Jobs

As I recently resigned from one of my favorite jobs and began another, I think its time to post a list of all the jobs I've ever had. (At least the ones I can recall right now.) These are in no particular order.

Felicity's Gift Wrap
I've only been there a week but its great. We just need some more customers and it will be the best place ever. Come check it out at the Gateway next to Ben and Jerry's.

Dentist's office
This one pays the rent and such. I plan to have it until the day I move.

Utrecht
I'm still technically employed here but I just don't have time to work. This was probably one of the best jobs. I worked hard but played hard too. I also met some really great people.

Extra
I was an extra on Everwood. I just stood at the snack cart and ate food that wasn't for me. Mmmm.

Market Research
This was a fun job but it took up most every Friday and Saturday night for 2...maybe 3 years. It paid well and I had a pretty good time. We made people so mad though. It was a little bit shady.

Ensign Elementary
I was a teacher's assistant in a special education class for first through third grade. The other TA was horrible to the kids. I really liked being with them but it was stressful to be ordered around all day. I used getting engaged as an excuse to quit.

Kiwanis Felt Rec Center
Best job with the worst pay. I worked for the county playing with kids all day. We went on field trips and made crafts and played games and ate and napped (but not really)... we had a good time. I wish that place still existed. Those kids LOVED me.

Sherwin Williams (SLC, PIT)
In Pittsburgh I was an Interior Decorator and was extremely overpaid. We had a really good staff and had a great time. My claim to fame was meeting Andy Warhol's brother. I was there for 2 years or so. When I moved to Salt Lake, I had the same responsibilities plus more. I got paid 2$ less and didn't like my coworkers. I think it only lasted 3 months.

Wooster College
Alexis and I worked at a basketball camp at the College of Wooster in Ohio. It was pretty great. We just made sure the girls went to sleep and didn't fight. If they were homesick we let them cry to us and tried to make them happy. I also remember ordering a lot of pizza and making a ton of Gatorade. Oh and, we drove a golf cart around campus. It was excellent.

Homeless Youth Resource Center
I volunteered with Volunteers of America and made lunch for homeless teenagers. This didn't last long because I wanted to help out but they really didn't need me. The best part was the kid's names. Lets see...there was Blade and Frenchy, PacMan, Fro, ToothPaste, Camaro, Magnet, Tabasco, now I'm just making these up. But they had really cool streetnames.

Salt Lake City Blitzz
This was an especially embarrassing job. The Blitzz was Salt Lake's professional soccer team a few years ago and I worked for them doing various things. I would pass out the promo item at the gate and one time I had to count the ticket stubs so they knew how many had come to the game. It was a lot. I also sat on the sidelines of some games and passed out water. I was the water girl! I did get to meet Mia Hamm and got to know some members of the team. The embarrassing part comes from one particular game where we didn't pass the promos out at the door, we went out on the field and threw them into the stands. I think they were stuffed soccer balls about the size of baseballs. I'm really not good at throwing so sometimes the people in the first row caught stuff but mostly it just kept falling back down in the field.

Episcopal Diocese
I got this job through Kelly Services. I only worked it for one day but it was supposed to be longer. When I came back for the second day there was somebody else in my seat. I guess they weren't impressed with my "sitting at a desk" skills. I was just supposed to transfer calls to the correct people but the whole day I only got two or so calls. Nothing too memorable there.

Oil Convention at the Salt Palace
Also through Kelly Services I worked at the convention center and helped out with whatever conventions were coming through. The one I worked the most on was an Oil Convention where I learned all about Schlumberger and other oil giants. Nobody really knew what they were doing. I think we just had to print up name tags and check people in. Seriously nobody else could figure this out so it was like I was the one eyed man in the land of the blind except I had two eyes with 20/20 vision. Does that make sense? I was so poor when I had this job and somehow the people that I worked with knew this (I probably told them) and some of them gave me cash in addition to my paycheck when the job was all over.

Cigna Healthcare
Another job where I got to work with Alexis. I couldn't have done it without her!!! We actually worked for Intracorp: the Pre-Certification for Cigna. I think we had to call hospitals and doctor's offices to track down people who did not bother to pre-certify with Cigna to see if it was okay if they got treatment. I'm really not sure. I just know that we learned a lot of short hand and I used a fax machine a lot. I also learned to call dead people "expired". It was really really mundane. We took walks around the parking lot every day and ate egg salad sandwiches for lunch. Towards the end I was taken off of phone duty and took care of all the incoming and outgoing faxes. I saw a lot of disturbing pictures of cases that were trying to get pre-certified like skin blemishes (moles, birthmarks, growths) and many breast augmentations and botched implants. It was shocking.

Porter's Prescription Pharmacy
The summer after I graduated high school I got a job with my pal Cherisse at Porters. It was very uneventful. I remember taking calls from doctors and lots of our customers dying (expiring). I also remember dusting a lot and reading Hallmark cards. I don't really remember how it ended but I don't think anyone was too sad.

Kaufmann's
I worked at Kaufmann's for a looooong time. Kaufmann's for those of you who don't know is a part of the Robinson's-May company who recently renamed all of their stores Macy's. I worked there for a while in pretty much every department. There were a few highlights. There was the time that somebody asked me how to get to the mall (that hadn't been built onto the store yet) and I gave him directions that he obviously could not follow since, again the mall did not exist yet. It was really immature and mean but I was young and bored. Once I was at home and got a phone call from one of our security guys who wanted to ask me out. He got my phone number from all the information that he was privy to because of the position he was in. It really creeped me out since there were cameras every where and I'm not sure how long he had been watching. He was fired. Like I said, I was there for quite a while so there are many stories. I think I'm still on my lunch break from the last day I was there. I may go back one day and clock back in and get to work.

Dollar Tree
This was my first real job. I wasn't very good at using the register. Its true that everything is a dollar...except for the things that are 2 or 3 or 4 for a dollar and some has tax but some doesn't. So it isn't that easy. I did well though. Dollar Tree will always have a special place in my heart.

Janitor at the Weather Station
This is a job that I was able to work with McKenzie. We had a blast. We had keys to the weather station that serviced all of Pittsburgh and maybe even south western PA. I don't remember how old we were but for anybody, that was a lot of power to have. It was like having a key to the city. We were supposed to clean the whole place (including the bathrooms) and I think we did pretty well but we didn't go near the bathrooms. We got that job because the regular janitor was going out of town. I hope he still had it when he came back. I think we got paid like 200$. I also learned that weather balloons are huge!

Substitute for Prof. Woods at CCAC
There was a lady in our ward who taught a class at Community College of Allegheny County but sometimes she couldn't make it to her class so I would show up to take attendance and throw a movie in. It really earned me too much respect. The students thought I was legit and would ask me questions and I think they were even a little intimidated by me. I never figured what the class was about. Something along the lines of psychology.

Babysit Brinks
I was stuck in the middle of an ugly divorce babysitting the Brink kids. It was horrible. I left on bad terms but I was glad to get out. It was really horrible.

Embassy Suites Banquet Serving
Another not so great job. I set up, served, and took down banquets at Embassy Suites. My co-workers were sleezy and the job was not fun at all. Setting up involved polishing silverware, folding napkins into fancy shapes, and a few other things. Serving, for me, involved dropping giant trays of dishes and hopefully not spilling food or broken glass on the guests. Clean up was just getting the dirty dishes to the right place as well as the dirty laundry. I wore black pants and a tuxedo shirt with a black vest that was way too big for me. Sometimes when we served cherries jubilee for dessert I had to throw sugar into the flaming alcohol and dance. It was mildly embarrassing. The worst, of course, was when people that I knew would come. Once I served my high school's Christmas dance which just felt weird. Oh and once I worked at the cash bar which was totally illegal but I did make a lot of money.

Is that the end?!?!! I don't believe it. There have to be more that I haven't thought of. Well that was a walk down memory lane.

Trips

Places I'd like to go to between now and this time next year:

Los Angeles
Pheonix
Denver
Chicago
Pittsburgh
New York
New Orleans
Philadelphia
New Jersey

I think there was more.

a short list

As I was eating my lunch today I realized that there are a lot of things that I eat (and everyone else should try) that seem a little odd...or even gross. But you should try them.

tortilla with melted cheddar cheese and grape jelly
pancakes topped with sour cream and syrup
raw eggs (don't really eat them, I gave this up when I was little)
and for some reason yogurt and granola, which sounds normal but I eat it at work for lunch and they think its really weird "eww what are those crunchy things in it?" (referring to the granola)

In fact, I could make a list of things that aren't very odd at all until I eat them at work and then I'm surrounded by my very own gagging audience. That list would include, but not be limited to:

Edamame
eggplant chicken stir-fry