Ask the Audience: What Was Your First Job?

I have a somewhat strange fascination to learn about people’s “befores.” I love an origin story. Back when I worked as a magazine editor, we had this column that featured an artist, artisan or creative of some sort in a short Q&A. One of the questions we regularly asked is how someone got to where they were. Essentially…who were you before this version of you? How did you get here? It’s been nearly a decade since I edited one of those pieces, but so many of the ones I did work on still stand out in my memory.

Most people’s lives are not exactly linear. Some go to college, major in something, end up a decade later in something completely unrelated. Some never went for higher education at all, and ended up somewhere inspiring by happenstance, or hard work, or a series of events no one could have guessed.

One of my favorite career-focused podcasts is called How I Built This, hosted by Guy Raz, and I just can’t get enough of hearing about how someone used to work at the aquarium or the town movie theater or as an accountant before they ended up starting a jam empire. There’s something about knowing these things that grounds that person for me. Makes me feel like…wait…I could do that, too. It’s disarming, to know that most of us started in very mundane, run-of-the-mill work. Also, sometimes, it’s just a fun story. Or completely surprising.

My first job? I’m pretty sure I’ve gone over this before, but I was a ride operator at Universal’s Islands of Adventure, specifically in Seuss Landing. I worked on three rides/attractions: One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, the Caro-Seuss-el, and a little play water park for kids called If I Ran the Zoo. I rotated between several positions, including a greeter (the person at the front who answers all the inane questions tourists always seem to have, counts the number of people coming into the ride, and just general stands guard), actual button pusher (my favorite part), or the person who went around checking seatbelts and what have you. For each of these attractions, because it was Dr. Seuss themed, I had to memorize a rhyming spiel that was said at the start of every ride. I can still remember parts of the Caro-Seuss-el, 20 years later.

My uniform consisted of thick, itchy bright orange utility shorts that came just under my knee (so flattering!), a light blue big flowy cotton top with a bunch of fish all over it, and chunky white sneakers…Sketchers, I believe. Every 16-year-old girl dreams of wearing something like that, surely. But it was so much fun. I got to work with my best friend, though we were rarely scheduled together. The heat of Florida summers was horrendous, but youth gets you through most things that would be intolerable as a 36-year-old, surely.

I worked there one summer, and then one Christmas break. The following summer, I worked at Sea World, operating another ride. The summer after that, I worked at the Gap folding clothes, monitoring the fitting rooms, greeting people as they came into the store. Then came Nordstrom, where I worked the kids clothing department. Then a summer internship at Brides magazine in New York (the dreamiest dream ever), where I supplemented the money my parents could give me for food with a temp job that deserves its own post to recount. There were stints at the college bookstore, where my friend and I got pigeoned holed into always standing at the entrance on game days because we had “good energy” (really, we just acted like fools, dancing around while we laughed hysterically as you do when you’re 19/20 without any real cares in the world).

After that came jobs with a lot more weight, as I had graduated college and having a “job” for some spending money and cell phone bills all of a sudden became “work” for real bills and “real life.”

But that’s me. Please regale with stories of your first job or jobs. If not just for my own entertainment, it’ll be a fun trip down your own memory lane.

See you tomorrow, FOAS.