What jobs have you been employed at?

My first job - while still in high school was as a clerk in a variety store followed by waitress in ice cream store. Once graduated, as a part time waitress at a restaurant while attending college.
When I went back to college 10 years later. I worked as a nurse's aide
After graduating I worked at the VA, then pediatrics - then critical care for 8 years (ICU< CCU and ER). Then I went to medical and then to corrections health adults and my last was corrections health for juveniles.
 
My work history is full of various jobs. What sorts of jobs have you had? I never seemed to earn that much and felt no qualms about starting a new job in a new field, whenever I got bored. On average, I'd get bored after about 4 years. Some professions I enjoyed more and stayed longer... about 8 years. The various jobs I've had were:

mimeographing sales receipts for a catalog company (Spiegal)
cook (breakfast & lunch) at a small shop
tax examiner at the IRS
sewing machine operator (horse blankets)
packed shipping orders for a catalog company (Sears)
sewing machine operator (ironing board covers)
dog groomer
filled vending machines
ran a lunch counter in a factory
supervisor in recreation department at a nursing home
certified nursing assistant at a nursing home
certified nursing assistant for a home health care agency

I've also occasionally earned extra money working from home, by doing personalized embroidery and sewing alterations to clothes.
I once filled vending machines myself. It was a morning job and allowed me to do something creative in the afternoon and paid for my supplies.
 

I've been employed in a hospital in one way, or another since I was 21. Before that:
store clerk
plastic mold machine person
hamburger window guy. That was for Kemp's Hamburgers in Worcester Mass. It was just like real early McDonalds with the stores with the big arches. Fries, hamburger and pepsi were 48 cents. I think I'll be dead 100 years before if forget that order.
 
Let’s see, there is the one off South Cobb Drive, then the one at Cumberland mall, Third St, and Peachtree Parkway,, Route 281, and other locations
 
Construction HVAC and ran the company. 1985 went broke and went back to school. Software automation for 15 years. Then was forced out with health problems. Construction was my favorite by far.
 
K-12 education. I have told all my kids and any other young people who will listen to me that they should probably avoid that field entirely unless they go to a different state or region of the state than I have worked in.

The BEST, most relevant degree for a career in K-12 education in my area is, IMO, a degree in Political Science. One must learn to campaign for oneself using social media and package oneself properly to appeal to the voters (school admin., parents and school board) who make the decisions about who to hire and who to fire. It is one of the most highly political jobs you could ever join.

It is also a field that strongly favors extroverts over introverts. (I'm the latter.) Especially for guys. I have seen happy, smiley, extrovert guys hired as subs and FT teachers and it doesn't matter if they are good teachers or not. They are outgoing, happy, smiley and admin. LOVES that, so they get the jobs.

I have subbed in some of their classrooms. These guys can be a disorganized MESS, their lesson plans are substandard, but admin. doesn't care. They are happy smiley MEN so they get hired and retained for their energy. (To be fair, I have also subbed in happy, smiley male extroverts' classroom who were good and organized teachers, not total narcissists, so not all male exroverts are bad teachers. But come on! Hired for his personality!? Put that freakin' qualification in the credential programs then.)

The worst thing about the K-12 field, which I sure didn't know before I got into it, is that people without degrees or experience are your judges (the parents).

I didn't know I would have 50-100 unseen bosses evaluating me.

But I try to warn everyone - if you're not good at politics, if you keep to yourself and simply DO YOUR JOB, if you're not in the office talking up the admin. and bringing them little gifts, if you are not willing to learn whatever the Language du Jour is in your region (it was Chinese one year), stay out of K-12 teaching. Because it is not enough just to do you job well in K-12 teaching - ONLY THE KIDS WILL SEE THAT.

Years ago I used to draw all my lesson illustrations and outlines on the white board, because that's what we all did. Now, probably because parents come to teachers and say crap like, "You're not teaching my child. I don't see anything in this room that shows what you taught", now teachers draw their lessons on giant Sticky Notes for the lower grades and use Power Point slides constantly for the upper grades. That way they can shove that in a parent's or admin's face and say, "HERE is the evidence of what I taught that day/week. If your child did not take notes or complete the accompanying worksheet page, I did help them but they just wouldn't do it."

I get angry just writing about all of this. It's such a hard job, but everyone always picks on teachers. They are societal scapegoats.

So, I do tell young people - "Consider another field. If you want to help children, maybe become a therapist or social worker. They can make 4x as much as teachers, often can set their own schedules, actually have entire weekends off, and you will have supervisors who also have degrees in your field."

Another good field for introverts : Law. I wish someone had told me LONG ago, "Wow, you're really smart. Have you thought about a law career?" But even Ruth Bader Ginsburg couldn't get a lawyer job when she started, women were not encouraged to go into law in the 1970s but to become legal secretaries instead. Sandra Day O'Connor didn't join the Supreme Court until the 1980s. You have to type 100 WPM to be a secretary. I cannot and will never be a fast typist, so I was just born at the wrong time and didn't have anyone encouraging me to look into it.

Plus, the expense. Independent student loans were not even allowed, I don't think, until the 1980s? Something like that.

But that's what I tell young people - be POLITICAL if you really want to teach and CHOOSE a "district" where you can be re-elected by all your invisible but powerful constituents. AND don't join any social media at all if you plan to teach.

In some areas, if you call a toaster "stupid" online or say the words "dang it" or "fricken", some parents will believe you are cussing up a blue streak in front of their babies in the classroom. They don't seem to understand that off hours, in their social media accounts, teachers talk differently to their adult peers than they do to the children.

So, for the politics of teaching, I would tell all aspiring teachers to simply not join social media at all - OR, if they join, to always imagine their first, 6th or 11th graders are reading everything they post.

And the INSANITY of some school districts encouraging teachers to use anything but a closed system of websites supervised by school district tech teams to post stuff about their classes, that advice makes me want to scream.

Twitter should not be a teaching tool. Do not force all of your students to join Twitter or FB or any of them! Because then the KIDS will be judged in the future by some stupid crap they said online, in public, when they were teens.

Perhaps the only benefit of my career has been that I have been able to steer my own children AWAY from it. Go make more money and develop relationships with your VISIBLE bosses in so many other fields.
 
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The BEST, most relevant degree for a career in K-12 education in my area is, IMO, a degree in Political Science. One must learn to campaign for oneself using social media and package oneself properly to appeal to the voters (school admin., parents and school board) who make the decisions about who to hire and who to fire. It is one of the most highly political jobs you could ever join.
You’ve got that right. I remember we had a teacher that was not only unliked by his colleagues, but the kids couldn’t stand him either. He was constantly out in the hall berating kids in the harshest, mean-spirited way. I suggested to the superintendent that this guy was a liability to the school and district. Then I was the one being berated! Turned out the principal of that school was a close personal friend of the superintendent, and I was “questioning“ her hiring capabilities. We all got treated to a few more years of this idiot until he finally left. Personal friendships over ride doing what’s best for kids. Nothing new here.
 
You’ve got that right. I remember we had a teacher that was not only unliked by his colleagues, but the kids couldn’t stand him either. He was constantly out in the hall berating kids in the harshest, mean-spirited way. I suggested to the superintendent that this guy was a liability to the school and district. Then I was the one being berated! Turned out the principal of that school was a close personal friend of the superintendent, and I was “questioning“ her hiring capabilities. We all got treated to a few more years of this idiot until he finally left. Personal friendships over ride doing what’s best for kids. Nothing new here.
Thank you. This is why, when people argue that "personal relationships" will get you the job and that should be the criteria, I just want to roll my eyes :rolleyes: as loudly and blatantly as I can because if "personal relationships " are all that matter in hiring, WHAT ABOUT MERIT?

We are told (or were told) to go to college and get various degrees, get a high GPA if possible, and that achievement will open doors for you in the job market.

Then we get to the job market and NO! Merit matters not. Your degrees only matter if, in my region, they came from a Name Brand University (Yale, Harvard, Boston, Penn State, Brown, UCLA, Stanford, etc.)

But I have a cumulative 3.5 GPA. It's on my resume. I repeated that degree-earning process three times while also taking care of one to six people, depending on what year it was, and usually working PT or FT.

Is that not meritorious?

But then some guy will come along and he also went to the state colleges (2.9 GPA), but he can talk about SPORTSBALL and go drinking after work with the team, while a woman has to rush home to take care of her kids, so he will get the job.

Or a pretty, thin young lady in her 20s will come along, competeing for the same job, and she also went to the state colleges (3.2 GPA) and she will get hired because she is potential dating material. They never say they are hiring dating candidates, but all women know that's how it really works at some workplaces.

I learned all this in the Sociology class I took. Learned all about Thin Slice impressions and Confirmation Bias, and many other types of biases that go into hiring decisions.

So now, when economists argue America has a "merit-based" economic system, I just want to yell at them. They are usually White guys who attended the Name Brand Universities, and they think the economy they have experienced, and their college pals experienced, is how it works all over the nation. Nothing could be further from the facts.
 
A fellow Nurse!
A late calling at 38. It was not quite the same in Germany as a registered nurse in the US and UK. In the 1990s I was trained as a geriatric nurse, primarily concerned with gerontology and related disciplines, sociology, psychology, and geronto-psychiatry, although now the training is the same as Registered Nurses. I also moved on to Nursing Management rather quickly and then on to general management, although I still had the nurse's concerns at heart - and still do!
 


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