I made a list of all the jobs I’ve loved before…who’ve traveled in and out my door…um, I mean, all the jobs in my life, which is the first step in this week’s topic post (Job! What Job?). I thought I had a lot more jobs than this. I guess I’m more stable than I care to admit.
1. Babysitter: Starting at about age 13. From my Summer Diary of 1974, a few excerpts on babysitting:
- June 7: Dear Diary, Well, school’s out. I’m glad. I got st. A’s. Gonna babysit tonight. After school we went to Alvarado. I got my yearbook signed some more. Lisa wrote me today. I babysat the H.’s. I made $2.50. I went at 7:30 and came back about 11:45. Got to go. Bye.
- June 10: Dear Diary, Well, I went to swimming lessons. My instructors name is Mark. We mostly just got organized. We did do some of the back float and front float. At first it was scary but it was fun too. I babysat A. and A. Got $2.25.
- June 14: Dear Diary: Today in swimming lessons I got to dive. Michelle didn’t go. The Brody’s moved today. I babysat the B. kids from 2:00 to 12:00. Boy, were they BRATS!!! Bye.
- June 18: Dear Diary: In swimming lessons we dived some more. Not off the high board! Mark says that this guy is a baby! He is! I like Mark. He’s nice! Also funny! I forgot to tell you yesterday but my guppy died. I babysat the B. kids. They weren’t real brats. I met their reletives. Boy, some more weirdos. Now I have about $25.00. Bye!
2. Dentist Office File Clerk: The next summer, age 14, I went to work with my sister at a dentist’s office. We drove in her brand new red MG convertible. I filed all day long while she worked the reception desk. It was the most boring job ever. After the first day of standing in front of the giant set of file cabinets pulling out identical manila folders and filing dental x-rays and insurance papers, I knew I never wanted to have anything to do with teeth again.
3. Retail clerk, Hallmark shop, age 15, where I stole something almost every day. I think the owner was on to me.
4. Banquet waitress, Albuquerque Convention Center, age 17. Got fired, along with all my friends, the night after we dropped water on debutantes and their escorts and essentially did a lousy job working the Senorita Ball.
5. Hostess, age 17-18, at a restaurant housed in an old haunted building. I got to drink in the saloon after work each night even though I was under-aged.
6. Picture framer, age 19, for two different frame shops. From the second one I quit and got fired in the same instant. Good news is I can cut my own mats, and if I had the equipment, I could do my own framing. Given the cost of framing today, I ought to splurge and buy myself the tools.
7. Researcher for the Vargas Project, age 20ish. Beautiful flourishy hand-writing of the Spaniards who entered New Mexico. Otherwise showed me that I wanted nothing to do ever again with historical research.
8. Waitress for a university-area restaurant, early 20s. I never wanted to go back to waitressing, but then I discovered I needed tips to survive.
9. Account Executive for a Santa Fe advertising agency, mid 20s. Learned it’s all about image. Also learned I’m not.
10. A bum in Spain.
11. Research Assistant for a handsome Brazilian graduate professor who unlike other professors didn’t even make me grade papers (and I didn’t even sleep with him! He was just a nice guy.). I guess I was lateish 20s.
12. Program manager for a university program that did internet publishing related to Latin America. This was a cool job–got to travel all over Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean. Went to Cuba. Salary sucked. Started at age 29, quit at 35.
13. Internet trainer. Attempt to supplement my university salary. The role took me to Mexico a bunch of times. I learned how to say “mouse” and “click” and “ftp” and “telnet” and all sorts of early-internet words in Spanish.
14. Corporate sell-out, age 35. By then primary breadwinner for my family. I’ve had about six or seven different jobs in my almost eleven years with the company.
I LOVE those diary entries, Summer Diary of 1974. Unbelievable that you still have those. And that you actually wrote down that you made $2.50. Or $2.25. Amazing. I love seeing the handwriting, too. Perfect.
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Yeah, the handwriting is fun to look at. I was always so neat. And I spent extra time learning my r’s and a’s. And later on, I made g’s the old-fashioned way, with two circles connected by a squiggle. But that came in high school.
One of the families I babysat for paid only half of what the other family did. I didn’t even think to negotiate my hourly wage.
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This write is a blast to read. I, too, love the documentation of your daily earnings, and the thrill when you reached $25. It reminds me somehow of a conversation I had recently with a friend about telephones. She said, “Remember when you just stood in one place, as far as the cord would reach? And if you left the house, they couldn’t find you? They just got that bit of time while you stood in the kitchen?” A simpler time, I guess. One telephone in the house. $25 was a thrill.
Oh, I also loved the shoplifting at Hallmark. I’ve always wanted to be a shoplifter for at least a day (always too chicken, or too aware of the repercussions). Anyway, today I live vicariously through your “5-finger discount” days at the card shop.
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A superb and evocative post, ybonesy. Weirdly, I was just talking about my early jobs today with my mother. It came up because we had dinner last night with a colleague of mine from work who worked on the police force of the town where I grew up and spent a summer directing traffic off the highway in Greenwich, CT, after the highway bridge collapsed one night.
My jobs were un-glamourous, because I never really took a risk on an exotic one. The program manager’s job that took you around Latin America sounds fascinating. All the waitressing jobs; I liked hearing how you got fired for dousing the debutantes. Probably worth it, I suspect.
I loved this trip through your past. Can’t wait to see what my child’s first really exotic job is.
Thanks for this. It was wonderful.
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I hope the woman who owned the Hallmark Card shop never reads this. I was a terrible shoplifter as a teenager. My friend Laurie worked at the shop with me, and Laurie was the best kid. Super responsible, ethical. The owner, Mrs. K., loved Laurie, and I think that made me want to be even “badder” than I already was. I still remember how Mrs. K. would hover around me and watch me from the corner of her eye. She totally knew, but I don’t think she knew what to do about it since Laurie and I were a package deal.
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A job I really wanted was standing on the street corner (already sounds ominous) off the plaza in Santa Fe selling The Santa Fe New Mexican. Cars have to make so many stops and traffic is basically a crawl in that downtown area that you can sell oodles of daily newspapers. Your summer directing traffic kind of reminds me of selling newspapers in Santa Fe, Nat. You wear the neon vest, hopefully a wide-brimmed hat, and stand there. Bliss.
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[…] book order she made for her new class. She gave it to me about the time she started teaching: 1974. I was 13 years old, a newly minted teen, and my journal (it was actually more of a diary, although […]
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