It’s not until years later that one can look back and really appreciate the lessons of the past… I’d like to think all of the jobs I’ve had were just training me to become the person I am today.
In the summer when I turned 14 I got my very first job as a “maid” cleaning hotel rooms at Spinner’s Inn. The cigarette smoke and weird smells of the aerosol cleaners weren’t a great combination (and people can be really disgustingly gross), but I could walk to work and the $2.30/ hr added up over time. I also tried being a caddy at the fancy golf club, but the very first golfer to whom I was assigned couldn’t keep his hands to himself so I ended up walking off the job the first day.
Well, I guess I learned what I wouldn’t tolerate on a job.
During in high school, I went to work at Hersheypark, the biggest seasonal employer of young people in the area. I’d bust my tookus during the summer months to save something for college. Ah, Hersheypark. Where the mixture of nostalgia and chocolate meets motion sickness and rude tourists. The mustard-colored dirndl uniform dresses for the female employees were just a hoot.
There, I learned the importance of being on time, how to clock in with a punch card, and how to keep my cool.
In the first year of art school, I switched to working full time and found that a 2nd shift job at a container manufacturing plant in Lancaster fit well into my class schedule plus it paid more. For about $6.50/hour I swung 8’ metal sheets into a very noisy punch press. The machine would come down on it— ka-chunk!— and out popped all these lids and I’d stack them neatly into a box. For 8 hours. When the machine was running more or less on auto, I’d amuse myself by learning a few words or phrases in another language. How do you say in Russian, “This is dangerous work” because it wasn’t long before I noticed several of the company’s mechanics were missing one or more fingers. This job was not one I wanted to keep. When I got laid off, I went to work as a ghost painter for a local illustrator.
The ghost painting job was really ideal except that the guy was a raging alcoholic and a horrible misogynist. (Is one characteristic predicated on the other?) I lasted there with him in his lavish Victorian mansion, in the huge beautiful third floor studio, amidst the paints for about 6 months. Until the factory called me back and I left. He was paying me about the same as the manufacturing plant but I was working more than 50 hours a week (and Christmas eve!). I was doing research, making drawings, underpainting, packaging, etc., all important things to be an illustrator. But what I also learned was the one thing you do not do as an illustrator: get your work in late. He and I would sit shoulder-to-shoulder painting furiously on a job while the publisher’s courier sat downstairs in the parlour having tea and chatting with the wife who was trying to entertain him with idle talk while upstairs, we raced to finish by the 11 pm deadline.
I learned that procrastination is not a good look for a freelancer (or any other occupation).
The factory job didn’t last long; I got laid off again so I tried waitressing. There was a time when you could walk into a restaurant and fill out an application for a job, and if you were wearing a white shirt and black pants, you might get an apron thrown at you and start a shift. It really was that easy.
I’ll be blunt: I was a crappy waitress.
A restaurant is a deafeningly loud space to work in with a lot of moving parts and I struggled to do 5 things simultaneously. But I didn’t know going in that I was actually pretty terrible at reading people’s body language. Bad tips, irate cutomers, and barking cooks should have tipped me off. A waitress friend told me that she had a house cleaning business on the side— perhaps she mentioned it because she could see how badly I was floundering at the restaurant. She thought I should try housecleaning instead. It was really good money at the time too ($10/ hr) and best of all, I could clean when nobody was home.
My friend set me up with a new client she couldn’t take because her schedule was already full, and she taught me the ropes of how to clean a house efficiently and well. Soon, I began to attract my own clients by word-of-mouth and voila! my schedule was full. Surprisingly, lots and lots of people hate to clean their own house. Oddly, I found the work to be rather satisfying. I only took on 30 hours of cleaning work per week so that I could have the remaining time to work on my illustration portfolio. This was a most gratifying situation: I could set my hours, cherrypick the clients, negotiate my fees, and do the work I wanted to do.
Does it sound like training wheels for owning a business in illustration? Why yes, yes it most certainly does.
I learned so much in the 4 years I cleaned houses and not just about the business end of things like how to budget money, keep expense records, submit quarterly taxes, etc., but how to deal with people as clients.
Most importantly the experience taught me how to value my time.
Those extra 10 hours a week in my painting studio was the foundation on which I made my first illustration portfolio that launched my career. How to budget my time may have been the most important habit I developed then—and it’s one I continue to use.
What kind of lessons did your first jobs teach you? Perhaps they also helped you to recognize who you are and the kind of work you were always meant to do. Leave some fun stories for us in the comments below.