Lessons Learned From My Past Jobs

Photo by The Nix Company on Unsplash

Are you working your dream job from childhood? I feel like most of us aren’t and that’s totally fine!

If you’re one of the lucky few then congrats on knowing yourself so well.

In a recent webinar one of the presenters talked about how all dreams have an expiration date and I immediately thought of all the dreams and aspirations I had when I was younger.

I’ve reached a lot of my goals, learned new skills and started building a business.

Could my younger self have even imagined the things I’m doing now? Probably not!

The good news is that even if you haven’t always been working your favorite or well aligned jobs you at least learned something from them.

Here are some of the jobs I’ve done and what I learned from them.

Lifeguard

Ever since watching The Little Mermaid daily while refusing to nap as a kid I’ve been obsessed with swimming and acting like a mermaid. I’ve been on two different swim teams throughout school and always enjoyed being in the water minus getting crispy and burnt in the sun.

This job made sense to me because I’ve always loved swimming and was on my high school swim team the first year I applied. Not that you need to do much swimming day to day.

You mostly stand around or near the water where I worked at a water park. Texas summers are no joke and sitting outside for hours every day wasn’t fun.

I made sure to go for the deep lifeguard position because I got a pay bump and it was a bit of a challenge to qualify for it. You needed to swim a few more laps and tread water with a 10 pound brick. It definitely feels like an accomplishment when you’re done!

Lessons Learned

I don’t look that great with a dark tan, literally look orange, and that my natural ability to pay attention to details was important. I only had to jump into the water a few times.

They were mostly close calls where if no one had paid attention things would have gotten a lot worse. I knew my next job would need to be indoors so I didn’t sweat out my body weight daily in the Texas sun.

My supervisor treated us all with respect even though we were chaotic teens and 20 year olds. This showed me early on what a good manager was like and I’ve been mostly disappointed since then by other supervisors micro managing and power tripping.

Retail

I love shopping and clothes so it was only a matter of time before I started working at a store in the mall. This was in college so the flexibility to work in the evening and weekends made it easy to make some fun money.

I enjoyed the perks of the employee discount and being able to rock mostly black clothes every day at work. My closet still has a few pieces from this era that somehow survived!

The common pitfalls that anyone who’s worked in retail will know well remain. Overworked, underpaid and stressed out when influxes of people arrive on the weekend and during the holidays.

Another side effect of working retail during the holidays is I started hating Christmas music. I also had no idea people would be stealing clothes constantly or how easily they would freak out if a coupon didn’t work.

Lessons Learned

I learned that I enjoy helping and getting to know people who really need or want help aka not the mean, pushy people or scammers.

I love retail therapy but don’t love working in those stores when it’s pure chaos. Standing on your feet all day isn’t fun and you will eventually want to wear comfy but ugly shoes.

Also that the things management will tell you to do in training that feel kind of weird like following people around is also making customers uncomfortable.

Direct Sales

I’m not a naturally extroverted person so any position where this is the main responsibility isn’t going to be a great fit for me. Even though I knew this in my mind I still tried it out a few times mainly because I wanted a job so badly after I graduated from college I would take anything.

One of these type of jobs I detailed in a post on my first website Kristen Morris Writes. It was direct sales inside Sam’s Club stores and there were too many red flags to count so I left pretty quickly.

That position was bizarre and only lasted 2-3 days. My other foray into sales was a famous makeup MLM.

Lessons Learned

I’m still learning the art of selling now as a service provider and creative entrepreneur but I learned what not to do in these direct sales jobs. Being demanding, bullying people and not taking no for an answer was never going to work for me.

Not trying to sell to everyone with a pulse and being desperate in general doesn’t work great in sales even if that’s what you’re taught and there’s no alternative presented to you.

Tricking people into buying products from you is not a long term or sustainable business model. I suspected this even before I tried doing these jobs.

Lessons Learned From Previous Jobs

No matter where you work there are always lessons to be learned. Usually these past job experiences will help guide you towards a career path you actually enjoy or at least tolerate.

For me I learned that I’m not great with pushy direct sales, I enjoy talking with customers and helping them and occasionally I can save a life or two. Finding your strengths and the jobs that need them makes your career journey easier.

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