career

First Job – Gary Palgon

/ Robert Pease / 1 Comment

Another great first job story today this time from friend and former co-worker Gary Palgon from Atlanta.  Gary and I worked together on a couple ventures while I lived in Atlanta including nuBridges where he is currently Vice President of Product Management.  I love receiving these stories so please keep sending them to me and I'll keep posting them here.  Read my first job story.

From Gary:

My First Job

If you ask my mother what my first job was, she’ll tell you it was to make my bed every day before school in exchange for my weekly allowance.  But let’s be real, I don’t really count that job and I never did a very good job at making my bed.  My reasoning, of course, was why make it if I’m just going to climb back in it at the end of the day! To be perfectly honest, I still don’t do a very good job at it though I do at least try since it makes my wife happy!

Lendl

First Real Paycheck

My first real paycheck came in 1977 from the City of Miami Beach, Florida for working at the Junior Orange Bowl Tennis Tournament.  While I was only 10 years old, I had to wear many hats.  My job consisted of (1) picking up trash around the bleachers, (2) cleaning the lines on the clay tennis courts before a match and (3) working at the tennis counter storing and retrieving tennis bags for the tennis players.

None of it was very exciting since I had not interest in tennis at the time, but looking back at it many years later, I came to realize I was actually interacting with the future stars of the tennis world.  The winners of the tournament in 1977 were Ivan Lendl and Anne Smith.  Other famous-to-be players whose bags I stored and whose spectators’ trash I picked up included Yannick Noah and Andrea Jaegar from what I remember.  According to their 60th anniversary story, “The 1977 final developed into one of the most dramatic in Orange Bowl history as Lendl, two points from losing in the second set, outlasted Noah 3-6, 7-6, 6-3”.  What I difference I must have made in making it a memorable year!

Second “First Job”

While I’m quite sure I was offered the job again the following year, I found other things to keep me busy.  It wasn’t until my first summer during college that I returned to my hometown in Miami and started my second “first job”, this time working behind the counter in a sub shop, Subs $1.29.  This job I remember a bit more clearly given I was 19 years old. Personally I think I did a pretty good job of being helpful to the customers, making their sandwiches on-demand after spending several hours before the store opened to prepare the goods.

I learned a lot about how many businesses operate, though they are not necessarily how business should be conducted.  First, there were only four subs on the menu for $1.29 and a plain cheese sub was one of them – my first exposure to marketing! While the owner had all these fancy tins of olive oil displayed, I remember being asked to fill the fancy bottles we used on the sandwiches with Mazola oil in the back – while not necessarily bad, this was another example of deceptive advertising in my opinion.  And then there was the canisters of Coke syrup which were delivered in a non-descript truck out back for pennies on the dollar – obviously shorted from the distribution center so someone else along the way could earn some extra cash on the side.

Jobs from that point forward

It was not long after that I decided to take control of my career path for the remainder of college and picked up some computer programming jobs and later assisted a small company in selling software to small businesses.

Lots to learn from my first jobs. And no more picking up trash or deceptive retail advertising for me with my “second jobs”!

Thanks Gary!

Do you have a first job story?  Email me and I'll post it.

First Job – Fraser Suyetsugu

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

Fraser

Here's another first job story from a friend here in Seattle - Fraser Suyetsugu. Fraser is a great guy and Salesforce.com master who has helped me many times with questions related to it and customer relationship management (CRM) as a whole.  You can also follow him on Twitter @Frasuy and be sure to check out all the First Job posts.

From Fraser:

1st job – was a paper route carrier starting at the age of 13 I believe. Peddled the (defunct) Journal American and Seattle Times through the Lake Hills and Chevy Chase neighborhoods by 6:30 am. The other half of that job was a ‘collection agency’. Back then you had to chase down your customers and collect their money or you didn’t get paid. Did that job for almost 4 years I believe. Shoot, if they had a 401k I could plan my retirement a couple of years earlier.

2nd job – courtesy clerk and stock boy at the (defunct) Overlake Market which is now a Goodwill center in the Overlake area. Great job since it was customer facing and I was making bank ~$6.00/hr. Who-hooo!  I remember learning about unions because I was mad that some of my paycheck was siphoned off to pay member dues. I am pretty sure that was my first “real” job since you had to be 16, had to fill out an application and interview. It was the big time!

There are many others along the way but those are the two that ordained me to the working/responsibility world.

Great stories and the second one about a newspaper route.  My guess is that you won't hear too many of those in the future given the changes to news delivery and consumption.

If you have a first job story you'd like to share, send it to me and I'll post it here. Be sure to read about my first job too.

First Job – Dave Fauth

/ Robert Pease / Leave a comment

I continue to get great stories about first jobs and wanted to share another today. I met Dave Fauth through my work at Gist and we've gotten together on my travels through Washington, DC and a couple of events including the most recent Defrag conference in Denver.

I always enjoy our discussions and he shared the following two jobs with me:

The first job I had was working on our farm growing up. We never got paid for it but we always had to show up. It didn't matter whether it was raining, snowing, cold or hot, you had to show up and work. Some days you would be working until 10 or 11 at night but the job had to get done. Once the job was done, we had time to play baseball or go over to our neighbors to play wiffle ball. I remember my dad saying that if you want to get off of the farm, you need to study and do well in school.
Lessons learned:
  • Work is hard. 
  • Show up.
  • The job needs to be done before you can go off and enjoy what you want to do.
My first paying job was as a cadet at the US Merchant Marine Academy. We went out to sea on US merchant vessels for about five months during my sophomore and my junior year at school. We were paid $480 a month or as we liked to say, $16 a day, $2 an hour. I worked alongside the regular engineers and when there was work to be done, we worked some long days and nights. I remember joking that when we were working over 16 hour days, we were getting paid less than a dollar an hour. There was a ton to learn and it was a lot of fun. Since we worked hard and since we didn't have a lot of money, the officers that we worked for took care of us in port. We didn't have to pay when we all went out to eat or drink. They knew we had put in the effort and that we didn't have the money that they did. (Dave is on the right)

Dave_Fauth
 Lessons learned:
  • You don't know everything. While some of the work was mundane and it seemed like anyone could do it, there were a lot of things that I needed to learn. Listen, watch, and do and you will learn a lot, especially from those that have spent a lifetime doing whatever work you are interested in.
  • Take care of those that are working for you. Get to know them. Be generous when you can be. 

Awesome stuff!  Thanks Dave!

Want to share your first job?  Email me and I'll post it here.  Also be sure to read about my first job here.

First Job

/ Robert Pease / 2 Comments

  RCP_LP_van

What was your first job?  The first thing you ever got paid for when you were a teenager?  You probably haven't thought about it in a long time so take a moment and think back to the first time someone paid you for doing something.  Cutting grass, flipping burgers, babysitting, or the like?

The truth is we all had a first job at some point in our lives and that first job is a critical piece to what makes us tick.  How?  The lessons learned, experiences gained, and ability to apply what on the surface seem like unrelated experiences is unmistakeably telling about someone as you evaluate them for a job, promotion, vote, award, etc.

One of my long time favorite intervew questions is to ask this.  It takes the interview beyond a resume and business environment (in my case) and puts it into an unexpected place for the person being interviewed.  I am no longer asking about the amazing accomplishments they are representing, I am now asking about something from their youth that they were unprepared to discuss and probably hadn't thought about for a very, very long time.  Thus, you get to the real person.

I have heard stories about everything from fast food and lifeguarding to detasseling corn and working in a funeral home.

The answer of what is not as important as the second part of the question – what did you learn from that experience that you apply every day today?

I have seen people completely freeze on this question which shows a lack of critical thinking and creativity.  I have heard some arrogant and unfortunate things like how stupid co-workers were or how demeaning the work was as well.

The ones I like the most hit on work ethic, accountability, and learning.  Those are the people I want on my side.

My first job?  I did some grass cutting in the neighborhood but what sticks out is the time working for Leggett & Platt in their Georgia operations.  My Dad led a business unit and my brother and I worked summers doing a variety of odd jobs around a textile mill and operations (also one Christmas break when I needed new tires for my car).  I worked with some amazing, hard working, and genuinely decent people.  Some were brilliant and others couldn't read but were brilliant in their ability to fix just about anything.

Unlike many of my peers at this stage of my life, I have worked on a shipping dock, driven a fork lift, cleaned up untold amounts of garbage, textile debris, hydraulic oil and other identified things.  This doesn't make be better than anyone, just different.  I understand distribution because I have gotten dirty doing it – not just writing it on a Powerpoint slide or saying it.

The pictures here are of me when I was 18 or 19 and had responsibility for making deliveries of industrial wiping products – rags.  Big and durable ones.  The kind that are used to clean wheel axles or drill bits or just about anything else.  I delivered 25 and 50 pound boxes just about everywhere.  I got lost a lot and had my fair share of harrowing experiences jockeying for a slot at a receiving dock with trucks much, much larger than me.  This was a major step up in responsibility and type of work after many summers in the shop and on the floor…and when there were no deliveries to be made I was right back there.  As you can imagine, I was always working hard to make sure there were deliveries…

RCP_LP_vanfull

What was your first job and what did you learn that you apply everday?  Share it with me and I'll post it here.