Here's the skinny on work

So, I have had a variety of jobs in my life. Some good, some bad, all paying wayyyy too low. Here's the skinny on the work that I have done: 1) My first job at a national retail chain that is now going out of business. I worked there for three years, from age 16 to age 19. At 18, I was offered a management job in the patio area in lieu of going to college. I chose college--was this the right choice, America? LOL. For the most part, I was used wherever they wanted to use me with no regard for if I actually wanted to do it. I was taken advantage of by my boss--as a teen I was doing layouts, total clothing setups--things that were basically her job. I started at $5.35 an hour and left at $6.35 an hour after three years. I worked weekends, holidays; I worked my teenage life away so I could buy things for graduation and prom since my family was pretty poor. Sometimes it was fun, though. I worked fast so I usually had plenty of time to chat with friends or browse, spending my paycheck on things I found. It's not too bad if you remember one important thing: They are a corporation. They brainwash the management to eye the bottom line and only the bottom line. They will use and abuse you with no loyalty. Case in point: This same place my mom worked at for 30 years, at which point they said "see ya" with no explanation except "down-sizing." So, view the job for what it is and you'll be fine. 2.) Coffeeshop in college. I LOVED this job. It was my workstudy job at a small college in Illinois. I loved making coffee, and listening to music on the comfy old couch when there were no customers. Hell, I even liked cleaning the place at closing time. And, you couldn't beat the tips from the tip jar on top of the $7 hourly pay. Many a laundry day was saved by those tips, let me tell ya! Of course, the college coffee bar and corporate coffee bar are probably different. But overall, a pretty fun job with free coffee! Just take some of the advice from #1 to heart. 3.) Bagger/cashier at a fine foods grocery store. The pay was better as a bagger when I helped rich people out to their cars and received tips on top of my hourly pay of about $6. Sometimes I got like 10 bucks for walking less than ten feet! Of course, some of the customers were snobby. When I so-called upgraded to cashier this woman cursed me out and made me cry because I mishandled her bread. So remember, with $ sometimes comes arrogance and entitlement. The management were also pretty shady. When I left to go home for Xmas break, they fired me after assuring me it would be fine. 4.) Gas station attendant. Almost the WORST job I ever had. When people are in a hurry, need expensive gas, and are hungry, they become like Gila monsters. Add a bad neighborhood to that, and you have a recipe for disaster. I was spit on, had change thrown in my face, and coffee dumped on my counter all for making people follow the rules (aka not put gas in a pop bottle--true story) The cool thing about the management was that we were allowed to fight back. I almost stood on the counter one day screaming at this man who said he would smack me. He ran over by the door continuing to yell at me from a safe distance. LOL--what a loser. You almost have to have a military mindset that you are going to take abuse but you have to and you will get through it. I wouldn't recommend it. 5.) Day care worker. Lots of pluses and minuses here. Big plus--the kids, and how some of them need love so badly they will attach themselves to you. Minus--at times, the co-workers don't care too much about kids and are kind of immature about work ethic--aka lazy. Minus, the management, especially when they pay their workers $5-$7 an hour and somehow justify charging parents around $125 a week for ONE KID. Plus--being able to create activities for the kids and teach them things, watching them grow. I would recommend this job if you are thinking of going into social work or education. It's great experience and you get to play all day! 6.) My first big girl job after graduating college with a BA in sociology. I was a residential aide for people with mental retardation. Big plus--how grateful some of the people are. The pay is pretty good; I made about $13 an hour to start, and you really only need a high school diploma or GED. Minus, again, hate to say it, but the management. Bottom line, litigation, and the appearance of things, and little or no concern for the people living in their houses. Minus--co-workers who were callous, lazy, and did things bordering on abuse and neglect. And if you confronted them on it, they would say who is protecting me from them? 'Scuse me? Grrrr. Although, some of the people are quite violent and could hurt you, so you had to be on your toes. And a big minus for some people was changing adult diapers, but it didn't bother me that much. I figured I would want people to do it for me. Really bad insurance though. I mean bad. 7.) Child protection. Sometimes seemed like a way to move kids from "lower class" homes to "middle class" homes, but I could be wrong. The agency I worked for said they were about helping and reuniting families in crisis, but it seemed to me like gathering enough evidence against them so the kids could be taken away in court. Kids, who, by the way, no one really wanted and would end up in foster homes (which a lot of times were run sheerly for money) and in the juvenile justice system. Very political; and my co-workers were huge backstabbers. This, and my huge honest mouth led to my dismissal after only three months. Good riddance to that. 8.) A sheltered workshop for adults with MR/DD. See # 6 in a work setting and that's it in a nutshell. It was union and I was a sub. After three years of working my hinie off, I was still a sub with no way into the union. And no health insurance, still. The good thing about union is that usually you could tell the management where to go, even as a sub. The bad thing is that there were plenty of horrible, mean, lazy workers whose jobs were protected. Again, borderline abuse and neglect. As a sub, if I had reported anything, everyone else in the room would protect each other. It was kind of sick, an "us against them" mentality. I made some really good friends with kind and wonderful people. I knew all the clients in the workshop and enjoyed working with them. A lot of them were so grateful for someone to listen and regard them as human beings. I did case management as a sub for almost a year, and the management tried to get me to cover two caseloads at once. They got a big fat no. MR/DD is a strange field. Kind of smoke and mirrors for some people, in that, we're helping--but we help because we know better than them and are better than them. I got so burned out. 9.) Same sort of job, helping people with MR/DD in their homes. It was kind of a better company than the first however. They allowed lots of scheduling changes and were pretty tolerant. Same problems with uncaring co-workers however. I firmly believe if not for this, I'd still be in this field. 10.) Finally felt I arrived, after years of struggle. I was a service coordinator for a section 8 housing complex. It was a dream come true for me--I got to help elderly people (all 90 of them) with their social issues while planning activities for them. I got my own office and computer. It was what I had hoped for for so long. The people were suspicious at first, but when they saw I genuinely wanted to help, they sought me out and were eager to see me if only to chat. I brought things unprecedented to the place--parties every holiday, computer and art classes, religious groups. After three months my job was eliminated due to "downsizing." At least that's what they said. That was the negative, the management. They were always suspicious and always watching every thing you did. They also tried to get you to do things that weren't your job, like take work orders. We were also supposed to have our own budget--yeah right!! The people, god bless them, were enraged and talking about calling AARP. It was like my heart was taken out and thrown in the trash. It is to this day the best job I have ever had. 11.) After a stint back at the workshop, I landed a job at a mental health agency as a case manager. Big emphasis on getting money from Medicaid here, in the form of "direct time." They kept upping our hours. It was like more important than actually helping people, it seemed. At least I got my own office again. Some of the clients were great, some of them were big fakes scamming money from social security. It was so much paperwork, you could barely keep up. The pay was sub-par but the benefits were good. It could be scary at times. This schizophrenic guy sent me naked pictures. You had to go into crackhouses sometimes to get your clients. The management was very clueless about how much work case managers had and kept trying to squeeze more and more blood from a stone with no pay increase. We had all this mandatory training, we had offices and name badges, but we were pretty much glorified scapegoats and workhorses. At least I got experience in talking people through their problems. And I did feel like I helped some people. After a year, though, I was completely and utterly wiped out and done with social work. It was the end of the line. I was going back to school for a Master's in music education, and I didn't care how long it took. 12.) Which brings me to my WORST job ever---waitressing. Not in terms of the work you do, but the management is so tightly wound, discriminatory, inappropriate, unintelligent...need I go on? It's like unless you're seventeen with perky boobs you get no respect. Which, I would like to think mine are still perky at 28, but who knows? You make 3 bucks an hour and the rest is at the mercy of the public, who sometimes very often tip crappy even for good service. You get dirty, you get sweaty, you run around like a beheaded chicken. You have about an hour and a half of "sidework" you have to do before leaving, aka cleaning, rolling silverware, the like. It is like high school too, with cliques and such selfishness and immaturity. One plus is that you can't beat leaving with cash every day; I mean sometimes it's over $100. But I have been written up about three times the past few months over the most idiotic bull, and in my opinion I am one of the better workers. But, just until school is over. That's what I keep telling myself. Stay tuned for my next blog, folks!