After graduating college (age 21) I worked the following jobs:
- Film Projection specialist at a movie theater
- Television writer at a children’s show
- Theater producer
- Art/Gymnastics teacher
- Bartender
- Collections agent
- Administrative assistant
It took me seven (7) career changes to get to what I wanted to do, which I didn’t figure out until I was 26ish. That’s averaging a more than job a year!
Here’s my thought on this: Quitting a job is depressing, irrational, and completely necessary
Fun lessons I learned:
1. ) Film Projectionist – If you’re doing a great job, no one notices. If you’re messing up you’re the fall-guy. Avoid these jobs like the plague
2.) Television writer – Easily the least-creative job I’ve ever done and after you calculate the number of hours you’ve worked, you’re making less than $5/hour.
3.) Theater Producer – As with most Not-for-Profits, raising money is 85% of the gig, 13% is managing personalities; 2% is producing art.
3.) Art/Gymnastics teacher – I learned almost all my conflict-management skills here. You’d be surprised how reasonable five-year-olds can be, versus their adult counterparts (especially parents)
4.) Bartender – The most boring job that exists. What I thought was a glamour gig for a young 20-something was really menial and stupid. If you have skills don’t do this.
5.) Collections agent (Revenue Management!)- If you run a small business, get good at collections. And it takes a lot to do it – cajoling, begging, demanding, threatening, etc.
6.) Administrative Assistant – If you’re sitting in meetings, meeting interesting people, and getting mentored this is great. If you’re running for coffee please quit ASAP.
Not-for-profits tend to be poorly run; corporate America has GREAT benefits but uninspiring that I think it’s…..intentionally so; and there are very few people in the any industry that really knows what their doing or how to manage people effectively. Working for corporations is a selfish world, people. It’s very often a selfish, short-sighted, incompetent world. Which is why I needed to keep quitting – I assumed that “no, no this isn’t how people really work. I’m just in a bad company/place/department/industry. I need to try something else…go where people are competent and like each other.” Grass was never greener.
Now, I don’t consider those gigs as a waste of time. I picked up valuable lessons all throughout. There are no detours in life – I carried a lot with me at DOM & TOM. Basically, don’t work with jerks, be respectful and humble enough to assign interesting projects to coworkers, and for the love of God don’t do boring.
No one likes
Brendon McCarthy says
Don’t do boring!
Bayard Russell says
So far, the jobs in my life have been 1) Mail Boxes Etc. 2) Dishwasher 3) Short order cook 4) Classical music publicist 5) Rich Media Campaign Manager 6) Project Manager (current). It’s interesting to see how each successive job was a gradual decrease in boredom. Your observation inspired me to make an excel chart following my decrease in boredom. I can see that there’s still progress to be had.
Tom says
I love this chart. I want to make one.