Ostomy Memories of Odd Jobs

There were some odd jobs that I found myself suffering with while waiting to discover my true calling. Driving a taxi on the night shift in Miami didn’t last too long; nor did working as a houseparent at a facility for the developmentally disabled (still called “retarded” in those bygone days); the pizza chef gig was doomed from the start, notwithstanding that I got to eat whatever I had time to make for myself, since my supervisor was the owner’s fifteen year old son. I taught school for a while, wrote advertising copy, clerked in an office, and night managed a university store. Then there was the brief stint as a soda jerk just off-campus. I made lots of ice cream sodas, milk shakes, banana splits, and the like. It was also a good way to meet coeds. I ran into trouble when the owner discovered that I was using real ice cream in all my concoctions instead of the cheaper, less creamy faux stuff. He became a trifle heated over it. I proclaimed my ignorance of the preferred process. Then he said something to me that made it impossible for me to continue working for him. *

*As I recall, his exact words were “You’re fired.”

I expect we all had a colored history. I drove a taxi a few times too. Worked in the family corner store. Pitched my tent on a market garden. Modeled for a university art class, draped not nude. Various labor jobs. A few years for Revenue Canada. 30 years for an oil and gas company as an auditor.

"You're fired." Hmmmm....must be why you're such a fan of Trump.

My first summer job was detasseling corn. We started early in the morning, wearing garbage bags over our clothes to keep from getting soaked with dew. I put myself through university working summers at a Campbell Soup factory, making chicken noodle soup. Yuck! I still cannot stand the smell of it! I was a medic in the army reserves for 8 years, supplementing my university years income. Now that job was a lot of fun, but the sexual harassment was not. I waitressed for exactly one day. At the end of my shift, I handed in my apron and walked out, never to return.

Laurie

Hi Henry, my first job when I was fifteen was in an automatic car wash. After the cars came through all clean, we had to jump in and do the inside windows. I had very toned arms after working there all summer! One day, Little Richard came through. He and his driver waited off to the side as his limousine came through. I remember he was wearing a bright red satin suit and had this huge pompadour hairstyle, very exotic to my young eyes. My wage was $1.15 per hour.

Terry

Hello HenryM.

Thanks for yet another post which sent me on a brief trip down memory lane.

Nearly all the 'jobs' I have had have come by way of people offering them to me without me having to make an applications. For one reason or another, they have all been enjoyable in their own way and I feel fortunate to have had a very satisfying and contented working life. It started with a paper-round, which led to gardening and handiman work; progressed to barbering, then to engineering, and on to 'knitting' nylon products; From there I worked on building houses, then selling a whole variety of different products, before becoming a youth & community worker; This progressed to being a social worker and a psychologist , which lasted for over 40years. After official retirement, I carried on with psychology and did part-time work as a 'caretaker', welfare bus driver/escort and once again a handiman -cum-gardener.  Of course I have also been an academic, researcher, artist, poet and author, but I don't really view these as 'job's' because they were taken up more as intense hobbies and,how could I forget farming and dog-grooming! There have been a whole range of other part-time occupations including taxi-driving, working with scrap-metal and various odd-jobbing. I have ambitions to become a home-carer before I kark it, but at present I am too busy to take on anything else.

It's been an 'interesting' life!

Best wishes

Bill

Sounds like you have had a background that rounds off as a shining example of the proverbial "little of everything."  Good for you!  Thanks for letting us in on it.  HenryM

Little Richard...how cool!! 

Driving a taxi in Miami sounds like a fun job, but that virus has put a damper on everything here. When I was in college in the US, I worked one summer in the laundry room of a beautiful resort for the well-off near New York City. Bed sheets, pillow covers, napkins. It was all easy; you stuck the sheet under a roller and it came out pressed on the other side. An easy job, and I made a friend who asked me, "You have some Indian in you, don't you?" I realized he didn't mean Indian, Indian, but Native American Indian. He did not mean anything bad, and he was a friend. My Kuwaiti friend from college used to hang around (never actually worked), so in the evening I introduced him to our American friend and told him he was an Apache! Everybody laughed about it.

Hi Henry, your story brought back some long-lost memories of jobs from the past. My first job was as a paperboy, which led to some customers asking me to cut grass, rake leaves, and shovel snow. When I was a senior in high school, I got a job cleaning at a local elementary school. I locked myself out once, but I had an old beater of a car and was able to stand on the roof and crawl into a window. I've also worked in a commercial laundry and drove a van picking up laundry from a local university. I was also a gas station pump jockey, which I didn't much care for as I would end up smelling like gas by the end of the day. I worked one summer as a mason's helper, but the boss was a drunk. I ended up saving his life from falling off a roof while building a chimney, and that was it for me. I quit after that. I've been a welder, building garbage trucks, and also a nailer, building shipping pallets. The last job I had was in the land of cheeseheads, Wisconsin. People will know what that means. My last job was quality control in a circuit board factory.