I’ve had lotsa jobs since I started working while in high school. Some great. Some meh. A few dreadful. I detailed several in part in my Money, Man! series of posts.
I’ve thought of this a lot recently because of the recent mild disruption that I shrugged aft sturm und drang with my part-time job. Cuz I realized that regardless of whether or not I liked each job, and regardless of the job itself, each provided me with benefits of one or more kind or another. Monetary rewards. Life and learning experiences. Personal relationships. Etc.
I thought I’d do a terribly long and tedious little run through on this.
A matter of convenience
My first job was working in the VHS tape rental section of a drug/convenience store. For those of my younger Dear Readers who have no idea what a VHS is, imagine Netflix . . . but without the ease and convenience. Oh yeah, with late fees, too. For my labors (I became an accomplished slacker and so did very little of what might reasonably be called “labor”), I earned the minimum wage princely sum of $3.35/hour. But this job’s benefits to me were many.
First, it was my first earned money. I learned that Uncle Sam and Uncle/Aunt [insert your state governor’s name and your locality’s executive’s name as applicable] get theirs before you get yours. I also learned how to show up and do a job, instilling in me a healthy work ethic. Also, about the chain of authority. Last, those paltry handsome wages were a revelation. I loved getting those paychecks. Having pocket money and more was thrilling. This job didn’t make me rich. But it did make me eager to earn money.
Fast food notion
My next job was about a six-month, barely-more-than-minimum-wage job in a fast-casual restaurant. My main takeaway: me no likey working in fast/fast-casual food service. First, I had to pay for my uniform. I took that as a personal affront. Why, I thought, must I pay you, employer, for your uniform? This was my intro to ridiculous employer rules and requirements. It left an impression.
Also unpleasant about the job: I’d come home greasy and stinky after each shift. Well, greasier and stinkier than my pimply, unwashed 17-year-old self normally was. Actually, now that I think of it, maybe the acne and lack of showering was the full explanation. Anyhooooo . . . let’s move on.
My shifts for this job also could be all over the place and changed with fairly little notice. Having then and since craved daily schedule predictability and consistency, I didn’t like that. At all.
Putt(er)ing around
Next up some golf course jobs. One essentially a license to destroy drive golf carts with my friends/coworkers. The other involving *gasp!* actual physical labor. While I liked the former job much more than the latter (in fact, that former job may be my all-time favorite job), both taught me that working with people I liked and could goof off with appealed a great deal to me. I also liked working outside, tho I’ve never since had a job allowing for that.
Against type
I next took a part-time data entry job. What I liked: schedule predictability and easy work. Day in and day out, the same and low-key, repetitive tasks. What I didn’t like: minimal socialization, working all day in a windowless, fluorescent-lit room, and boring work Just as with the fast-casual restaurant gig, I discovered another environment in which I didn’t want to work. This was one of the first times I realized that there can be as much benefit in learning what you don’t want/like as what you do want/like.
Full schedule, empty pockets
Next came my first full-time job. Working full time proved its own valuable experience. One that I didn’t mind at all as I found. The pay was embarrassingly low. But more than I’d ever earned. And, notwithstanding having recently moved out of my parents’ house for the first time, enough to allow me to support myself. Barely. The valuable lesson was that I could budget effectively. Something I’d assumed was the case, but that hadn’t been reality-tested. An intertwining benefit was that my hardwired frugal bona fides got kicked up a notch.
The flipside was that having precious little fun-spending money was . . . wait for it . . . no fun. See what I did there! And those harder-wired bona fides reinforced my already unhealthy scarcity mindset. I didn’t transform into a rapacious capitalist. But I further concluded that I wanted financial security, which translated to being able to pay my bills and having enough scratch left over for some fun (building wealth was then nowhere close to being on my radar).
A last benefit to the job was that it was in a great industry, and my coworkers were fantastic. Yet another lesson that I like fun jobs where I get to work with good people.
Legally bound
Next up was my first legal industry job. Having by then painfully realized that I was racking up a mountain of (student loan) debt and that *clutches pearls* I’d have to pay back all that and the interest accrued, I realized that the less loan money I took in loans, the better. The job’s pay was low, but did help me accomplish my goal of taking a lower sum in loans, which certainly paid off in the long term.
Your complete dolt of a blogger, who was totally underemployed in this job, also learned that there was a threshold to his tolerance for getting paid to do easy work. Yet another valuable lesson about what I didn’t want to do when I grew up.
After graduating from law school, I took a temp job. It ultimately led to a full-time job offer. I’d previously had some part-time jobs obtained through temp agencies. But this was the first time that one directly led to a full time one. I came to develop a deep appreciation for temp jobs. Beyond that lesson, the jobs I had with this organization were the first in which I really had to use my brain. That, I found, was fun.
What wasn’t fun about the job? Baller money I was by no means making. And because the full force of loan repayment winds were blowing squarely in my face, much of that moderately hard-earned pay was being automatically diverted to barely any principal and eye-watering amounts of interest, leaving me with almost as little discretionary spending money as ever. By that point in my life, this was, shall we say, getting old.
The job also came with annoying office/organization politics and toxic bosses, which I’d never had to deal with. I learned what makes a bad leader. And how a good (or at least tolerable) situation could be derailed in an instant by a change in supervisors. Painful, but incredibly valuable, lessons.
Another lesson I learned in the job was the value of a network/making connections. Because that’s what led directly to my next job, one that held lotsa promise. A large pay increase! New challenges! A dynamic company in an exciting industry!
Alas, the job sssuuucked. The pay was niceish and helped me move from paying monthly minimums on my loans to paying an excess amount. But because of those voluntarily higher payments, I had as little spending and safety money as ever. Far worse about the job, tho, was that I neither liked nor was good at the job’s actual tasks. And most of my coworkers were, shall we say, not my people.
This job’s lessons, however, were many. First, about how important company culture is for me. Also about liking my work and coworkers, regardless of how good the pay. More than any job I ever held, this one helped me create the boundaries for what I wanted in a work environment and situation. Although learned the hard way, these lessons were invaluable.
My next job was a far better fit, even if the pay was little changed. The job was remote and for a large organization. The former I took to enthusiastically. The latter . . . not so much. I have no reflexive dislike for yyyuuuge companies. I just learned that I didn’t wanna work for one. Too much red tape, moving parts, and ridiculous and faceless corporate stuff coming from what seemed an anonymous, soulless black box.
Last stops
I left this job to enter the industry in which I’d spend the rest of my full-time career. These were far and away the best jobs I had in terms of salary and employee benefits. In time, the pay reached heights I’d previously only dreamed of. I’d long sought financial security but never got much of a taste for it. These jobs fully confirmed for me that financial security was invaluable.
Having by this point mostly learned what I did and didn’t want in a job, I spent most of this time in positions that ticked most of the right boxes. The key word, however, is “mostly.” Because during this time I made one career move motivated in part by bad reasons. It proved disastrous.
That move was to take a job that made sense on the surface. But to be honest, a large salary bump was at least an equally driving factor. The painful lesson relearned was that if the work and/or coworkers suck—and this job and most of my coworkers were hands down the worst in my career—no amount of pay makes it worthwhile for me.
The other move I made during this time was to open my own company. Not something planned. But it worked out well.
The valuable lessons were that I figgerd out how to open and operate my own business, that I liked being my own boss, and that I was kinda done with working for strong-willed (if well-meaning and effective) bosses.
Also, by this time I found that I liked my work less and less. By then headlong into pursuing FIRE, I had two epiphanies. First, that leaving both the job and profession were doable. And second, that doing so was the absolute right thing for me to do at that point. Essentially the culmination of all the lessons I’d learned from my jobs and the nexus between that and my learning of and pursuing FIRE.
And then I FIREd.
And in the end . . .
And there you have it, Dear Reader. A buncha jobs. Even more lessons learned. Valuable, hard-earned lessons.
