Jobs you had before you found your place in the world

[warthog]

Worked for a small company making snowboard step-in boots and bindings in 1996 in Boulder.
This was my post college foray into the "real world". I had interned with a small snowboard mfg co in Elicottville, and they knew these guys out in Boulder. Answered an ad in the paper. Did EVERYTHING. Customer Service, reception, sales, design, R&D (LOTS of R&D), on snow demos in ASSSPEN, etc. It was fun. I made no money. It gave me the only window into the snow sports industry that I needed. I decided very quickly to keep my hobbies and passions as just that. Making a career out of them, at least in my case, could only sour them for me. Overall, it was the best experience of my life. I learned the above, as well as how NOT to run a business. I also did a little bit of everything, so when I interviewed afterwards, I could easily relay how any of those experiences made me a wise choice for their job. No ragrats.

[singlecross]

Mow lawns
Dishwasher
Waiter
Temp laborer in a paper mill
Graduate High School
Logger
Ski bum/ shop tech
Bike shop tech
Kayak Guide
Graduate College -Geology degree
Ski Academy coach - 15 years
Get Married*... have kids
Built my house
Ski/Kayak buyer at sporting goods store
Cafe’ owner
Handyman
Boatyard service tech
Boat Captain

Ski coaching was my best and longest gig. Had some great times with good folks, travelled all over, and had some brushes with greatness. I really only miss the course setting these days... it was really special to look at a ski hill, place your vision of how it should be skied, and then have world class athletes rip the panels off. Closest I’ll ever get to being an artist... Sigh. I walked away when my Son was born as the travel was too many days on the road to remain happily married.

*My best achievement was marrying well.

[Benny Profane]

Driving a cab in NYC at night around the time Taxi Driver was filmed. Lucky to be alive, but coolest job I ever had.

[retirwntm]

So did you have change for a nickel?


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[EWG]

I had a long list but the most impactful to me were

Bartender
Framing Carpenter
Ran a bike team

[ötzi]

For 3 summers, when I was 17, 19 and 20, I was the maintenance guy's helper at a French-language girls camp on the coast of Maine. Les Chalets Francais on Deer Isle, to be exact. The maintenance guy lived at home. The owner of the camp lived in a house at the edge of the camp with his wife. Aside from the owner I was the only male who was at that camp at night. Fun was had.

(when I was 18 I lived with a bunch of friends on the Cape and partied and worked a couple different jobs and had a good time but the next year I was like fuck that, I'm going back to the French Camp.)

[JimmyCarter]

For 3 summers, when I was 17, 19 and 20, I was the maintenance guy's helper at a French-language girls camp on the coast of Maine. Les Chalets Francais on Deer Isle, to be exact. The maintenance guy lived at home. The owner of the camp lived in a house at the edge of the camp with his wife. Aside from the owner I was the only male who was at that camp at night. Fun was had.

(when I was 18 I lived with a bunch of friends on the Cape and partied and worked a couple different jobs and had a good time but the next year I was like fuck that, I'm going back to the French Camp.)

We’re gonna need more info...

[Meadow Skipper]

I have a pre-career list like most people - pizza delivery and bike shop to factory work and construction - but I only really found my place when I retired from wildland fire. Since then I’ve done short term gigs like ski patrol, movie extra, event EMT, and yard work for Forrest Fenn.

But now I wish I’d worked at a French girls’ summer camp. If I’d only known...

[JimmyCarter]

But now I wish I’d worked at a French girls’ summer camp. If I’d only known...

[ötzi]

Yeah they had me live in basically a shed way off at the edge of the camp in the woods, thinking the seclusion would keep things under control. It kinda worked out the opposite. When "Love Shack" came out I was like, hey that's copyright infringement.

The first summer when I went up there (I was 17, remember) I brought 3 cartons of Marlboro Reds and a quarter-pound of weed. That was all the money I had or I woulda brought more. I ran out of smokes but the weed made it to the end of the summer.

How I got the job was my twin sisters went there for a summer. My parents had to drive them up there and they didn't trust me to be at home without them for 4 days (they were smart) so they made me go with them. I carried their incredibly heavy trunks to their cabin after the owner tried to pick one up and couldn't and he said, ya know, we could use a big strong kid around here. So I went back home with my folks, stocked up, packed, and took a bus back up to Bangor where they picked me up. The rest is history.

[singlecross]

Otzi... Deer Isle is right in my backyard. We are there often in my boats. Does this camp still exist? Maybe my best days are ahead of me!

[ötzi]

Nah it's out of business. was there for like 75 years but now it's gone. It was on Little Deer Isle. Where you at?

[singlecross]

West/backside of Mount Desert Island... small boat paradise around these parts... especially surrounding Isle au Haut.

[ianpnw]

Pumping gas, running a car wash, mechanic’s mate in a metal factory, mechanic’s mate in a paper mill (pulping seized porn mags - maybe not all of them made the pulping tank), digging ditches to lay a gas pipeline, track maintenance laborer for British Rail, bartender, laborer in a meat market, subject for medical research, gastric juice donor (srsly, 3-5 times a week for 4 years - they purified Intrinsic Factor for Schilling tests from it back in the day).

Watching a train go past at 125 mph a few feet away when standing trackside is impressive. My buddies would turn away - I would turn and look. Until the day someone on the train flushed the toilet onto the track and I was hit by a brown cloud of vaporized shit when a turd hit the ground at 125 mph. I was covered from head to toe with flecks of shit and TP. My buddies thought that seeing a college boy covered in shit was hilarious - me, not so much. Good times. I stayed in school!

[riser4]

Little bit of this and a little bit of that. Have any of us really found our place?

[Benny Profane]

So did you have change for a nickel?


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No, but, I may have sat at the very table that exchange was filmed. The old Belmore, sort of a competitor for the Horn and Hardart automats. Now a condo that, I'll bet, some aspiring Trumplike troll wants to tear down and put up a taller condo building.

[XXX-er]

I have a pre-career list like most people - pizza delivery and bike shop to factory work and construction - but I only really found my place when I retired from wildland fire. Since then I’ve done short term gigs like ski patrol, movie extra, event EMT, and yard work for Forrest Fenn.

But now I wish I’d worked at a French girls’ summer camp. If I’d only known...

I never even thot of the apres career stuff, sell/ fix bikes, sell kayaks, forestry tech at a research center, stick bitch on survey crews, construction, shuttling trucks for fishermen & rafters, trucking food into forestry & wildland FF camps, expediting for a BC ski hut, fixing dry suits, after >30 yars doing one gig any other kind of work was a hard adjustment at first


I remembr looking at the 25 yr guys they all looked fat and happy wearing clean clothes, I knew in 5 more years their money was just gona keep coming for the next 40 yars, so I figured it was a good place to land so I stayed narth away from those fucking managers and besides I wasnt qualifyed to do anything else but be a IBM HW guy ... a one trick pony


my understanding of french was/is still very bad

[Harvey44]

Ceramic arts/potter

I definitely didn't have change for a nickel.

[Flounder]

High school I worked as a busboy at a nice restaurant. Cash in hand every night walking out the door. Occasionally swiping a nice bottle of wine that wasn't finished. Waitress taking us to bars after work. Waiters from local college inviting us to parties. Pretty cool gig for high school.

After HS it was 2 summers on the survey crew with the power company. Dad would drive me to work in the morning hung over, sleep in the back seat of the company suburban as we drove an hour to the site for the day. Wake up at first diner stop fro breakfast. Work for a couple of hours then a diner for lunch. Couple more hours of work before driving back roads home while stopping for creamies. Good times.

[ötzi]

West/backside of Mount Desert Island... small boat paradise around these parts... especially surrounding Isle au Haut.

Yeah I've been all around Penobscot Bay pretty much, over to Rockland, up to Searsport,, Vinalhaven, Northhaven...Isle au Haut I hiked a lap of...still love it there.

[Buster Highmen]

I forgot to mention tree planter. Lived under a tarp during the spring and early summer weeks in the Cascades, nearly constant drizzle and being wet. Exhausting tramping up and down clearcuts with 400 seedlings strapped to my waist, but I got so I could lay in 1000-1200 trees a day. I made good money, more than $8/hour in the mid seventies. I didn't have a car, so on the weekends, I'd catch a ride with some of the guys that did to hang with the girlfriend, take baths, go see shows like the Dead and Zappa, then back to the hills for another week.

As far as that magical 'place in the world', I'd made the mistake of thinking that had something to do with a career of making money through thinking before I realized that it was having a family. I've loved being a dad.

[DJSapp]

Picked up cans/bottles around the neighborhood construction site

Paperboy

Malibu Grand Prix track guy

Movie theater usher

Campus mail delivery

Soils field research assistant

Soils Chemical lab tech

Grad student assistant counting traffic on I80

Caltrans intern

Auto parts store runner

Most educational by far was Malibu Grand Prix. Between the club next door that brought drunk girls over in mini skirts who always had problems with the 4 point harness, learning how to drive aggressive race lines and control skids, small motor maintenance, and our own after hours parties, it was everything a 16 year old needed.

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[east or bust]

Neighborhood grass mower in the summer, shovel boy in the winter.

Town pool maintenance assistant, which more or less equated to taking out the trash, ending beehives, and starting intentional grease fires in the kitchen.

Rental tech at the local ski hill through high school.

Construction PM intern at a luxury condo building in SOHO. I liked that job a lot. The commute from Jersey sucked but it was kind of cool since you weren’t doing it alone. So much funny shit happened on that project - full nude model photo shoot on an adjacent roof top, by the time my boss made it up after my phone call there were about 30 craft guys and me gawking. When they realized what was going on they quickly packed things up. Then the time we staged fake coke on the street corner and watched from above as sketch balls scoped out the scene for like 30 minutes before casually walking by and grabbing it.. good times.

Out of school been doing the field engineer thing with large projects. 1B in PA, 899M in Arizona, 250M in ID. I’ve learned that going after these projects is a fools game with the amount of risk and uncertainty at bid time. Contingency is of course added, but only enough to remain competitive.. AKA not enough. That and the hours suck. Currently 14-16hrs door to door. Have not found my place, planning to make it through this project then GTFO. Don’t have the escape plan put together yet.

[glademaster]

I'll think I'll have found my place when I don't have to work for myself or anyone else anymore. Until then, it's all just a means to an end.

[ötzi]

You greedy schmuck.