Category: Reflections

Daily writing prompt

What jobs have you had?

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The writing prompt is “What jobs have you had?”

You say “Jack-of-all-trades (master of none).” I prefer “Renaissance man.” One is a cut, the other a compliment (of a sort).

I started my work experience at the age of 15. After many years of obsessing over every movie musical that came on television, or I could get at the video store (we are talking 1989 here), I decided it was time to take tap dancing lessons. The local dance studio was only a mile from home, near my Aunt’s house. At the time, a family friend, her daughter, and my cousin all had 2-year old toddlers (yes, one was the uncle to the other, it was a surprise to everyone!). The grandmother/mother of two of them lived 2 doors from my Aunt. I became babysitter to one of them on several afternoons and all three once a week. I used that money to enroll in classes down the street. From this, I learned patience, entertaining a tough audience, perseverance, conflict management, and how to care for another human being.

At 16, I started work at a family-owned small convenience store and deli. Looking back, I cherish the time spent there. It was truly being in a second family, I got to know the regulars, I learned valuable skills in retail, point-of-sale, merchandising, cooking, customer service, time management, and working as a team. For some reason, this small store became a central hub for Swedish and Scandinavian specialties, especially at Christmas. The owners were not Scandinavian, but they embraced this niche. We sold lutefisk (frozen, I called them porcelain fish for the sound they made when they hit the counter), made spice bags for Glogg, sold Cardamom braids (yum!!!) and Lingonberries, and made Swedish meatballs decades before IKEA made it to Massachusetts. We were so busy that former employees would come in to help during the season, making it even more of a family reunion party atmosphere. The store has been gone for many years, but a few of us still wax nostalgic at the joy we feel when smelling cardamom when it gets close to the holidays, or we think of stealing cookie dough from the freezer.

The summer before I left for college, I joined the Avon Parks & Recreation Department as a counselor at the day camp run on the high school grounds. It was free for residents and included open play, crafts, and sports for most of the day on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, with paid field trips on Tuesdays and Thursdays for certain age groups. Building on my babysitting skills, I honed patience, entertaining a tough audience, perseverance, conflict management, crafting, pedagogy, security in crowds, and emotional support/encouragement. The kids were 6-16 years old, and in this day and age, I can’t imagine them being left in the care of semi-untrained teenagers and young adults.

In college, I held two very different positions. For the first 2 years, I was a “Script Librarian.” We had a closet full of theatre scripts with a very small desk in it. Students could come and borrow and script, or set of scripts, for use in their classes or performances. I sat there and catalogued, itemized, and tracked them all. The copious amounts of downtime gave me ample opportunity to read through most of them, which came in handy when I was advising younger students on where to find an audition monologue or scene to stage. For my last 2 years, I was a “Safety Escort.” <hold for snickering> My college had a “boozer cruiser” – a 10-passenger van that drove students around the campus at night for free. You would call the dispatch (a lonely room in the campus police building) and the van would drive you wherever you needed to go on campus. Driving around was fun, because you got to be out and interacting with other students (even if they were drunk or high). It was always entertaining. Being in the dispatch office was creepy and lonely, but that’s when I could practice lines or dance steps. Being a theatre major, I had a lot of late nights rehearsing, then I would pick-up the 12-4am shift. When I was in the dispatch office, someone would call at 2am and I would answer the phone in a husky, sleep-deprived, sung-too-much-in-rehearsal bass: “Safety Escort, how may I assist you?” More than once, I had a drunk student (both sexes) purr at me and ask if I was the one picking them up. From this job, I further developed customer service, conversing with strangers, safe driving, dealing with difficult customers, how to save a drunk girl from getting into a dangerous situation, and using humor to diffuse tense situations. I relished the alone time in the van between pickups and at the dispatch office, but also the constant entertainment of the customers in the van.

For the summers between my Freshman and Junior years, I was a Meter Reader for Bay State Gas (now National Grid). My father worked there for over 40 years before he retired. I enjoyed commuting with him, and getting to know his colleagues those summers. Typically, the full-time readers would give us the worst routes, or a collection of unattainable readings over several routes (basically the sh1t jobs). Most of the time, I dealt with basements filled with dog poop, possible crack dens, lousy neighborhoods, and belligerent homeowners. Once in awhile, I would get one of the coastal towns of Scituate, Hingham, or Hull, where you walked along the beach to read the meters of cottages. Those were the best days. I remember reading the meter at La Salette Shrine one day, and sitting in the parking lot to eat my lunch. All of a sudden, a priest opens the passenger door and gets in, saying: “Hello my son, would you take me to the store?” This was strictly forbidden in the company truck (natural gas powered, of course), but I was raised Catholic and convinced my Mother would somehow know if I refused, so I took him on his errand. From this job, I explored a lot of the South Shore of Massachusetts, learned to deal with difficult people, to navigate the bureaucracy of a large corporation, that summer help are slaves, that unions are great, but sometimes protect those that shouldn’t be there, how to survive walking miles in the summer heat, how to cheat by saying you couldn’t get into a house that creeped you our or made you feel unsafe, and gave me an appreciation of all my Father did to take care of us.

Between Junior and Senior year, I attended a summer stock cattle call audition. Several local and regional troupes attended and made offers based on one 90-second song audition. I had some less than favorable offers, but was determined not to work at the Gas Company again. After turning down a troupe that paid nothing, a friend of my roommate called to say her friend needed guys that could dance. I drove out to Scituate (one of my favorite routes for meter reading) and auditioned for Showstoppers Dinner Theatre. Doug, the owner, producer, and sole employee, asked me to do a time step and sing a bit of a song, then hired me on the spot to be a sailor in Anything Goes. We would rehearse for 3 weeks and have 4 weeks of performances. During the first rehearsal in an unairconditioned church hall, we learned the choreography for the 88 counts of 8 that made the big dance number of the title song. That show kicked my ass and I lost all body fat and leaned-down to the best shape I’ve ever been in. Halfway through the run, I found out that 2 of the ensemble were here from Ithaca and that Doug had found them a place to live and a part-time job. I told him I needed a job, so he hired me to assist him for the rest of the summer. I painted and constructed sets, pulled costumes from storage, cleaned dressing rooms, worked in the box office, coordinated meal orders with the kitchen, acted as maitre’d, host, bus boy, and greeter, tour bus coordinator, usher, prop master, and sound and light engineer. On top of that, I was rehearsing and performing in every show. I was there at 8am every day and leaving at 2am most days. I was in heaven and I miss it so. The pay was below minimum wage, but I didn’t care. I assisted with choreography and vocal rehearsal for a children’s summer production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat while also performing 3 of the adult roles and running spot light and front of house. I co-developed and ran an after-school program for kids in one of the local schools and still performed in 2 productions and a tours to New Hampshire, Colorado and Florida while still attending my senior year of college, and when I graduated, Doug made me Associate Producer full-time, where I ran most things on my own so he could spend time with his family, assisted with another summer kids production (this time only with one dance number to fill-in for), more after school programs, and more tours. At the dinner theatre, I would sell the tickets, greet the guests, seat them, bus tables, change into my costume, perform, change back to my suit to work the dessert course during intermission, go back to costume to perform the second act, then back into the suit to escort the guests out, or perform in the post-show cabaret in the lounge. The lessons learned here were myriad, and it would take too long to list them. Work ethics, loving what you do and doing it well, having fun while you work, building relationships with colleagues and customers, and hard work were the cornerstones. It was exhausting, exhilarating, and the most fun I’ve ever had in a job before or since. I was overpaid and underworked and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

After 2 years there full-time, Doug moved us to a new restaurant partner in a new location. Unfortunately, after less than a year, they stole money from us, locked us out of our theatre, and thus started a legal battle. I was out of a job while they went to court, so I went looking for something, anything in the arts. I landed at a theatre production company in Boston. Well-established in the educational theatre space, they specialized in producing touring theatrical productions geared toward middle and high school students. We offered them shows that included 5 short stories of American classics dramatized with a cast of 5 actors, full sound, lights and sets. My initial job was to contact and coordinate the technical and financial specs of the theaters and halls across the country to build the tours. I was there for about a year (2 seasons) when I was recruited to move up to assist the Artistic Director. In that role, I coordinated casting calls in NYC, Chicago and Boston, worked with the Producer on hiring the actors, negotiated contracts and temporary housing, scheduling rehearsals and playing referee/translator between the Producer and Artistic Director whose relationship was well established, yet strained and complicated. At the heart of the entrance to the office and the bullpen of reservationists, I was the de facto receptionist, back-up reservation coordinator, and back-up assistant to the Producer/Owner/Founder. Aa Tony-winning Broadway producer, she was difficult and not easy to please. Handling the two strong energies between them, and handling everything she threw at me, gained me a status that granted me a lot of perks and a lot of extra responsibility (with none of the compensation). She went through 4 personal assistants during the 7 years I was there. During that time, I was the backup assistant, and guided each of the new assistants through their training and pitfalls, called during vacations for inane tasks that could have been handled by her assistant, sitting in the car so her nanny could come use the bathroom without parking the car or waking the baby, screening calls she didn’t want to take – you’ve all seen Devil Wears Prada – it was similar. From this job, I learned how to deal with difficult people, how to deal with celebrities, copyediting scripts, the politics or Broadway, dealing with egos, dealing with actors, dealing with stagehands, dealing with Teamsters, booking travel, booking and re-booking discounts for millionaires when you can’t afford to eat… and the list goes on. I did get to see a lot of free shows in Boston, and made friends with a lot of the local critics and producers, but in the end, the tension and working environment was toxic and it had to end. I still talk to other ‘survivors’ of our time there.

After asking me to do something she had no right to ask, then firing me for mentioning this to her, then trying to take away my unemployment benefits (she lost, and tried and failed the same thing with everyone since then), I landed a job at a music booking agency because of the very skills I learned from the last job. This agency specialized in Jazz and World Music artists. They were well established in the US, and had a strong footing in Europe, though there were many boutique agencies in the US and Europe that they competed with. I was brought in to assist two female strong-willed agents that could not/would not work together in the same way – sound familiar? I was to assist them with their bookings and keep the peace/translate between them. Their styles were diametrically opposite and that exacerbated the disdain and frustration they felt with each other. It was toxic beyond toxic. They tried to play the outgoing assistant against each other and drove her away. Being well-versed in this behavior, I jumped in and kept it all afloat and sorted. After a year or two, one of them left (the nicer one, obviously), and I continued assisting the remaining one, eventually taking-over some of her territory as a junior agent. She was NOT happy about it and only relinquished the territories she didn’t want. When the owner gave me some of her “friends” (she thought that, they definitely did not) as clients, and they immediately warmed to me, she complained and demanded to take them back, giving me her other undesirables. I grew my territory and the owner gave me more and more responsibilities and territory. Her rough American pushy nature ruffled a lot of feathers in Europe, so many of her remaining clients preferred to talk to me to finish deals rather than listen to her “show me the money” demands. Artists’ managers called to talk to me when she wasn’t around. I was my own agent, but acting as her assistant because of her manner. She eventually screwed the owner by starting her own agency under his nose and stealing several clients. Suddenly, I was the only agent for Europe, Asia and Africa. We hired other agents that came and went, but over 11 years there, my territories shifted and changed to a rag tag disconnected collection of problematic areas. Wars, financial collapse, political upheaval, visa issues, and an aging clientele brought a steep decline to my carved-out territories. Having seniority (read: pay scale) and the worst-performing territories (read: low income) = a buyout to leave. Having been burned before, the owner’s stipulations included that I could not discuss my departure, and could not work in the industry for one year. I gladly accepted following one of the last shows I booked. Maybe one day I will tell that story here, and though the artist has passed on, there could still be implications if I made it public. Stay tuned….
From this job, the longest of my careers so far, I learned a lot about deceit, back-stabbing, pettiness, slavery (I was, literally, selling people), overpromising, and the Artist as a commodity (the finances of a world-renown jazz vocalist will break your heart when you work out what the contract pays vs. what she actually takes home vs. what her managers take home). It’s not all negative, I also learned a lot about contract language, copyright, international travel and visas, currency exchange, high-end performance technology, riders, working with difficult people, customer service (for buyers, performers and managers), conflict resolution, conflict mitigation, interpersonal relationships via phone, email, and in person, professional travel, trade conference presentation, marketing, sales, website and software design, and how to decompress/separate work from home life.

I started this blog during the transition from the agency to unemployment. I had received in the mail my first digital SLR camera on the same day I was bought-out, so my first post is a collection of photos I took trying out the features of the camera on my first day of unemployment. I stated at the beginning that I wasn’t sure what this would be, or where I would be going. Several of my Artists and Managers reached out to me to offer me positions and to ask my advice, and I had to tell them why I couldn’t. The truth was, I didn’t want to be in that world anymore. If I could tell you that last story, and you knew my family background, you’d understand. (Hint.)

After months of looking around for my third (5th?) career, I had an interview at Harvard Medical School that I had heard about from a friend (a former actor from the theatre company, actually). I had never considered academia – all of the positions I had been applying for were in the Arts, Event Planning and Customer Service. This job wasn’t a good fit for either of us, and both the interviewer and I knew it, but my husband happened to mention it to his colleague that I was there that day. His colleague’s wife worked in HR at MIT at the time, and asked why I hadn’t reached out to her. The truth is, I hadn’t thought of it. I thought I wanted non-profit in the arts, not in academia. While she had nothing for me, she suggested where I should look on the MIT campus. I landed at a very small office where…you guessed it… there were two strong women, slightly at-odds and not listening to each other, running the show. I met with the operations manager first, who grilled me on what I did and didn’t know. She brought me in to meet with the Executive Director, who loudly proclaimed “I don’t know why I’m meeting with this guy!” from her office (within earshot) only moments before sitting down to interview me. I was not hopeful, but after a month of silence, they offered me the job (after their first choices didn’t work out, I later found out). The HR manager, in my offer call, asked if I had any concerns. I told her that I was concerned that I’d be the stupidest one in the room. She assured me that the entire Institute was run by former theatre majors keeping the smart people running, and that I was desperately needed. I’ve been at this job for 6.5 years now, the longest of any of my colleagues besides my boss. She has since drastically changed her view of me from that first meeting to constantly proclaiming: “what would I do without you?!” While I did not have domain expertise (the US Healthcare System and all its flaws), I have had to tap into and hone nearly all of my previously learned skills of customer service, time management, working as a team, navigating bureaucracy, patience, resilience copyediting, contract language, copyright, travel, working with difficult people, customer service, conflict resolution, conflict mitigation, interpersonal relationships via phone, email, and in person, trade conference presentation, marketing, sales, website and software design. To that, I used my theatrical production skills for event planning, event material production, front-of-house management, A/V needs, and run-of-show planning for our highly complex multi-dimensional workshops. I also have become proficient in PowerPoint, as it is a tool used daily in our work, The domain content is slowly seeping in, but only enough to keep me from not being completely lost in conversations. I know the history, the players, and where all the bodies (files) are buried, so I’ve also become a repository of the things that may have fallen through the cracks.

Things are constantly changing in this job. I don’t know which previous experience gave me the ability to nimbly switch from one topic to another, or to completely change course on a plan at the drop of a hat, but it’s there, because that is the nature of the position I’m in now. Was it babysitting toddlers? Was it the dozen-or-so positions I filled every day at the dinner theatre? Maybe it’s inherent in the non-linear path of my work life?

I know this is a rambling post, but the prompt intrigued me, especially when I looked back at the strange, seemingly disconnected path that lead me to where I am now. I hope you will take a moment to look back (or forward!) at your career path and see where your experiences can be knit together to make you the ideal candidate for any job you want, regardless of how the requirements of the position are worded. Translate your experience into skills needed for that job, especially if it’s not obvious from what they see in your CV.

So… what jobs have you held?