Meme Part I: Four Jobs

1. Full Time Dad. Best job ever. Highly motivated to succeed. Benefits too numerous to mention. Large challenges, but I enjoy meeting them and finding creative ways for Baby and I to rise above.

2. Bank Teller/Lead Teller. This job was almost completely not primarily about what I thought it would be about. I'd always liked sorting baseball cards and other such obsessive/compulsive activities. I thought I'd be great at it because I thought it would be a lot of keeping track of pieces of paper, numbers, and working on a computer. And I was great at that.

The thing I didn't know it would be about was SALES. I don't know why anyone would go to a bank teller these days when everything is available online or at the ATM. But people do, and when people do, they are supposed to be offered a new banking product or service EVERY TIME they do. That is the official policy of my bank and prior employer. And what surprised me was that I was also really great at that.

I studied the various products and services the bank offered – who knew there were so many and such variety? And most of the people who came to the bank could have saved time, made more money, and paid fewer fees with new or alternative bank products, so suggesting these things to them based on my extensive product knowledge was good for everybody. I made about 15-20% more money than my regular wage and won trips for two to Hawaii, Colorado Springs, and Madden's resort in Brainerd. And for every septuagenarian who was annoyed at being offered online banking or an ATM card for the 3,000th time (and, btw, I have no sympathy) there was at least one person who ended up saving hundreds of dollars in fees they didn't have to be paying.

Still, the whole time I felt like "Why the hell am I (just) a bank teller?" The job didn't pay that much, and while I was really, really good at it, it didn't really play to my skill set or use my education. In fact, one of my coworkers, when we were talking about our backgrounds and I mentioned my college degree and revealed my relatively advanced age said something like, "Don't take this the wrong way, but why are you working here?"

I thought to myself, "A lifetime of truly colossal underachievement and breathtakingly poor decision making." I actually said something about being burnt out on guitar teaching and wanting to earn more money, which was also true. Still, the general public, at least that somewhat deficient cross section of the general public that still uses actual live bank tellers, often uses them as venting targets for deep seeded "my mommy never loved me" style oedipal rage. I now hate the general public. When I got the call at work that my wife was in labor and my daughter was being born, I walked out the door knowing I would not miss the industry in the slightest and I haven't.

3. Guitar teacher
This was intermittently an extremely rewarding job. There was about a three-year learning curve for me during which I learned to a) teach fast or slow according to a student's background and ability to learn and b) charge people when they skipped a lesson. After that I had my part down and it all depended on the skills, habits, ability and desire of the students. I had some great ones who went on to make their own music they shared with me and I feel very proud of them.

I also had some complete duds, but the fact that I was a complete dud as a teenage piano and voice student then went on to enjoy making music more than anything else in life is encouraging to me. The money was inconsistent, however, and I did get burnt out after nine years so was not too sad to leave. I enjoy music more when I'm not teaching it – especially teaching theory, which a person should learn thoroughly, teach for a while to fully internalize, then actively, consciously forget and just get on with it. Still, I may go back to this someday.

4. Camp counselor
This job was a lot of fun, as I loved the kids and I am basically just "the world's tallest nine year old" as my friend Evan once called me. The drag was the bosses. I can't remember exactly why or what precise stupid things they would say, do, and suggest. I did it for two summers and have a lot of good memories. This was the worst paying job of the three paying jobs I mention here. At the Christian Church camp I think I made about $15 a day – which was because I was working for the Lord. Uh-huh. Amen. The following year at the YMCA I made $5/hr. There are a ton of stories from these two years – more than I have time to go in to here.

I got the idea for this blog entry from a blog by a friend of mine. Check her out if you want. Maybe I will finish the rest another time. Hope that was interesting to someone. Meffis out.