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All the Normal Jobs I've Had All right, I've been meaning to write some more background stuff, as the current life stuff is just plain Meijer's I was 16 when I worked at Meijer's and I'll NEVER work there again. Now, I can see why everyone with mental or drug problems works in grocery stores. You pretty much have to be slow to stick around. Meijer's in particular rapes you coming and going. First, they force you to join the union before employing you. Then, when you find a quarter of your paycheck goes to said union, you learn that Meijer's actually owns the union. Yeah. So any legitimate complaints about work schedules, overtime, etc., are ignored because its not really a union. The store Pizza Hut (Slut) So, I'm 17 and its another summer. After cold calling around to various low wage jobs, Pizza Hut hires me on the spot. I'm so happy because my Dad might forgive me for losing my job last year. So, I sign on for four to five months of pizza prepping hell. Originally, I hire in as a waitress, but they badly need cooks so they train me as a chef. After a month or so, I ask to be trained to wait tables as I'm bored doing the menial cooking jobs, i.e. dishwashing. They spend about four hours one night training me, and the next day nobody shows up for work. We're running a slammed restaurant with a total of four people: two waitresses, a cook, and one manager. Yeah. So, I fuck up, naturally, and the head manager gets complaint calls so I'm demoted back to cook with no opportunity to try my hand at waiting tables ever again. Cooking isn't bad though. I work with several cute guys and we have a good time pranking each other. The staff Hollywood Video Ahh Senior year before college. An easier job than anything else I've done. They're strict on eating, the dorky uniform, and constantly finding stuff for you to do, but overall it wasn't horrible. I do remember the staff confronting our shift manager through our store manager about her slacking off. She never appeared to do anything except sit on her cell phone and bullshit. Well, she chatted with us too, but I swear I never saw her do anything when she could delegate it. So, we all teamed up to talk to the store manager about this. Too bad we all knew they were best friends, because nothing was done about it. The accused described how she stayed late working on stuff we never did, so we had to let it drop. It was a good start for my organizing skills, however. I left this one because I had to go to college, no other reason. It was the job that got me my driver's license though, so Library Services--Circulation Another job I just walked into one day. I decided that I'd be great working in the UM libraries because I like reading, quiet, and I can shelve well. So, I walked in before classes started and asked for a job at the Long story short, this job turned me off college students for awhile. My boss didn't like that I read constantly unless there was something else to do. She also thought I was hostile and/or shot dirty looks to anyone that interrupted said reading with a question or a transaction. I was told to work on this, but it was hard. With so many special people around, its very difficult not to act like they're all asking the same dumb questions over and over again. I wanted to leave for a stacks job, but I learned that would involve a pay cut as UM determined its pay raises by how long you spent in a position, not how long you've been working for that library or the library system overall. So, even if I stayed in stacks in the Ugli, I'd be losing fifty cents or more an hour. Not doable. So, I found myself another job and headed on out of there. Survey Research Commission I think this one lasted maybe half the summer. It didn't work out well. It taught me the major lesson of my dayjob career: always find a boss and coworkers you can deal with. If your boss sucks, you're doomed. Pay can The job itself wasn't bad. It was mostly code checking, which was kind of fun. We did research for the Big Three, computer companies, and national accounts regarding consumer confidence and things like that. At our remote sites, people would autodial houses and ask them to take a survey. If they took it, we'd add them to a list and send them five bucks. Then we'd ask them if they would take a longer version to send back for more money, like ten bucks. This data would be collected and entered into our system. As the questions were open ended, a lot of I'm guessing the last part is what started me off on the wrong foot. See, when computers jam or don't work right, I get a little angry. I don't do anything, but sometimes I like to growl. It releases tension. I think its comical. I guess my boss didn't. She found it hostile. I'm sure there were other things too, but that's the LSA Media So, once again, I wandered campus and got hired two days later by my favorite boss Dave. This one was clearly a man's world. I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground when I started, but after three years I was one of the best they had. I was promoted once, into another subdivision, and I was invited back after the jobs became permanent. Me being dumb, I rejected it. I didn't want to drive to Ann Arbor every day, plus the porn shoot I had scheduled for the month of my return would be paying more than a year working there. Heh, too bad that never panned out. I had good times here. I had some awful ones too. I remember fighting over being the only tech assigned to clean equipment all day because I was female. Granted, I was the only one working part time, but shouldn't the men be doing their share of the maintenence? I called my boss out on other sexist shit too, though he was often good at seeing it himself. I also really liked this job because I could be out about my other occupations. Everyone there had a problem of some kind, so my being a bisexual sex worker was accepted. I haven't had that kind of openness in a real world job since. Pest Control And now, I'm thinking that I'm back into the male world. I think they gave me the hardest sales position to see me fail. Every day I work hard to avoid thinking of failure. I know the stress might kill me, but part of me really wants to prove the men wrong. Yes, I'm rough around the edges and I'm not a hard sell, but a woman can do it if she works hard enough and smart enough. God, I just hope I'm right. I'd hate to leave this nice company and a decent boss with my tail between my legs. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? I hope so. With the world going the way it is, I'm almost ready to pack up and move down under. It couldn't be too much worse over there, right? Too much writing for today. Will reflect on other stuff tomorrow. Daphne |