114. First Seven Jobs
Today we’ve got an excerpt of “The Muse of Coyote Ugly Saloon” and a prompt where you can put a new spin on the long-buried lowlights of your résumé.
In the summer of 2016, there was a thread going around Twitter called #firstsevenjobs. Mine went something like this:
Pet sitter
House cleaner
Receptionist
Retail
Double bass teacher
Paralegal
Creative assistant to a “filmmaker”
Thinking back on some of these is pretty entertaining. For my pet sitting business, I made a hand drawn flier that said that I’d sit any pet “from a mouse to a snake” for $10 an hour—though I soon realized that price was too high and discounted it to $10 a day. A few years later, I got my start in retail at a thrift store called Better Than Toast where, instead of legal tender, I got paid in second-hand clothes.
But the job with the “filmmaker” really takes the cake. I was a freshman in college, and some guy hired me to advise on his documentary. He’d just had his heart broken, and he had spent the past year interviewing a bunch of women to try and understand the mysterious inner workings of a woman’s mind. But instead of actually doing interviews, he’d traveled around the country and thrown huge parties. To recount all the shady stuff that happened along the way would take days, but suffice it to say that the film was terrible, he paid me in crisp $100 bills, and a few years later he got arrested in one of the biggest drug busts in the tri-state area. The next time I saw him was at the health food store in my hometown. By then I was in treatment for leukemia, he was wearing a tracking device on his ankle, and he wanted to commiserate about how down we were both on our luck.
The last few days I’ve been gearing up for our Studio Visit on November 8 with one of my all-time favorite writers and the exceptional human Elizabeth Gilbert. While rereading my favorite magazine stories of hers, I came across “The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon,” which was published in GQ back in the late 90s and adapted into the movie Coyote Ugly. Just last month, the bar’s owner announced that they were permanently closing due to covid-19, and the story now reads as a bittersweet tribute to the place and really to a whole era. In it, Lizzie’s genius for storytelling is on full display, as are her wit, her humor, and her deep compassion. Once again I was awed by her range—that not only has she mastered just about every writing genre, from short stories to magazine features to memoirs and novels, but also the art of bartending at one of the diviest dive bars on the Lower East Side. What a woman.
Today we’ve got an excerpt of “The Muse of Coyote Ugly Saloon” and a prompt where you can put a new spin on the long-buried lowlights of your résumé.
Still open to sitting for your pet—but no longer accepting snakes.
Excerpted from “The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon,” by Elizabeth Gilbert
There are so many secrets to getting a man to fall in love with his bartender, and so few of them have to do with mixing good drinks. At the very simplest level, the game goes like this: One afternoon you visit a bar. I am your bartender. You have two bottles of Miller, and you tell me about your upcoming divorce. I sympathize. I tell you a few lawyer jokes (“How do you keep a lawyer from drowning? Take your foot off his head”), and that cheers you up a bit. Three weeks later, you come into the bar again. This time you've brought your drinking buddies. As you enter, I say something like, “Hide your girlfriends—it's Jerry!” Then I say to your friends, “You know this maniac?” I open up a nice, cold bottle of Miller just for you, before you even sit down. Your friends are beginning to think that you are a very notorious individual indeed. You may even be wondering if I've mistaken you for some other Jerry. But you like the attention, so we continue the banter until your friends finally get up to play darts.
Then I lean over the bar, and I say very quietly, very gently, “How'd the court date go, Jer?”
You, Jerry, are now in love with me.
Read the full story here.
Prompt:
Excavate the long-buried lowlights of your résumé and jot down a list of your first seven jobs. Then pick the most surprising, disastrous, or absurd, and spin it into an epic tale.
Linda Gallalee
Location: Rapid City, SD
About: I love thinking about my earliest jobs, mostly fond memories.
Age: 68
My First Seven Jobs, Part Deux
It has occurred to me that my employment history might not be as riveting to the reader as it is to me. I will include three jobs this time.
When I turned 16, my first order of business was to get a real job. It had to be a job I could walk to, since I was one of those freaks who had no interest in getting a driver’s license, and my mom driving me to work was absolutely off the table. The Jewel supermarket, part of a large national chain, was a few blocks away. I got a job in the Chef’s Kitchen (deli department).
In those days the deli selection was maybe seven salads, four cold cuts, and three cheeses. My job was basically to stand behind the counter and take people’s orders, weigh out their food, and pass it across to them. It never ceases to mystify me that now when I approach a deli counter, all the employees seem incredibly busy doing something other than serving customers. I get that they have a lot of responsibilities and presumably want to finish their work and get home sometime, but it just shows how much the landscape has changed.
My uniform was a pink crinkly polyester dress, which I hated. My hair was long and too thick to stay put on top of my head, so I wore it in a ponytail confined by a hairnet, which I also hated.
The Jewel was like a big dating pool. My boss JG was interested in dating my good friend who cashiered; although she was quite mature, she had to be at least 5 years younger than him. The Stock Manager JL spent many hours visiting my coworker P in the Chef’s Kitchen back room. They were both married to other people. I am not saying any funny business occurred on the premises. Mostly they just whispered and made cow eyes at each other. I could understand why P was such a hot ticket. She had a bouffant hairdo, cat eyeglasses, much makeup, and a kind of braying voice - exactly what a 30-something guy with a wife and a couple of kids was looking for. I will say that the Jewel did not have their most productive employee in JL.
Most importantly, I met my high school boyfriend L in the Chef’s Kitchen and we ended up dating for 2-1/2 years. L was quite tall, attractive enough, and very gregarious. It was love at first sight on my part. I lived for those evenings when it was just the two of us working in Chef’s Kitchen. He was so darn nice that he would walk me home even though it was out of his way.
Those first few months working there were idyllic. Eventually JG & L - two of the nicest guys in the whole store - moved to the Service Desk. My new boss was Joe, recently retired from the Navy. Didn’t have much use for women. Had his own way of doing things and wasn’t interested in feedback. Didn’t talk much unless it was to criticize or correct. My life became a misery. If I asked him for a day off, he would invariably put me on the schedule for that day. If I politely reminded him that I needed the day off, he would just smirk. I lasted about two months under Joe’s tenure, then I did the most cowardly thing ever. My last night of work before I was scheduled to go on vacation, I left a note for Joe that I wasn’t coming back. He was justifiably furious. When I returned from vacation and applied at the other supermarket chain store within walking distance, Joe made sure they didn’t hire me.
I would say Joe haunts my dreams, but only since he appeared in a dream I had last night. He worked at a seafood restaurant that was attached to a large fish market. He seemed to want me to forgive him. That is surprising since I feel like I should be the one to apologize. I really really doubt he would ask me to forgive him for acting like a jerk. Thinking back on the job, I wish I had tried harder to win him over. I think maybe I was just bummed because JG was such a good boss. Maybe Joe wasn’t that bad, I just wasn’t really on his radar. Truth be told, I don’t remember him very well. I do feel like quitting via note was a classic shitty move. It’s natural to shy away from those difficult conversations, but they are the ones you remember forever.
My next stop was Burger King. At 17 I was the oldest employee on the night shift. The assistant manager was 14 years old. The store manager was Larry. He was a nice enough guy. He gave everyone a nickname. Mine was Gus. One time when I was cleaning up and it was just him and me, he said, “You do good work, Gus,” and then he looked incredibly sad. I don’t suppose managing a Burger King was his dream job
One of my coworkers, E, was pregnant. She was maybe 16, maybe not quite. The smell of food made her nauseous so she got to work the cash register which was the best job in the house. When there were no customers she would write out the lyrics to Beatles songs. She didn’t have to clean anything because she was pregnant.
My senior year in high school as the holidays approached, I got a lead on one of my favorite jobs ever: assembling party trays for the Chef’s Kitchen. I don’t remember if Joe was gone by then. In any event, my ignoble history did not prevent me from getting this highly desirable job. Most of the year, party trays were assembled in the back room of the Chef’s Kitchen as workload allowed. But during the holidays there was not enough room or staff in the store to complete all the orders. We occupied a Dairy Queen that was closed for the season. It had no heat and minimal insulation. We made do with a few space heaters. I guess it seems weird to be excited about a job that involved being on my feet for eight hours at a stretch and having to wear my coat inside. Maybe it was the fact that I didn’t have to deal with the public; I always was an introvert. Maybe it was the pride I took in making beautiful party trays and thinking about happy gatherings and the people they would feed. I did enjoy curling the cold cuts into S shapes, then piling them up into triangles and separating the triangles with parsley and olive rows. It was good money, I remember that. Also the girls I worked with were older than me and they were very nice to me. I was anxious to get away from home and I loved listening to them talk about their grownup lives. One evening, after a long day making party trays, I called in sick for my evening shift at BK and I never returned. Very shortsighted of me, I know. Eventually the holidays came and went, and so did my job making party trays.
The Jewel, the BK, and the DQ where we made party trays were all within a couple hundred feet of each other. I knew eventually I was going to have to expand my vocational horizons, literally and figuratively.