Bad dog and jobs

You have to wonder why. Out of all the things he could have chewed on while we left him alone in the house, why does he have to choose the irreplacable thing. This is the remote control for the dvd player. I suppose it's possible that it will still work but I'm not all that hopeful about it. Last time we left him alone, he chewed up a newspaper. Perfect, I was done with it anyway. Now we're going to have to put things out of his reach when we leave. The Christmas tree is going to be interesting.

Now a little idea I pinched from Polt. Feel free to pinch it from here. Tis nothing new, just a recounting of the jobs you've had. Kay here goes.

The first real job I had was in a bank. This was when I was a 15 year old high school student. After school I went to (I think it was called) Security Pacific Bank to file checks. This dates me, doesn't it. I took all the cleared checks and filed them in the appropriate customer's folder and then once a month I bundled the cleared checks up with the statement and put them in an envelope for mailing. When machines were ready to take this task over, I lost the job.

Next was a stint in a Del Taco venture. They opened a concept shop where they married ice cream and video games. Two things I adored. I loved that job but ultimatley the concept was a flop. I remember days where sales were under a hundred bucks. No bueno.

At the same time in the summer, I worked as a camp counselor. The thing I remember most about this job was that I had to be there at 6:30am. For a teenager, this was torture.

Then there was the graveyard shift job I took at a company that transferred paper documents to microfiche. My job was to remove staples from documents before they were sent to the microfiching department. That's all I did - remove staples. If there is a hell, that is what it will look like.

Then I worked for my dad's friend's cabinet shop. My job was to go to different city halls to scour recent building permits and then hit up the contractors to bid on the cabinet part of the jobs. It was fun until I wrecked the boss's car. It was a little truck he had purchased barely a month before. Badness.

After that or maybe at the same time I got a job at BJ's Pizzeria where I waited tables for the first time. I rememer I quit that job by throwing my uniform in the manager's face. She had cut my hours in half to accommodate a friend of her's that she gave a job to.

A few weeks later I was hired by the Hyatt Regency Long Beach as a busboy in their fine dining restaurant. I worked my way up to evening waiter and this was the job that got me through college.

Next up was the Rose Cafe in Venice. Another waiter job but we had lots of celebrities come in at that place. That's where I waited on Arnold the gouvernator many mornings since his office was next door at the time.

After that, I did a stint as a delivery driver for a gourmet take out business. Yawn.

Then I was hired by the Ritz Carlton first as a waiter and then as a manager. After a couple of years of management slavery, I asked to transfer to another property as a dining room captain so I could "go back to school". Really though, I just didn't want to be a slave anymore.

I quit that job to go visit Serge after he was stuck in Montreal after getting blocked by US immigration. That whole story is here.

When we snuck Serge back across the border and came back to California, I got a couple of waiter jobs, the more important of which, Spaghettini, became my life for several years. I became a manager for them and opened a new concept business for them, a bakery cafe with ready to heat and eat meals. I quit after our first profitable month. I wanted to go out on top.

Serge and I focussed on building our own website design business, which Serge still does today under the name Drafter.com. It was then that I decided working together wasn't a positive influence on our relationship.

When we came to Montreal, I worked in a restaurant for a couple of summers to solidify my French skills but mostly I've been teaching English. I've been doing that now for 8 years, longer than any other job in my life. Most days I love this job so I figure I'll be doing that for the foreseeable future.

There were other jobs in there too. I got a few modeling and acting jobs in my California years, but as you can see, I was never really discovered. Sometimes I wonder what life would be like had I gotten a job early on and stayed with it. A job with a retirement plan. I'd only have about 15 years left to retirement. But then I'd have never met Serge, learned French and lived abroad and gained dual citizenship. I'd have to say I'm pretty happy with the way things turned out.