My Job History, Part I
Ages 14-15: Baskin Robbins. Shoveled ice cream after school for $1.10 an hour wearing brown Levi's corduroy bells and fake Earth shoes. Quit when I learned the Tastee Freeze across the parking lot would pay me $1.45. Asked for my old job back after my new boss made me scrape gum off the disgusting hot sidewalk where kids would run over ketchup packets with their bikes. My old boss wouldn't take me back because she found out I'd been shoplifting little ice cream pies.
Age 16: Lehrer's Flowers Drove the delivery van for a summer instead of hanging out at the community pool, the result being that only my left arm (which hung out the window when I drove) got tan. No air conditioning, so you had to drive fast before the flowers wilted and looked like shit. Still, possibly the best job I ever had. Responsibility + freedom, the pleasure of giving people flowers all day long, drive-thru Cokes whenever I wanted them, and I learned how to change a flat tire.
Age 17: Tamarac Square Multiplex Still a sore spot in my family history. I loved working in a movie theater and going to midnight staff screenings, but my mom hated me coming home from work at 1 a.m. When I needed a few days off so I could get my tonsils out and was recovering in the hospital, my mom called up the theater and quit my job for me. Spent the rest of the summer hating her and developing a low-grade eating disorder.
Age 18: Haagen-Dazs at the strip mall next to the Aurora Mall Being an old hand at this ice cream thing, I was a shoe-in. Got a New Wave haircut and switched over to the alternative radio station every time the boss left. Discovered that because the ice cream had so much butter fat in it I could eat a scoop for dinner and not be hungry again for hours. Lost ten pounds and thus resolved, for the most part, my eating disorder.
Age 19: Art Hardware, Boulder My dad knew the owners and got me a job as the phone operator at a busy art supply store. Drove an hour each way to get there in my white '73 Volkswagen Bug. Between calls, started writing poetry that would win me an award the next semester at college.
Age 20: Connecticut College Library Rented a place near school with my boyfriend and another couple for the summer and didn't go home. Not really the greatest summer for me, emotionally, but I loved shelving books and browsing through the stacks, and writing down strange author names in a small notebook I kept in my pocket.
Age 21: No job Didn't get back from the University of Edinburgh until late June, and school in Connecticut started in mid-August, so couldn't in good conscience ask someone to hire me for six weeks. Played a little tennis at the Washington Park public courts and went to the movies a lot.
Age 22: back to the College library Had no idea what to do with my life now that school was over, so did my best to freeze time by continuing to work in the library the whole summer after graduation. My brother came out in August to help me pack up my studio apartment (hotplate, mini-fridge, bathroom down the hall) and drive back to Denver in my Bug. The Virgin Mary came to me in a dream in a hotel outside of Sandusky, Ohio.
Age 16: Lehrer's Flowers Drove the delivery van for a summer instead of hanging out at the community pool, the result being that only my left arm (which hung out the window when I drove) got tan. No air conditioning, so you had to drive fast before the flowers wilted and looked like shit. Still, possibly the best job I ever had. Responsibility + freedom, the pleasure of giving people flowers all day long, drive-thru Cokes whenever I wanted them, and I learned how to change a flat tire.
Age 17: Tamarac Square Multiplex Still a sore spot in my family history. I loved working in a movie theater and going to midnight staff screenings, but my mom hated me coming home from work at 1 a.m. When I needed a few days off so I could get my tonsils out and was recovering in the hospital, my mom called up the theater and quit my job for me. Spent the rest of the summer hating her and developing a low-grade eating disorder.
Age 18: Haagen-Dazs at the strip mall next to the Aurora Mall Being an old hand at this ice cream thing, I was a shoe-in. Got a New Wave haircut and switched over to the alternative radio station every time the boss left. Discovered that because the ice cream had so much butter fat in it I could eat a scoop for dinner and not be hungry again for hours. Lost ten pounds and thus resolved, for the most part, my eating disorder.
Age 19: Art Hardware, Boulder My dad knew the owners and got me a job as the phone operator at a busy art supply store. Drove an hour each way to get there in my white '73 Volkswagen Bug. Between calls, started writing poetry that would win me an award the next semester at college.
Age 20: Connecticut College Library Rented a place near school with my boyfriend and another couple for the summer and didn't go home. Not really the greatest summer for me, emotionally, but I loved shelving books and browsing through the stacks, and writing down strange author names in a small notebook I kept in my pocket.
Age 21: No job Didn't get back from the University of Edinburgh until late June, and school in Connecticut started in mid-August, so couldn't in good conscience ask someone to hire me for six weeks. Played a little tennis at the Washington Park public courts and went to the movies a lot.
Age 22: back to the College library Had no idea what to do with my life now that school was over, so did my best to freeze time by continuing to work in the library the whole summer after graduation. My brother came out in August to help me pack up my studio apartment (hotplate, mini-fridge, bathroom down the hall) and drive back to Denver in my Bug. The Virgin Mary came to me in a dream in a hotel outside of Sandusky, Ohio.
20 Comments:
Can't wait to find out what the virgin had to say....
I, too, had my stint at a library. I loved the smell...i'm so weird.
It sort of unnerves me to think how close we came to knowing each other 20-odd years ago.
Aweome list. Thanks.
I loved delivering flowers too! Except this one time I had to bring them to a funeral home, and it was for a tiny baby (open) casket, and when the worker answered the door, it was obvious he was in the midst of some kind of mortuary activity in the back. Not so fun.
I really really need to know what the Virgin Mary had to say.
Yeah me too...... You can't just leave us hanging!!! Did it have anything to do with blogging?????
you inspired me to make my own list:
http://beangrower.livejournal.com/
I always get a kick out of the Denver part of your life. Starting in high school I lived only a few blocks from the Tamarac Mall. We sneaked into many an R-rated movie there. For awhile, the coveted position was at the cookie stand just inside the mall because they would hire 15-year-olds and we were all desperate for jobs.
Tamarac Mall, now that sure bring back some memories - but the first post about virgin reminds me of my first job at Dairy Queen working for a woman manager that showed me the meaning of subservant employee. I lied about my age to get that job, but two years, I was 13 and now think a lawsuit would be in order today in that situation near Centennial Race track (it's gone now, but the DQ is still there)
Denver represent! It was rather a chore to get out to where you grew up for me, though. I used to ride my bike from 5th and Humboldt to the Happy Valley Shopping Center where my boyfriend's reluctant mother would pick me up and take me the extra half a mile to his house (why, Lord, did she not just let me ride all the way?). Until he got a Jetta, that is.
Oh and I once got busted by the mall cops at Tamarac when, at 17, while attempting to sneak bottles of beer into the Multiplex, one of us geniuses exploded one of the bottles on the floor outside the entrance. Ooops.
love this post- I did one of them too last year- So brain itchy to look back....http://doobleh-vay.blogspot.com/2007/12/sampling-of-jobs.html
Any chance you could post the list of strange author names? Please oh pretty please?
I have no idea why I'm intrigued by a virtual stranger's job history. But alas, I am.
I knew we had some sort of kindred bond - I was an ice cream scooper from way back when. Although it was Carvel, which was mostly soft serve. Way easier to do stoned.
The place for "cool kids" to work was the Baskin Robbins in our town. No, I didn't work there. I worked in the hospital food service. Better pay, fewer hours, it all evened out.
And I never made it out of the Baskin Robbins trial period, could not get the right size scoop. No idea what my next job was.
I totally worked at Baskin Robbins in Denver, too, for $2/hr. Senior year, because my mom insisted I stop working for my crazy boyfriend's mother. Anyway the other kids, all 14 and 15, delighted in making me do the shit work because I was a private school senior. So I flipped my car on 1-25 and got to quit my job and go to the Center for Self-Destructive Behavior in Adolescent Girls, I believe it was called, for the summer before college.
But I got some groovy 80s asymmetrical earrings at Tamarac in 9th grade.
My first job was at Baskin Robbins too; it lasted all of two weeks.
that was beautiful.
i can't wait for installations in the future.
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