Me too!
Speaking of Maria, I’m going to list all of my jobs, too. Ready? Here we go!
1. I started babysitting when I was twelve and by the time I was about 14 I worked practically full-time for a family who had a little daughter and a son. The son had cerebral palsy so the job required some caretaking, too, but not a whole lot. During the summers I pretty much lived there but during the school year, I put in 30 to 40 hours a week. I babysat for them until I was about 21 although my hours dropped off dramatically once I was out of high school and had a regular job.
2. My very first job was at Elby’s, which is like Denny’s or Big Boy’s. I was 16 and freshly graduated from high school. We were supposed to wear a lot of underwear and a hairnet but I didn’t dress to code. I was a lousy waitress. My hair was fire engine red and one of the cooks asked me if I worshipped Satan because of my hair. I didn’t understand it then either.
3. I quit Elby’s and started working as a child care provider at a health club. Other than the hideous polyester green running suit we had to wear, this job wasn’t too awful.
4. I began working at a pizza parlor but was fired when I shaved my hair down really short. I tried to fight the boss on that (a male co-worker got a crewcut the same day and was NOT fired) but then realized that I didn’t want to work for them anyway.
5. Then I started at Baskin-Robbins while I was a freshman in college. I was fired for giving away ice cream. Well, wouldn’t you?
6. I worked for Women Against Rape, a radical feminist organization collecting money for the rape crisis line. At this time my hair was green and I found that people gave me more money if I wore a hat so you couldn’t really see the color of my hair. Clearly, reading through this, I suffered with hair issues during my formative years.
7. After working at WAR, I got a job as a cook at another italian restaurant. I quit after trying to stage a coup d’etat. I had a Bad Attitude and my father told me that I needed to Grow Up. He may have been right. I was 17.
8. When I was 18 I got a job at a New York-style deli. I loved this job. I worked in the specialty foods section (go ahead, ask me a question about balsamic vinegar) and finally Grew Up and learned to deal with nasty people. Kill ‘em with kindness. My favorite sandwich was the #32, grilled, 86 the honey mustard. Brett’s favorite was the #12.
9. By this time I’d dropped out of college. I was 20 and not babysitting as much. I really missed working with kids so I took a paycut (lost half my hourly wage) to become a preschool teacher at an upscale daycare. I became the head teacher eventually; I was there for about two years. Oh do I have stories (some of them you’ve already read).
10. We moved to Portland and I got a job as a toddler teacher at a crummy daycare. It was pretty awful and my stories from there are significantly worse. I quit when I went back to school.
11. I became the site director of a school-age childcare site. My particular site was working class but the other sites were, well, rough. We joined the sites during the summer and I learned a lot working there about racism, values and parenting styles.
12. The whole time I was at the school age job, I was volunteering at the YWCA women’s shelter as a child care person for the domestic violence support groups. I’ve always volunteered (as an elementary tutor for an inner-city tutoring program, on an AIDS hotline) and I started taking on some extra duties even though I was also going to school full-time. (Except for that first year in Portland, I’ve always worked full-time while I was in school.) Anyway, I became a substitute resident assistant and also continued volunteering with the kids. Eventually (as a volunteer) I began putting together a child advocacy program because we were the only shelter in town without one. I pulled together funding through work-study and was then able to quit as an RA and send more time with the families.
13. During my last year of school I had a fellowship to work with the freshman in this brand new, collaborative learning, freshman inquiry program. Basically I hung with my assigned freshman and taught them basic computer skills. We also talked a lot. It was a very impressive resume-building job but the truth is that the freshman inquiry program was so new that it was a big, giant, frustrating mess.
14. Once I graduated, I went full-time at the shelter as the children’s program coordinator. My resume describes my job like this: Edited the volunteer manual for the Women’s Resource Center; wrote and edited the manual for the Safe to Grow Children’s Program; collaborated in grant writing (soliciting government sources and private foundations), that resulted in expansion of the family program; designed and wrote curriculum for support groups for preschool children living with domestic violence; offered parenting support groups; designed and led staff/volunteer/community trainings and workshops; supervised volunteers; worked closely with clients to keep them on track with their case plan, helped them connect with community resources. I de-emphasized the case management stuff ‘cuz it’s a writing resume but I worked hands-on with our clients. At the time, I was also volunteering as a parent educator for community parenting classes and I was pregnant.
15. Housewife! We moved back to Cowtown and I didn’t work for awhile.
16. Since then I’ve had a hodge-podge of jobs. I did some more child care kind of things to make ends meet; I worked as a freelance editor for a textbook publisher; I wrote. Oh and I worked at a toy store one holiday season.
17. My official current title is senior editor at ePregnancy. What does this mean? It means that Sheri bosses me around and has me write stuff. Also it means that I’ve started editorial duties for the web site. (Write me if you’re interested in submission guidelines.) Sheri made me a nice little Excel sheet for the editorial calendar and everything. I was hired to do this awhile ago but the duties are just starting to kick in and I think it’ll be fun although I plan to panic about all of the work on my desk at least once a month.
