What was your favorite or worst job before starting your business? 🔥

[isabelle]

Heyyy Seller Community! ⚡️

Today we're wondering...

What was your favorite or worst job before starting your own business? 🔥 

I know mine 🤫 

Can't wait to read your replies! 👀 

[Thevioletfox]

I cleaned motel rooms during high school.  It was ... beyond words.

[Tom]

@Thevioletfox during high school I worked at my father's home remodeling business. Sometimes the project involved a property/estate that had not been maintained/cleaned for... decades? Being the youngest one on the site, I always got the shortest straw when it came to gutting out the house. I can imagine we've seen similar things. 😵‍💫

[Thevioletfox]

and now we're made of iron LOL 

[Doran]

I live in Monterey/Pebble Beach/Carmel and my first job was the beer cart girl. BEST JOB EVER!  I wasn't even 21 yet but mixing drinks for celebrities and just fun groups was a blast. 

Then I switched to working inside for the accounting department and HATED it.  Even though my office looked out over Spanish Bay and the free food was incredible the job was awful. 

Opened my esthetics business less than a year later.  The accounting skills were helpful but no desire to ever go back. 

[isabelle]

What celebs did you meet @Doran ?! Sounds amazing! 🍻 

[Doran]

@isabelle  3 different Presidents and 1 Vice President.  Every major golfer and Tiger Woods in his prime.  Tom Brady, Justin Timberlake, George Lopez, Bill Murray (many times), Alfonso Ribeiro ( and yes he did the Carlton for us-- nicest guy ever), Larry The Cable Guy, John Madden and so many more I can't remember them all.  

[keicollective]

meeting Bill Murray just out and about is on my dream day bucket list. you're so lucky!! 

[Doran]

He comes to Pebble Beach for the AT&T ProAm every year in February.  Everyone who grew up here has a Bill Murray story.  He is so nice and funny and he always spotlights a local business or two.  This year he went whale watching with the local news.  That tour company was all over social and traditional media for a week. 

[Ironcitycustoms]

Did you know a Mike Andre at Pebble Beach when you worked in Accounting?

[keicollective]

does a dream job with a nightmare boss count?? 

I was a product manager for one of the largest SaaS Ed-Tech companies in the states. I loved my co-workers (still see some of them weekly!) and I loved the work -- helping guide what the product would be and being able to work with just about every other department within the company to make it happen. BUT my boss was a nightmare. Not sure if it was me being a woman or being autistic, but the man would hold up his hands and SHUSH me in meetings about MY PRODUCT. I was always so confused to say the least. 
I left corporate life and never looked back. Couldn't be happier! Small business life is stressful, but it's like a good stress 

[MudFire_D]

It is good stress right??? I haven't always had the best boundaries running my own business which leads to saying yes too much and being overworked sometimes, but it is nothing compared to working for someone terrible.

[MudFire_D]

I don't know if it is a best or worst but perhaps the most fun college job - I was a paid student note-taker in college and made $$$ in 30 minutes of typing notes after class that I attended anyway. I made as much as friends working full-time for a few semesters of core classes with a lot of students then it dried up once classes were smaller. At one point I was selling 600 packets of notes in a biology class a week. This was the 90s so they were sold on red copy paper that no one could copy because scanners/cell phones/apps of any sort with a camera weren't a thing so anyone who wanted them actually had to buy them. I once saw my professor leading an exam review using my notes instead of his own because I augmented them with graphs/images after class. 😂

[keicollective]

did you say anything to the professor?? that's amazing 😂 

[MudFire_D]

No - I kept it pretty low-key I didn't want anyone to know it was me. The notes were all sold through a store front adjacent to campus and each semester you'd just take your schedule in and they would pick classes to buy based on the popularity of your notes. It was a great racket, and probably one that has disappeared with everyone having a pocket computer at the ready to record.

[isabelle]

Legendary scribe @MudFire_D !!!! 

[JUYBoutique20]

The professor must have thought you were right on with the notes to not do it himself or maybe just lazy...Probably both 😂

[ryanwanner]

Hey @isabelle !

I've got a doozy for ya. Right after college I had this misguided thought process that I should work in the computer biz. I graduated with a CIS degree in '99, and since we were in the heart of the dot com era the only place an associates degree got me was tech support.

I got hired on to Gateway Computers and began to tech away. Here's where it gets interesting...

I was on the tech support floor when Ted Waitt (the founding CEO) decided to step aside. At the time, the company was highly praised for its great computers and above-and-beyond tech support. Everyone wanted that cow spot box to show up at their door! We would have contests to see how many "format reloads" we could have going simultaneously with callbacks to make sure everything went well.

Jeff Weitzen took over, promptly moved the company HQ to San Diego, and instituted the dreaded "scope of support" line. We went from doing whatever we could to help to doing whatever we could to get those poor saps off the phone as fast as possible. "Oh, I'm sorry: your question is outside the scope of support for free support. I can connect you to our pay support number: it'll only cost you 99¢/minute!" At the same time the quality of the computers took a downhill plunge: we actually shipped computers that would crash on the Win 98/Win Me (UGH) load screens simply because the windows drivers were looking for components on the motherboard that weren't even installed to save money--and nobody bothered to tell the developers so there was no solution at all.

I was on the front lines as support: 35 calls per hour was our goal. 34 of 35 calls were people screaming at us about the change in support standards and the woefully inadequate computers being shipped. After a few weeks of this I had to start showing up to work 30 minutes early just so I could build up enough courage to go in and get screamed at for an 8 hour shift. I left a few weeks after that to get back into the "safe" restaurant biz.

Gateway had a spectacular implosion in the span of three months, and the company ended up being sold off as parts.

[isabelle]

O M G @ryanwanner ! So many memories just game back of our desktop "family" gateway computer.

Your experience reminds me of when I worked at this loan/tech company post-college. It was chaos, and so many high interest rates and unhappy folks... 😔 

Anyway, I'm so glad you got out of there! My goodness! 

Their story kinda reminds me of the Atari demise... 🤔 😬 

[keicollective]

PHEW! that one is a doozy! I do NOT miss working corporate support - much prefer helping my current customers when I'm the owner and can help them as much as I want. 

I think everyone should have to work customer support at some point in their life though. A lot of callers haven't been on the other end of the line and it shows 😩

[ryanwanner]

100 percent agree with you @keicollective