From Dishwasher to Night Watchman
“I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy.” – Danny McGoorty, Irish pool player
My father wanted me to be a doctor, but I had a secret romantic idea that I wanted to be a peddler, either that or join the Peace Corp.
The following entry was inspired by my niece, who recently posted a list of her jobs on her blog. Family members on the Love-Link, the group e-mail that was started when my brother Dan was in the hospital 5 years ago, have been doing the same. 
Because of my issues with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which started during my 6 year tenure as a day care teacher, my jobs have been mostly part-time and often untraditional. They are listed in order from the time I was a teenager up to the present and do include a little peddling and work in human services.
1. Babysitting
2. Helping our neighbor Mrs. Brody open her beach house for the summer. I washed dishes and sometimes slept over because she was elderly and didn’t like to be alone.
3. Washing dishes at the Stonecrest Nursing Home.
4. Hat check girl at the Surf Ballroom in my hometown of Hull, Massachusetts. Sonny and Cher played there.
5. Sales person at an upscale woman’s clothing boutique in Boston. I smoked pot with my bosses and sometimes did live-mannequin modeling in the window.
6. Private duty nurse for an elderly man who had no legs. I was actually a nurse’s assistant but worked the night shift on my own. I ate a lot of chocolate chip cookies and watched old movies. I was recovering from a major depression/anxiety disorder at the time.
7. Worked in a factory with my sister Sherry (now an RN), who I also shared an apartment with. We called this period our “Laverne and Shirley” days. We painted fire alarms red.
8. Day care teacher at South Shore Day Care. I got this job via the un-employment office after telling them that I wanted to work with the blind or the mentally handicapped. I started as an aide, got accredited, and worked my way up to a teacher.
9. Full-time Mom. The highlight of my life.
10. Took an elderly man shopping once a week.
11. Freelance writer. The first piece I sold was to Mothering Magazine around 1979.
12. I worked in a pre-school nursery at a church and a gym, never went to the church or worked out at the gym.
13. My life as a waitress lasted only 1 week. You couldn’t pay me …
14. I was a night watchman at the B-Real Ethanol Plant in Floyd. I watched the moon more than anything.
15. Sales person at Seeds of Light, a bead shop in Blacksburg. I did jewelry repairs and ordered the store’s books. More on that HERE and HERE
16. Jeweler. I peddled my wares in shops from Floyd to the Caribbean and was a Grateful Dead parking lot vendor.
17. Foster care provider for an individual who was blind and mentally handicapped. (See # 8) for 9 years.
18. Author of The Jim and Dan Stories, blogger, freelance writer and poet who occasionally gets paid.
Addendum: I also sold peppers to the Harvest Moon food store one year when I had a surplus crop. I was hired as a poetry tutor for a child, and worked behind the scenes with kids for a kid TV show pilot briefly. I once auditioned for a TV commercial and modeled ski wear in a fashion show.
Post notes: The first photo is of me and my son Dylan and was taken around 1990 at a Grateful Dead Show. The second one is of me doing potato print art with kids at South Shore daycare in 1977. Feel free to leave a list of some of your jobs in a comment.
October 6th, 2006 10:23 am
The first few are the same exact jobs I had……..Great entry!!
October 6th, 2006 11:07 am
Good list! I haven’t had nearly that many, and I will have to think about it before I post.
The fat painted rock frog was my first; I loved his sillly expression. I don’t remember which one I bought next, but it was all downhill from there….LOL
October 6th, 2006 11:09 am
ditto for #1,9,12,13 and 17(resource family for a teenage brother and sister through dss), and a bunch of others in my 30 years of life- most involving working with kids. currently i’m doing #9- the hardest, but most important one i have done thus far!
October 6th, 2006 11:14 am
My first job was wearing a Christmas elf suit and handing out coupons for the shops along the Pike Street Hill Climb in Seattle. I also babysat a lot. I spent one summer working in a movie theatre (and to this day I can barely tolerate movie theatre popcorn), and another summer working in a toy store.
October 6th, 2006 11:36 am
It sounds like you have a lot of jobs. I’ll bet you learned from each one of them. I don’t think there is anything wrong with doing work that you like. Enjoyed your post.
October 6th, 2006 1:08 pm
I did the usual babysitting, then two summers of Nurse assistant, a summer externship in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Internship and Residency in Pathology, made and sold a few birthday cakes on the side and then physician, specialty pathology.
October 6th, 2006 2:46 pm
lovely. crazyqueen did the same sort of post a few days ago.. and i’m sort of considering doing something similar myself.
nightwatch woman huh? sweet.
October 6th, 2006 6:26 pm
I think such varied experiences is what makes a full life. Yours is just that from what I read. I worked in pre-school one vacation in college and that was all I could handle!
October 6th, 2006 10:25 pm
Have had very few. Lifeguard at an apartment pool,Cdn National Exhibition in Food building, summer camp counselor for 8 summers at camp for diabetic kids, English Teacher at High School for kids from Hong Kong in Toronto for 3 years,teacher of Kindergarten – Gr. 8 kids for 25 years right up untillast Jan. Camp was the most fun and brought me right to teaching with the same warm fuzzy tone and approach.
October 6th, 2006 10:35 pm
Babysitting, selling hot dogs and cokes at lunchtime in high school, Personal Shopper and gift-wrapper for a large dept. store, florist helper/sales, Cytotechnologist, and finally florist – wedding business owner. See? Not as many as you!
Michele sent me back.
October 7th, 2006 4:26 am
What an eclectic mix of jobs you’ve had! Sorry to hear about the chronic fatigue. 🙁
You had asked me on my blog about Dragonheart: http://caylynn.blogspot.com/2006/10/new-photo-of-dragonheart.html
Yep, Sphynx are that way. 🙂 They are a naturally hairless breed of cats, although every now and again, one is born with hair. They do need to be kept warm, and are indoor pets only (they can become sunburned outside, since they have no hair to protect them) but they are a wonderful, friendly breed.
October 7th, 2006 9:28 am
I’m right with you on the waitress one…I’ve done some of the same things you have but not the most interesting ones!
October 7th, 2006 9:50 am
Hi from Michele….you have had some very interesting jobs..and how wonderful that you live in a rustic cabin that is naturalized. I’d do the same given the opportunity! My most interesting job? A military policeman(woman?) in the U.S. Marines.
October 7th, 2006 10:33 am
I also cared for old and infirm people. I also tutored, English, to Japanese people.
Cleaned houses for people in my neighborhood.
Literary journal editor.
Sales “associate” at Belk.
Waitress.
Hotel concierge.
Nursery (plants) worker.
Secretary.
Advising Coordinator at a college
Registration coodinator at a college
Event planner at a college.
Marketing director for a development company.
Realtor.
October 7th, 2006 10:59 am
That’s a good list, not the typical list with lots of restaurant and clothing stores listed early on.
Michele sent me.
October 7th, 2006 2:37 pm
Not counting babysitting when I was a kid, I change jobs about every 17 years…except for a few in between where I knew I didn’t fit (those only lasted less than 3 months and are hardly counted when you compare it to 17 years).
I’m due for a change, I guess, since I’m going into my 17th year next month … at the “V.”
October 7th, 2006 3:34 pm
Well, you’ve certainly run the gamut….I’m afraid my previous jobs aren’t as interesting as yours.
File clerk, cocktail waitress, legal secretary, Registered Nurse and author. Gosh, that’s IT…I’m boring!
October 7th, 2006 6:22 pm
How wonderful for you to have got entrance to so many opportunities! They must be all around.
October 7th, 2006 10:09 pm
I’ve done various freelance and office work over the past 30+ years. I am grateful to waitstaff because it’s a job I can’t see myself doing unless I absolutely had to. When I was a kid I made and sold potholders up and down the block, then took orders for and produced scarves after learning how to crochet in Home Ec. My first salaried job was as a clerk-typist at MOTBR: Military Ocean Terminal, Brooklyn, in a massive, amazing building. The elevator I took to my office could fit a tank and did. Five years of volunteer work in the planetarium field yielded a short story that I sold to Asimov’s; “The S.O.B. Show” appeared in mid-December 1986. “S.O.B.” stands for “Star of Bethlehem,” trade slang for the Christmas shows planetariums do every year, over and over and over.
October 8th, 2006 9:50 pm
Danny McGoorty sounds like my kind of guy. Enjoyed reading about these different phases of your life–none of which have ever really defined YOU.
December 13th, 2006 10:39 am
Can you believe I am just now reading this post and I inspired it? LOL
March 22nd, 2009 4:57 am
my life pales by comparison. i retired after 30 years of service, during which time i held 3 positions within the agency, 2 social work positions, and later a supervisory position. as a student i had a couple part time jobs and after college spent part of one year teaching high school English.
February 2nd, 2011 11:33 pm
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[…] HERE is a list of some of the jobs that I’ve had, one of which was a […]
December 8th, 2016 12:21 am
[…] 12. My father wanted me to be a doctor, but I had a secret romantic idea that I wanted to be a peddler, either that or join the Peace Corp … – More from “From Dishwasher to Night Watchman,” a 2006 post about all my unlikely past jobs, including a brief stint as a hat check girl HERE. […]