Hope it is okay to add an odd job that my son worked before becoming a mechanical engineer. He washed the huge baking sheets at the Top Pot donut bakery plant. He would come home with free donuts and his jeans and shoes would be soaking wet, then dry into glazed, sticky sugar creases.
What a fun post. One doesn't have to be an artist to claim having had odd jobs-- especially as a teen or in college. My daughter works in health care and was once a Cart Girl (collecting shopping carts in the parking lot of the grocery store). When I was an actor I had some crazy temp jobs. One in particular I would rather forget as it was a little too Epstein island-ish. Don't worry, I left in a hurry.
Cart girl - of course! There’s a job that’s right in front of my eyes and I don’t think about. Good one. Glad you made it out of the job that needed to be dumped. This has got to be one of my favorite comment streams. We are all so interesting! :-)
I’m getting to this the day after Labor Day. Ah well, what a great post! I’ve trained horses, mucked stalls and groomed horses, cleaned cages and washed and dipped dogs and cats (yes, cats!) for a veterinarian, and worked as a sort of bookkeeper for a lawn and garden store, where the owner was always drunk but tried to hide it. Funny in retrospect but not at the time! I appreciated the history too, Tara.
Emily, You had the dream jobs of my youth! 😄 Alas, over time, my animal passions moderated. Turned out it was the books about animals I loved. :-) I hope that owner got into rehab and kept the business.
Ha! I can't say as I recommend washing and dipping cats as a profession. We wore heavy, ankle length canvas aprons and long gloves for protection!
I hope he did too. I did learn a lot about chainsaws and other power equipment in that job. I can tell you what's wrong with you mower (it's usually the carbureter:)
Great topic. Like many others commenting, I had when young and through higher education a quite varied work history, from executive to mostly blue collar and sometimes soul crushing, but nothing seems more iconic than New York City taxi driver. People often react with a kind of awe or a flipside incredulity that I could be so mad. Yet it was formative and brands my New York bona fides. I also attended City College of New York and worked at odd hours on a first novel and screenplay while doing it, so that completes the picture. :)
NYC cab! You are so right. That job is iconic. Keeping odd hours and writing only complete the picture. You did not hesitate to make yourself a bicoastal New Yorker.
The collection of jobs here is getting to be so interesting that I believe I will share it with my senior English Lit majors. The theme: Fear not! The best job may be one you can't even imagine.
Thanks so much for doing this "Holy Labor." What a great launching pad!
First, I do have to agree with your appreciation of days and skills past - "those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."¹
Secondly, I think fascinating jobs probably have a disproportional opportunity to shape our futures versus the garden variety experiences that never rouse the emotions or curiosity. One of my first "real" jobs out of high school was as a diener, assisting a pathologist as he did autopsies in Camden, NJ. One of my first "patients" was a two-year-old orphan who died from hydrocephalus. l still retain the visual as I lifted his lifeless body onto the sliding stretcher that went into the cooler (after sewing him up after his autopsy). I suspect those unusual experiences can have an over-sized influence on our future paths or even help define us.
I love this! The best job I ever had was working in a used bookstore. It was the year after college, before I entered a PhD program in Russian literature. I was quickly becoming steeped in academic approaches to literature. Working in the bookstore gave me a look at the business of books--how people actually read. It was valuable experience for so many reasons!
It affected all my reading--and it was really useful after I dropped out of grad school and worked as an assistant in a literary agency, managing two agents' slush piles. I'm not sure what taught me more about the business of books: the buying table at Half-Price Books in Austin or the literary agency in NYC. Both were great jobs and rungs on the ladder to becoming whatever it is that I am now.
I once worked for a John Deere tractor dealership in Nampa, Idaho. It was my summer job and my after my high school classes job. I was assigned to paint old John Deere tractors taken as trade-ins on newer models. The old tractors were often greasy, the paint was faded, and most looked completely unloved. They also required special skills just to drive them into the paint booth, such as spinning a big, external flywheel with precise positioning and an agile technique to start them. They required a gentle but skillful use of the hand clutch lever to smoothly put them in motion, all while sitting on a tall iron seat and guiding them with a one position fits all steering wheel, which were kind of like soldiers getting new boots. “What size do I wear? 9 1/2, like everybody else.”
I took it as my vocation to renew those noble old machines. I scrubbed, straightened, sanded, masked, and using an old fashioned John Deere brand alkyd enamel paint that took forever to harden, I learned to spray a finish coat of paint that was mirror shiny. I also learned that the round stuff was painted yellow and the squarish stuff was painted green.
The only downside to the job was my hands often had a green/yellow tint that people noticed and commented on. “Your hands look like you just painted a John Deere tractor. Arrgh, aargh, aurgh!”
That was back in the days before we could unfriend people.
I love this essay for so many reasons. First of all that someone thought to have a special day that celebrates folks who work, bravo to them! Next that parade in NYC. All those folks lined up in an orderly way with not a digital device in their hand, mostly honouring the folks that work. Bravo to them! Lastly this list of the day jobs of famous writers was fascinating! Bravo to them (and you Tara)!
Most of my prior jobs were in the food and beverage industry (which I loved) but I also was a tour guide for a sawmill and pulp mill operation and I learned a lot.
You are right Mark, some of it was certainly beyond my comfort zone. Standing at the front of the bus pointing things out was great but walking my visitors through the mills and logging operations was a stretch.
It's hard to imagine this now! A teenage guide traipsing a bunch of tourists through a logging operation, a sawmill and a pulpmill!! No one was injured, no one died (we were very safe because we wore hardhats🤣) and everyone learned something interesting but it just wouldn't happen any more.
I imagine you as an amazing tour guide! I’ll bet that mill of was sorry to see you go. It’s a good holiday, well timed for teachers and students to have a 4-day week while they get their academic legs back on. 🤓
My job history isn't very exciting. Like many, I've spent time as a server, a cleaner, an office administrator, a program manager (non-profit). I think the farming years would have to count as the most compatible with artistic work. Not only is coaxing marketable food from the earth something close to art itself, the level of observation needed to do the job well is good training for someone who is inclined to write stories.
We are not even going to talk about that quiz, though. 🙄
Haha! I think I can point my students to this quiz and warn them what’s in store if they miss class. Attendance will be amazing!
I love the way you put this: “Not only is coaxing marketable food from the earth something close to art itself, the level of observation needed to do the job well is good training for someone who is inclined to write stories.“ Having worked alongside my mother, a gardener who knows the language of her plants and soil, I completely agree with you about the art of coaxing food and the observation required. Yes!
Also on a farm, there’s manure-shoveling to strengthen bones and nostrils. Was that on your dance card?
We did not keep four-legged animals, but there were copious quantities of chicken manure to manage. We kept our 125 layers in a rotating set-up, which helped tremendously, but the wire coop bottom was given a temporary floor and bedding each winter (for warmth) and yours truly was the one to muck it out each spring. Go Chicken Scratch!
Oh the jobs I’ve done. A fun one was a pepper jelly slinger at Seattle’s famous Pike’s Place market. I offered samples right down the way from the fish throwers.
Oh, and a house cleaning business was one of the way as I worked my way through college.
That it was! One of the first things I did on moving across the country from West Virginia to Seattle was, of course, check out the market. I was immediately like, OK, so I’ll be getting a job here. I mean what better fodder for an aspiring writer, right?
Werner Herzog warns aspiring filmmakers to not quit their jobs and go to film school. In place of academic thinking, he’s is interested in real-life experiences — filmmakers who have done their time in the world, spent a few nights on the street, worked as a bouncer at a night club. I’m sure the same applies for writers. One of my strangest and most eye-opening jobs was as a summer temp working in a frozen pizza factory after my freshman year in college. Pepperoni, pepperoni, pepperoni, one after the other for 8 hours straight, an endless conveyor belt of frozen discs. Mind numbing, but also strangely meditative, though I recognize my great privilege of being able to go back to school in the fall.
Funny you should say that. After being in the pepperoni zone for a stint, I moved over to the boxing conveyor belt, where I quickly discovered I WAS NOT quick enough at stacking in threes and they all piled up on me. Yes, I did shut the entire factory down for a moment because of this. College students, geesh.
Haha. I considered a full paragraph for each author, which would have provided more clues. A lot of job histories sound similar. I rejected "diaper changing" for that very reason.
I had no job that took physical effort unless it was happily gathering almond with an uncle.. or gathering herbs to take back home for the winter stews…
You're taking me right back into the new graphic novel by Jen Wang, released a couple of weeks ago. The main character is a teen who wants to live in the woods, and who checks out books on foraging and hunting to learn how to survive. Your herb-gathering for stew is just what this protagonist is trying to learn. :-) That sounds like a wonderful memory with your uncle. Glad you enjoyed the post.
I chose my day job--secondary English teacher--in part because I thought it would be compatible with writing. It was not. This was after abandoning an editing job because I quickly realized that after a day of wrestling with other people's words I had nothing left for my own. Would I do it differently if I could? I don't know. It's allowed me to retire, and earlier than many. I won't write what I once might have, but I might get to write what I otherwise wouldn't.
Early retirement is a great boon. Teachers carry a lot of responsibility, so thank goodness for pensions where they exist and a chance to step back. Was teaching a better complement for gardening than for writing?
Oof. I only knew 3 of the authors by their day jobs.
Love the question.
Car mechanic. Lifeguard at a women's pool in Saudi. Delivered telephone directories. Christmas wreath-maker. Knitting instructor. Poll watcher. Micro-fiche reader. Nanny. Avon lady. Bean picker. Kelly Girl, handing out free cigarette samples on the Nicolet Mall. Telemarketer. Blood donor. Fabric store clerk. Home-baked pie vendor. Maid. Movie extra. Fiber artist. Short-order cook offering up K-Mart blue light special plates. Camp counselor. Waitress. None of those appear on my official resume. Ha!
Jill, you have an amazing work history! Isn't it amazing what resumés leave out? During graduate school, I had three different ones, customized for the types of jobs I most often applied for. We humans don't tell half our own stories. Thank you for sharing this!
Amazingly LONG work history (16-66 and still laboring). Teacher, farmer, reporter, writer, researcher, editor, literary agent, and then helped launch a local florist during the pandemic. Never a dull moment and plenty of material to draw upon. The people you meet!
Every small town needs a hometown florist and especially during the pandemic it seemed especially hopeful to help the next generation of small business owners get a boost up. Evergreen Florist of Appleton. They bought out my shares and still open.
Hope it is okay to add an odd job that my son worked before becoming a mechanical engineer. He washed the huge baking sheets at the Top Pot donut bakery plant. He would come home with free donuts and his jeans and shoes would be soaking wet, then dry into glazed, sticky sugar creases.
That is so cool. I’m gonna tell my kids about that one. Who wouldn’t want to be a glazed chocolate teen?
What a fun post. One doesn't have to be an artist to claim having had odd jobs-- especially as a teen or in college. My daughter works in health care and was once a Cart Girl (collecting shopping carts in the parking lot of the grocery store). When I was an actor I had some crazy temp jobs. One in particular I would rather forget as it was a little too Epstein island-ish. Don't worry, I left in a hurry.
Cart girl - of course! There’s a job that’s right in front of my eyes and I don’t think about. Good one. Glad you made it out of the job that needed to be dumped. This has got to be one of my favorite comment streams. We are all so interesting! :-)
I’m getting to this the day after Labor Day. Ah well, what a great post! I’ve trained horses, mucked stalls and groomed horses, cleaned cages and washed and dipped dogs and cats (yes, cats!) for a veterinarian, and worked as a sort of bookkeeper for a lawn and garden store, where the owner was always drunk but tried to hide it. Funny in retrospect but not at the time! I appreciated the history too, Tara.
Emily, You had the dream jobs of my youth! 😄 Alas, over time, my animal passions moderated. Turned out it was the books about animals I loved. :-) I hope that owner got into rehab and kept the business.
Ha! I can't say as I recommend washing and dipping cats as a profession. We wore heavy, ankle length canvas aprons and long gloves for protection!
I hope he did too. I did learn a lot about chainsaws and other power equipment in that job. I can tell you what's wrong with you mower (it's usually the carbureter:)
Haha! You have acquired some valuable skills along the way. 🐈
Yes!
Great topic. Like many others commenting, I had when young and through higher education a quite varied work history, from executive to mostly blue collar and sometimes soul crushing, but nothing seems more iconic than New York City taxi driver. People often react with a kind of awe or a flipside incredulity that I could be so mad. Yet it was formative and brands my New York bona fides. I also attended City College of New York and worked at odd hours on a first novel and screenplay while doing it, so that completes the picture. :)
A cab driver! My dream job when I was an actor but too nervous being a woman. Have you ever written about your experiences?
NYC cab! You are so right. That job is iconic. Keeping odd hours and writing only complete the picture. You did not hesitate to make yourself a bicoastal New Yorker.
The collection of jobs here is getting to be so interesting that I believe I will share it with my senior English Lit majors. The theme: Fear not! The best job may be one you can't even imagine.
Yes!
Thanks so much for doing this "Holy Labor." What a great launching pad!
First, I do have to agree with your appreciation of days and skills past - "those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."¹
Secondly, I think fascinating jobs probably have a disproportional opportunity to shape our futures versus the garden variety experiences that never rouse the emotions or curiosity. One of my first "real" jobs out of high school was as a diener, assisting a pathologist as he did autopsies in Camden, NJ. One of my first "patients" was a two-year-old orphan who died from hydrocephalus. l still retain the visual as I lifted his lifeless body onto the sliding stretcher that went into the cooler (after sewing him up after his autopsy). I suspect those unusual experiences can have an over-sized influence on our future paths or even help define us.
Sounds fascinating but heartbreaking. My father is a retired pathologist. We heard stories when I was growing up.
Thank you for sharing the post. How did you find such a hidden job?
I just wanted to get my feet wet and applied to the nearest sizable hospital for any medically related job - and there it was - "a dead-end job."
Groan! 🙉🙃
LOL
I love this! The best job I ever had was working in a used bookstore. It was the year after college, before I entered a PhD program in Russian literature. I was quickly becoming steeped in academic approaches to literature. Working in the bookstore gave me a look at the business of books--how people actually read. It was valuable experience for so many reasons!
What a perfect time for that job, before graduate school. I can imagine how that could have affected your academic reading.
It affected all my reading--and it was really useful after I dropped out of grad school and worked as an assistant in a literary agency, managing two agents' slush piles. I'm not sure what taught me more about the business of books: the buying table at Half-Price Books in Austin or the literary agency in NYC. Both were great jobs and rungs on the ladder to becoming whatever it is that I am now.
Oh Tara! You really should do this for a living.
I once worked for a John Deere tractor dealership in Nampa, Idaho. It was my summer job and my after my high school classes job. I was assigned to paint old John Deere tractors taken as trade-ins on newer models. The old tractors were often greasy, the paint was faded, and most looked completely unloved. They also required special skills just to drive them into the paint booth, such as spinning a big, external flywheel with precise positioning and an agile technique to start them. They required a gentle but skillful use of the hand clutch lever to smoothly put them in motion, all while sitting on a tall iron seat and guiding them with a one position fits all steering wheel, which were kind of like soldiers getting new boots. “What size do I wear? 9 1/2, like everybody else.”
I took it as my vocation to renew those noble old machines. I scrubbed, straightened, sanded, masked, and using an old fashioned John Deere brand alkyd enamel paint that took forever to harden, I learned to spray a finish coat of paint that was mirror shiny. I also learned that the round stuff was painted yellow and the squarish stuff was painted green.
The only downside to the job was my hands often had a green/yellow tint that people noticed and commented on. “Your hands look like you just painted a John Deere tractor. Arrgh, aargh, aurgh!”
That was back in the days before we could unfriend people.
I love that you were a tractor salesman!
Tara- you really should compile a book of these odd jobs. Holy Labor.
I agree! These responses are amazing.
Wow - I am learning so much from these comments! 🤣🤣
In a good way?
It’s a wholesome neighborhood!
Wholesome is a very good word.
I love this essay for so many reasons. First of all that someone thought to have a special day that celebrates folks who work, bravo to them! Next that parade in NYC. All those folks lined up in an orderly way with not a digital device in their hand, mostly honouring the folks that work. Bravo to them! Lastly this list of the day jobs of famous writers was fascinating! Bravo to them (and you Tara)!
Most of my prior jobs were in the food and beverage industry (which I loved) but I also was a tour guide for a sawmill and pulp mill operation and I learned a lot.
Donna! A tour guide for a sawmill operation! I love it! I want to read the essay.
Haha! You might have to write it for me.
I love the fact that you did the tour guide work, surely beyond your comfort zone.
You are right Mark, some of it was certainly beyond my comfort zone. Standing at the front of the bus pointing things out was great but walking my visitors through the mills and logging operations was a stretch.
It's hard to imagine this now! A teenage guide traipsing a bunch of tourists through a logging operation, a sawmill and a pulpmill!! No one was injured, no one died (we were very safe because we wore hardhats🤣) and everyone learned something interesting but it just wouldn't happen any more.
Kudus to you. Plus, it's sometimes great to run through the old chapters.
I imagine you as an amazing tour guide! I’ll bet that mill of was sorry to see you go. It’s a good holiday, well timed for teachers and students to have a 4-day week while they get their academic legs back on. 🤓
Our students go back tomorrow but it’s our family’s first time in 22 years with no back to school😀 We had a toast tonight as the boys were visiting!
That sounds like a wonderful milestone to share together.
It was but I think the boys thought we were a little nuts to be so excited.
Haha!
Good one Tara. I’m resting. Maybe later. ☺️🤷🏻♂️
My job history isn't very exciting. Like many, I've spent time as a server, a cleaner, an office administrator, a program manager (non-profit). I think the farming years would have to count as the most compatible with artistic work. Not only is coaxing marketable food from the earth something close to art itself, the level of observation needed to do the job well is good training for someone who is inclined to write stories.
We are not even going to talk about that quiz, though. 🙄
Haha! I think I can point my students to this quiz and warn them what’s in store if they miss class. Attendance will be amazing!
I love the way you put this: “Not only is coaxing marketable food from the earth something close to art itself, the level of observation needed to do the job well is good training for someone who is inclined to write stories.“ Having worked alongside my mother, a gardener who knows the language of her plants and soil, I completely agree with you about the art of coaxing food and the observation required. Yes!
Also on a farm, there’s manure-shoveling to strengthen bones and nostrils. Was that on your dance card?
“. . .there’s manure-shoveling. . .”
If that doesn’t prepare a young writer for her life’s work, nothing will. It’s the very essence of the craft.
We did not keep four-legged animals, but there were copious quantities of chicken manure to manage. We kept our 125 layers in a rotating set-up, which helped tremendously, but the wire coop bottom was given a temporary floor and bedding each winter (for warmth) and yours truly was the one to muck it out each spring. Go Chicken Scratch!
125 layers is a serious manure factory! Good thing your parents drew the line at poultry.
Fun game! ;)
Oh the jobs I’ve done. A fun one was a pepper jelly slinger at Seattle’s famous Pike’s Place market. I offered samples right down the way from the fish throwers.
Oh, and a house cleaning business was one of the way as I worked my way through college.
Write that story, Ms. Pepper Jelly Slinger. 😀
Yes! 🙌
Awesome! Slinging anything near the fish stand requires a person with a gift for entertaining. What a workplace!
That it was! One of the first things I did on moving across the country from West Virginia to Seattle was, of course, check out the market. I was immediately like, OK, so I’ll be getting a job here. I mean what better fodder for an aspiring writer, right?
Right! You put yourself right in the heart of the action.
Werner Herzog warns aspiring filmmakers to not quit their jobs and go to film school. In place of academic thinking, he’s is interested in real-life experiences — filmmakers who have done their time in the world, spent a few nights on the street, worked as a bouncer at a night club. I’m sure the same applies for writers. One of my strangest and most eye-opening jobs was as a summer temp working in a frozen pizza factory after my freshman year in college. Pepperoni, pepperoni, pepperoni, one after the other for 8 hours straight, an endless conveyor belt of frozen discs. Mind numbing, but also strangely meditative, though I recognize my great privilege of being able to go back to school in the fall.
I immediately conjure Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory but with pepperonis. Hehe.
Funny you should say that. After being in the pepperoni zone for a stint, I moved over to the boxing conveyor belt, where I quickly discovered I WAS NOT quick enough at stacking in threes and they all piled up on me. Yes, I did shut the entire factory down for a moment because of this. College students, geesh.
Haha! Love this. 😅 Lucy would have been proud to call you a friend.
🤣🤣
Wow, I’ve never known anyone who worked in a frozen pizza factory. That’s a fresh one for me. Nice!
Enjoyed the quiz, but should probably not reveal how poorly I did on it!
Haha. I considered a full paragraph for each author, which would have provided more clues. A lot of job histories sound similar. I rejected "diaper changing" for that very reason.
What a lovely piece of writing.
I had no job that took physical effort unless it was happily gathering almond with an uncle.. or gathering herbs to take back home for the winter stews…
Thank you, Patris!
You're taking me right back into the new graphic novel by Jen Wang, released a couple of weeks ago. The main character is a teen who wants to live in the woods, and who checks out books on foraging and hunting to learn how to survive. Your herb-gathering for stew is just what this protagonist is trying to learn. :-) That sounds like a wonderful memory with your uncle. Glad you enjoyed the post.
And what kind of a stew herbs are we discussing here? Asking for a friend who enjoys smoking his stew.
I chose my day job--secondary English teacher--in part because I thought it would be compatible with writing. It was not. This was after abandoning an editing job because I quickly realized that after a day of wrestling with other people's words I had nothing left for my own. Would I do it differently if I could? I don't know. It's allowed me to retire, and earlier than many. I won't write what I once might have, but I might get to write what I otherwise wouldn't.
Early retirement is a great boon. Teachers carry a lot of responsibility, so thank goodness for pensions where they exist and a chance to step back. Was teaching a better complement for gardening than for writing?
Oof. I only knew 3 of the authors by their day jobs.
Love the question.
Car mechanic. Lifeguard at a women's pool in Saudi. Delivered telephone directories. Christmas wreath-maker. Knitting instructor. Poll watcher. Micro-fiche reader. Nanny. Avon lady. Bean picker. Kelly Girl, handing out free cigarette samples on the Nicolet Mall. Telemarketer. Blood donor. Fabric store clerk. Home-baked pie vendor. Maid. Movie extra. Fiber artist. Short-order cook offering up K-Mart blue light special plates. Camp counselor. Waitress. None of those appear on my official resume. Ha!
Jill, you have an amazing work history! Isn't it amazing what resumés leave out? During graduate school, I had three different ones, customized for the types of jobs I most often applied for. We humans don't tell half our own stories. Thank you for sharing this!
Amazingly LONG work history (16-66 and still laboring). Teacher, farmer, reporter, writer, researcher, editor, literary agent, and then helped launch a local florist during the pandemic. Never a dull moment and plenty of material to draw upon. The people you meet!
Launching a florist is a new one for me. That sounds like an adventure among adventures!
Every small town needs a hometown florist and especially during the pandemic it seemed especially hopeful to help the next generation of small business owners get a boost up. Evergreen Florist of Appleton. They bought out my shares and still open.
Wonderful! Now that was a good way to handle the pandemic.