I sorted working when I was 17, I started off as a dishwasher then got promoted to cook. For the next three years I had a string of 15 or 16 jobs, none of them lasting more than three months. Then I became schizophrenic at age 19 and didn’t work for the next three years as I went in and out of hospitals and group homes.
In 1983 I was living in a group home and going to a vocational program. I went to the vocational program usually 5 days a week. There, we had groups, classes, outings and we did mailings for the post office and did yard work at private houses in the community. The vocational program owned two vans and gardening equipment and a couple of counselors would take a couple 4 man crews out and we would mow lawns, rake leaves, sweep, trim hedges, weed, and other duties. That’s where I took my first step into becoming employed again. A counselor made me the head of a crew and I was in charge of making sure everybody did their work properly, I did that a few times.
My next step was running a cash register at the program. We served lunch at the program and charged a few dollars and we got hold of a cash register from somewhere and rang up the meals. I did that for a month. Then, the next step was that the counselors picked me to be groundskeeper for the whole property the program sat on. There was landscaping and they chose me out of twenty people to take care of all of it. I didn’t like doing it but I did it anyways. The same agency operated the group home and the vocational program and they had their offices across town. The agency would hire a person from the vocational program to clean the offices for a month at a time. They rotated us in and out. They chose me to do it. It was pretty simple; just empty some wastebaskets, clean some ashtrays, vacuum and clean the restroom. I did it two times a week for a month for $35 and they liked me and my work so much they hired me on for a second month.
Finally, the program had some connections with employers in the community and the program supplied a few workers to them. I think they were in touch with a restaurant, a health food store and a hot tub joint and they got me a job at the hot tub place. this was 1983, 9 months after my last hospitalization. Hot tubs were popular in the 1980’s and there were a couple places where you could rent private rooms with hot tubs in them and couples would go rent a room for an hour for $6.00.
So I got hired at one of them and my job was to clean hot tubs and maintain the whole building. So I cleaned and polished, painted, kept the machines cleaned and did all sorts of odd jobs. I ended up working there four years, through psychosis, drug addiction, depression, and moving 7 times and getting kicked out of my housing and all sorts of other problems. But I had a lot of fun doing other stuff through those years too.
Anyways, that’s my story of how I became employed again. I ended up getting fired from there but I just kept on going out and getting other jobs. I applied on my own, sometimes friends got me jobs, sometimes I used other vocational programs, sometimes I got jobs from ads in papers or employment agencies. I worked part time sometimes, and sometimes full time.
Here’s a list of my various jobs and the time I spent at them (in chronological order)
Hot tub technician: 4 years
Prep cook: 2 days
Another prep cook job: a month
Recycler: a month
Warehouse: a month
Stock boy: three weeks
Maintenance man: two weeks
Recycler/furniture mover: three years
Truck unloader: 4 years
Warehouse: two months
Construction/laborer: two weeks
Park ranger: two years
Stock boy at Target: 7 months
Stock boy at Macys: a month
Janitor: 6 months
stock boy/truck unloader at Kohls: 3 years
Assembler: 9 months
and finally, I’ve been at my current janitor job for 12 years.
I don’t have enough space or time to list how I did or what I liked about each separate job. I was best at unloading trucks but I didn’t like it. Stock work and warehouse work isn’t that bad, you can work nights and not be around a lot of people and it isn’t too physically demanding if you get the right place. Construction work is hard physical work but pays good. I liked being a park ranger but those are hard jobs to get.
I like my current job the best though I’m starting to get tired of it. It’s easy physically; it’s just cleaning restrooms, vacuuming, emptying wastebaskets and doing a few other miscellaneous tasks. I work in an office building three days a week, 6 hours a day and it’s not that crowded or busy. I also get to work by myself 90% of the time which I like. I don’t have to be to work until 10:00 am and I get paid holidays, paid vacation and sick leave. I know the routine pretty well by now and I can work easily without supervision. It pays $18.15 an hour.
I manage to work because I’m concentrating on doing my job and my symptoms take a backseat to getting the job done. I hope this all helps, good luck.
at it.