I've seen cosmic's meme in a few places, and at first I wasn't going to give it a try because I wouldn't have that much to write. But I've got an anniversary coming up this week, so it seemed to fitting, somehow. Here goes.1st job: Everybody babysits, so this shouldn't count, but I sat regularly for the Purnick family around the block, for 50 cents an hour, for a couple of years. They were a weirdly dysfunctional bunch. Among the more amusing was that Mrs. P. could never figure out what to pay me on the nights the clocks changed, and no matter how she worked it out, I lost money on it, both in the spring and in the fall. It would bother me when her husband told her all the time that she was stupid, but in fact, she was.
2nd job: In my junior year of high school, I got a job in a fabric store that was on the highway, but still in my neighborhood, so I could walk there or ride a bike, if I felt so inclined. This was probably my first inclination that people were going to be f--ing crazy wherever I went in life. I worked two nights a week and Saturdays, as I recall.
3rd job: Right after high school graduation, I looked for a summer job and got one at Alexander's, which was a giant discount department store near here, long since closed. I lasted two days. It was way more high-pressure than working in a little neighborhood store, and I could see that I was not even remotely cut out for retail.
4th job: Later that same week, a neighbor who worked in an office in a glass and millwork factory got me a job as summer help in the office there. (Millwork is doors, windows, other things like that.) One of my jobs was to price the windshields as the invoices came across my desk. They computerized their billing the second summer I was there, so this was my first exposure to computers. (They were the size of refrigerators.) I worked there three summers.
5th job: During my senior year of college and the summer after, I helped out in the office of my OldFriend's family store, a ladies' clothing store.
6th job: After college, I took a semester off because I'd missed the deadline to apply to graduate school. I worked in a trophy factory, putting prices on the items on the invoices as they came across my desk. (2" golfer, left-swing, male: $1.08)
7th job: In library school, I filed cards in the giant Rutgers Library card catalog several mornings a week,
8th job: During my last semester in library school, I worked as the librarian in a large synagogue library in Short Hills, NJ. Rabbis: as strange as you'd think. Although one of them, quite elderly, was a lovely gentleman. The other one was just an arrogant SOB.
9th job: Well, here it is. On February 2, 1977, I started working as librarian at Bizarro Town High School. So that means that this Thursday, I'll be starting my thirtieth year there. At the same freaking job.
Well, that's it, really, although #10 is that for four summers, 88 - 91, I worked as a camp counselor so that my kids could go to this neat camp for free. Does it count if I didn't get paid? Speaking of which, early on in my BTHS years, when it looked like I might get laid off, I tried selling Tupperware for a couple of months. That shouldn't count, though, because I was so horrendously bad at it that I never made a single dime.
That's not a lot of jobs, I think, but I certainly have been in one place for a long time. That's not necessarily something good, I'm just saying. It's just the way it worked out for me.
