Contender for the World Record!

At some point last week I am pretty sure I broke my all time record for continuous employment by a single employer.

The sad part? I've been here three years. The sadder part? I am fifty fucking years old.

Before this, the longest job I held was my second civil service job, which I left three months shy of three years. As any good civil servant knows, at three years you achieve Career status, which makes it possible to actually get another civil service job in the future. No career status? Good luck, sucker. That was probably the stupidest career decision I ever made, meaning I fucked myself at the ripe old age of 27 years old.

I suppose the only longer period of time was the five years when I was 'self-employed', but I'm not sure that counts since I wasn't really earning anything. And even then, in those five years I started three businesses and toyed around with a couple more. The good news is that I didn't have to wear grownup clothes for five years straight.

But enough hindsight already. In honor of this most humiliating of milestones, I will attempt to list every single job I've ever had, without access to the moldering box of resumes in the basement.

Here we go!

1970s
Indiana
- Dairy Queen: whatever
- An infamous portrait studio: phone sales
- Retail: cosmetics/jewelry sales
- Pizza place: waitress
Wisconsin
- Chain restaurant: waitress
- Machine shop: assembler
- Bank: teller
- Savings & Loan: mortgage clerk (only job I was ever fired from)

1980s
- Credit Union A: teller
Connecticut
- Credit Union B: new accounts
- Military exchange: cash cage
- Civil service (USN): clerk/typist
- Civil Service (USCG): clerk/typist
- Weekly ad newspaper: ad layout (part-time, concurrent w/above)
- Oceanographic surveying company: data processor

1990s
- Full-time student (concurrent w/below)
- Contractor A (USCG): programmer
Maine
- Furniture refinisher
- Yarn store: sales
- Contractor B (USN): programmer/analyst
Connecticut
- Contractor C (USCG): programmer/analyst
Washington State
- Temp agency: QA web tester (@ Microsoft!)
- Website design company: QA web tester

2000s
- Software company A: programmer
- Self-employed: handmade soap, knitting catalog, soapmaking supplies, web design/hosting
- Bakery: production
- Grocery store A: cake decorator
- Grocery store B: cake decorator
- Software company B: software tech support

I may be missing a few (god, I certainly hope not!) but I think that's the bulk of it.

Now that I've achieved the pinnacle of my career, there's a very real chance that at some point my bosses are going to be looking to retire. They'll probably sell the company.

That means I'll have to find something else to do. Can you say 'disaster'?

Hey, anyone have a suggestion for a moderately interesting career I can get into that doesn't require years of school, will pay more than $15/hr, and will allow me to work from home?

... cue crickets ...

I thought not. I think I'm fucked. Let's just home I didn't burn my bridges with the WalMart, ahem, I mean 'Grocery store B'.