All the Jobs I've Ever Had

There's this YouTube duo that I love: Rhett and Link. They have a weekly podcast that I listen to on SoundCloud called "Ear Biscuits," and on one of their episodes they talk about all of the summer jobs they used to work. They are hilarious, and I love listening to them, but this particular episode got me thinking more about myself than about them. I started thinking about all of the jobs I've had, and how I don't think I've ever written them all down. Things like jobs are so obvious and present to us that we often neglect to record them, which I think is kind of a shame.

It is difficult to even consider how something that is so much a part of your life right now will someday be forgotten.

But I am a huge fan of nostalgia, of reminiscing, of keeping the past alive. Not in a way that holds you back, but in a way that preserves the piece of you that used to be. People change - all the time - and I like to use journaling and blogging as a way to capture the me that is now, so I can still have her with me later, should I need her.

Anyway. You probably don't care, but here is a list of all the jobs that I have ever had:

• Babysitting. This barely counts - it was by no means regular - but from the time I was around 8 or 9 to the time I started getting "real" jobs (in high school), I was a very popular babysitter in my neighborhood. I charged "a dollar per kid per hour," but always took more if it was offered. The kids liked me - I was an oldest child, so I'd had a lot of experience keeping younger kids entertained - and I always left the house cleaner than I'd found it.

• The Snowie Shack. Growing up, one of the highlights of summertime was the Snowie Shack that took up residence in the corner of the Reams parking lot. (Snowie Shacks being tiny huts that served snocones.) That particular Snowie Shack was owned by a couple who were friends of my parents. They hired me to work one summer, when I was fifteen. It was a pretty great job, even though I had to spend six hours at a time alone in a cylinder that was only about five feet in diameter. I got to see my friends a lot, the work wasn't too hard, and I got to try every flavor of Snowie they had. (I got pretty well addicted.)

• Allen Cleaners. In February of my sophomore year of high school - so I would have been 16 years old - my friend Kim told me that they were hiring at the dry cleaners where she worked. The manager hired me, and I started my new career as a presser. At first I pressed shirt sleeves, but after a while I moved on to pressing pants, and eventually worked my way up to special items (prom dresses and suits, stuff like that). I rode my bike straight from school to the dry cleaners until my parents gave me their car. Every day, I worked from 3:00pm to whenever I ran out of stuff to press. Usually, I only have enough work to last a couple of hours, so I wasn't making a ton of money. Still, I worked this job all the way through high school, and it wasn't bad.

• JFSB. When I started attending BYU in 2009, I got an on-campus job (largely because my friend Erin had worked the job all summer, and recommended me to her boss when she quit). It was a custodial position in the Joseph F. Smith Building. We worked early morning (4am to 7:30am), and so none of us had much sleep or social life. That made for a crew of wacky people who all became pretty close friends, and it was a blast! (Through a strange course of events, I was given the nickname Sicka, short for Jessica.) We goofed off a lot, but we also worked hard. Those were some of my best times at BYU. My boss was a Star Trek superfan, and so we all had ranks reminiscent of Star Fleet; while I entered as a crewman, by the time I left I was Commander Sicka. It was a beautiful, beautiful two years.

• Utah Lake State Park. The summer before I left for St. Petersburg (2011), I was desperate for work. My friend Logan tipped me off that Utah Lake State Park was looking for a Quagga Mussel Inspector, and though I had no idea what that was, I jumped at the chance and somehow got the job. I worked 40 hour weeks there (M-F, 10 hour shifts). I was positioned in the entrance booth, and most of the time I was a simple cashier, letting people into the park. I was friends with all of the other booth workers, and we had a lot of fun hanging out together in that little room. We had a library, a bunch of games, and a computer, so we were well-entertained. AND I had a uniform for the first time in my life, so that was fun.

• The MTC. After St. Petersburg, I was really low on funds. The day I realized I needed a new job, I got one. I was hired as a custodian at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, though I spent less time cleaning and more time teaching missionaries how to clean. This job involved a crew of eight, split so we were two to a building (a huge bonding experience), and we all used walkie-talkies. Once again, I had a blast and made some great friends. But my personality conflicted pretty badly with that of my boss, and though it didn't bother me at first, but April 2013 I was desperate to get away. We got into a huge fight right after I put in my two weeks notice, and I left on bad terms for the first (and so far, only) time in my life.

• BYU - Catering. That summer, I got a new on-campus custodial job. This time I was hired by the Catering crew. I would go in at 5pm, when the catering team was done for the day, and clean the equipment, counters, and floors, of their three kitchens (all in the Wilkinson Student Center). I worked with two other people, quickly becoming the leader of the bunch. The best part of this job was that I got a locker in the basement of the Wilk, I got to ride in the freight elevator all the time, and I got a discount card to all the restaurants in the CougarEat. I worked for these guys for about six months, then quit so I could do my student teaching.

• The Junior High. Depressed after student teaching, I did almost nothing for four months after graduation. Finally, in August 2014 I applied and was hired as a temporary custodian at a nearby junior high school. I helped the crew finish their big summer projects, and they liked me enough to ask me to stay on after the school year started. I am still working there, as an Adult Sweeper, where I am responsible for cleaning up 13 classrooms every day.

• Tutoring. In October 2014, I started tutoring a girl in my neighborhood whose family is friendly with mine. She's a junior, and was nervous about the ACT. I went over there twice a week to give her one-on-one instruction in the four content areas, to coach her on testing strategy, and to track her progress on practice tests. She's a great girl and a hard worker, so it was a pleasure to tutor her. This job ended when she took the ACT in December.

• Toys R Us. One of my mom's oldest friends is in a management position at Toys R Us, and she told my mom that they were in serious need of help for the holiday season. My mom told her that I might be interested, and I was fast-tracked through the hiring process. I started working there in November 2014. I worked on the overnight crew; we received new shipments (anywhere between 1,600 and 2,400 boxes), unloaded trucks, unboxed new merchandise, and put it on the shelves. It was fast-paced, back-breaking labor, and it all took place between 10:00pm and 8:00am. My last shift was on Christmas Eve, and I was glad to leave the frantic atmosphere behind me. (I am sure this is a nicer place to work when it isn't Christmastime.)

• Kelly Services. Technically, I was hired by Kelly Educational Staffing at about the same time I was hired by Toys R Us, but I realized that I couldn't work both jobs (plus the junior high, PLUS tutoring) so I froze my Kelly account until January 2015.  I finally completed my first substitute teaching job on February 5. This is also a job that I am currently working, and one that I don't have a lot of experience with yet. I will say, though, that it is incredibly unpredictable. Teachers usually don't know that they need a sub until the night before or the morning of, so it is very difficult to plan ahead. Plus, I'm still figuring out the computer system this is all based around. There's quite a hill ahead of me still in this learning curve.

• The Cherry Orchard. This was actually my little brother's summer job last year, but he had to take a day off once and they made him provide his own replacement: ME! So I only worked here for one shift, but I feel it was intense enough to be worth mentioning. I had to wear boots, gloves, and an apron, and I worked on an assembly line, processing the cherries. First they had me standing at the conveyor belt, plucking bad cherries out of the cascade that flowed past; then they had me working an enormous funnel, pouring sugar into full buckets of cherries; then they moved me to an earlier point in the line, where my job was to place and replace buckets onto the counter so they could join the marching crowd. Each task took only seconds to complete, and had to be repeated hundreds upon hundreds of times. So while the factory setting was intriguing to me at first, it didn't take long before the mind-crushing monotony broke my spirit. I worked from 4pm to 1am, and by the time I left I had seen enough cherries to last me several lifetimes. Even thought it lasted only nine hours, this was definitely the worst job I ever had to work.

So, there you have it. In my 24 years of life, I have worked 12 different jobs.

And I still have a long way to go.Who knows? Maybe in the future I'll be able to add "Author" or "Opera Singer" or "Luchadora" to this list. So few of the jobs I've had were things I'd planned. Probably an equal number of my future jobs will be unforeseen and unexpected.

Ah well. That's worked for me so far.