hmmm. That’s quite a long list. I am *ahem* a bit older than fifteen now, and I have moved around a bit, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve tried my fair share of different jobs. However, none of them ever ‘took’.
Until now.
For the past ten years or so I have had the same job: writer. And I love it. I love the challenge of working with words, of finding the correct tone for each piece, wrestling the pieces into place so that I speak with my own voice, or that of my client. I love writing stories and sharing them, and consider myself incredibly fortunate to be able to do so. Sometimes it pays quite well, and at other times I can work weeks for a pittance – but I enjoy all of it.
I don’t know that there’s much of a point to this post, other than the fact that I tried lots of different things until I found what it was that I really wanted to do. And, the thing is, I was doing it all along. One of my best friends from university, when I told her I was writing a book, said, ‘but you’ve always been a writer.’ Funny that she could see what I could not. So I look back on each of my different roles as learning experiences. Sometimes the only thing I learned was that I never wanted to do that job/work with that person again, but it was a lesson, nonetheless.
Perhaps we only come to things when we are ready for them. I know all the jobs I’ve had gave me different skills and made me the person I am now. They also gave me life experience to draw upon when writing stories, and taught me what I didn’t want from my life. It was one of my former employers who first took a chance on me, asking me to write something for them. And for that, I’m eternally grateful.
So how about you? What unusual, awful or wonderful jobs have you had?
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Helen Glynn Jones 
A list as long as yours from cleaning chitterlings in a pork butchers after school to running fleets of lorries …but writing is the best job I’ve ever had 🙂
I had a feeling you’d have a wonderfully eclectic list, Sue 😀 Writing is the best job, isn’t it?
It is…and I do. And wouldn’t have it any other way 🙂
Me either 😀
🙂
Most definitely..
Farmhand – from the age of eight to fourteen – feeding an assortment of livestock, milking cows in the days before milking machines, ploughing with a horse pulled hand plough, cutting and gathering crops using a scythe – then technology kicked in when I was eleven and I got to drive a tractor to plough instead (but still looked after the old plough horse bless him)
For two summers, aged 15 and 16, dug graves for the local council, finding the occasional unmarked grave at six foot down (new graves are eight feet deep)
Then I started full time work in engineering at 16 😄
Wow – that’s quite a list, Chris! The gravedigging especially 😁 The things we do to get by, hey? I quite love the idea of farmwork before technology, but I imagine the reality was not quite so rosy.
Hard work, but made me strong enough to minimise being bullied even though I was only 5 foot tall until I was 16 then a one year growth spurt brought me up to 5′ 9″ to match them 😄😄😄
(A painful year as I recall – no one can tell me ‘growing pains’ are ‘only in the mind’ 😱)
Yes, my husband had growing pains too, and now our daughter’s getting them – definitely not in the mind!
And I love how that work made you strong enough to minimise bullying. That’s one of the reasons I started martial arts – which then led to one of my many jobs 😀
👍😃
Oooooh my… quite the jobs
Yep 👍 Hellen.. experience teaches and gives us stories to share..
I’m so happy 😁 you found your true calling..
you a wonderful author.. very gifted indeed
Thanks so much! Experience is the best teacher, isn’t it?
Most definitely
Potato picker was a low spot for me, and although I enjoyed being a lifeguard at the local swimming pool, the only upside to being employed by the local council was that they paid double time at weekends!
Moving from being a groom to becoming a professional rider was just amazing (no more mucking out for me!), and of course, being a writer is fab. I earn most by writing for horsey publications (there’s no surprise), but being able to indulge my demanding imagination by writing fiction is just the best.
Oh I forgot to add strawberry picker to my list! That was a low point for me too – perhaps why I’ve put it out of my mind 😀 and yes, aren’t we lucky we get to tell stories? Nothing makes me quite as happy, at least where work is concerned
not many; carnation cutter, farm hand, hotel waiter, porter and gardener, worked at an oil refinery as a ‘bollokie’ then lawyer then writer..
Carnation cutter sounds rather debonair, Geoff – but I imagine the reality might not have been so glamorous? Still a fairly respectable list, I think 😀
It was grim helen
My first job – albeit Saturdays only – was doing up coat buttons at my local C&A. It was enough to persuade me that I wasn’t cut out for a career in retail.
Doing up coat buttons sounds very specific, Jools – no wonder you didn’t like it! Were the coats on mannequins, hangers or people? 😀
They were on hangers. It was my job to tidy up all the costs that people tried on and left dangling on the hangers. Invariably that meant doing up a ton of buttons!
Oh, that does sound tedious – I bet there were loads, too. It wasn’t called ‘Coats & ‘Ats’ for nothing haha 😀
This is amazing because I’ve been watching this a lot lately https://youtu.be/jKYivs6ZLZk and it’s about most jobs I’ve ever had hahaha
Yes! haha – I’ve had a few jobs like that too 😀
I haven’t had that many jobs—a caterer in a hospital cafeteria (hated); sales assistant at a newsagent (hated even more); an aide at a nursing home (didn’t mind); an animal carer at St Thomas’ Hospital, London (didn’t mind, except when they took one of the animals, and it, ahem, never returned; in the blood bank; a GP and then a breast physician (both of which I loved). Add one more if babysitting counts.
Like you, my favourite job is the one I’m doing now, as a writer. It’s my favourite by a mile. Still, I cherish all the experiences I had before I found this career.
Another lovely post, Helen. xx
Thanks, Louise 🙂 Oh, I remember those jobs I hated, too many, really. Jobs I thought I wanted but then found out were awful, jobs where I was treated badly – they certainly spurred me on to do other things! I mentioned to another commenter that I’d forgotten to add strawberry picker to the list – that was a particularly bad one 😀
My list of paying jobs is extremely short, as in, count-on-one-hand short. Factory worker (making plastic binders), nanny, librarian, editor. I married very young, and proceeded to have children almost right away, whom I homeschooled, plus I was trying to be a Little-House-on-the-Prairie homemaker (until I smartened up/burned out). So, even though nobody paid me for any of that, the list of *work* I’ve done and skills I’ve acquired is quite long – Jill-of-all-Trades indeed.
However, I wonder if part of my struggle as a writer/freelancer is that very lack of experience of paid work…
Sounds as though you’ve always worked hard, Angelika – I do find it frustrating that the work we do raising families is so often discounted when it comes to talking about our experience. You’re a great writer 🙂
Such an eclectic mix of jobs here – what interesting lives you’ve all led!
My work has been mainly retail and I’ve been a florist (mainly on but sometimes off) for the last 23 years. I’ve worked in off licences, farm shops, behind supermarket deli counters, in a stationers where I did little else but have price gun fights with one of my colleagues (in my defence I was only 16). I was a hairdresser and waited on in a cafe for all of one week before it was closed down – nothing to do with me, honest.
The weirdest one was working in ladies’ fashion in a small independent department store. It had a covered bridge that connected the buildings (rather Dickensian) that creaked when you walked on it and leaked when it rained. The weird bit was being 18 years old and learning how to measure elderly ladies for corsets. Interesting times. And the store is still there
Thanks, Lynn – yes, it’s been fun reading the comments, I love hearing what everyone’s done. Your list is very impressive – I love the creaking bridge and the price gun fights. Those sort of details are what I remember about jobs I’ve had too – especially if the jobs themselves weren’t that great. And you’ve reminded me of another job I had which I didn’t put on the list – Assistant Salon Manager at a hairdresser! haha 🙂
Your list is very impressive – so many alternative careers! It’s all useful I think. I’ve had plenty of opportunity to watch people, to see them at their best and sometimes their lowest (ordering funeral flowers for example). It al helps you learn about folk and how different they all are
Yes, I think that’s one of the biggest lessons when you go out to work – the infinite ways we are all different, yet the same.
And thanks – not sure if impressive is the word, I wish I’d found what I wanted to do earlier. However, perhaps then I wouldn’t be the writer I am now…
Absolutely – it’s all experience, all things lurking in the back of your head, ready to be used in a story. That’s what I tell myself anyway 🙂
Me too 😀
🙂
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Iv had had the same job since leaving school 15 years ago, i work in vending and its an industry thats so unique and forever on the move to the next best thing
Lucky you to have found something you love straight from school 🙂 I suppose all the change keeps it interesting, too!