Moving Pipe, Age 6 to 9 - Don't know if it was really a job. Mostly it was Steve Theurer's job, and I tagged along. His dad paid me anyway. It was only pocket change. We used to ride our bikes, or very ocasionally their three-wheeler down to the farm, about two blocks away. We'd move the sprinkler pipes up and down the upper and lower fields, one row at a time. There were about four or five aluminum pipes, about 12 feet long each and maybe three inches in diameter. There were like four runs of pipe per field, that connected to plugs, and rows would alternate pulgs, so we'd move the row to the next two plugs up and seal the old one. I think we earned 7 cents a pipe. It was enough to keep us in soda refills of our Maveric Mugs. 25 cents a piece. We'd just mix all the non-caffinated drinks on the fountain. Sometimes I'd get daring and add caffinated Mt. Dew.
Dishwasher, Age 16 - I worked one night at the Copper Mill washing dishes. I got the job through a kid I was kind of freindly with at school. I think his name was Kenny Fluckinger. Anyway, he was talking about how he was quiting the job in the locker room at school and I over heard him and asked if he'd introduce me and put in a good word. I went in and met him there, and he introduced me to the line cook. He gave me the job on the spot and told me to be there to work the next day. The next afternoon Sue, my swim coach, pulled me aside and told me she was worried that I'd have to miss practices to work there. She said if I quit then went through the guard program she'd give me a job at the pool. I went in and worked that night because I didn't want to leave them un-staffed for the shift. I earned more that night than I'd ever earned in one day. More than minimum wage, which was $4.25 at the time I think. I think I earned like $5 an hour.
Lifeguard, Age 16-19 - I worked at the pool for three years in high school. We'd guard in I think 20 minute intervals. In the off time we'd clean. Sue was obsessive about cleanliness. Her house was crazy clean. This was considerable since she spent about 14 or 15 hours a day at school and the pool. To think she went home then and cleaned two or three hours each day, and still graded papers was amazing. Actually, a lot of times I ended up grading papers for her. I don't know if that was really all right, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time that she trusted me enough to grade the papers of people ahead of me in school. Anyway, we also taught swim lessons in the summer. I really, really liked working with little kids. I also periodically taught aquasize classes, so I got to work with senior citizens too. The old ladies loved me. I really made them lift those thighs. They said that the girls always took it too easy on them. But I felt no pity. Infirmity be damned! I think I started at like $6.50 guarding, then went up to $7.50 when I became a head guard. We got like $8.00 for swim lessons, and $25.00 I think for private lessons.
Baker, 21 - I got a job at The Old Gristmill on 4th North in Logan soon after my mission. I went to a ton of places that I thought I might like working and asked for applications. I had been trying to apply at Hastings (they weren't hiring) and I went into The Old Gristmill on a whim. Andrea? Turley, a girl from the 5th ward before it split into the 10th, was behind the counter, and when I asked if they were hiring and she took me into the back I ran into Elder Ballard (Steve?), an AP from my mission. They were looking for a mixer, and they both gave me good references. The bosses were Val someone, who was really cool, and Curtis Heaton, who was a little harder to like. Val gave me a job on the spot. The pay was I think $8.25 an hour. I was the first into the store at 4AM, where I would turn on the oven, and start mixing up the doughs for the day. Lots of good stuff. The guys were mixers, and the girls did everything else. It was sometimes hard for the girls to move sixty pound bags of flour and 90 pounds mixing bowls of dough. I wasn't great at it. I'd lose track of measurements. They tried me out baking, and I'd space timing and sometimes I'd miss the baking tray as it spun around. That meant it would go a couple minutes too long. They'd be a little over done. Not bad, but it's all about consistancy in a bakery like that. So they moved me off mixing, and I did customer service. Not as interesting. They didn't fire people. They just gave them fewer and fewer hours till they quit. And I did eventually, because I couldn't afford to work there any more.
Deck Builder, 21 (or 22?) - The deck on the cabin collapsed under a big snow load that year, so Mom and Dad wanted something new for the family reunion. I read a lot of books, designed it, and (over) built it with dad that summer. My first real-ish construction experience. I don't remember what they paid me. Maybe $8.00 an hour.
Cell Phone Salesman, 22 or 23? - I got this job through Mace Johnson. Diamond Wireless, in the Pinecrest Shopping Village on 14th North in Logan. We had to work a shift in the store each week, but mostly it was what I think is called "outside sales". We got paid totally on commission. I think we made $40 or $50 on each plan sale. We sold for Verizon wireless, but we weren't the factory store, so that was kind of weird. Sales sales sales. I could sell, but mostly I felt guilty when I did, because I really didn't believe in the product. Cell phones were just becoming the thing, but I didn't think they were really a good thing for most people. People were using them as fashion, and I didn't think they would fullfil the lifestyle promise they dangled. Now everyone spends $100+ a month on smart phones, and I still don't think they are necessarily good for people. I have a prepaid cell phone myself. I spend about $15 a month. I spent the whole summer working there. I never really liked it much.
Unpaid Intern, 23 - I did an internship with one of my tech writing professors. I didn't get paid. I also didn't learn much. I also wasn't very usefull to they guy. Probably a good thing I wasn't getting paid.
Rock Wall Builder 23? - Mom wanted a rock wall where the rock garden was between the terraces. So I read a bunch of books and designed something for her, and did a mock up with photoshop. And they gave me the job. I ended up spending almost the whole summer digging the foundation. It was a huge amount of excavation, and doing it by hand alone was insane. They wasted a ton of money paying me to dig and dig and dig with a hammer and crowbar, a mattock and shovel. It took forever because it turns out that it was part of the old course of Spring Creek, and the ground was packed with river rock. In the end Dad and I built the wall out of block, and faced it with stones we dug out of the foundation and split there in the yard. I wasn't super pleased with the top cap. It was too slumpy. I wish I'd made a better mold. They paid me $8 an hour again.
Parts Picker, 23? - When I graduated with my degree in tech writing I couldn't get a job to save my life. I remember talking to Peter about it, asking his advice on how to deal with the rejection. He said he didn't know, because he'd never failed to get a job he'd applied for. Awesome. I had committed to move into a house with Mark LaRocco and Devin Healey in Logan, and I didn't have any money to pay rent. It was terrifying, and I needed to make some cash. So I went to Don Pence, who was in charge of shipping for Proform, or whatever the exercise machine company is called now, and asked for a job. He gave it to me. Minimum wage, $7.25, right out of college. I was amazingly stressed and super anxious. Then the night I moved into the house I had the biggest anxiety attack of my life. I spent the next week lying on my back on Mom and Dad's couch. The anxiety attack never abated, until the fifth day when I was proscribed Xanax for the first time. Like magic. It was good for about thirty minutes of sleep at a time. On the eighth day I went back to the house and spent my first night there. I didn't sleep for the first five days of that anxiety attack, didn't drink anything for the first three days, and didn't eat for seven. I lost 25 pounds. And I never showed up for my first day of work. So did I really have the job?
Substitute Teacher, 23-25 - I started substitute teaching because I had kind of been interested in teaching forever, but avoided it as a major because I was afraid I wouldn't make enough money to support a family. Now I wasn't married and I didn't have prospects and I kind of felt like maybe it was a mistake not to consider it in the first place anyway. So I gave substitute teaching a go. And I liked it a lot. They paid us I think $45 a day. Doesn't seem really good. Can that be right? That's like $5.65. Jeez.
Sprint PCS Customer Service, 25-26 - Going to the phones. It's the old standby in Logan. Chad Rawlinson and Mark LaRocco were working at Convergy's and the money wasn't bad. $8.25 an hour, plus little bonuses for sales. I made a fair amount on sales. It was all pretty underhanded stuff. Again I felt like I was fooling people into buying stuff they didn't need. And I was really decieving them this time. These were the "Clear Pay" customers, which is to say people with credit so bad no one else would give them a phone plan. They had a $125 credit limit on their accounts, which they were constantly bumping up against. So their phones would get cut off and they'd call us furious that they couldn't make calls. We'd tell them if they made a small payment to get themselves under the $125 limit we could get their phones on and we'd even throw in free internet service for a month. We'd get the commission, and they would forget to cancel it before they'd get charged the next month, which would take them over the limit, and they'd call back furious. And we'd give them a free month of texting, and take the commision on it. Clever, huh? I was good at talking people into it, and unlike a lot of the people I'd even tell the customer that they would have to pay for it after the first month. That's what made me feel like I could actually deal with working there.
Web Designer, 26 - I did a page for Josh and Joe Chambers' law practice. I don't think it ever saw the light of day. It was pretty basic. The web was really changing right then. I was doing what I could with basic Dreamweaver knowledge, but the fact of the matter was that there were a lot of new services coming out then that were offering web hosting and basic web templates that would have been comparable to what I gave them. In the end I don't think they used either option. At that point I was looking for teaching jobs anyway, and I wasn't that into it.
Rock Wall Builder Part 2, 27 - After Mom and Dad got back from their first mission in Brazil, Mom wanted the other side of the terrace done in a rock wall. So Dad and I did it. This time they paid Mike Cooper to come in and excavate it and lay the foundation. What took me almost a whole summer took him an afternoon. The rest was pretty much the same, but we worked faster and did it better. I think it is a much more attractive wall too. I think they were paying $8 an hour again, but as often as not I didn't collect. I didn't need the money, and I liked feeling like I was giving something back to my parents.
High School Teacher, 26-32 - I applied for about 12 teaching jobs, interviewed for about maybe 10. I had soft offers from three other schools. One was a middle school in Afton Wyoming. I didn't want to live in Afton Wyoming. I thought the chances of finding someone to marry in Afton Wyoming was about 0.000% Another offer was from a high school in Knab Utah. Same problem. You don't move to Knab unless you have a family and you're settling down. The other was from a kind of American fundementalist charter school in Salem Utah. So besides the lack of where-withall, I'm pretty sure I'd be really out of place there. These fundementalist charters are really springing up in Utah right now. I don't get it, but it seems like they can't go straight up Mormon, so they go with the thing they worship almost as much, The American Revolution. Why has it become so popular and romanticized around here? It's not even the constitution they like. It's the patriotism. It's just weird to me. Especially considering the Mormon church ran away from the United States to what was Mexico with angry mobs at their backs. It was just our luck that the United States caught up with us. Anyway, I spent five years at EHHS earning the princely sum of $28,000 a year. I started at $27,500 and got bumped up to $28,000 after the first year. We all stopped getting raises that year. The pay stayed the same for the next four. Not bad for a single guy, but around the bottom of the pay scale for full time high school teachers. I taught English classes for all grades but the freshmen, and after the first year I took over yearbook and the media center. But that's over now.
So. What's next?
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