What in the world have you done?!

[Strangler Lewis]

Yogurt slinger.
Dinner theatre stagehand.
Costumed character (car dealerships, charity events) for trademark infringing events company.
Construction at theatre.
Campus work study jobs.
Temp-warehouse
Temp-office
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Extra in "Howard the Duck"
Proofreader of Yellow Pages ads
Temp
Secretary and copywriter at LA Marathon
Temp
Waiter at Beverly Hills Hamburger Hamlet
Copywriter at Music-and-messages-on-hold company.
Lawyer

Plus, various part time labor jobs here and there. The worst was breaking down a circus. Backbreaking work, and if you left early you wouldn't get paid.

[ozron]

Let's start at the zoo...
-Food service lead worker
-Retail spervisor
-Admissions cashier
-Receptionist
-Zoomer driver
-Railroad Stationmaster
-Thrill ride operator
-Lorikeet host
-Concert VIP Coordinator

Elsewhere...
-Record store assistant manager
-Limo driver
-Free-lance writer
-Music editor
-Title insurance researcher

Onstage...
-Opera chorister for eighteen years. I portayed a wide array of characters, from soldiers, courtiers, clergymen, servants, and peasants both happy and downtrodden.
-Actor. Among others I've been the keeper of an asylum, a famous riverboat performer, a mad sea captain, the ghost of Prince Albert, an Argentinian tango singer, a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, the King of England, a vampiric Count of Transylvania, and a British dialectitian.
-I've been a guest soloist with a few choirs and orchestras.

Oh yeah...once upon a time I was a music teacher.

ron

[Motorboat Cruiser]

Shipping/receiving at a billiards warehouse.
Newspaper delivery (two days)
Studio musician and producer
Soundtrack composer for corporate videos
Telemarketer
computer chip programmer
Web designer
Quality tester for phone systems
ISO 9000 auditor
Quality Manager (yes, there is a theme here)
Owner of business that programs integrated circuits
gigging musician
Freelance writer and editor

[Kevy Baby]

I'll skip the boring ones (which is, well, most of them in my case)

Petroleum Transfer Engineer
Mobile DJ
Radio DJ and Manager (college radio - don't be impressed)
Nightclub DJ

[Ghoulish Delight]

I think the only odd one worth noting that I've had is data entry at a pap processing lab.

[SacTown Chronic]

The worst job I ever had was pumping out toilet holding tanks on rental houseboats. The first day the boss handed me a pair of pliers but wouldn't tell me anything beyond "you'll see" when I asked what they were for.

Ladies, when the sign says no sanitary napkins in the toilet....there's a damn good reason. I want to throw up just thinking about it.

[Stan4dSteph]

I have been paid to be:

- Summer intern at a civil engineering firm
- Summer intern at a manufacturing facility that made boxes for film
- Food service worker at college (known as a "Hasher")
- Research assistant on indoor air quality (grad school)
- Tutor at Score! learning center
- Environmental engineer

[Snowflake]

Lawn Mower Slave - ages 8-16
Paper Route - ages 8-12 (thanks Mom, she worked for the Mercury News and helped me get the job, first girl in the neighborhood)
Babysitter Service - ages 9-14
McD's Company Store (very restricted, but good people)
McD's Franchise in a mall (more freedom, but a lousy boss)
Maxell - making blank cassettte tapes (noisy and miserable job and it's a surprise to me how many blank cassettes actually worked after seeing how poorly they were made) 2 months (never on any resume)
Macy's Sales Assistant 1.5 years
Safeway - Courtesy Clerk then store bookeeper 5 years
Tower Records (which overlapped with Safeway for a few years until I moved to SF) 10 years total (most fun job I ever had, was classical and later fine tuned to opera buyer, opened a couple of stores and always thought the yearly inventory counting sessions to be a archaic but weirdly fun episode, especially when the counts in some rows were wildly off and the management began to really stress)
IP Law - Foreign Department Secretary was the start, where I began to learn my trade that is now a 20 year career that varied from foreign-based trademark paralegal, client practice liason and legal secretary in patent prosecution. 20 years! I thank every day my first boss, a crazy Swiss/Italian lady who was the head of the Foreign Dept. and fought to hire me, the person with absolutely no experience. By doing so, she gave me an opportunity to work at a job where I can plant my butt in any city in the US and get a job, and a decent paying one at that.

The only stuff on my resume now is the last 10 years of my career in IP law.

Okay, WB, tell us some stories!

[Prudence]

Library page
Dessert counter/espresso slave
Counter wench at Mrs. Fields, the company whose cookies I will never eat again.
Dishwasher for one day, possibly the longest in my life.
School photo assistant (best revenge ever! Oh, your student ID card photo isn't cute enough? Tough.)
"Off-campus library assistant" (In the dark ages, before most universities developed significant e-journal collections - people getting degrees at off-site locations (mostly teachers getting their required masters degrees) would fax in requests for journal articles and I would fax copies to the extension program office for them to pick up, order their ILLs, mail books to them, etc...)
Plastic widget assembler/job coach for the developmentally disabled (at a plant where they had jobs appropriate to their skills, and the rest of us filled in the other jobs as needed and helped out the "special employees", as we were supposed to call them.)
Receptionist in some kind of annoying business that now I can't even remember what it was.
Data entry for a mental health HMO office that managed the local Medicaid money.
Secretary senior/Administrative assistant/Assistant to the Chair at the nursing school.
Budget flunky (current)
LSAT tutor (also current)
Perpetual student (also also current)

Nothing particularly exciting.

[Kevy Baby]

Originally Posted by Prudence

Plastic widget assembler/job coach for the developmentally disabled (at a plant where they had jobs appropriate to their skills, and the rest of us filled in the other jobs as needed and helped out the "special employees", as we were supposed to call them.)

You should swap stories with Susan. She also was a job coach. One of her former charges still calls her once in a while.