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Dead-End Sh*t Jobs ... Yours?

ruzara5

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. . . . . . Ok, I think this deserves the gold medal in worst jobs ever. Anyone?
- Years ago went for short adventure. Long line fisherman in Dutch Harbor AK on contract. Signed on for XXxx per month. Went out into Bering Sea for 90 days on old WWII converted refueler into long line fishing vessel. Worked 18 + hours in wet and cold. Smell is awful. Bering Sea is rough. People puking all the time. Caught huge cod. Make lots of big messes - think fish guts like the size of regular organs in med school. It is fish bait later on. Flash forward to last two weeks. Running low on food. Cook cannot. Food born illness. Low on food last three weeks. Eating frozen danishs, tea, popcorn and catching fish from ocean for food source. At end of shift boat springs a leak. While I am getting off of a grueling shift. We are now bailing water with buckets. Pumps fail. Engineer uses rope due to old corroded valves break loose in boat ballast hold. All our catch is now ruined from oil and spoiled bilge. Any point of the catch being even close to a payoff is gone. Boat is at a list and we are on deck. Nearing a island about a mile away. Preparing to abandon ship and swim for safety. Only so many life saving suits. May have to just swim for it in very cold water. Now awaiting moment to abandon ship. Valves turned. Water is being pumped out of ship. Limp back to Dutch. Now temperature about 70 degrees. Leftover catch is placed in rotting fuel soaked bins in open holding area. It begins to rot. Think ammonia gas from decaying flesh. Overwhelmed. Abandon in Dutch. Thankful to be alive. Eat pizza at local bar. Moving on to better things.
 
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MJ DeMarco

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Is having a dead-end shit job while working your Fastlane and long-term goal, Fastlane?

Yes! It is FASTLANE!

Getting a crappy job is NOT failure. It's a means to an end, namely to instill discipline, financial responsibility, and heck, even ego management.

Do not fear the job ...

A job is only to be feared if it starts making you comfortable, if it takes ALL of your time, or it does NOT reduce the anxiety of bills.

Means to an end...
 
D

Deleted50669

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Is having a dead-end shit job while working your Fastlane and long-term goal, Fastlane?

Yes! It is FASTLANE!

Getting a crappy job is NOT failure. It's a means to an end, namely to instill discipline, financial responsibility, and heck, even ego management.

Do not fear the job ...

A job is only to be feared if it starts making you comfortable, if it takes ALL of your time, or it does NOT reduce the anxiety of bills.

Means to an end...
Good point. And it teaches customer service.
 

All_In52

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  • Working 70-80 hours as a car salesman (1 month, this was the worst, especially when I was told to stand on "line 2" for up to 4 hours at a time because a "fresh up" is a sure deal)
  • CutCo Knives Sales Rep (3 months; I actually enjoyed the interactions but felt bad for selling to family, family friends, etc.)
  • Amway MLM (1 day; bought kit then returned it upon arrival)
  • Graveyard Quality Assurance Technician (5 Months; a lot of times the sanitation speciailsts a.k.a janitors wouldn't clean the plant in time for the morning shift so I had to join in and help)
The rest of my jobs were okay. Even with the dead end Sh*tness of these jobs I still learned a lot of lessons from each of them. Except the MLM one lol
 
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hamhock89

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1. Telemarketer
2. Whataburger
3. Cable guy
4. Audio Visual
5. "Slowlane" Self Employment business that failed (I learned a lot! This wasn't' Law of Effection by any means!)
6. Hobby store employee (This taught me how volume and margins worked and how sales and marketing were affected by invoking emotion)
7. Cell phone tower climber

I'm done slaving away and working to build someone else's dreams. The fire has been lit and is in the leap state. I work just as many hours with lack of sleep laying my foundation recently for my money tree seedlings. In fact my first arrival from China should be here next week. Time to take a different road!
 

FeaRxUnLeAsHeD

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My dead-end shit jobs have been significantly evolving and helping me acquire the skills and tools I need to be a successful CEO and founder, in my honest opinion.

17/18 years old - retail sales associate making $8 an hour, which went up to $8.58 after 2 years with raises. Worked the job of 3 or 4 people at once while other people slacked off.
18-20 years old - started a lawn care company, didn't understand scalability and did everything myself, learned sales even more, cold door to door, probably made myself $25-30/hour on my own terms
20 years old - also picked up a gym job to start getting into my passion for healthcare/fitness/wellbeing - made $10 an hour and some bonus commission
21-22 years old - Did my own startups on the side while in full time school. Had various internships in corporate Amerika (Toyota, BAE Systems), realizing I was a lot smarter than society told me I was. I was over-qualified on a lot of the work and projects I was on, and I was honestly bored on certain days because I could finish my work so quickly.. Made roughly $16 an hour.
23 years old - graduated college, started a career in SAAS sales making $17 an hour plus commission.. slaved through business development, and was on the 'corporate ladder' game... if i was lucky in a year, i'd make myself $42 an hour ($89K / year) between salary and commission if i worked really hard... Meanwhile I started a personal training business (continuing to work on my sales game and I just enjoy it) - making anywhere from $50-70/hour and up doing small group training.
24 years old (today) - left the corporate SAAS gig when a start-up reached out to me after doing my due diligence and realizing it was a great move. Began acting like i WAS the CEO, doing a little bit of everything to help the company grow. Currently on track to being one of the top performing reps (once we close out the year) and making myself a health 6-figures.. and I'm also switching roles to be responsible for helping build up a business unit from essentially 200 grand/year to being a multi-million dollar business unit (which already has the setup to do that and more if managed correctly) - I'll probably make anywhere from 180K in 2018, and could possibly do 300-500K in 2019 if done successfully.

'Dead-End Shit Job' can mean making $8.58 an hour, or it could mean making $500K a year - I think it all depends on what you make of it, and what you take away from it. The lessons I learned at the $8 job are different from the potential 500K job - however, they're independent lessons and both just as powerful/important.

The skills I'm learning and have learned are really solidifying the skills I need to run a successful company and learn from my failures without 'failure' putting me into bankruptcy or home-eviction. It's nice to have that freedom of a paycheck to support the real dream. In the interim, i'll be building up my businesses/assets/investments on the side - when it makes sense, I'll be going all-in on a possible value-add in the healthcare industry.. something I see a need for and I think I have the solution for.. Will continue to test and work my dead-end shit jobs in the meantime.
 

NewManRising

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Some of my worse jobs were working in construction and plumbing as basically a grunt. I also worked security for a few years at various locations like commercial buildings, car dealerships, residences, manufacturing plants and warehouses, that all sucked for various reasons. I did something called "vending" when I was 16. Basically, me and a group of friends would meet these 2 Russian guys at a park very early in the morning, all get in a huge truck, and head to various locations all over the state to sell stuff at parades and similar events. For every $3 we sold we keep $1. The job wasn't bad, we did not make a lot of money but it was fun socializing with people and goofing off with friends.
 
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robodale

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1st job: 12 years old. I delivered the local newspaper for 2 years every morning 5am, 7 days a week. I live in the frozen upper midwest, so those dead-cold mornings were a nightmare. Sunday's sucked! Heavy Sunday paper plus the giant adverts in each one. With the money, I bought my first computer in 1984 (a Commodore 64).

2nd Job (15 years old), stocked Coca Cola delivery trucks 4 days a week after school for $3.35 USD per hour (this was about 1986). The owner was a drunk (he lead me to his office one day, opened his lower filing cabinet, it was stocked with 1.75 Liter bottles of Lord Calvert - most were full). That explained the smell Lord-Coke on his breath! The supervisor drove the forklift and would throw cans of Coke at my feet. They'd often explode and I'd be a syrupy mess by the end of the night. Rode my bike to work there and managed to get sprayed by a skunk. Good times? No!

3rd Job - stocker at local grocery store. Worked there until I graduated high school in 1991. I was offered $28,000 USD to be a shift manager instead of going to college. Went to college, 5.5 years later got a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering. My first engineering job? $35,000. Nearly 6 years of tuition, expenses, classes I hated, being broke...only to get a job paying $7000 more than no degree.

The rest of the jobs - mech engineering turned to software engineering and now I'm building web apps and sites. Yes they paid well. I took that scripted path, but realized I need to do my own thing to be happy. This is why I'm in this forum....building my Unscripted life out from under my Scripted one. I haven't cut the scripted cord yet...but I'm pushing hard to get there.

Thanks MJ and everyone else!
 

NewYorkCity

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My dead-end shit jobs have been significantly evolving and helping me acquire the skills and tools I need to be a successful CEO and founder, in my honest opinion.

17/18 years old - retail sales associate making $8 an hour, which went up to $8.58 after 2 years with raises. Worked the job of 3 or 4 people at once while other people slacked off.
18-20 years old - started a lawn care company, didn't understand scalability and did everything myself, learned sales even more, cold door to door, probably made myself $25-30/hour on my own terms
20 years old - also picked up a gym job to start getting into my passion for healthcare/fitness/wellbeing - made $10 an hour and some bonus commission
21-22 years old - Did my own startups on the side while in full time school. Had various internships in corporate Amerika (Toyota, BAE Systems), realizing I was a lot smarter than society told me I was. I was over-qualified on a lot of the work and projects I was on, and I was honestly bored on certain days because I could finish my work so quickly.. Made roughly $16 an hour.
23 years old - graduated college, started a career in SAAS sales making $17 an hour plus commission.. slaved through business development, and was on the 'corporate ladder' game... if i was lucky in a year, i'd make myself $42 an hour ($89K / year) between salary and commission if i worked really hard... Meanwhile I started a personal training business (continuing to work on my sales game and I just enjoy it) - making anywhere from $50-70/hour and up doing small group training.
24 years old (today) - left the corporate SAAS gig when a start-up reached out to me after doing my due diligence and realizing it was a great move. Began acting like i WAS the CEO, doing a little bit of everything to help the company grow. Currently on track to being one of the top performing reps (once we close out the year) and making myself a health 6-figures.. and I'm also switching roles to be responsible for helping build up a business unit from essentially 200 grand/year to being a multi-million dollar business unit (which already has the setup to do that and more if managed correctly) - I'll probably make anywhere from 180K in 2018, and could possibly do 300-500K in 2019 if done successfully.

'Dead-End Shit Job' can mean making $8.58 an hour, or it could mean making $500K a year - I think it all depends on what you make of it, and what you take away from it. The lessons I learned at the $8 job are different from the potential 500K job - however, they're independent lessons and both just as powerful/important.

The skills I'm learning and have learned are really solidifying the skills I need to run a successful company and learn from my failures without 'failure' putting me into bankruptcy or home-eviction. It's nice to have that freedom of a paycheck to support the real dream. In the interim, i'll be building up my businesses/assets/investments on the side - when it makes sense, I'll be going all-in on a possible value-add in the healthcare industry.. something I see a need for and I think I have the solution for.. Will continue to test and work my dead-end shit jobs in the meantime.

Currently working in SaaS sales as well. Decent place to be for a "job"
 

MJ DeMarco

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An incredible hodgepodge of jobs and stories. Yet, reading each one of them, I feel like each one of you can be successful. If you can succeed the grind in a thankless job for minimal pay, you can succeed at being an entrepreneur. At this point, I see the big challenge is not in "finding ideas" or "execution" -- it's getting our mind right and keeping on track when life steps in with shinier objects, or worse, the simple comforts of a decent paycheck and a fun weekend.
 

mws87

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  • Working 70-80 hours as a car salesman (1 month, this was the worst, especially when I was told to stand on "line 2" for up to 4 hours at a time because a "fresh up" is a sure deal)
Ha! That takes me back. I remember working a 17 hour day (not. Frigging. Kidding) one time because I got stuck with a late deal. Went home and got about 4 hours sleep to get up and go back for another 12. Talk about a life-suck.
 

whiz

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I've been running a makeshift recording studio selling recording time, mixing and mastering services, and instrumentals to artists in my area for about the last 3 years. It is inherently slowlane due to my marriage to time.

I have grown super frustrated and decided to stop recording people for the month of December. I got people to use my space and take care of the rent for this month, and probably the next. I have been in somewhat of a haze the past couple weeks with very little income.

I am trying to see what I can do to build an asset that will eventually decouple my time from my income, but I'm just stressing so much because I DO need some short term income now. I just can't record people anymore. It was killing me and my passion.

I learned some pretty good business skills and I am extremely good at selling myself and things I believe in. People really trust me and I am a no judgment, truly caring, armchair psychologist type. I listen to what people have to say and I make sure they leave my presence a better person than they were before they were with me. I am very good at providing value.

I just don't know where to take it from here though. I want to make $$$ outside of music and then bring it back in. I do not enjoy being a bottom feeder in the music industry. Even at the top, the morals and the general vibes aren't really my thing. That's why I want to get money outside the industry and bring it back in. I don't want to play by the rules of others. I want to do unique marketing and artist development and make music that truly touches people. A lot of music today is junk food; Dorito music. I want to make steak and potato music. Eggs and Ezekiel bread music. I know a bunch of talent that lacks the correct representation or funding. It is a disservice to humanity.

Sorry for venting in someone else's thread.

I may be a new forum member but I've read 100s of pages in this forum and appreciate everyone. I hope to give value back one day.
 
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socaldude

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-File clerk at law office.

-Computer sales at best buy.

-Car washer.

-Auto detailer.

The worst part about these jobs? a**hole managers. Oh, and I held these jobs right after college.o_O
 

whiz

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Wanted to list all my shit jobs while I'm here...

-ACME Supermarket Bagger
-Shoprite Supermarket Cashier
-Home Depot "Parking Lot Attendant" (Cart boy)
-Urban Outfitters Shirt Folder Walk Around And Do Nothing Person
-Pizza Delivery Driver
-Production Assistant
-Listing baseball cards on eBay for an "entrepreneur" that didn't divorce his time from his job. He was making good $$$ but worked easily 100 hours per week... the place was so disorganized and it looked like shit. You could see it affected his family life when his kids would visit him at work (because he was never home) and he wouldn't take his eyes off the computer. Sad really. He either never learned to trust, delegate, or either.
-Tons of Craigslist jobs... tons of weird stories... pretty sure I worked with a sex offender at one point?
-Probably tons of other jobs I'm forgetting about.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Limitless4Life

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Right now I'm a sales development rep. I 'sell' enterprise software a.k.a. send dozens of emails and make 50 calls per day to global 1000 companies - 25 dont answer/15 voicemails/8 not interested/2 actually talk to me. Repeat every day from 8:30 - 5:30 @ $15.36/hr before tax and hopefully hit monthly quota to add $1000 before tax. During (unpaid) lunch I dream of breaking free, freeing my inmates, shooting the warden and burning down the prison. F that. Practicing sales daily will pay off though.

Also: flower cleaner/delivery, door-to-door alarm system sales (MLM - didn't know it at the time), musician (100+ paid gigs), painting/construction, recently made $90.64 in kindle royalties...mostly (if not, all) from family and friends o_O.

I must work to change my situation. I have quite a journey ahead of me. Damn, tomorrow's Monday.
 

Readerly

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Crap jobs (because they were either dull or exploitative or the organization or boss I worked for was crap):

Construction laborer
Supermarket cashier
Admininstrative assistant
Adjunct professor
Electronic medical record (EMR) go-live at-the-elbow tutor
EMR Analyst
EMR Instructional Designer
 

FeaRxUnLeAsHeD

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Right now I'm a sales development rep. I 'sell' enterprise software a.k.a. send dozens of emails and make 50 calls per day to global 1000 companies - 25 dont answer/15 voicemails/8 not interested/2 actually talk to me. Repeat every day from 8:30 - 5:30 @ $15.36/hr before tax and hopefully hit monthly quota to add $1000 before tax. During (unpaid) lunch I dream of breaking free, freeing my inmates, shooting the warden and burning down the prison. F that. Practicing sales daily will pay off though.

Also: flower cleaner/delivery, door-to-door alarm system sales (MLM - didn't know it at the time), musician (100+ paid gigs), painting/construction, recently made $90.64 in kindle royalties...mostly (if not, all) from family and friends o_O.

I must work to change my situation. I have quite a journey ahead of me. Damn, tomorrow's Monday.

The Sales Development job will pay off - mine certainly did. I realized from doing that role that I could apply that same job to any business I start and there's almost no reason why I wouldn't be able to make sales. A lot of businesses I've failed at in the past were simply because I didn't put in enough effort (calls/emails) to people who actually needed my product.

Doing sales development for 8-12 months and then landing into a 6-figure sales role not only gives you all the skills you need to succeed at your own companies, but it also lands you in a highly lucrative selling gig if you play your cards right (work from home a few days a week, get paid an insane amount of money if you sell enough and hit quota, and arguably put yourself in the most leveraged position if you're a strong team player who can SELL... there aren't many people who can sell consistently)
 
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goldstein

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  1. Cashier - McDonald’s

    (First job. started at 15 years old. Incredible experience with dealing with customer service, especially for an introvert! )



  2. Drive-thru cashier - McDonald’s

    (After a few months eventually got trained to work the drive-thru, truly helped with my listening and concentration skills. Some microphones were really bad and the noise in the background didn’t help.)


  3. Back-kitchen “cook” (lol) - McDonald’s

(Believe it or not. This was a fun job.. Learned to stay calm under pressure. )


4. Plumbing laborer


(At that time, I had dropped out of school. I was aspiring to own a plumbing business. It lasted one year. It really sucked. I got some of my tools stolen, some of the older guys painted my boots with orange paint , I got thrown some tools at me by one of the old timers… )


5. Shift manager - McDonald’s


(At this point, I was laid off at my job as a plumbing laborer and I was back to school. So, I went back to McDonald’s.. and got promoted! I was 19 years old and managing employees. This lasted for 2 years. Lots of BS to deal with though.. employees with BS excuses why they’re not coming in to work on a Friday night (most of them were teenagers and wanted to get drunk) , hangry (hungry + angry) customers, first of the month furies , those f-ing coupons, shitty ice cream and soda equipment breaking all the time..)

6. Clerk at deli section - Costco

(At this point, I couldn’t stand McDonald’s anymore. So, I got this job at Costco. Still sh*tty but lot less BS. The constant cold and obligation to stand up sucked but it was way better than Mcdonalds. They also had a future manager’s placement program for college students which sounded interesting at the time! )


7. Help desk support officer - Federal Government of Canada


(This is my present job. This one is actually very good. Finally got a job with decent hours (no night shifts, all weekends off, 9 to 5 schedule). I also have a schedule that accommodates my school schedule and my side hustle. A big plus compared to the other places I’ve worked at.)
 

MJ DeMarco

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goldstein

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Consider them badges of honor.

All things held equal, I'd much rather hire/partner with someone who's open to handling the McDonalds grind, not to mention the associated stigmas.

Thank you MJ, I sure will !
 
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AurimasLT

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I agree with many of the people here that most of those jobs shape you, make you stronger mentally, and in some cases make you stronger.

Here is my list:

Turkey and Chicken factory worker - cold environment and long hours.

Car mechanic - not the worst job for sure.

Water delivery driver.

Construction worker.

Warehouse order picker.

Fitness instructor.

Cleaner in a clothing store.

Water production factory maintenance engineer ( my current job for the last 2 years). 60+ hours per week, mixed day and night 12hour shifts + 1 hour commute one way..

Responsible for all factory machines, preventitive maintenance etc. Perks of the job are that I am allways under pressure to deliver due to high demand, and a ruthless boss fits well to the mix.

I used to hate the job like god hates the devil, however after improving my mindset ( thanks to MJ and many others) I've changed the way i look at it. Now I have a goal creating something of value and achieving financial independence. I kind of push my self into those stressful situations (making tough decisions 3 am at night. when things are broken down and wrong decision could cause 10's of thousands to the employer. Most of all I value that it improves my problem solving skills under pressure.

I see it as a vehicle to get where I need to be and improve myself in the process.

And it gets better, now I can read this forum during the breaks. Thanks to everyone for your input.
;)

Apologies if I went a little off topic. :wideyed:
 
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DanWasDrunk

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Much of these jobs I had after college graduation. :nonod:

If you find yourself in a *sh*t* job, take a deep breath and reassure yourself that it is only temporary. Your job is no predictor of your true potential but only a byproduct of your circumstances and your choices.

I did my best thinking while enduring these jobs -- I remember mopping floors and coming up with ideas as well as stockpiling motivation. The thoughts "I'm better than this!" builds and builds until the fire under your a$$ can no longer be tolerated and leaping into action is no longer an option, but a survival move.

Currently in one, so thank you haha! I work at a grocery store. I probably get asked three times a day by customers (used to be co-workers too, before they knew my story), "So... are you in school?"

Nope. I actually have a degree.

Before that:

- I worked as a cook for a year at a failing bar and grill, got paid under the table, below minimum wage, and I was technically too young to even be legally working. I didn't even know how to cook, either.
- I did data entry in a cube for 3 months during the summer at a faceless company and hated life (it was basically a call center)
- I was a barback for a whopping 3 days

The barback was probably the most depressing. Sleeping all day and staying up all night got me f--ked up really quick. No social life. The bar manager would bark at everybody, I missed being on the other side of the bar, and my co-workers were all bitter about life. Dealing with drunk people all night and having flashbacks of working in a kitchen before I went to college (and vowing to not come back) just got me down super fast.

That was a wake up call, though. I was pursuing acting professionally in LA and quickly realized that I didn't want to work dead-end jobs for 10 years while putting the rest of my life on hold just to get a few credits. It was better as a hobby.

I was also reading Millionaire Fastlane at the time, so that lit a fire under my a$$ ;)
 

DrunkFish

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First job ever - Walgreens. Before i knew i was NOT a 9-5er. I remember thinking to myself at age 17, how come my first job, that is ABOVE minimum wage, feels like im doing shit and wasting time? Foreshadowing is strong here.

I might be missing one, but

Next i think was bank teller. Second lowest paying bank in the area. Boring as all hell.... worked with petty women who all had small children who had play dates and shit (not my thing what so ever.. they all hated me as i pulled up with my modified car talking about my business ventures at the time lol. lame) Had to wore a dress shirt and tie everyday even in the 100+ humid a$$ STL weather for $9 an hour.

Next was a cell phone repair shop. Was a lot better but not what i wanted to do forever. I never came back to that job after i got a spot on a TV show that filmed in Richmond,VA that opened my eyes to what was possible with my life.
 
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cottonbuds

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I have had a lot of dead end jobs lol.

1. Custodian at my Undergraduate school
2. Teaching Assistant
3. Lots of manufacturing temp jobs (got fired from one of them for being too slow at sticking labels lol. This was my second job and I was already in school and working another full time job. Could barely keep awake so I understand the firing lol)
4. Retail store manager
5. Call center employee
6. Phone stock broker/customer service (this was the most dead end - I spent 6 brutal years here but they paid for my Masters degree and I left with a healthy bank account)
7. Financial Analyst
 

p0stscript

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Finding myself, at the tender age of 53, made redundant (or sacked as most of us called it since no pay and little notice involved) I took a job drilling holes in metal rods, minimum wage zero hours contract, this dirty job was followed by a much cleaner one - washing dishes (had to wash them in a large sink ready to put in an industrial dishwasher to clean them!) again minimum wage, zero hours.
 

andrewsyc

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1. Grocery boy, easy job and a little fun, I never knew a food market could have so much drama.
2. Custodian at a movie theatre after it closed. (3 weeks, went to this after my grocery boy)
3. Subway sandwich artisan, fancy title.
4. Newspaper delivery when I was a teen early mornings.
5. Welder (not a dead end job but many people who were stuck were in a really bad mood)
6. McDonalds...
 
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Private Witt

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1. Caddy
2. Pizza Delivery dude
3. Route sales driver
4. Teacher (sometimes not that crappy but sure felt like it)
5. Pizza Delivery dude again
6. Uber driver (I still do this to pay the bills and a few extra bucks for business, but getting really old and need to stop by the end of this year).
 

cheeky ram

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1. Construction worker
2. Warehouse with frozen fruit.
3. Car registering agency.
4. McDonald's (just 1,5 week because the owner was a dick)
5. KFC
6. Women's clothes shop
7. Bookstore
8. Another construction work
9. Retail warehouse
10. Warehouse driver
11. Green house worker
12. Supermarket worker (2 different places)
13. Restaurant (2 different)
14. Christmas trees seller
15. Hotel Bar waiter
and I think maybe some other.

Anyway I've had quite many jobs. In some of them I was just a month or two. In the other few days or half a year. I have never had a straight job. I got bored quite quick every time. I said to myself if I need to work for peanuts I can do this anywhere.
 

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