Jobs I've Had

This is a meme that I didn’t (hmph) get tagged with. My job history is nowhere near as exciting as those of these two, but I’m bored, so … in the spirit of self-amusement...


The Child Labour Days

1. Nurse Clinic Assistant

My parents evidently thought that there would be no violation of the relevant Geneva Conventions when they put me to work at Dad’s clinic for no salary. I suppose they assumed immunity from public outrage if the intent behind said child labour was to make sure I appreciated my life as a privileged kid.

It was a 9.30am (not my fault if the doctor, my ride, thought it fit to make patients wait) – 5.00pm job, during one stretch of school holiday.

All I did all day was:-

* sit on a stool in front of a glassed-in counter and dream,

* fill up patient-registration cards for the new ones;

* hunt for the cards of the existing ones,

* try not to curse those who forgot their card numbers (I guess being sick should be curse enough), resulting in me having to flick through pages and pages of handwritten (badly, I might add) index books,

* call out turns and hand Dad the patient cards and

* try not to laugh at sick people’s IC photos.

Occasionally, I got to fill the medication bottles.

I hope those patients are still alive.


The Australia Days.

I had part-time/ad-hoc jobs for three out of my four years at Uni. Didn’t actually have to, because Dad was a convenient ATM in a fortunate position to keep me in rich-privileged-kid comfort.

Maybe the early child labour served also to secretly brainwash me into having a conscience.


2. Clinic Cleaner

What was it with me and clinics?

In my first year, Tasmania’s most lemon-faced Malaysian osteopath paid me AUD$20 to clean her clinic and living room (their clinic and residence were in the same house). Once a week, she’d leave the money in an envelope in the living room for me, I’d let myself in and out while she and her also osteopath husband were away for the evening.

It wasn’t hard work at all. Even at my natural sloth’s pace, I’d be done in 90 minutes, but hey, since they were paying for 2 hours, I slowed down to the speed of a pregnant sloth in a mudbath.
For AUD$20, I hoovered, dusted, swept the basement, yard and porch and cleaned toilets, windows and the kitchen stove.

Initially, I was also asked to iron for another 2 hours a week but regretfully I had to kiss that extra AUD$20 goodbye because I absolutely sucked at ironing sheets, of which they had LOTS.

My lack of ironing skills was discovered soon after I decided to save time by ironing the sheets in the straight-out-of-the-dryer folded state I’d find them in. As in, I’d just iron the parts that were exposed, instead of opening the damn things out.

The doctors quickly decided I should just stick to cleaning. I thought so too.

It was my first-ever paying job and I was fiercely proud every time I slid that orange-coloured note into my pocket. As a treat, I’d buy a block of Cadbury’s from the mini-market on the walk back home. I’ve never in my life wanted for any material luxuries, thanks to Dad, but you’d never guess, from the way I’d hoard that chocolate, allowing myself only two pieces a day.

It was only Cadbury. But I’d earned the luxury by my own efforts.


3. Assistant Gardener

Jane Franklin Hall, the residential college that I lived in, had a policy of creating jobs for its students. You could be a residential assistant, academic tutor, kitchen hand, admin assistant or gardener. In my second year at Jane, I was an assistant gardener.

For AUD$20 per week (it was taken off our fees), I’d follow the College’s gardener around for two hours on a weekend. Greg, a champ of a man of almost no words would set me weeding and watering the College’s substantial flower beds, planting for spring, raking the autumn fall and making sure that the College goats were grazing in their usual spot.

Working alone, outdoors in often glorious weather, with the breath-taking view of Hobart’s hills and waterways always a short walk away. I was happy. It remains as the one job where I’ve ever found myself singing while working.


4. Traffic Data Collector

The advertisement on the Uni noticeboard said the job would pay AUD$100 for a couple of hours’ work. Ker-ching!

I was given a clipboard with 3 clicker-counter things attached to the top. For two hours on a freezing autumn morning, I stood on the corner of an intersection and clicked my clipboard. Cars going straight, click middle counter, cars going left, click left counter and so on.

An easy hundred bucks.


5. Candy-Floss Seller

I moved out of Jane in my third year and shared a house with two Aussies I’d met at Jane. Kate had an uncanny knack for finding interesting jobs, one of the more unusual being dressing up as a walking and unnecessarily tall peanut to promote Peanut King nuts at the mall. During her stint as Captain Hook to promote the visiting Disney on Ice Show, she pointed me to temp agency and I got hired to sell candy floss.

The job paid about AUD$25 per hour (it was a weekend) and I got to watch bits of the show for free, given that we were allowed to hang around in the corridors leading to the venue. There were two categories of sellers; those that sold at the fixed stands outside, and those that walked around the aisles during the intermissions. I got the interesting one, yay me.

T’was a bit unwieldy, trying to balance a huge pole on my hip, from which hung balloony bags of floss, while negotiating the steps between aisles.

A memory that I'll always carry from then was of a little girl (or boy?) who bounced up and proudly announced that she would like a bag please, dumping a little clutch of coins into my hand. Unfortunately, she was AUD$2 short. Her obviously tired mum walked up, trying not to lose her grip on another squirming infant, and upon hearing that it wasn’t enough, told the girl that she wouldn’t be having any candy floss. They didn’t have enough for it.

What else can you do when your heart is breaking?

Make up the balance, avoid the spoiling of a kid’s happy day and give a tired mum a break.

Made my day, and perhaps even my life, for just a tiny moment.

The other perk of the job was that we got to bring back as much leftover popcorn and candy as we liked. For a couple of nights, my housemates and I gorged ourselves stupid, deciding that the most efficient way was to wrap popcorn in a fist-full of candy floss and pop them sugarbombs into our mouths.


6. Academic Tutor

Since Jane hadn’t found a tutor for its students for Criminal Law, I applied and got it, despite having only barely passed the subject myself in second year. The fact that the students (most of whom were my fellow uni-mates) had told the College warden that they were desperate for a tutor must have been of enormous help.

Waddaya know, I may have sucked as a student, but I must have rocked as a teacher because over 90% passed, with a majority getting at least a credit grade. Ah, a teacher’s pride. Particularly when said teacher is Asian and the students are all Aussies.

This job paid the best. AUD$40 per hour. And I got it in cash. Whee.


The Adult Years

7. I became an everything-also-can-do lawyer, then a corporate lawyer, then a family lawyer, and then, finally a corporate finance lawyer. Life was boring.

Then I quit.

8. And became a faceless “manager” in a financial institution.

But life’s no longer so boring.