What jobs have you been employed at?

Lots and lots of various and sundry things...this thread was started long ago and although I haven't checked must surely have posted about them.

Since I retired the last time...maybe four years ago?...I got more and more bored. Y'all have heard about the labor shortage so what did I do? I applied at a locally-owned fast-food place that serves mostly breakfast and caters to mostly older folks. Yup. That's what I did. I merely mentioned it to the person at the drive-thru window one day when I was sitting in the passenger seat while DD picked up breakfast.

Much to my surprise, the clerk called the manager over who asked if I'd be willing to be the biscuit maker, a job that starts at 4am. Oh, hell to the yes! (For those of you not in the US, our biscuits aren't cookies 😊 ). That's an almost obscene hour to be anywhere except snuggled up in bed🛏️. Have you any idea what it's like to get up at 3am in order to be awake and working at 4am?

So, I became the biscuit lady Thursday/Friday/Saturday mornings at 4am. It's hard work mixing and kneading and rolling and cutting out hundreds of biscuits, but gosh! I love it. On Thursdays and Fridays, I'm home by 10:30. Saturdays are a horse of a different color and w're busy, busy, busy. Just a wild guess, but there are probably close to a thousand biscuits made. I'm not home until between 12 and 1.

I like having a place to go and something to do and people to talk to. I especially like payday🤑

Considering the jobs I've had since I started working at 14, from carhop to file clerk then through the ranks all the way up to the C Suite in Germany, then head housekeeper at a hotel, then owning my own cleaning service, this is a very different kind of "career" move.

At 80, I've started a new career. LOL
 

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No particular order:
Carpenter's helper, pump jockey, factory worker (hated that), soldier (killer... hated that also), dairy farmer (short time), mechanic, Granite quarry worker, logger (mostly pulp wood), owned a service station and sold used cars, heavy equipment operator, Maintenance foreman at a cement plant,
 
No particular order:
Carpenter's helper, pump jockey, factory worker (hated that), soldier (killer... hated that also), dairy farmer (short time), mechanic, Granite quarry worker, logger (mostly pulp wood), owned a service station and sold used cars, heavy equipment operator, Maintenance foreman at a cement plant,
My list has a lot in common with yours, Squatter; (not in order) dairy worker, tailor's assistant, gas station attendant, bus driver, locksmith, heavy eqip operator, produce man, store clerk/cashier/part-owner, millwright (lumber), licensed foster home (current).

Oh, and I worked as an underwater Search & Recovery team member off and on for a couple decades with various agencies.
 
My list has a lot in common with yours, Squatter; (not in order) dairy worker, tailor's assistant, gas station attendant, bus driver, locksmith, heavy eqip operator, produce man, store clerk/cashier/part-owner, millwright (lumber), licensed foster home (current).

Oh, and I worked as an underwater Search & Recovery team member off and on for a couple decades with various agencies.
Never worked with the underwater recovery team, but, I did build the underwater stretcher needed to pluck the bodies (or what was left of them), from the turbine entrances in the All American Canal. Not a pretty site. Migrants didn't understand how swift the current was in those canal's. :(
 
Never worked with the underwater recovery team, but, I did build the underwater stretcher needed to pluck the bodies (or what was left of them), from the turbine entrances in the All American Canal. Not a pretty site. Migrants didn't understand how swift the current was in those canal's. :(
I'm interested in this stretcher. Bodies that have been under for quite some time are difficult to move without something sloughing off or actually falling off, so we'd basically secure them and a different team had to come to where we were and bag them as well as they could.

What was the stretcher like?
 
I'm interested in this stretcher. Bodies that have been under for quite some time are difficult to move without something sloughing off or actually falling off, so we'd basically secure them and a different team had to come to where we were and bag them as well as they could.

What was the stretcher like?
Small aluminum tube frame with a real fine mesh basket that was almost, but not quite as fine as most screens. Even then, when retrieving those bodies, they didn't always come out in one piece. (shudder).
 
Small aluminum tube frame with a real fine mesh basket that was almost, but not quite as fine as most screens. Even then, when retrieving those bodies, they didn't always come out in one piece. (shudder).
We attached it to the crane that was mounted on the side of my service truck. Set the outriggers and swing it into the water and lower away.
 
Grocery delivery boy.
Paper boy.
Cattle Market assistant.
Engineering Apprentice.
Design Draughtsman, special purpose machinery and mechanical handling.
Building Services Technician.
Handyman.
I was a design draftsman for a few years in the late '80s and early '90s. I kind of liked it when we did everything by hand. It was almost an art. Computers took the fun out of it. I used to design underground mining equipment. I worked for a small company and the draftsmen did a lot of design work.
 
Early CAD systems were hard work and a lot of very experienced draughtsmen took early retirement rather than try to learn them.
I was too young to do that so reluctantly went on some courses to learn the systems and grew to like using the computer.
Unfortunately a lot of employers seemed to think the computers did all the work, not realising that you still had to be a trained engineer to design machinery.
We got more and more clever youngsters who could use CAD but were not true engineers. Eventually in the UK we just stopped making anything and our medium engineering industry died a death.
 
High school... farm work at home and for neighboring farmers.
10 years in tire and auto mechanic shops.
6 years as construction superintendent, mainly in utility (sewer and water) work.
8 years as Project Manager and Equipment Manager for utility contractor.
10 years in design, application, and marketing of water/wastewater process and pumping equipment. During this time taught continuing education classes for water/wastewater operators.
15 years in Construction Engineering. On site engineer for large water/wastewater treatment plants and pumping facilities over a 4 state area. Ended up owning part of the consulting firm I worked with by the time I retired.
Retired at age 70. Then was a substitute teacher at a trade school for about a year. Taught students in the concrete, carpentry, and plumbing classes.
"Fully" retired, on the Board of Directors at one of our local golf courses. Take care of their water systems. Played 238 18-hole rounds of golf in 2020. May not be able to top that in 2021, but will come close.
 
1964: Shell service station, 14 years old, cleaned inside of cars having their oil changed.

Sawmill, started on green chain, eventually moved up to forklift truck driver, 11 years there.

Video game company, did a little bit of everything, moving games, repairing games, collecting money from games.
Escaped from there, I mean retired from this company 3 months ago. Was there for 40 years and 8 months.
 
Fascinating read each reflecting decades of life.

Instead of entering college after HS it was decreed that was no longer a factor in being drafted. So my first job was a result of trying to avoid being drafted into the Viet Nam War that I expected would have had me carrying an M16 rifle through leach, poisonous snake, and mosquito infested MeKong Delta swamps dodging bullets. Instead took Navy and USAF tests that after scoring high resulted in a USAF electronic repairman career field and schooling that after discharge was able to leverage in rapidly growing Silicon Valley as an electronic tech where at a list of corps mainly worked as a non-degreed ET, test eng, and troubleshooter in hardware engineering support. Included 6 years at Cisco Systems Mid-range Router division engineering during the early Internet explosion until after the Dot Com implosion. Very technically difficult mental work requiring constant technical self studying. Between jobs I spent months to years each time enjoying myself without ever collecting unemployment until funds dwindled with the last time after the 2008 crash. Not one that ever had much a goal of accumulating money or material junk.
 
Started Community College in1964
Skipped classes and went body surfing in the ocean
Box boy in grocery store
Taxi driver in Central California
Taxi driver in Southern California
Typist / accountant at furniture manufacturing company
Typist at Community College in Los Angeles
Supervisor of Admissions at same college
Supervisor of Admissions at different college 8-10 years
Concurrently typed 95wpm and finished A.A. degree
Leave of absence to finish B.S. degree in Kinesiology
Moved out of Los Angeles
Supervisor of Health Sciences Library 3 years
Moved again to finish M.S. in Exercise Physiology
Passed Real Estate exam in Los Angeles
Typist during summer while waiting for R.E. license
Real estate agent
6 months later passed Broker exam - 2 years
Moved back to Central Coast
Independent Real Estate Broker until retired -- 20 years
 
Started Community College in1964
Skipped classes and went body surfing in the ocean
Box boy in grocery store
Taxi driver in Central California
Taxi driver in Southern California
Typist / accountant at furniture manufacturing company
Typist at Community College in Los Angeles
Supervisor of Admissions at same college
Supervisor of Admissions at different college 8-10 years
Concurrently typed 95wpm and finished A.A. degree
Leave of absence to finish B.S. degree in Kinesiology
Moved out of Los Angeles
Supervisor of Health Sciences Library 3 years
Moved again to finish M.S. in Exercise Physiology
Passed Real Estate exam in Los Angeles
Typist during summer while waiting for R.E. license
Real estate agent
6 months later passed Broker exam - 2 years
Moved back to central coast
Independent Real Estate broker until retired -- 20 years


Now that is an interesting resume!
 
For a summer when i was 13 i dressed in a huge piece of pizza costume for promotion for a pizzeria near my home and walked around on a sidewalk all day on weekends.

- On Saturdays, my mom was like "have a good day at work, mike!!" as i walked sadly out the front door. "thanks." I'd reply with my brown bagged lunch in my hand.

- My dad was like "well, i better get him going in renovations because his resume will look pretty vacant as "pizza sidewalk guy with sign" and a start date and finish date beside it.

Then my dad took me on the next summer in construction for him. He bought me work boots and i had to buy my own hammer and nail pouch (with my pizza mascot savings lol). I pounded nails and labored hard - worked sun up till sun down for my dad.. i was in residential construction and some commercial construction forever after the pizza mascot career didn't work out. : )
 


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