One of the things I enjoy about story telling is rounding out the characters. For my current WIP, I was pondering a job for one of the characters, and started to think about the jobs I had when I was young.
My first experience at earning money was one summer when my sister and I were going to camp, and we were allowed to pick strawberries. We lived along a minor highway in Ontario, and sold them at the edge of the road. Twenty-five cents for a big basket of strawberries. We had lots of money to spend at the tuck shop that summer.
I worked in an ice cream factory for a while. We filled quart boxes with ice cream, but mostly we worked making single serving ice cream sundaes. One of us would put in the filling and the other would place the cup under the constantly flowing ice cream. Surprisingly enough, I still like ice cream.
One of my part-time jobs was working in a ladies’ wear store. Looking back, I can’t imagine I was much help to the customers, all of whom were women my mother’s age. The only real work I did was unpacking the new dresses and hanging them to be steamed free of wrinkles. I suspect the woman who owned the shop was just being generous, because I don’t think I contributed much.
Christmas season at the Hudson’s Bay should have been a jolly time, but I got stuck in the hardware department. I recall the look of horror on one man’s face when I said I would mix his paint. I wish I could remember how that turned out…talk about being miscast!
I worked in an insurance office one summer. The agent was out of the office a lot, and my job was mainly to answer the phones. It was the first and only time I had a giggling fit. I had answered the phone and for some reason (nerves perhaps) I couldn’t stop laughing. The person on the other end of the line was very kind, as was the man in charge of the office.
The major difference in getting a job those days was that we didn’t worry about getting a job, it was a matter of which job we would take. How times have changed.
What was your most memorable job?