@Jake 's thread about the hardest jobs we’ve worked got me thinking of the jobs I’ve had over the years. I started my first actual job in May of 1996, when I was 16, so I have 24 years of work history, minus the year I didn’t work when I was in med school.
But yeah, these are the jobs I can think of, starting with my first job.
- Grocery bagger
- Stock clerk
- Factory/assembly (summer 1998)
- Federal Work-Study worker, typing a professor’s notes
- Proofreading a thesis, or maybe it was a dissertation
- Auto parts warehouse worker (summer 1999)
- Dishroom/catering/bartending (2nd and 3rd year of college, a little into 4th year)
- Paper mill (summer 2000)
- Clerk at a funky, cool variety store (4th year college)
- Security guard (first job post-med school year)
- 7-eleven clerk
- Graduate teaching assistant (for 4 semesters of grad school)
- Shitty job for which I’m not sure of a title, working at a printing press facility
- Lab tech at Johns Hopkins (first job post-grad school, failed miserably)
- Associate scientist (lab tech, really, failed miserably)
- Back to the same 7-eleven
- Different factory/assembly job
- Lab in milk processing facility (failed miserably, quit while in a psych unit)
- Teaching at a community college (started August 2010, still teaching there)
- Seasonal employee at a Kohl’s-like department store, was treated like ■■■■ (quit while I was in a psych unit)
- Sunoco gas station
- A different 7-eleven, this one with gas pumps
- Retail pharmacy tech, worked there for 2.5 years
- Hospital inpatient pharmacy tech
- Foundry, working in “rough grinding” (very physical) and “clay” (less physical) departments.
- Back to the same Sunoco station as before
- Back to the 7-eleven that had gas pumps, quit because it freaked me out too much. I worked there only because the Sunoco station was closed for remodeling
- Back to Sunoco station
- Taught at a different community college in 2019, failed miserably
Holy hell, 29 jobs. Granted, a few of them repeated, like the 7-elevens and the Sunoco station.
My teaching job that I have held for nearly 10 years is the longest I’ve held a job, and I plan on sticking with that job for years to come.
How about y’all? What jobs have you worked?