This is not what I usually discuss on Steemit, but I was thinking about the different jobs I had over the years on my way to work and I decided now was a good time as any to write about them.
I was in college when I got my first job. It was at a place in Queens, New York called Rock Bottom. It was a drug store. I don't recall too much about it except that I unloaded trucks and stocked shelves. The supervisor was kind of a douchey guy. The one upside was that directly across the street was this tiny pizzeria that employed God. Their pizza was deliciously heaven-like that the only way it could be that good was by having a cook who could perform miracles. This was somewhere between 1995 - 1996.
Then I worked for Wal-Mart for a short time. It's not worth discussing. I will say this, I found excuse after excuse to not be there. That was in North East Pennsylvania though the location doesn't matter as the experience would have been the same anywhere.
Oh yeah, while living with friends in Bensonhurst, New York (Brooklyn), around 2000, I went to work for Marshalls. I was on a register checking-out customers. My training lasted about an hour. I knew next to nothing and the two other check-out people were not very interested in teaching me anything; only correcting my mistakes. Job security I guess.
After a couple weeks I packed my bags and went to Miami on an invite from my uncle. He offered me a job and a place to stay. I couldn't pass it up. Looking back, I wish I did. We don't have any sort of relationship now. He owned a construction company, but I knew nothing about carpentry. He said it didn't matter as he would teach me. I don't think he taught me anything except how to deal with his bad-temper. His foreman tried to teach me a thing or two, but it was tough as we were always in a rush at the job site which was always in fancy office buildings. There were some upsides; the few from the roof we lived on (it's complicated) was... and I wish I was poetic, but simply put, beautiful. Cruise ships in the distance, the bay, downtown Miami... I would just stand there watching it all from way up high thinking it doesn't get much better than this. And when my uncle wasn't angry, he was kinda cool. We both like watching boxing and had some other things in common.
I moved back to Pennsylvania and got a temp job at cosmetic factory. Oh man, that was bad. Every time the shift ended, we would be blowing out noses of powder. That can't possibly be good! Then there were these machines which were the stuff of nightmares. They were old fashioned; very mechanical. Not computerization and no safety devices. The one would pack powder into a metal cap which you manually put in place. The piston that compressed the powder into the cap was automatically doing this; it wasn't using any sensors to determine the correct time to compress. It was going to get that powder in that cap no matter what was in the way. This terrified me and kept my attention on that piston the whole time I was using it. One day while talking to a supervisor, I caught something at the corner of my eye. It was another employee who didn't speak English and since nothing was coming out of his mouth, I think he may have been a mute. Or perhaps he was in shock from having his finger crushed in that machine! He was standing there looking at my supervisor, holding his hand while blood streamed to the floor. I was out of that place a short time later.
I worked at gas stations working the register and making sandwiches in their deli, Pizza Hut as a cook and waiter, Maines where I picked food orders for restaurants, Home Depot also pulling orders but for contractors, and temp jobs galore... Sometimes working the night shift. That was terrible. Sometimes I had a 40 minute ride home. There was rarely a time I wasn't dosing behind the wheel. I don't care what people say, humans were never meant to be nocturnal.
I have to end it here as there's too many jobs to discuss. I'll make this part one ;)