Jobs you had before you found your place in the world

[Bunion 2020]

I was a mainframe computer operator in Indianapolis in the late 70s. Worked mostly midnight to 8:00 am. My sleep rhythm has never forgiven me.

Perhaps its because I used to load a whole bunch of stuff up to run and would sleep on the CPU. It was warm and had a soothing hum. Every now and then I would have to wake up and reply to a question or hang some more tapes. Yeah, tapes.

The machine had 1MB of memory and that was a big deal at that time.

[idahospud]

This implies that we've found our place in the world or think we have, so... I'm out!

[dan_pdx]

Moonlighting at a bar in Japan; I only did weekend nights. I was in my early 20s and it was pretty fucking fun. In retrospect, maybe I had found my place in the world then and didn't recognize it.

[BmillsSkier]

Best job before I settled in? Easy.

Lifeguard at a second-tier water park with a 45-10 F-M ratio amongst the guards during the summers between Senior year of high school and Sophomore year of undergrad. Books could be written about the fun we had.

[UTpowder]

Cheese taster/grader. While working days I only graded the cheese. Had to taste each lot, check curd formation, bubble size for Swiss, check salt ph etc. I hated it. Worked with a bunch of assholes. Lazy cheese plant lifers that thought they were something special.

Finally had enough and went back to school. switched to nights where I had to unload cheese from semi trailers then grade and put away. At least I got to work by myself.

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Line cook, bartender, sous chef, set decorator/props, furniture and cabinet maker, trim carpenter, construction stuporvisor.

[XXX-er]

out of HS I worked for the fed govenerment shredding old files and relief truck driver

the lifetime IBM gig came along 9 months later and I had arrived at the age of 18

[stealurface831]

I worked at a donut shop owned by an old Cambodian man who spoke no english and run by his heroin addict son. cambodian folk at full volume does not sound good anywhere, at any time, but it especially does not sound good at 3 am in a kitchen with 100 degree sugar air.

[stealurface831]

oh, and i certainly have not found my place in the world.

[old goat]

Summer camp counselor, sailing instructor, shoveling coal in a steel mill, greasing conveyor belts, landscaping, pizza delivery. All just summer jobs though, although the high turnover at the steel mill meant that by the end of the summer I had some seniority--enough to move from laborer to millwright helper.

[Buster Highmen]

Worked in a butcher shop at age 14 - 17 wrestling quarters of beef to the cutting block and swamping out the gore at the end of the day. I weighed about 80 lbs at the time. Can't stand the smell of bleach to this day.

Janitor in the college library. My "office" had a steel door that accessed a half mile of steam tunnels. I had access to the rare book room. Psychedelics were enjoyed throughout.

Managed the college coffee shop. Ate a lot of sprout, tomato and cheese sandwiches. Ah, the 70s.

Graded papers and tutored calculus and linear algebra. I thought that was the place.

Was a faculty member at UMass Boston Columbia Point. Didn't pay much, but was fun and more of being in the place.

Summered over in Boston gutting a 5 story near the combat zone. The culling stage involved "kangos", lightweight jackhammers used to peel off the old stucco and mesh from the brick walls. Graduated to smashing out the 1800's glass from windows, watching it sail down to the blocked street below and shattering on the tarmac. Spent hours prying off old olnate wood mouldings from windows and doors.

Grad st00dent, Math, Phd and all that shit. Found that the place I had thought wasn't in the primary epiphany.

Was a barista in the early 80s. Dance school above. Reread Lolita.

Was a rocket scientist: wrote ICBM tracking algorithms for star wars program; with a top secret clearance; found how bogus the military industrial complex was.

Taught myself C, wrote code for the petroleum industry that read output data from well heads.

Worked for Microsoft for 25 years on and off. C Compilers, RPC runtime & interpreters, 3d graphics schedulers, remote desktop, remote apps on iOS.

Was the Chairman of Computer Science Department at DigiPen, a college that taught games programming. Was a blast; didn't pay much.

Wrote Codecs for sony cameras.

Wrote driver code for graphics companies, Dx8/Dx9.

Found that my place in the world had a lot less to do with a career than I had thought.

[fatnslow]

Best job before I settled in? Easy.

Lifeguard at a second-tier water park with a 45-10 F-M ratio amongst the guards during the summers between Senior year of high school and Sophomore year of undergrad. Books could be written about the fun we had.

I think at least 5 movies and a few shows have been made about your late teen years.

[bobz]

I had a great job in college working in a meat warehouse. That was back in the days when warehouse work paid well. 3 swing-shift days per week, often paying overtime and then double-time when I felt up to doing an all-nighter with the especially chill graveyard crew. Great guys on the crew, and got a good workout when it was my turn to load a truck. Had "Mr. Chitts" drawn on my helmet. Everyone who worked there either was a total meathead, buying ribs by the 30-lb box at employee discount, or was vegetarian; I definitely gravitated towards the latter the longer I worked there.

[irul&ublo]

Bartender at a live music club after college. We had 50 cent happy hour 5-9, every day. At that time, the Diablo Canyon nuke plant was being retrofitted, and there were several thousand workers doing 7/24. Wild times, with cocktail waitresses.

[BmillsSkier]

I think at least 5 movies and a few shows have been made about your late teen years.

We celebrated the entire collection and used most as a blueprint for our behavior.

Being the youthful upstarts we were, we thought, we tended to push things a tad farther than what was in film and literature at the time. Textbook Salad Days.

[S_jenks]

A job I had before my current career was slinging salmon eggs (roe) up in a remote corner of Alaska for a summer.

The eggs would come in with the tide, since our camp was on the Naknek River. We’d brine them in big tubs able to hold several laundry basket loads at a time, churning away for so many mindless hours. What little downtime you had was spent walking over a mile each way to the village bars.

You worked a lot, and as a result burned a whole lot of calories. And the company running the show made sure it was never short on feeding their workforce. Never ate so much in my life, it was like they kept throwing it at you. A lot of salmon and seafood brought in on the boats was served for the main courses. Their bakery crew could make a mean donut too.

All sorts of vagabonds, ex cons, diehards, and oddballs worked during those few months. With the right job you could make a killing up there, and while many of them would squirrel their money away, most would just take a vacation.

Several months cut off from the world will do ya strange.

[Garbowski]

Landscaper, laborer, warehouse gopher, surveyor, delivery driver, busboy, bartender, salesman, standardized test instructor, office drone, event planner, English teacher, monkey caretaker.

[billyk]

Soda jerk, built fences in Wyoming one summer - put up a mile of fence per day, roofer in Houston in the summer for about a week until I decided it was too fucking hot, worked as a boilermaker in a machine shop repairing heat exchangers.

There were some more, but that’s the highlights.

[BCMtnHound]

Summer in high school did yard work for seniors, and farm hand for the neighbours. Swamped cat for a local contractor for a bit. Between high school and college worked in a tree nursery.

During college and university, worked banquets, bar and restaurant in the downtown hotels. Lots of late night did not make for productive early morning classes. Summers fighting wildfire, pulling chain on survey crew, and point sampling ecosystem data. Damn near indestructible those days and nights. All I owned fit in my vehicle, with room to spare.

Then a couple decades in consulting, running saw during the leaner times. Got tired of the ups and downs of the private sector so got a job with the govt and settled down a bit. Accumulated more than I can carry in the truck now, and it weighs at times. But it means security for the dependants.

Was always trying to find my place, still am to a lesser degree, but that's OK. Can't get too comfortable in any one place, life has a way of shaking things up whether you want it to or not.

[bennymac]

The details of my life are quite inconsequential. Very well, where do I begin?

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet.

My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament.

My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds - pretty standard really.

At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum - it's breathtaking. I highly suggest you try it.

[xyz]

shovelling coal in a steel mill.

Mic drop winner?

I had a temp gig of watching phone books come down a conveyor belt at a printing press. If the books got backed up etc, I had to press a button to stop the conveyor. It is was so boring I’d lose focus easily and always had some guy come press the button before I noticed there was like 200 phone books scattered over the floor.

[smartyiak]

My first job out of high school was at Birchwood meat. Basically I carried 50# blocks of meat to be dumped in a grinder and pushed 500# tubs that were dumped in a pattie press.

I learned that frozen BK and A&W was waaaaay less gross that Wendy’s “fresh never frozen” Schlick. I also learned that I wasn’t interested in assembly line work or a life of manual labor.


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[skiHOG]

Ran away from life after college. Ended up in NZ for a couple years. First, had a temp gig working at corporate HQ for a bank. Beer/wine were allowed starting at 3pm. It was The Office: Kiwi Edition, but before The Office existed. Then, I worked at a vineyard outside of Wanaka for about a year. Living in a tent on the Clutha River. High AF every day, getting paid in cash, working for a guy from Zimbabwe who always talked about his days in "Rhodesia."

[ill-advised strategy]

Scavenging 10¢ cans
Paper Routes
Babysitting
Umpire
Lifeguard
Outdoor rec, bringing rich kids on hikes
Gas station night shift
Ski shop rental tech
Dishwasher
Furniture mover
Sandwich shop
Hand sanding wooden chairs
Wildland fire, many seasons, many crews/engines
Forestry labor
Ski shop manager
Landscaper
Farm work (picking lettuce)
Timber faller
Construction demolition
Dynamite hole driller
Fire/aviation dispatcher
Hotel night auditor
Helicopter crewmember
Student nurse
Ferry dock worker
Doorman/security at a shitty bar
Construction laborer
Truck driver
Taxi driver
Bus driver

My place in the world doesn’t exist. All there is for me is a Sisyphean nightmare struggling to roll the giant frozen turd of my life up the lowest levels of maslow’s pyramid of needs for a few months before it melts and slips away and rolls over my nutsack again for the 80th time.

[schindlerpiste]

Life guard
construction laborer
snow shoveling
Beach club manager
Car Parker
Parking Lot attendant
Bus Boy
Law Clerk
Baseball Coach
Umpire