This question has been floating around the Internet for a little while now. It’s a very telling bit of information in the history of a person. Sometimes the shitty jobs of my youth come back to me. Not in a nostalgic, American Beauty sort of way. It’s more “sure, it was formative but I don’t ever want to do that again.” Probably why I work so hard at being a designer, at least partly.
So here’s my list. From the top:
- Mower of Lawns (in the neighborhood)
- Shelf Stocker + Truck Unloader + Maintenance Kid (high school)
- Bean Buggy Weed Sprayer (summers)
- Mower of Green Space + Weed Eater of Ditches (trailer parks)
- Telephone Survey Conductor (on campus)
- House Painter (the crew I was on also roofed 1 house, then school started back up, thank God, because roofing is fucking hard)
- Ice Cream Server + Sandwich Maker (joint operation)
A few more things like that and then my college education paid off and I began my career as a graphic designer. When the clients get challenging or the work seems overwhelming, sometimes I think back to those simpler times. Unloading that truck of BBQ sauce with the ones in the back having spilled all over. Staring at rows and rows of beans for miles and miles. Weed eating ditches for hours on end. Talking to students on the phone about their drug use for hours on end. Painting houses white for hours on end. Making ice cream cones and sandwiches for college students, most times while hung over. And there was the time I got heat stroke while roofing and somehow made it to McDonalds where I just sat in the air conditioning with an extra large orange juice trying to keep it together.
Those were the days. How’s that for Oh the way things used to be...
