Because there weren't too many items on my list, I was able to get through the store in pretty good time. I did have a brief and spirited discussion with a gentleman as I grabbed a bag of raw peanuts in the shell. He wondered why I liked raw peanuts, and I explained that I buy them not for myself, but for the blue jays. "But how do they eat them? Do they bust them out of the shell or eat the shell or what?" he asked, fascinated. I told him, and he was astonished. "I been buying birds the jars of shelled peanuts, and now you tell me I coulda been buying these bags? They's so much cheaper!"
I didn't have the heart to tell him that, all along, he also could have been buying three-pound bags of shelled, raw peanuts in the bird food aisle up front. Who knows how he'd have taken the news?
Only two cashiers were available this early in the morning, and I didn't know either of them. That's been the rule more than the exception lately. And the employees in general have gotten older. The woman who rang me up was probably in her late 50s/early 60s.
She was pleasant and efficient. "Let me wrap up that meat in a plastic bag before you put it in your bag," she said. "I don't want it to leak, possibly. I used to work in food service, and that has stayed with me."
In the course of me bagging my groceries in my reusable bags, I learned that she:
*was a manager then regional manager for Taco Bell and took many food safety/food science courses
*left that to work in health care and then took care of her husband who had cancer and early-onset Alzheimer's
*worked in various retail jobs and in the service industry
"You've really had a varied career," I said, "and in each job you've had, you really relied on your basic skill set, being organized, efficient, and good at working with people."
"Well, except for working with teenagers when I was their manager," she said. "That about drove me crazy."
I smiled. "I was a high school teacher for 30 years," I said. "I loved it. I love teenagers."
"Oh wow," she said. "You win!"
******
I wasn't thinking about my victory on my way home--I wasn't even aware there had been a competition. Instead, I started thinking about all the jobs I've had and how, perhaps, they've had an impact on me. Here's a list of all the jobs I've had, paid and unpaid, since I started working, starting with babysitting.
1. Babysitting
2. Paper Route
3. Reading Tutor
4. Catechism Teacher
5. Bank Teller
6. Pet Department Clerk
7. Warehouse Worker
8. Substitute Teacher
9. Teacher
10. Freelance Writer/Editor
I do think the majority of these have influenced me, and I have lots of memories--good and bad--about all of them. Maybe I'll write about several of them in subsequent blog posts. Some of you may be curious about #4. (I still can't believe that one myself.)
Is your list of jobs a long one or short? Do you find yourself in conversation in the grocery store? Is there a job that you miss?
What a fine idea for a post; I will have to work on a list for sure. And identify my basic skill set. As for the catechism, I was always IN the class, not teaching it. The teacher was, shudder, my mother, mostly, until I qualified for the Confirmation class (betting that is the same thing, C of E to Catholic, maybe?). I always had my homework done; my mother was tough for sure, at least to me.
ReplyDeleteMary--I cannot imagine having my mother for a teacher. My sons never had me; that was taboo in the school system where I worked, and I was glad.
DeleteCatechism was every Monday from 4-5 o'clock, K-12. Once I went through Confirmation, however, I quit going. Didn't see the point. Almost all my teachers were nuns except for one seminarian and one other woman who was a church member.
Every single Monday I came home with a headache. It was brutal.
My first job was baby-sitting where I learned I didn't want to sit any kids who were not old enough to say, "My stomach hurts, I need to go to the hospital." Then I taught sewing to F-H girls and floral design in after school programs---both for 2-3 years. But I mostly worked in the floral industry working my way up from a card signer after school around the holidays because I had great penmanship to owning my own wedding floral business for ten years. For contrast I worked for with my husband in his parking lot maintenance business where I learned to plow snow, put down yellow lines and fix pot holes.
ReplyDeleteI love to talk to workers in groceries stores and other places like that as long as we're not holding up a line behind me.
Jean--I'm amazed at the number of couples who used to let a 12-year old babysit their very young children! I know our own mothers were just a phone call and moments away, but...!
DeleteI love the job of Card Signer at a florist. You are the only person I know that has had that as an actual job. Imagine going from that to plowing snow and lining parking lots. What a resume you have!
It's funny--I don't often initiate conversations with people. I must have the kind of face that makes other people feel as if they can/want to talk to me. Like you, I don't want to hold other people up.
List is here. https://themsmysentiments.blogspot.com/2025/04/jobs-and-all-that-for-nance.html
ReplyDeleteMary--I read your post and was entertained and astonished. And that photo!
DeleteI had never heard of feeding blue jays peanuts! But I don’t think we have a lot of blue jays here in Minnesota? I will have to ask my parents. Something they buy for birds is grape jelly during the spring and summer months for the orioles! They get it Aldi since it’s so muck cheaper there. They get gobs of orioles!
ReplyDeleteSome of my jobs include babysitting, teaching piano, waiting tables, and selling shoes at JC Penney’s. The oddest job I had was a temp job in the summer when I was a teen. We worked for the county tax assessor and went around and measured the exterior of people’s homes, drew it on grid paper and then calculated the square footage. As a math person I enjoyed this. Some of the home owners would scream at us or try to keep us off their property. In hindsight I don’t know why my town let some teens do this job! I lived in a tiny town of 500 people, though, so it was a feasible summer project for 3 teens.
Lisa--Yes, you do have blue jays in Minnesota! They should be a very common sight there. I'll bet that now, if you start looking for them, you'll see them. Put out some raw, shelled peanuts on a flat feeder (mine is on a ceramic dish on a porch post), and unless you have a lot of squirrel traffic, you might get some blue jays.
DeleteI do love Baltimore orioles, and we see a lot of them at our lakehouse. Jelly feeders are very common there. Sometimes they get hummingbird visitors.
Your measuring job sounds very like something I used to help my husband do when he worked for a title company. He had a measuring wheel with a long handle and did very much the same thing. I used to go with him--we were dating then--and write the numbers down for him. No one ever screamed at us, though. That sounds terrible!
You play the piano! How wonderful. That's something I always wanted to be able to do. It seems magical to me that anyone learn that instrument--so many keys! and there are pedals! and it's big and wide! Astonishing.
My resume is: house plant waterer, paper route substitute, pet sitter, baby sitter, McDonalds, kitchen work, office work, technical support/technical writing, general accounting, and now payroll (a very niche, specific kind of accounting). The hardest job? McDonalds! The easiest job? Payroll. I just did the math and the difference in the hourly wage is $63.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to hear your work memories. I've found that work has gotten less interesting and less "who I am" over the years, but I am always here for work stories.
I struggle to get beyond "hi", "how are you" and "how 'bout the weather" in conversation, so I am missing out!
Birchwood Pie--Hello, and welcome to the Dept!
DeleteI cannot imagine how hard the work at McDonald's must be. Or any restaurant, fast food or otherwise. I deliberately avoided that kind of work my entire life. I mean, people and their money was bad enough (as I learned from being a bank teller), but hungry people and food? Nope.
As a former paper route girl, let me say thank you for being a sub. Back a hundred years ago, when I had my route, subs were impossible to get. I just had a little, walkable, neighbourhood route, but we were in charge of getting our own subs. When I was sick, my mom used to just take me in the car so I didn't have to carry the bag.
It's funny, as I mentioned in a comment above, but I rarely initiate conversations with strangers. They seem to find my face encouraging and chat with me. I'm fine with it, however, and have met a lot of interesting people.
My list of post-college jobs is varied. I have them listed on my blog bio page concluding with "many jobs, no career." I got skills, maybe the foremost one being adaptability.
ReplyDeleteAlly--I think adaptability has become doubly important in this day and age (and administration).
DeleteI AM curious about #4! Tell all! I've also had a variety of jobs - babysitter (I was TERRIBLE), convenience store clerk, sheet sorter in a laundry, stamped state tax on cigarette packs for a wholesaler (those last three were summer jobs while I was in college), bookkeeper for the Zambian Baptist Mission, admin assistant for a special needs group home program, legal assistant, & HR benefits specialist. Oh! And I was briefly a candy striper! I really enjoyed that - it's interesting that I never pursued a career in the medical field. (But in retrospect I'm pretty sure my personality wouldn't have been suited to it.)
ReplyDeleteBug--Oh! I was a candy striper, too. Forgot about that. THAT was interesting.
DeleteI cannot imagine spending a whole summer simply stamping on cigarette packs. It sounds mind-numbing and repetitive. Were you the only one doing it? Did you just sit at a table or a machine? It's like child labour in the Victorian times. Surely it's not like I'm picturing it.
My stint as a CCD ("Confraternity of Christian Doctrine") or catechism teacher was relatively brief. Even I don't recall all that much of it. It was a first grade class, and I was asked to take it for part of the year, possibly while the regular teacher was on maternity leave. This may have come my way via my mother, who was a member of the church choir and a friend of the director. I figured, how hard could it be? They're so little, there won't be any hardcore religious tenets.
We practiced the sign of the cross, made collages of Things God Made, learned a couple of prayers. I had them over to my house (I was living at home at the time, age 18 or 19), and we decorated Xmas cookies and sang carols. Then their workbooks came in! Holy crap, were we behind. It was unreal what they were supposed to be learning/doing, yet no one had told me a thing. I managed to get them pretty well caught up without turning it into the drudgery I remembered from my past (with mean nuns). But when it was over, I was glad.
That cigarette pack job was through a temp agency. I stood at a conveyor belt & the boxes of packs would come through with the flaps open. I guided them through a device that stamped the tax notice on all (10? 12? I don't remember how many come in a box) of the packs at the same time. It was EASY, but very messy. The first day I came to work I wore a cute little shorts outfit & got ink all over it. The ladies there were hazing the college girl - there were aprons to wear, but they didn't tell me about it. I certainly never tried to look cute again, but I did hook up with the guy that manned the front gate, so I got something out of the deal. Ha!
DeleteBug--Shame on those women. Those jokes never seem funny to me. Not to mention the fact that women should take care of each other. Ah well--it's all in the past.
DeleteThat job sounds pretty easy, but I'm sure it became sort of boring after awhile. Maybe you forgave the ladies and there was some camaraderie there to break up the monotony. At least you did get some fun out of it in the shape of a boyfriend (or at least a dalliance).
Well, yes, I did wonder about the catechism teacher!
ReplyDeleteIf I trace my work career back to my teens (omitting my lucrative high school babysitting jobs) my list is kind of complicated. Several of the freelance jobs below were simultaneous, of course.
1. Gift-wrapper at a department store (seasonal job at Christmas).
2. Salesperson at another department store.
3. Salesperson at Target Bakery (yes, they used to have a bakery!)
4. Secretary at Brown & Root (engineering company when l lived in Bahrain.)
5. English teacher at Gulf Technical College in Bahrain.
6. Freelance English teacher in various academies, companies, and private homes in Spain.
7. Freelance translator for the Ministry of Culture in Spain.
8. Freelance work with a textbook publishing company: script writing, photo shoots, recording and
post production.
9. Director of adult English language program for the National Organization for the Blind.***
10. Senior editor for EFL (English as a Foreign Language) textbooks in above-mentioned company.
11. English teacher for intensive courses in the Spanish Air Force.
12. Full time senior editor at the same company as in No. 8.
13. Sales and Marketing manager for a software company in the U.S.
14. High School Spanish teacher.
15. Coordinator of Lower-Level Spanish program at a state university.
***Chapter 3 of my “memoirs,” lol.
O.K., that's enough of my past jobs which looks more like a C.V., lol. —Since retiring, I do find myself in conversation at the grocery store as well as other places where I shop. I have always liked to chat with the cashiers, but in retirement I enjoy it even more since I no longer have the day-to-day contact with my work colleagues. Every little bit helps in terms of feeling ‘connected’.
The job I miss the most is the final one I had. My best friendships in the U.S. have come from that job, and I still keep in touch with my besties; it’s difficult because they are all still in the trenches
and most are much younger than me: overworked and still raising kids! Hoping to have a lunch reunion
with some of them when the spring semester ends next month. —Looking forward to you writing about your past jobs!!! 😊
Ortizzle--My busy, learned, and well-travelled friend! THE SPANISH AIR FORCE. I'm just stopping there because of course you taught English to the Spanish Air Force.
DeleteAs one does.
I know you miss your friends from work and the daily contact with them. It's hard to go from almost constant social contact/camaraderie to almost nothing. But do you miss The Work? I'm a bit opposite. I don't really miss the people as much as I miss the teaching itself. It's like being a simmering pot always just ready to boil. I've still got all this stuff in my head and nowhere for it to go.
Why don't I remember Target ever having a bakery? Maybe it was a regional thing?
I also miss the teaching part of my job. But I do not miss all the useless, time-wasting bureaucratic bullshit we had to churn out constantly. Like preparing an Excel spreadsheet every semester with final grades for all the classes of all the teachers in my section so the uni could see what percent of our Spanish students were getting grades of D, F, W (withdrawn) or Q (dropped without penalty). That, and a lot of other B.S. reports, robbed me of endless hours in the evenings and weekends when I could have put more time into creative lesson planning. Which I did anyway; I think all teachers suffer from sleep deprivation. Because we love our job so much that we are willing to make that sacrifice.
ReplyDeleteThe Target where I worked was in Houston, and they did have a bakery back then, at least in the store where I worked. Summers of 1969 and 1970 more or less. After that I was working full time flippin’ burgers at Jack-in-the-Box to put myself through college. Geez... how did I leave that one off my list?! I often think I learned more life lessons from the menial jobs I had.
O--Same. I only miss the teaching. I never want to grade another paper for as long as I live, nor do I want to contact a parent, sit in any more inservice meetings, or administer any more government mandated standardized tests or writing prompts. So much of my day was crammed with bullshit administrative crap. And so much of it ended up being busywork that never, ever went anywhere. I remember coming across several stacks of blue cards that I was supposed to use to keep track of student performance on a series of state and district objectives. I was also supposed to xerox both sides of each one and send them out to parents at midterm time. I absolutely refused to do it; it seemed ridiculous to me. Sure enough, no one ever checked up on me--there was zero accountability attached. Those cards stayed locked in that cabinet for years and years, blank and unused, and no one was the wiser. So many colleagues bitched and moaned as they did their blue card dances. I never said a word. My kids did fine and no one ever asked to see evidence of their performance. Talk about bullshit.
DeleteKudos to you and anyone who works/worked in the food industry, especially fast food. I know I couldn't do it. Funny how many people say that to teachers, right?
OMG, I love how you never sent those stupid xerox copies! 😂😂😂 I have a similar story: we had to keep all chapter tests, Midterms and Final exams on file for allof our classes for at least 2 years after we taught any given class in case a student decided to lodge a grade grievance. That, of course, amounted to a shitload of stuff since we could have as many as 5 classes (150 students) in any given semester. Multiply by 7 (total number of tests per class), and that's 1,050 exams per semester. I had an entire filing cabinet and several bookshelves in my office devoted to this absurdly unnecessary storage. It was about this time last year that I started loading all those exams into little suitcases with wheels so I could transport them to the trunk of my car and go straight to our community dumpster when I got home. There was a lot of other crap I threw out as well, but chucking all those exams was sheer bliss. I even threw out ones from recent semesters that I was supposed to keep stored in "somewhere in the department." Those also went into the Santa Hoguera (Holy Bonfire) as well because... guess what? Not. A. Single. Student. In. Fifteen. Years. EVER. Lodged. A. Complaint. 🙄
DeleteAs for working in the food industry and folks saying “I know I couldn’t do it” --- yep, there’s a clear parallel there with the vocation of teaching.
O--Isn't that positively insane? And they thought NOTHING of putting that storage burden ON THE TEACHER. After a while it was hard to look at the kids and not see each one with the shadow of a lawyer behind each one.
DeleteAnd in Ohio, our schools are funded by property tax. Boy, do the parents know that! I cannot tell you how many times teachers hear, "You know, *I* pay your salary!" Well, guess what? The sad reality is that I paid my own salary, too. And I sure wish I could have given myself the raise I deserved!
I love your posts, as well as all the responses. I always read through everybody else’s comments; a good group!
ReplyDeleteMy jobs have all involved publishing, I think. Started right after college in Philly, editing appraisal reports for a real estate firm. Then a project manager for a small publishing house. Have worked for a company called Elsevier since 1987. Project editor, managing editor, editorial director, and, for the last 26 years, as a freelance editor/writer for them (as well as for several other medical publishers). That is all disappearing, of course. Elsevier is changing over to an AI-driven system called Value Edit (a name I just find so offensive), slowly replacing all of the human editors and writers. I have 3 years to what I had hoped was my retirement. The work, as I know it, will end before that, I’m pretty certain. If nothing else, I am resilient and adaptable, though, so I will make do. I just had hoped to officially retire from what I considered my career for so many years, not just a “job.” I think the days of standard English majors and working in publishing may be on its last legs. Some of my younger full-time colleagues at Elsevier have left the company over the last year; tell me the emphasis is only on production, layout, etc., and not on the editing/writing. It is a shame.
And I talk to everybody and anybody when I’m out. Working at home, w/only my dogs and cats for company, I truly know the value of a kind word or a simple conversation.
Elle--Thank you for your kind words. As you know, being complimented on my writing is so valuable to me. And I agree about my Commenters--they're terrific.
DeleteYour resume is impressive. I'd have loved to get into some publishing arena right after retirement, but even then, the job market was contracting. And, as you've identified, it's almost nonexistent now, thanks to AI. (Value Edit...as if! I, too, find that name to be offensive.)
I admire your determined attitude with regard to your future. You're right in believing that our only choice is to be resilient and adaptable. And ready!
It's true that as we age we can become socially isolated if we're not careful. Working from home can exacerbate that. I retired many years before my husband, so I was used to keeping up a stream of chatter with my cats. Rick is here now, but he's not a big conversationalist, and I often get worn out always being the one to initiate and keep it going. Sometimes, I think I talk more to Piper and Marlowe than him, so I don't mind chatting with people at the grocery store or wherever.
I love how conversational you are in the grocery line, and so invested and interested in the people around you. It's wonderful. Over the years, I've had grocery checkers that I've connected with - I'd even wait to get in their lines. I'm guessing they've retired, or I'm not at the store at the right time. I've not connected with my grocery people as regularly, but there's a woman that works in the drug store side, stocking shelves. Sheesh - she's been there since Lad and Ed were tykes. Whenever I see her, I stop and chat with her, and she remembers me and the kids when they were young.
ReplyDeleteI feel like my list of jobs is short, but if I sit to write it out, I might surprise myself. Most of them are babysitting, nannying, and my in home daycare. I have one really unusual job when I first got out of college. I sold hood and duct cleaning services. A man whose kids I babysat for bought a power washer and started hiring guys to do this on the side. He made most of the money. I had to give estimates based on how greasy the hood and ducts were. It was a lot of guess work and interesting to be in the kitchens of various restaurants. My fav was cold calling a Japanese restaurant. They misunderstood me: We have no hood, just hats. No thank you cleaning our hoods. (so funny).
Ernie--Thank you. I try to be kind always, and I want to "be the change I wish to see in the world." It helps immensely that I'm retired, of course, and am often not on a strict schedule or in much of a hurry. That's a big reason why I don't shop on weekends or evenings, leaving those times free for people who work.
DeleteIt's heartwarming that you have that ongoing relationship with the woman at the store who recalls when the kids were so little! I'll bet she can't believe what they're all doing now.
I'm loving your unusual job of estimating for kitchen power washing and the Japanese mixup. No hood, just hats! LOL LOL
I don't miss any of my jobs, but I do miss people from some of my past jobs. What jobs have I had? Let me think...
ReplyDeleteMy friend and I used to fold pizza boxes for a local pizza place. They would pay us in pizza and soda. (Like a whole pizza or two to take home, and a big thermos that held enough soda for a family)
Another friend and I would go to a local horse stable where they rented out horses by the hour to ride, and we would clean stalls in exchange for horse rides. Both of these jobs were negotiated by my friends, I never had the great ideas, but I loved them both. Pizza! Horses!
Jobs for money -
Babysitting
Cleaning up at my mom's office after they had trainings
House cleaner - cleaned for a friend of my mom's once a week for $10 - unheard of money, it was probably an hour or an hour and a half of work
Once I turned 16 and could get a W-2 job -
Restaurant hostess
Restaurant waitress
Hotel front desk
Hotel concierge
Hotel HR admin
Assistant to dept chair at big university
HR admin again
Business Analyst - IT adjacent work - 2 companies
Other IT adjacent work that does not include programming - most recent 2 jobs
Unlike you, I've never had a dream job. I just go from one job to another.
J--Are you sure you don't miss the pizza and horse gigs? Because both of those still sound pretty good to me. Do you know that I've still never ridden a horse? I'd still like to, I think.
DeleteAssistant to the department chair sounds like something that could be interesting. What department?
I think the idea of Having A Dream Job is a bit dangerous. I did always want to be a Teacher; it was my chosen profession. However, it wasn't Dreamy. I loved the Teaching aspect and the students, but there were times that those were very, very small parts of it.
Your job might not be your Dream Job, but it doesn't become your Identity. You work, but then your real life is just that--Your Real Life. You probably have way more balance in your life than I did when I was teaching. It's a tradeoff.
I think my horseback riding days are over. I’d like to have a pet horse and treat it like a dog or a cat. Just love it and pet it.
DeleteI was assistant to the chair of the Sociology Department, which mostly meant keeping files for people to review when professors were up for tenure, or for when they were hiring, that kind of thing. It was interesting, and I really enjoyed the university atmosphere (I was at UPENN, where Ted was working on his PhD). The pay was crap.
Ted has a PhD and wanted to be a professor, and never could make that work. Too many jobs going to adjuncts, not enough tenure track. Talk about crappy pay, adjuncts around here make almost nothing, and sometimes don’t get paid until the end of the semester. How is one supposed to live getting paid 2x a year? All of that education and work and deferred job and money for nothing. It was hell on his ego for years.
J--Higher education is brutal until you get a tenured position. One of my formers was an adjunct at the local community college. He's a brilliant writer and published poet/novella/short story author. He was teaching entry level comp classes for peanuts. Now? He has his own comic book store.
DeleteYour description of adjunct pay there is astonishing to me. What on earth!? It's just wrong.
I had no idea that Ted had his PhD. I shall henceforth refer to him as Dr. Ted, as is his due.
You had a lot of good conversations in the store! I usually just get in, get out! Of course right now I don't speak the language, so that makes it a lot easier! :) I have actually not had that many jobs overall. My parents had their own business, so from the time I was about 8 to 18 I worked for that, then I basically only had three other jobs after that: retail, government, finance. I enjoyed the people that I worked with in each place, but each job itself had its pros and cons! I don't really want to work with teenagers, but working with a bunch of older white dudes is not a huge cup of tea either! :)
ReplyDeleteKyria--You know, the staff in my grocery store are also quite friendly, and since I go there once a week, we sort of feel like we know one another. And Midwesterners are known for being chatty. Add that to me apparently having a face that people seem to want to talk to, and there you have it.
DeleteIt's true that people make the difference in the workplace. I think many have the philosophy of, "We're all in this together, so we might as well make the best of it" and try to get along. I always tried to keep my work and home life separate as much as possible so as to have some balance and sanity, but I did have some great relationships with coworkers.
I can see where old white guys would still predominate in finance and government. More's the pity.
I'm curious about 5, 6, and 7, Nance--they seem to veer off the "wordy and nerdy" path a bit. Were they part-time gigs while you were in college? #4 Made me smile, but I could see you meandering into it because of circumstances and upbringing before making a decision to not continue.
ReplyDeleteIn other news, I've been seeing more older checkout staff, and it worries me because they're easily at retirement age and deserve to retire, but are at an entry-level position all over again.
My list of jobs is short, since part-time jobs weren't a thing when I was growing up. I always envied American kids in books and movies with their jobs and their independence!
maya--You got it. I had to finance my own college education by taking out a loan and working. I'll write up the details in a separate post later. I explained #4 in my response to Bug, above. #4 was yet another nail in the coffin of my catholicism.
DeleteYes, I'm seeing far more older cashiers now, too, and it *is* worrisome. People are supplementing their income, perhaps, or re-entering the job market because of higher costs, healthcare concerns, etc. It's alarming.
Oh, maya, to hear that you envied us and our Puritan Work Ethic and now you are part of The Machine. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Nance, like your comment to J, teaching was always what I wanted to do and I enjoy the active teaching parts of it very much. I'm not a fan of the more cog-like aspects of it, but see no way around that.
DeleteThat seems like the perfect list to me, Nance. A nice variety!
ReplyDeleteMy first job was also babysitting. I wonder if every American girl's first paid job was babysitting.
Engie--Variety for sure. It does seem like a lot of us did some babysitting! I think about how I was responsible for children as young as 9 months old when I was only 13 or 14. It seems crazy!
Delete