I’m hopping on the meme bandwagon. (Is that redundant? I’m not sure.) Here’s a list of every job I’ve ever held. I’m not sure if I ever got paid to babysit or to shovel snow, so I’m leaving those off. My job history is rather directionless, as you’ll see. By the way, this is a great exercise — it’s a trip down memory lane and shows you how much world experience you’ve got.
Summer Intern, U.S. Embassy, Tokyo, Japan (summer 1991, age 17): My final summer in Japan after graduating from high school there. Me and this other guy went through files of corporate visa requests (Japanese companies requesting U.S. visas for their workers) and entered tons of data into a database. The embassy had a great library, and tons of American snacks and magazines.
Maitre D’, Dai Hachi Japanese Restaurant (summer 1992, age 18): My first college summer. I turned down a camp counselor job because I didn’t want to live in a cabin all summer and deal with kids, so instead I lived at home and worked in a small local restaurant. My hours were 11:45-2:30 and 6-10 weekdays, 6-10 Saturdays. (I had no social life.) I wrote down food orders over the phone, I worked the cash register, and sometimes I seated customers. Wasn’t too bad.
Part-time fast-food cashier (summer 1993, age 19): The job that I tend to repress from my memory. I needed to take Biology Lab that summer, because I was pre-med but started it late and needed to catch up. I’d always thought it would be neat to work in a fast food place. I was wrong. The customers sucked, I had nothing in common with my coworkers, I was surrounded by hicks. One night I had to stay until 1 in the morning and help clean all the greasy tools and mop the floors along with this mean limping cross-eyed woman. Totally not what I was born to do. Hence I repress it.
University Singers music librarian (1993-94, age 19-20): I was appointed music librarian of my mixed chorus during my third year of college. I actually got paid by the music department for this. I was responsible for making sure everyone’s folders were up to date with current music pieces and collect the pieces when we were done. I also reorganized the cramped little U. Singers music library. I spent countless hours in the chorus room (a.k.a. B012, or “B-twelve”), organizing music and playing CDs on the stereo in the room. I enjoyed this job.
Caterer, UVA Catering Services (summer 1994, age 20): The summer after my third year of college, I decided to stay in town and live in the Glee Club House. This is partly because I’d procrastinated looking for a job that would have looked more impressive on my resumé. So I lived in the house and worked for UVA Catering. We were all students, and the people attending the events were nice, and everyone got the same food so there were no orders to screw up. Plus, we got to eat the same food as the guests, which was really really good.
Temp, Servicemaster (summer 1994, age 20): During one week that summer, I didn’t cater but instead manned the office of a local Servicemaster husband-and-wife franchise, a job I got through a temp agency. They ran a carpet-cleaning service and a basement de-flooding service. Unfortunately, that happened to be the week a huge storm hit Charlottesville. I was flooded (heheh) with calls from people who needed their basements pumped, and I had to schedule tons of visits for the basement-pumper-people to go help the homeowners, who were overwhelmed by all the requests and fell behind schedule, so of course all the customers got mad at me.
Temp, shipping company (summer 1994, age 20): During another week that summer, I worked in a company where I helped this guy deliver copy machines and stuff like that. Basically I rode with him in a van all over the state of Virginia and did about 10 minutes of actual work each day. Not bad.
Book shelver, Alderman Library, UVA (fall 1994, age 20): During my senior year of college I worked as a shelver part-time. I liked my boss, a typical library bookish type. “Well, Jeff, today for you we’ve got D’s,” he’d say. I always got the D’s — that was the world cultures section or something. I’d take a rolling cart full of D’s and go up to the D section and reshelve books. I was good at it, and fast. I liked the quiet, the seclusion, and occasionally I’d skim through the books I was working with. I enjoyed this.
Temp, Roche Labs, 8th Avenue and 15th Street, Manhattan (summer 1995, age 21): I temped for a month during the summer after I graduated from college. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, and this was a placeholder. I sat at a computer all day and entered in data about gynecological exams while listening to talk radio on my Walkman. This was dreadful and instead the planned month, I quit after three weeks.
Data enterer, UVA Health Sciences Center (Sept 1995-Feb 1996, age 21-22): I’d moved back to Charlottesville, VA after my post-college summer to see if I could find some direction there. I wound up temping. I entered data relating to medical patient folders. I worked inthe same room as a bunch of mostly middle-aged black women and a couple of white-trash white women who all affectionately reffered to me as “Muffin,” as well a rural queeny gay man whom I didn’t come out because I was in the closet at the time. They were mostly nice people, but I had nothing in common with them. My Walkman once again came in handy. Sometimes I’d look up the student health records of people I knew, just for fun.
Staff member, UVA Music Library (Feb-Aug 1996, age 22): I loved this job. I got to interact with students, many of whom I already knew; I got to surf the Web; I liked my boss. The music library was a familiar and welcoming space for me. I only left because I started law school.
Summer intern for a U.S. district judge, Newark, NJ (summer 1997, age 23): I didn’t get paid for this, but I enjoyed it. I worked with a few other law students, and the judge’s two law clerks were fun. Mostly I did legal research and wrote legal memos and draft opinions. My favorite case was the one involving a crazy woman who believed that aliens and the FBI and CIA were keeping tabs on her, or something. In dismissing her case, I wrote, “Contrary to ‘The X-Files,” the truth is not ‘out there’ but right here,” or something like that. I don’t think the judge used it in his final opinion, but he got a chuckle out of it.
Student researcher for a UVA Law professor (summer 1998, age 24): Unlike the other 99% of my class, and 99% of law students generally, I didn’t work for a law firm the summer after my second year of law school. I don’t know why. I just didn’t want to, and apparently I wasn’t good at feigning enthusiasm in my interviews. So instead I wound up doing research for a professor all summer. It was really boring, but I spent much of my time in the UVA Law Library. I sprained my ankle that summer. I also came out that summer.
Proofreader and editor; senior editor, On the Internet magazine, Hopewell, NJ (Sept. 1999-Aug. 2000, age 25-26): I’d decided not to be a lawyer. So for a year I worked for a four-person company with offices on the ground floor of a quaint Victorian house. I worked on several projects, including proofreading a bi-monthly magazine and writing a monthly e-newsletter, both of which my boss published for the Internet Society; proofreading a monthly catalog my boss designed for a yoga center in Massachusetts; and helping my boss edit her first book, an organic-food cookbook. As this was at the height of the dot-com boom (when was the last time you heard the word “dot-com”?), I also had to deal with tons of daily unwanted faxed press releases from dot-coms that didn’t know that “On the Internet” was a public policy magazine, not a general interest magazine like “Wired.” Sometimes my boss would bring her dog to work. It was such a great environment.
Law clerk, Newark, NJ (2000-2001, age 26-27): I decided to go back to the law. I worked as a law clerk for the standard term of one year, researching and writing legal memos once more. I wrote memos on a wide range of subjects, so it was always interesting. This was a nice state job with nice people, including my nice boss, whom I rarely saw because she worked in Trenton.
Lawyer, state of NJ (Sept. 2001-present): And here I am.