10 Life Lessons I Have Learned from Good, Bad and Ugly Jobs

Working is a part of life. Before fifty, most Americans will have worked between ten and fifteen different jobs. Inevitably, we're going to have jobs we loved, jobs that challenged us, and jobs we absolutely despised.

I'm twenty-two years old, and I've had ten different jobs in my life. Most were good, a few were bad, and even fewer were ugly. Through these ten jobs, I'd like to talk about ten life lessons (both big and small) that I learned from them, and how they shaped my career goals and who I am as a person.

10. How to build up others through respect.

My first position ever was as a cashier at my local Rite Aid. I loved this job, and I still remember crying in the toothpaste aisle as I told my boss I was quitting once I left for college. Even now, I still go back to this Rite Aid and visit my old managers who taught me what it meant to treat others with respect.

I was only seventeen when I began training new hires. Despite being a fairly new hire myself, my general manager saw my potential to both lead and teach with confidence. I loved this new responsibility, and I loved the fact that my general manager trusted me with this task. I truly felt valued, even though I was just a kid working after school hours. I even was awarded the RAPTAR award, which is a store award for an employee who embodies the company's standards.

I was rewarded for my hard work, and because of this, I have carried this same work ethic with me my entire life.

9. What business casual actually means

My second job was working as a secretary for a local accounting office. A family friend had asked if I was interested in helping them with filing, shredding, and basic inputting, so I easily said yes and entered my first job that did not have a set uniform. On my first day, I was told that the office was "business casual."

At eighteen, I learned the hard way that I had no idea what business casual meant.

At first, I had dressed more formally than the others in the office, often wearing dresses and dress shoes. It didn't take long for me to realize that my coworkers were much more casual than me, often wearing short-sleeved shirts and shorts. What I failed to recognize was the difference between summer attire and summer work attire.

One day, I showed up to work wearing a Champlain College t-shirt, athletic shorts, and running sneakers. When my boss walked in and asked what I was wearing, I could have sworn my heart stopped entirely. When she sent me home to change into something more appropriate, I approached my dad in his office with my tail between my legs and finally asked, "What is business casual?"

He told me. I changed. Life moved on, despite my morbid embarrassment. We learn the most from our mistakes and failures, and I have certainly never forgotten what business casual means.

8. Sometimes, things are out of your control.

I began working as a waitress when I was nineteen. This was my first summer job after being away at college, and, having quit Rite Aid last summer, it was time for a new job.

I was recommended to the restaurant through a mutual connection, and I found I loved waitressing more than I had loved any role before. For the first time, time flew by as I worked. I loved feeling so independent as I managed my own tables, fulfilling their needs and being tipped in accordance with my service. I had always been a people pleaser, and finally I had a job where I truly was pleasing the people I served and being compensated for it.

At the end of the summer, I said my goodbyes. My manager asked if I would like to work any school breaks, and I told her yes to Christmas, but no to Thanksgiving, as I was going to be spending my Thanksgiving break in Spain and Portugal. She wished me safe travels, and off to school I went.

Two weeks before Christmas break, I texted my manager and told her I would be home soon and would be happy to pick up some hours. To my surprise, she told me she had quit, and now a different manager was making the schedule. I then proceeded to reach out to this manager, who took a few days to get back to me. Even more to my surprise, in those few days between being told to reach out to him then not receiving a response, he had been fired. Now, a third manager had taken on the role of making the schedule. I reached out to her, asking for hours. She told me she would try to fit me in.

When I didn't hear back about being on the schedule the first week I was home, I called the restaurant to see if I had hours. Thus began the game of me calling to see if I was on the schedule each week only to be told I was not. This was a frustrating situation for me, as the original manager I had had from the summer had promised me Christmas break hours.

My new manager had had enough of my calls and told me to come into the restaurant to talk to her. I came in, already knowing in my gut that this was the end of my job. My manager told me I would not be receiving hours now or even possibly next summer, as I had shown I was not dedicated to the job because I had not worked during Thanksgiving break.

I explained to her how I had been traveling, but the damage was done. I was hurt, and I felt truly disrespected. Despite loving the job, I knew there was no going back from this point. In any job, communication is key. Looking back, I don't know what my nineteen year old self should have known in order to prevent this, other than the fact that sometimes you can't control every situation or miscommunication.

7. How to use past skills in new roles.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a writer. As a kid, I was always intrigued by sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation. As I grew older, I developed a love of proof reading, as it allowed me to test my own grammatical skills.

I started my sophomore year with a new leadership title: Peer Adviser. This on campus position had three main responsibilities: making sure my adivsees completed certain college career requirements, giving presentations on how to be professional (which, ironically enough, included what business casual meant), and correcting resume submissions.

The part I excelled at most was correcting resume submissions, which did not go unnoticed. I had an eye for spotting the smallest grammatical mistakes, which resulted in me being given the harder resumes to correct. When I had first started the job, I did not put much thought into whether I would enjoy correcting resumes or not. In the end, I learned that my love and experience with grammar could be brought into workplaces in ways I thought had never initially expected.

6. Sometimes, the best way to learn the job is on the job.

In my second semester of my sophomore year, I became a Resident Assistant. As a mid-semester hire, I was entering a community that had already formed its own connections and norms. I was the outsider, yet I still had to be an authority figure in the hall.

RA training was a blur. For a few short days, all kinds of policies, procedures, and protocols were thrown at me. In what felt like seconds later, it was the first day of the semester, and I was felt completely lost.

Thankfully, the hall welcomed me with open arms. My own personal interests and hobbies aligned with many of theirs, which made for easy bonding moments. However, there was still so much I had questions on. How do I handle a roommate conflict? What do I do if I smell marijuana? How do I approach someone who is breaking quiet hours?

Certainly, these things were taught to me during RA training week. But RA training week is like throwing spaghetti at the wall and just hoping some of it sticks. The real training is the job itself, which often throws so many curve balls that it is impossible to 100% ready for every situation. In the end, I followed my gut and tried my best to be (what I thought was) a good RA. And in the end, I think I did a pretty good job. At least, good enough to still be doing it two years later.

5. You don't need to have a title to make positive changes.

I returned home from my sophomore year of college and began working at a local sub shop. I was desperate to save up some money, so I ended up spending almost every hour of my summer working here.

It did not take long for me to realize that this shop had some serious customer service issues. My coworkers openly swore in front of customers, and, to my shock, sometimes at them. No matter how busy we were, everyone still worked painstakingly slow. Food was constantly being cooked incorrectly yet still being served. My coworkers openly complained about customers within earshot.

I knew something had to change.

Despite being the newest member, I was determined to learn as many food stations as possible so as to be able to help pick up the pace should we ever get busy. I created a closing schedule so that no one could complain of having no work to do at night. If food was made incorrectly, I'd send it back and tell them to redo it. I was determined to provide quality service to our customers, so I put in a new effort towards greeting them as they walked in, making conversation as they ordered, and asking them how their meals were. When people began swearing or complaining about customers, I'd ask them to go out back. Slowly, the mindset at work began to change.

At first, I had to grow comfortable with the idea that my title does not limit my ability to create positive change. I kept telling myself, "If this is how I'm going to spend the entire summer, then I might as well make it enjoyable." The changes were slow at first, but as the summer progressed, so did my confidence. In the end, I left the job understanding that one positive attitude can have the ability to make drastic changes.

4. You can't please everyone.

I began working once a week as a receptionist at a different accounting office at the same time I was working at the sub shop. My roles were simple: file paperwork, answer the phone, greet customers, and book appointments.

One day, a client walked in to drop off some paperwork. He was a regular, but being new, I had never seen him before. With him, he carried a custom corporate stamp, and he was trying to figure out how to put it together. He asked me to try it out, but, like him, I could not figure out the contraption. After handing it back to him, I looked up on my computer how to assemble the stamp.

I found a video, so I turned the computer screen towards him to show him what I found. The reaction I received from him was not one I was expecting:

"You're what's wrong with this generation. You kids never learned to use your brains because you think the internet has all the answers. Your heads are all just filled with air. If computers ever stop working, your generation is doomed."

I remember being so dumbfounded that I just sat there with my best customer service smile plastered on my face. I remember thinking over and over, "I can't believe that just happened." One of my coworkers heard the exchange and immediately ran out of her office to take over the conversation.

Angry customers are a part of life. In this moment, I truly learned what it means to grin and bear it.

3. Internships help you learn what you do and don't like.

When I was abroad in Ireland, I was lucky enough to earn at internship with an international company. At the time, I was really interested in marketing through social media platforms. Because of this, my internship had me managing various social channels while writing blog posts for the website. At first, I thought this was a dream come true.

It did not take me long to realize that my interest in social media did not extend past my own personal use.

As I continued to work, I became more confident that in my future career, this was something I knew I did not want to do. Although it was a fine job for a semester, I could not see myself doing this long term. However, what really piqued my interests during my internship were the brief flashes of Google Ads and Google Analytics that would occasionally be brought up by my direct supervisor. Because of this, when I returned to America for my senior year, I chose to enroll in a class specifically teaching Google Analytics. That class changed my life, as digital analytics is now a field I know I want to work in.

I never would have learned what types of marketing I wanted to do had I never had this internship. Most likely, had this never happened, I'd still be thinking that social media was my future career path. Internships are a great way to test the waters of your field, and I am eternally grateful that I was able to learn what career paths were and were not for me through this opportunity.

2. Own your miscommunications.

While in Ireland, I also worked as a Resident Assistant. Weekend getaways while living in Europe were expected, so for my last weekend abroad, I decided to book a trip to Scotland.

Having been friends with those who had had the same role before me, I was told that if you wanted to go away for a weekend, you just had to give your supervisor advance notice of two weeks so that they could cover that weekend's nighttime duty. So when I saw the sale on flights to Scotland, I booked the trip and then proceeded to let my supervisor know I was leaving, assuming he would cover.

What I did not know was that the policy regarding my supervisor covering duty nights had changed at some point in the semester. Now, my supervisor was not allowed to cover duty nights--only RAs could. In addition, I learned that all other RAs had booked trips to travel this weekend as well.

I was certainly in a pickle. I had taken on the "better to ask for forgiveness" mentality, and it immediately backfired. In the end, I learned the hard way that I should have been upfront about my plans before investing in a nonrefundable flight. I was fully prepared to accept the loss and let my plane seat be fly empty as I stayed home to work my duty shift. The mistake was my own, and I am lucky my supervisor changed his schedule so that I could, in fact, go to Scotland. Through this situation, I learned that clear communication is always better than relying on assumptions.

1. Your passion can become a career

After returning from abroad, I was left with a desire for the experience of traveling to never end. Because of this, I applied for a job at my school's study abroad office, where I became a Study Abroad Ambassador.

Through this job, I got to meet amazing people who loved traveling so much that they made careers out of it. Through these people I began to realize that perhaps I could do this too. I began tabling and discussing with future study abroad students about why they should go. I gave presentations on culture shock and how to apply for third party programs. I began to realize that passion drives careers, and these people I was working with had found success because of this passion.

Now, I hope to continue pursuing this passion in combination with my marketing degree.

We all have work stories that impacted our lives, so I would love to hear about the lessons you have learned through previous jobs and experiences. Feel free to share them below and start the discussion!