Ye Olde Resume
:Rihanna voice: work, work, work, work, work
Job hunting is the worst. I was very lucky and didn't have to do it for over a decade, but now I'm back on the grind, applying to dozens of jobs just to never hear back, or having meetings about jobs that aren't the right fit, all while my savings account runs lower and lower and my panic levels rise higher and higher. And since I'm looking for freelance contracts and writing gigs to supplement the work I do at Autostraddle, my resume only reflects the past 15 years of relevant writing jobs. But I got my working papers on my 14th birthday, the literal day it became legal for me to do so. I had done some babysitting prior to that, but that's when my journey of joining the workforce began, so I thought it would be fun to run through some of the other jobs I've had that aren't on my resume anymore.
Tupperware Assistant
Okay this one was an unofficial job I had pretty much from the day I could form full sentences until I moved out, but sometimes I did actually get paid for it. Whether it was helping my mother sort orders in the dining room (my favorite), doing my best Vanna White at Tupperware parties, or helping out at fair booths (including but not limited to the Topsfield Fair), I was available for all things Tupper.
Nana's Office
I finally put my working papers to use the summer before high school by working at Nana's office. They didn't have much faith in the new nepo baby at first, because I remember they gave me a box of papers and plopped me in a room with a filing cabinet, where after having someone adultsplain the alphabet to me, I dutifully sorted the documents I was given. When I finished, I found the person who had given me this assignment and her flabbers were gasted. That task was apparently supposed to take me the whole day at least, if not two, and I had finished it in an hour. I continued to do other random tasks around the office that summer, including covering the front desk for the receptionist on her lunch breaks, which would consist of me having a staring contest with the phone and begging for it not to ring and having a small heart attack when it inevitably did. I guess at some point they ran out of things for me to do because eventually they gave me a different job entirely. There was this small, bright white room in the middle of the warehouse where I was placed and taught to use a soldering iron and put microchips in electronic dog collars? Mind you, this wasn't what my grandmother's company did, I don't think. Honestly I am still fuzzy on the details of the company and also why a bunch of teenagers were left unsupervised with power tools as a summer job, but I liked it much better than answering phones.
Target
I started working at Target the summer between junior and senior year, so I might have worked at Nana's office a few summers in a row. That’s all kind of blended together as one experience so I don’t exactly remember how long I worked there or why I stopped. ANYWAY I started working at Target and I think that's where I lost faith in humanity for the first time? I had NEVER in my short existence been treated as poorly by strangers as I was by the customers at that store. I worked in "softlines" aka the clothing sections, which involved anything from (at worst) cleaning and organizing the baby & toddler clothes that never stayed on those damn tiny hangers to (at best) manning the dressing room, which was basically just sitting and sorting clothes and handing out numbers. Mostly it was just hours of me meandering through the clothing department and picking up clothes people threw to on the floor, sometimes while making eye contact with me. Or hiding behind the stroller boxes to take a nap on a shelf. Or having a customer ask me if there was something in stock that was no longer on the shelf, me using my little scanner to check, saying there was none, them asking if I could go check in the back, me explaining that my scanner just did check in the back, them demanding I GO check in the back, and me performing malicious compliance by going to the back warehouse and hanging out with the forklift guys until I was sure the customer would have given up and left or until someone walkied for me. I had some really interesting coworkers there too, including my old kindergarten teacher who had retired as a teacher but then started working at Target. A guy in his 20s who made me pinky swear I wouldn't work there too long, probably because he could see the light leaving my eyes. A girl a little older than me named something adorable like Heidi-Elizabeth who, in retrospect, I definitely had a crush on. A guy my age I went on an accidental date with because I took him at his word when he said he wanted to buy me coffee to thank me for giving him a few rides home after work.
In general, I hated that job so much, and dreaded every shift. (And this has more to do with the location and the people and the experience, not the corporation, don’t sue me, Target. But also put your DEI initiatives back in place.) On top of our lunch break, we got two 15-minute breaks per shift, and I would often spend those in my car screaming and/or crying. I hated picking up after strangers, I hated putting shoes that had been on people’s feet back on shelves, I hated getting yelled at because someone couldn't find the exact shirt from the catalog as if I was in charge of Target inventory. The only hours that didn't feel like time was passing backwards was when I covered a register during busy spells because at least that engaged my brain. The only truly fond memories I have of that job is eating discounted Pizza Hut personal pan pizza and breadsticks for lunch most days, the day I was the one to find the "missing" kid we locked down the store for (he was hiding in a clothing rack), and whenever my friends came to visit me at work. I was supposed to work until the week before I left for college but I quit like two or three weeks early because I couldn't take it anymore.
America Reads
While I was in college and AT college, I had work study, so since I was going to school to be a teacher, America Reads felt like the right fit. I basically just got plopped in a different school every semester and they put me to work however they needed me, sometimes helping in classrooms, sometimes doing 1:1 tutoring, etc. My first semester I was at a high school helping a Spanish teacher who also taught a dance class, and that's when I realized I didn't want to be a high school teacher. It didn't help that I was 5'3" and 18 and there were some seniors in one of the classes I worked in that were 6'4" and 19 and I'd be like "please stop talking during the quiz" and they'd be like "I'm older than you, miss, you can't tell me what to do" and I'd be like "fair point, carry on." After that I was placed in elementary schools and that was much more my speed.
Psych Studies
This wasn't officially a job, but you wouldn't know it from the way I made it a side hustle. Unlike my peers, I was at NYU on scholarships, grants, loans, thoughts and prayers, so I didn't have a monthly allowance from my parents more than most people's rent. So on top of my work study, I would sign up for the paid psych studies the school was running that were anywhere from 20 to 100 dollars a pop. I did everything from taking quizzes to test racial bias, to answering interview questions while wearing a heart monitor, to getting an MRI while the psych students administered mild electric shocks so they could study the pain center of the brain. I was not picky. Basically, if it fit in my schedule and was going to give me money, I signed up for it.
Dunkin Donuts
The summer between freshman year of college, I set out to find a summer job. I got rejected from my DREAM JOB at Blockbuster because I was "overqualified" (rude), and had gotten interviews at both the movie theater and Dunkin, but Dunkin called first. It worked out, because I loved that job. It was hard and sometimes so frustrating, but I made some great friends and we found a way to have fun. We were a group of youths from 18-24ish and we were GOOD at the job. I was asked to train someone literally my second week there. We were often put on drive-through duty together (and sometimes had to also help the front out at the same time) and as if that wasn't chaotic enough, we would sometimes make it harder for ourselves by playing "I'm going to a picnic" between orders through the headset. Sometimes we would get so frustrated by the fact that every time, without fail, if we said "one moment please," people would start ordering, because they weren't listening to our words, they just heard a voice and started going. So we started saying ridiculous things. "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the good burger, can I take your order?" "I love you!" "Would you like fries with that?" - it didn't matter what we said, customers thought they knew the script, so they would order and drive up without listening. It made us giggle. We also liked to experiment with the food and drinks (for ourselves, not for customers), like frosting chocolate munchkins with strawberry frosting, or filling them with the Boston creme filling. We invented new Coolatta flavors (like creamsicle and blueberry dream), and tried to use the Coffee Coolatta machine to recreate Arby's jamocha shake. I could actually write an entire essay about all the things we got up to, all the things I learned on that job, and all the insane things our managers said to us. But we had fun. The time almost always went by fast because there was no slowing down (with the rare exception of a night shift) and even when it was slow, I was either surrounded by friends or caffeine, so I was content. I worked there four summer and winter breaks in a row. My Nana still uses the customized Dunkin gift card that has a picture of me in my Dunkin uniform on it. Second favorite retail/counter service job I ever had.
Barnes & Noble
I worked at B&N my first semester senior year, and this is easily my favorite retail job I've ever had even though only worked there for a few months. I only worked the cash register, but I was in heaven, surrounded by books and book-lovers. I worked at the location in Union Square in New York so we even got the occasional celebrity coming in. (I was shocked, for example, that Whoopi Goldberg came in and bought a stack of books herself. I would have thought she had people for that.) I loved the people I worked with, I loved chatting with strangers about books. Sometimes I worked the music section and got to pick the CD we listened to, sometimes I got to dust off my Dunkin skills by doing a shift at the bookstore cafe. (Significantly less chill than working the regular B&N register.) I just had the best time. I sadly only worked there for one semester though, because I went back to Boston for the winter break, and they kept too many of the holiday employees on through January to hire me back and I had to find new employment. Which leads me to...
Pinkberry
Pros of working at Pinkberry: free froyo! No menu to memorize. Pretty straightforward. Froyo seekers are nicer than pre-caffeinated people on the way to work. Cons of working at Pinkberry: pretty much everything else. It probably didn't help that I worked from January through April, not exactly peak Pinkberry season. And we weren't allowed to have our phones on the floor, so I spent so many shifts standing in an empty store, just me and my manager who I called JimJam because he refused to stop calling me ValPal, him in the back doing whatever managers do, me at the cash register doodling the snapshot of St. Mark's I could see out the store window, stealing raspberries, and daydreaming. All while the Pinkberry song played. (Though I don't remember it having any other words besides P-I-N, K-B-E, R-R-Y PINKBEEEEERRY. *eye twitch*)
After I worked one final summer at Dunkin after I graduated college, I moved to New York for good and started grad school. While looking for a full-time job, I started babysitting for my aunt's friend. The first few months of it I called it "babysitting invisible children" because they were always in bed before I even got there. Eventually I was in charge of putting the older one to bed. I wouldn't meet the youngest until much later. (The first night I was there I did have to sneak through the entire apartment to find him, because I had seen the toddler's crib when the dad came out of the room when I first got there, but no one had told me where the baby monitor was, just handed me a baby monitor, told me to help myself to snacks, mansplained the TV to me, and left! Turns out the baby was in the parents' bathroom in a bassinet. (They obviously were quickly outgrowing this apartment, and that's why I ended up ultimately not babysitting for them anymore, they moved to New Jersey.) BUT, this woman ended up getting me the interview for the receptionist job at the company I would eventually become the copywriter for and work at for 12 years.
I'm sure I missed some odd jobs and such that I had over the years, but those were the big jobs. I'm not above getting a job at my local bookstore if that's what it comes to, but I am hoping to soon find a remote writing job to supplement my other freelance work that will allow me to pay my rent while continuing to pursue other creative ventures.
Wish me luck!