So I Don't Forget

Because if I don't write it down, I will.
All the jobs I've ever had:
Babysitting:
-4 kids under the age of 6 and I was 12. You do the math.
-Subbing for a family Paige used to sit for. I made chicken and rice casserole fordinner only to find out that the rice had moths in it.
-Staying with my eldest sister during the summers of 1992-1997 to help her with 2 daughters. At the end of the summer I went school shopping with the money.
Pizza Hut:
My first real job. Taxes taken. I got the job because my friends Brittney and Renee worked there. Three years spent waiting tables, bussing, hosting, doing dishes and occasionally cooking. It was your typical high school job. We took beer in soda cups, had parties in the back when the boss wasn't around and dated our co-workers. My boss, Omar, and I did not get along. (I'm not even sure what it was about him, but he really pushed my buttons. I was actually sent home a few times for arguing with him.) It was while I was working there that I got a phone call from Paige saying she was engaged. I also heard that my ex-boyfriend Aaron was killed in a car accident while working there.
A Day Care:
That lasted a week. I worked out of someone's home and it was she, I and about 12 kids. I'm pretty sure that's illegal, now that I think about it. Aren't there supposed to be 1 adult for 3 kids, or something like that? Anyway, that job made me never want to have kids. There were just too many of them to get things under control.
A Toy Store:
Supplemented income during a summer at Laurie's. She wasn't working much so there wasn't really a need for me to be there. But I think my parents were happy to get me out of the house for a few months. Since I was there, and didn't have much to do, I got a job at the mall working in a toy store. Almost as bad as the day care. And again, another reason in the "cons" field for having kids. Oooh, I remember this one toy. It was a train that made noises when it moved. I could go the rest of my life without hearing that damn train toy again. But the worst part of that job was having to count the till at the end of the night. Math is not my forte, to say the least. As the clock ticked down to the end of my shift, my hands would begin to sweat and I would begin to tremble. It was me versus the machine and I always lost. In the 3 months that I worked there, I don't think there was a single time that I balanced that son of a bitch.
Techtronics:
After graduating high school and moving in with Paige in Portland I tried to get a job as a nanny. Ironic since I'd twice convinced myself that I never wanted kids. But it seemed like the thing to do if I wanted to go to college. Take care of kids during the day, and go to school at night. But after 2 months of mooching off Paige and having nothing to do but TaeBo all day, I went to a temp agency. I had to take tests. Lots of tests. But the most surprising was when they ushered me into a room with motherboards and printers and had me follow instructions. I really should have tried harder to get it wrong, but damnit I passed those tests and was assigned a job at Techtronics.
I worked in a warehouse in 4 ten hour shifts. Training lasted a week and then our class was split up to do various assignments. I was the youngest one there. There were a lot of immigrants and social skills seemed to be lost in translation. There was one Russian man in particular that didn't understand it was unacceptable to follow an 18 year old girl around all day. The situation was brought to management's attention but it was taken lightly. Until one day, he cornered me in the breakroom and as soon as I got away from him, I ran to my boss and demanded something be done. The Russian was transferred to the night shift, but that only made doing my job easier. He would be finishing his shift when I arrived and coming in as I was leaving, so I still saw him regularly and he still overstepped the lines by waiting by my car and following me to the bathroom. I quit three months into it.
After Techtronics I decided I needed a more teenage-appropriate job. So I worked at Abercrombie and Fitch. The thing about going from a warehouse with hard working immigrants to a frat house (aka A&F) was that I had no patience for the people who preferred to socialize over help customers. And I took a big pay cut. So two months into working there, I picked up a day job at
Cucina! Cucina! Italian Grill as the lead host. The restaurant was in the parking lot of the mall I worked at so I would often open the restaurant and work the lunch shift and then change clothes and work at A&F until midnight. This put a damper on my intentions of going to school. I quickly learned that being a grown-up was expensive. It was during those first few months at A&F that Logic was diagnosed with Hodgkins so it wasn't long before he moved back to Roseburg and our relationship turned long-distance. Six months of that was tough, especially since I wanted to be there for him. So in November of '99 I packed up my .. hmm. Well, I didn't really have much. I guess I just packed my suitcase and moved to Roseburg.
I'd been offered a job at Enterprise Rent-A-Car before the move, so after unloading my clothes at my new apartment, I reported for my first day as a Car Prep (ie: bitch). It was exciting to tell people I worked at Enterprise because it sounded very responsible, but in all actuality, I was treated worse there than even at Pizza Hut. I cleaned cars, I picked up customers, I cleaned toilets, I did lunch runs. And I put up with that for a year.
Again, to make more money, I decided to get a second job. This time it was at a place called Ridgeway Market. A little mom and pop convenience store that also had a coffee drive-thru. That job would have been okay had the owners not been maniacal, sadistic tightwads. There were post it signs everywhere. "Don't do this" and "vacuum here" to the point where I didn't want to do my work just to spite them. And the security cameras weren't set up to protect us from robberies. No, they were there so the owners could monitor our ice cream consumption! I can't remember how long I worked there, but I think it was around six months. And then one day a woman came into the store to get a coffee and mentioned that she was doing interviews for servers at the new Applebee's that was going up by the freeway. I applied, along with another girl at the Market and we both got the job.
I started at Applebee's in June of 2000 and went through a month of training before the restaurant even opened. Since Roseburg isn't exactly a metropolis, Applebee's was the talk of the town. We were finally getting a chain restaurant! The day that we opened was complete mayhem, but in a good way. Everyone wanted to come see what Applebee's was about. And everyone wanted to work there. Having gone through extensive training together, our team had a strong bond. We all went to the same college and hung out before work. And then Logic asked me to marry him and move to Florida. So we traveled cross-country in our U-Haul without a place to stay or a source of income.
Within a week, however, we had an apartment and I was a server at Hop's Microbrewery. I waited tables there for nine months while I went to school and then found out none of my previous credits transferred. So I dropped out of school, resigning myself to go when we moved back to the West Coast (where my credits were still good) and graduated to bartender. But shortly after becoming a bartender I realized that I wasn't cut out for it. Sure, I liked making all the drinks and socializing with people but I hadn't anticipated having to fend off every drunk that thought I was cute. Typically, the guys were random and moved on to the next girl after they were rejected by me. But one guy in particular wouldn't leave me alone. His tips were always amazing and at first the girls all vied for his tab. But then he started requesting me and started making inappropriate comments whenever I'd take him a beer. Having dealt with this before, I used my strongest voice and informed him I was married. But the cat-calls continued. And then one night he took it too far. And my management didn't do anything about it. I no longer felt safe and had no other option but to quit.
After that, I decided I didn't want to bartend anymore so I took a job waiting tables at Carrabba's. The owner was really intense and didn't take kindly to excuses. I liked that about him. Especially since restaurant work was leaving me jaded. I was tired of picking up other people's slack and having to compensate for their lack of cleanliness, etc. Carrabba's was fun, and I made some good friends there. But after a year of making $2.13 an hour plus tips and not having health insurance, Logic and I decided it was time for me to get a 'real job' until he could graduate and we could move.
Citibank Fraud Department turned out to be that 'real job' for me. I went through six weeks of training before moving down to a large room with 60 other people answering fraud related questions for customers over the phone. It was really exciting. At first. And then the monotony kicked in. "Hello, this is _______, how may I help you? Oh, your credit card was stolen. Please hold while I access your account." (insert voice similar to "Bueller? Bueller?) I was promoted to specialty unit that investigated mail fraud but luckily the time had come for Logic to graduate and we picked the spot farthest from Florida on the map and got the hell out of there.
-Another move across country, another U-Haul, and again - no shelter, no job. Luckily, we'd saved up this time, which would turn out to be detrimental. I tried to off-shoot a company my sister started that was somewhat similar to catering while Logic looked for post-collegiate work. Three months later, he finally accepted a job at Lowe's and I was working with about 3 restaurants. Money was tight. So again, I took a second job. During the day I would run around like crazy, trying to start up my business and at 2:00 I would show up at Buca di Beppo's to coordinate their holiday functions for the next five hours.
Nine months after starting up my own company, I laid it to rest. The Seattle market was extremely fickle and my heart was no longer in it. I also couldn't see myself coordinating functions for Buca di Beppo for much longer so I did what I'd been dreading. I put my application out on the web in search of another fraud related job.
A week after signing up with Monster.com, I received a phone call from a temp agency wanting to place me with a contracting position at Amazon.com. Having felt defeated in all other realms of work, I accepted. Nine months of contract work turned into a permanent position on their fraud team. That was three years ago.
(to be continued...)