Your first job says so much

Saturday, 4 September 2010 - What was your first job? Was it flipping burgers at a McDonalds? Bussing tables in a restaurant? Working the dials at a radio station or working in a hotel gift shop? How long did you keep your first job? Was it longer than a few months? Did you quit the first time they asked you to work on a Saturday night when you could be out with your mates?

There is a distinct possibility that your first job has an impact on the career you are in today. If you turned out to be a good employee and worked your way from bus boy to head waiter - you are still a mover and a shaker. Or, you now own or manage a restaurant, or chain of restaurants. If you started out at a fish farm feeding the fish and pulling out the dead ones, would you be working now as a data specialist? Theres real numbers in fish in, fish out, fish thin, fish stout. Was your first job picking fruit at an orchard? What about the guy who goes around harvesting all the juice out of those tiny little buckets hanging from all the apples at Motts?  He's now a successful TV Infomercial sales guy who's developed a more efficient way of getting the juice out of the apples. Hey, he may have started out small,b ut today, Jack Lalanne is making juice out of carrots, and oranges, and pears, and cabbage.

My first job was as the Chicken Mascot for a radio station. My feathered alias was the LB Bird. I would go from the chicken suit to the control room where I would work as a DJ on the overnight show.  Today, I write a blog that few read, but it gives me an outlet of some version of creativity in the middle of the night. I was a chicken, I am a night hawk now. I once looked in to a paper route, but they expected you to deliver papers in the morning.  There was no way that was going to work for me. I still don't work in the morning.

A paper route was the first job for many of us... and our folks. In reality, the job of paper boy also required collecting the delivery fees from your route each week, and submitting the right amount. You might have helped, but mom or dad did the math, put the money away and drove you to the paper office each week.  The paper route carriers that took this job serious and managed their own money are today the top financial guys at Yahoo, Google, CNN, and Bloomberg.com.  They may not read a paper paper anymore, but they are still very up on the events of the day and the financial implications of every link you follow.

Today is Paper Carrier Day. Though the paper today may have gone mostly digital, but there are still paper carriers delivering the daily news. Of course they don't have quite as much work to do as before.  The papers are smaller, and therefore much lighter, and the money is gathered electronically. There is no muscle required and no math. Todays paper carriers are tomorrow's e-reporters, UPS delivery drivers, FedEx execs, and if they live in India, Purolator call centre employees.