Dumb Kwestion #38.....JOBS!

Dynamis wrote:

Quote :

I have a feeling the telemarketing industry chews employees up and spits them out.  The first week I worked at the company I had their best sales ever and was recognized in front of the team for it.  The second week I had the lowest sales (of the current employees) and they threatened to let me go if I didn't improve (also in front of everybody).  I said "I will save you the trouble, I quit, I will be back on Monday for my check."

My telemarketing experience took place in the late eighties in the Portland area.  I had just finished school and was desperate for a job to pay the bills- any job!  So I answered the classified add in The Oregonian and showed up for my first shift at this old run down building located in what we will say is not the best section of town.  Problem was not necessarily the work but rather it was a smoking environment- EVERYONE smoked (co-workers, management, ownership) and recall coming home from my first shift with my eyes burning, throat scratchy, etc.  So needless to say did not return for my second shift...

Oh man, that would have caused me to leave the job as well.

Fundy wrote:

Staybrite wrote:

Fundy wrote:

I had 4 jobs in 4 years after I left school.  Then I spent 4 years working in Medical Insurance (in the admin department).  Since then I have spent 20 years (this year) in my current job working in a Printers/Publishers.

Not very exciting, but I do love my job, so that's good!

Do tell, what were those 4 jobs?

1 - D.I.Y. store
2 - Insurance clerk
3 - Insurance assistant
4 - worked in a solicitors (lawyers) as a general dogs body 

"general dogs body".   That has got to be a British slang term....that doesn't translate to our poor colonial English.  What are you trying to say governor?

lol, it means someone who does all the jobs no one else wants to do.  Bit like a gofer I guess.

MikeInFla wrote:

In high school (10th grade) I worked at KMart. Stayed there for several years and enjoyed it. I worked in apparel. Restocking inventory and helping customers. I seemed to get stuck a lot in the "ladies" section where people would try to embarrass me by asking which bra would look best on them. I would normally say "go get a red one" or "go get a smaller size" or something similar. Had a lot of friends there and it was fun. Sometimes I would trade name tags with a girl named Misty. She would wear mine and I would wear hers. I also had a name tag that said "Alfonso".

When I was working at the airport restaurant I lost my name tag a few months into the job.  The manager told me to get one out of his desk to use temporarily (while they ordered me a new one).  They had one that said "Chuck", I loved it....tried to use it for most of the rest of employment there.

MikeInFla wrote:

Again, not sure if those links above will work or not I might be the only one that can see them. I used to tape record myself on the air. Used to have hours upon hours of it but now only have maybe an hour or less left.

I got both of the links to play, and you have (had) a great radio voice love the moniker "Jeff Stone".

Fundy wrote:

lol, it means someone who does all the jobs no one else wants to do.  Bit like a gofer I guess.

I was figuring that's what it meant, just thought it was a great phrase. 

ishmael81 wrote:

In order:
High school
June to August 1998 during the summer I worked for a factory that makes snow cone machines putting one bolt into a hole. By hand. For 12 hours. 
May to December 1999 six months as a cashier for a hardware company

College
February 2000 to April 2003 local convenience store cashier
April 2003 to April 2005 delivery driver then shipping manager for a local office supply company

After college
April 2005 to October 2007 direct care, case manager and supervisor for a children’s home
October 2007 to June 2009 unit leader at mental health facility for serial sex offenders
June 2009 to October 2017 Supervisor at facility for adults with disabilities 
October to December 2017 two months of hell
January 2018 to current MetLife as an auto adjuster

Glad you got out of that....also glad it was only two months, yikes.

How many 12 hour shifts did you have to work in a week at the snow cone machine factory?

Funny using an alias. Sometimes I would forget who I was. I tried to tell management that people were not stupid. They listened to multiple stations and would figure out I was the same person. I also never responded to "Jeff" when listeners in public would call me that. Some of them would be put off. Later on I would let some of them know in public my name is Mike not Jeff and it's complicated but I had to use an alias haha!

Staybrite wrote:

ishmael81 wrote:

In order:
High school
June to August 1998 during the summer I worked for a factory that makes snow cone machines putting one bolt into a hole. By hand. For 12 hours. 
May to December 1999 six months as a cashier for a hardware company

College
February 2000 to April 2003 local convenience store cashier
April 2003 to April 2005 delivery driver then shipping manager for a local office supply company

After college
April 2005 to October 2007 direct care, case manager and supervisor for a children’s home
October 2007 to June 2009 unit leader at mental health facility for serial sex offenders
June 2009 to October 2017 Supervisor at facility for adults with disabilities 
October to December 2017 two months of hell
January 2018 to current MetLife as an auto adjuster

Glad you got out of that....also glad it was only two months, yikes.

How many 12 hour shifts did you have to work in a week at the snow cone machine factory?

We worked Monday through Thursday. For a kid on summer break it was great - guaranteed overtime and I had my weekends off.

MikeInFla wrote:

Funny using an alias. Sometimes I would forget who I was. I tried to tell management that people were not stupid. They listened to multiple stations and would figure out I was the same person. I also never responded to "Jeff" when listeners in public would call me that. Some of them would be put off. Later on I would let some of them know in public my name is Mike not Jeff and it's complicated but I had to use an alias haha!

Did you get the pick the alias names....or did they come from management.  I would have been seriously tempted to use some hilarious names.

ishmael81 wrote:

Staybrite wrote:

ishmael81 wrote:

In order:
High school
June to August 1998 during the summer I worked for a factory that makes snow cone machines putting one bolt into a hole. By hand. For 12 hours. 
....
October to December 2017 two months of hell
January 2018 to current MetLife as an auto adjuster

Glad you got out of that....also glad it was only two months, yikes.

How many 12 hour shifts did you have to work in a week at the snow cone machine factory?

We worked Monday through Thursday. For a kid on summer break it was great - guaranteed overtime and I had my weekends off.

Dang, brootal.  I probably could have done it as a young man, but certainly not now.

Staybrite wrote:

MikeInFla wrote:

Funny using an alias. Sometimes I would forget who I was. I tried to tell management that people were not stupid. They listened to multiple stations and would figure out I was the same person. I also never responded to "Jeff" when listeners in public would call me that. Some of them would be put off. Later on I would let some of them know in public my name is Mike not Jeff and it's complicated but I had to use an alias haha!

Did you get the pick the alias names....or did they come from management.  I would have been seriously tempted to use some hilarious names.

Actually I don't remember. One station I worked at in Missouri didn't let us use last names. So I was "Mike". The logic being "you're their friend. When you greet your friends you only use their first name". Made sense I guess. That was at KGMO in Cape Girardeau. I loved it there but my wife didn't like the area.

In high school I just did odd jobs every once in a while.  I did do the traditional mowing lawns gig.  My most interesting job was the two weeks I did one summer driving around southeastern WV moving video games for 7-11.  We covered basically from I64 (Charleston-Huntington) south and I77 (Charleston-Beckley) east.  There are some scary places down in there.

In college I did work study during the school years, so I worked the desk at a dorm for a couple of years.  Over the summers I worked for Nashua Photo.  If you are old enough to remember when you had to mail your film away to get it developed, chances are good it ended up at Nashua.  I worked the processor, which meant I worked at the end of the huge tanks where the printed pictures passed through the developing solutions.  I was the first person to see the actual photographs people took.  Wow!  What an education THAT was.

I also worked as the stage manager for the Huntington Chamber Orchestra for a year.  That's where I learned to drive a stick and got the "pleasure" of working with real famous people like Lainie Kazan.

In graduate school I mostly worked as a substitute teacher.  I did work for a year as the Assistant to the Executive Compensation Manager at Lexmark, but the position got to be too much with my studies.

Now, I'm a part-time instructor at a Christian college, more or less homeschooling our two kids, and trying to carve out time as an independent scholar.

messiaen77 wrote:

...

In college I did work study during the school years, so I worked the desk at a dorm for a couple of years.  Over the summers I worked for Nashua Photo.  If you are old enough to remember when you had to mail your film away to get it developed, chances are good it ended up at Nashua.  I worked the processor, which meant I worked at the end of the huge tanks where the printed pictures passed through the developing solutions.  I was the first person to see the actual photographs people took.  Wow!  What an education THAT was.
...

I knew a guy that worked in one of the 1-Hour Photo places in a mall for a few years.  He said he saw some stuff that would curl your nose hairs.  Makes me glad I didn't have a job like that.

Staybrite wrote:

messiaen77 wrote:

...

In college I did work study during the school years, so I worked the desk at a dorm for a couple of years.  Over the summers I worked for Nashua Photo.  If you are old enough to remember when you had to mail your film away to get it developed, chances are good it ended up at Nashua.  I worked the processor, which meant I worked at the end of the huge tanks where the printed pictures passed through the developing solutions.  I was the first person to see the actual photographs people took.  Wow!  What an education THAT was.
...

I knew a guy that worked in one of the 1-Hour Photo places in a mall for a few years.  He said he saw some stuff that would curl your nose hairs.  Makes me glad I didn't have a job like that.

Just curious, what happens with provocative photos? In this day and age people can print their own but back when you had to have film developed I am just wondering what they did with such pictures. Did they get discarded or go back to the customer?

Well, the law was that they couldn't be sent through the mail, so the inspectors tossed them.  I think the one-hour places returned them to the customer.

Some of the other processor operators would call everyone over if they got a particularly "good" set of pictures.  The thing that was a bit awkward for me when I started that job as a 19 year-old was that when I took them off the processor and put them on the inspector's rack, the person most likely to come pick them up...was my mom.

messiaen77 wrote:

Well, the law was that they couldn't be sent through the mail, so the inspectors tossed them.  I think the one-hour places returned them to the customer.
...

My friend said that's exactly what they did (give them to the customer).  Unless it looked like something illegal (like child pornography), if they saw any of that they were obligated to report it.

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rockerVu2
Years later I was responsible for making flower arrangements for church.

And absolutely beautiful arrangements they are ! I buy Lisa flowers often, and don't like to just buy what's on the shelf, rather, I like to tell them what I want. Sort of arrange them myself. It really is an art.

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Staybrite
During junior high I had a few paper routes 

I think that would be the ultimate job. Up early, work alone, play your music, finish early, go home. 

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Alldat
Two years later, I moved into an aid job with special needs high school students.  I love these kids!  They are amazing people with a lot of disabilities but seem to just enjoy life despite their limitations.

I have mad respect for you and anyone else who can work with the disabled. 

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Ishmael81
unit leader at mental health facility for serial sex offenders

  Wow, that's gotta be a heavy job !

Like many here, I did odd jobs throughout my childhood and early teens = Mowed lawns, pulled weeds, watered trees, house-sat, dog-sat, even baby-sat, and also sold plenty of artwork. I loved to earn cash so I could buy comic books, art supplies and music.

Like Xid and Dynamis, I had a lot of jobs prior to falling into my career. 
My first real job was at Clarke's Art and Frame Center back in '83. It was either $3 an hour, or $4.50 in art supplies. I usually took the supplies.
From there I job-hopped: Worked with my mechanic Dad in his shop "Superior Machining", at a department store called Sprouse Reitz, then became a painter's apprentice at a Chevy dealer where I got to sand, primer, and paint vehicles. When that became a health issue, I then did a couple years at Stater Bros bagging then meat dept.  

I did the college thing, studying to be a pharmacist. While in college I worked for Baxter Hyland Division which was a plasma collection center. I did phlebotomy, worked in the lab, and took care of the Autopheresis machines (that collected a patient's blood, spun out the plasma, then returned the red cells back into the patient).
My girlfriend got me a job at a local independent pharmacy and thus started my career. While I worked at a couple different pharmacies here in our town, I put 25 years in as a registered/certified pharmacy technician. Great career. It helped raise our kids, paid for 4 cars, paid off our mortgage, not to mention multiple surgeries. 

The last 4 years of my pharmacy work was done in a Dr's office Dispensary. I got to finally be the head cheese of my job. Worked by myself in my own office/pharmacy. The Drs would come to my window and give me a verbal RX for a patient they were currently seeing, I'd fill it and counsel the patient on the med(s) - all in one visit. The patients loved it even more than I did.

Course at the end of that job was the beginning of going off work for permanent disability. I would've rather kept working that job, but I couldn't lug the daily shipment of RX totes, or stand all day long. After 10 years of back surgeries and having, as my surgeon described, the back of an 80 year old, I couldn't go on for another year. In the 2+ years of being off work, my condition has worsened and my pain levels are even worse than when I "retired".... so for the last 2 years I've been the housekeeper and chef of the Willis household 

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

Quote :

Staybrite
During junior high I had a few paper routes 

I think that would be the ultimate job. Up early, work alone, play your music, finish early, go home. 

It was a fun job but I didn't think so at the time.  Worst part was having to deliver papers in the rain (from my bicycle), and trying to collect from dead beats.  I basically had to buy the news papers myself, and was reselling them to the customer (but the paper set the prices).  So if two or three customers didn't pay (I had to go door to door each month to collect) that basically meant little to no profit for me because I still had to pay the newspaper back for every paper I delivered.  
They have since abolished that system.

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

I did the college thing, studying to be a pharmacist. While in college I worked for Baxter Hyland Division which was a plasma collection center. I did phlebotomy, worked in the lab, and took care of the Autopheresis machines (that collected a patient's blood, spun out the plasma, then returned the red cells back into the patient).
My girlfriend got me a job at a local independent pharmacy and thus started my career. While I worked at a couple different pharmacies here in our town, I put 25 years in as a registered/certified pharmacy technician. Great career. It helped raise our kids, paid for 4 cars, paid off our mortgage, not to mention multiple surgeries. 

A lot of the medics that I was in the National Guard with (after I left active duty) worked as Phlebotomists (or even Ambulance EMTs).  The Phelebotomists were great to have in the Aid Station because they could hit an vein for an I.V. every time (usually first try).  But much of the rest of us were just weekend medics and our skills with a needle got a little rusty when we didn't use them on a regular basis.

Guilty/Forgiven wrote:

, I then did a couple years at Stater Bros bagging then meat dept.  

My first thought was "I didn't know the STATLER Brothers had a meat shop"!

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They have since abolished that system.

Thank God eh ? Terrible system

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The Phelebotomists were great to have in the Aid Station because they could hit an vein for an I.V. every time (usually first try)

Luckily my entire job as phlebotomist was just drawing one small vial of blood from the medial cubital to ship off and test for any kind of disease. Once it came back clean, the patient would be called and could give plasma. But it was super easy for me to hit that vein every time.

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My first thought was "I didn't know the STATLER Brothers had a meat shop"!

I have a feeling the Statler Brothers would have been easier to work with than Stater Bros 

Delivered papers through high school.
"Worked" (volunteered with a little bit of thank-you money at the end) at a local Christian camp in the summer of 2013.
Worked at a provincial park campground in the summer of 2014.
Interned at my Bible school in the 2015-2016 school year.
Worked at a textile factory to make money in the summer of 2017.
This summer, I'll be working at a detour signage firm as an intern.

My family has had a decent variety of jobs overall. My mom left her job in civil engineering to take care of her kids (me and my brother), and never returned, but instead takes care of the home and volunteers in different local organizations. My dad just retired from nearly 30 years of teaching math and science in high school, almost all that time in the same school. My brother's working at a local engineering firm, in HVAC and plumbing, where he is likely to remain for a while.

I don't know where I'll end up when I finish school in 4 years (God willing). I hope to go work in the North, but I don't know how permanent of a position that will be, if I do go there.

Gosh, what a variety of jobs people do and have done. My first job was as a gymnastics coach. I started coaching recreational gym as a 12 year old and was very lucky to land a job coaching junior competitive gymnasts at 16. In my last year of high school I worked 30 hours a week. It was kind of silly because I didn't have much time to be a kid, but I suppose it kept me out of trouble plus it paid for most of my university fees and lots of music toys (a synthesizer, amp, percussion pieces, pedals, cables...).

Years later I was able to give all of that (minus the percussion stuff) to a local elementary school. There's a weird, God-works-in-mysterious-ways story behind that... I had been clearing out a lot of stuff I didn't use much anymore and woke up the next day with the idea to gift my synthesizer to a local school. I asked my Mum which was the poorest school in town. Later that day, I arrived unannounced at this school with the synthesizer and it's bits and pieces. When the teachers came out, there were definitely tears. Apparently the school's synthesizer had broken the day before!! There was no budget for replacing it....and then I walked in with my old one. Weird eh?!

Oh wow Jen that is really cool.  Are you still coaching, or up to other stuff?  We have a close family friend that was a high school and college gymnast.  She started a small local business that was a children's gymnastic/dance gym (but later sold it).

I stopped coaching when I was 21. It's too hard on the body. A couple years ago I volunteered a few hours a week for two years to help out for the district schools competition, but it was really basic stuff. The cool thing about that was that a lot of the kids would never have had an opportunity to do gymnastics outside of school because they were from poorer families who couldn't afford such a frivolous thing. At the start of the year some of them had never even seen a beam. Pretty neat that they had that opportunity. So cool to see kids' confidence grow.