TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Working in a hardware store is a great education. I think that and working in a hobby shop are great jobs for a teenager (I’ve done both as well as spending a year or so working on a cattle farm)

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

First job: selling cameras and small electronics in a discount catalog showroom (those don't exist anymore!)

Second job: wrapping meat in a grocery store (ewww... But it built character.)

Third job: fixing open-end spinning machines in a textile mill (horrible environment; great mechanical education; great cultural education (four Brits from Accrington and Oldham, many dirt poor South Carolinians, two Pakistanis); great incentive to study hard in college and not work in a mill!)

One of my goals for retirement is to interview interesting people about their life stories... What shaped them from early childhood to late career. I'm equipped to make documentary films. I'd like to find ten people who have meaningful stories to tell and do a series for cable or PBS NC. I'm particularly interested in what forged people's paths: What led to what else and whatever?

Some of us found our paths and purposes early on, and watched one thing lead to another and another in amazing ways. I'd bet there are patterns and formulae for doing that. I'll find out!

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

After the military, I worked my way through undergraduate and graduate school doing a plethora of jobs - running an apartment clubhouse and bartending, teaching woodworking at the Craft shop, building custom electronics at Duke Univ, tuning VHF radios, engine tuning for a racing team, but mostly doing drafting and electromechanical, RF and lighting design for ITT Mackay Marine, Sperry, Exide, Allied Chemical and a consulting design/build engineering company. One day, after 8 years of near poverty from the military and college, I said enough, and instead of pursuing a teaching career, found a Sales Engineer Job at Tektronix and spent the next 40 years in instrumentation, real time and high performance computing/storage design and sales until my 2nd heart attack caused me to retire from Oracle.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

The hardware store was a great education. Not sure that is true of today's hardware stores where everything is prepackaged, however, although the small town ones could probably fit the bill. I learned carpentry, plumbing, electrical work*, chemistry, home maintenance, safety, and finance (basic finance, anyway**).






* My father was hopeless at electrical work. He once put a new cord on a toaster and wired it so that when you put the toast down it blew the fuse. (That was before breakers were common).

**I just barely passed Economics in college. When I got my first real job I put some money into stocks. I held the stocks for 50 years. They appreciated enough to offset inflation. I remember the day the Dow reached 1000. I celebrated by eating lunch early, then back to work. Now my (new) wife has an MBA and deals with the arcane points of the market.

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

Burkphoto, don’t think that I was trying to be a horse’s butt towards you because I wasn’t. Besides farming, I’ve been a soil and water conservation technician for 44 years. Over the last few years we’ve had several summer interns on college break. Nearly every one has been useless and they are more interested in their phone than learning something useful. I believe most have had it too good and with parents that believed that school sports were more important than putting the kids to work. There’s nothing wrong with kids playing sports, but when the family supper five nights a week is a quick drive through burger grabbed between soccer, football and tap dance practice, I figure the parents priorities are all wrong. Particularly after our divorce, I made sure that we always ate supper together either at home or sometimes in town on a grocery run or school program. From little on my kids and I went for evening walks several times a week. I have a old time selfie of my little daughter riding on my shoulders while checking livestock because she couldn’t walk yet.

I’ve taught my kids that parents often must forego their own wants and pleasures and need to put their spouse and kids before themselves. As a result, I had early teenage kids actually enjoy going on vacation with their old man. And not to amusement parks, but to musty museums and sightseeing. And as adults my kids still enjoy vacationing with me. I consider myself very fortunate to have the kids I do. No one ever said being a good parent was easy.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

I would just remark that there are many types of parenting and values that can yield successful children and that doesn’t mean they necessarily need to work on a farm to understand the value of hard work. There are great parents that are cursed with useless children and lousy parents that produce wonderful offspring. And although I am a techno nerd of the first order, I will be the first to defend the value of sports to instill values of hard work, teamwork and good sportsmanship (including losing gracefully when you have tried your hardest). My son learned those values and discipline from various sports from the time he was 5 until college, and I think it was important in shaping his success in his education and the fine man and father he has become. And that participation didn’t prevent my wife or I from cooking dinner almost every night unless we were eating with his grandparents.

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

Trix, good for you! And yes, crappy parents can turn out good kids. One such young woman “adopted” me. Abusive alcoholic mother, absent bio father (his choice), a controlling OCD stepfather, then a molesting alcoholic stepfather. She has been through hard times yet is an excellent caring mother to her two boys, who call me grandpa. Rather than whine about being a victim, she has used her miserable childhood as an example of what not to be as a parent.

I do have a problem with schools handing out participation ribbons at science fairs, athletic meets, etc. As you know, in real life there are winners and losers with the latter vastly outnumbering the former. And no matter how good you are, there’s always going to be someone better come along. That’s why athletic records are constantly being broken.

Apparently you taught your kid that if you lose, suck it up and try harder next time. And if you don’t win, the world isn’t going to come to an end. Give yourself a pat on the back for being a good parent. The wife of a coworker works with family services. The stories he tells makes you want to cry first, then go out and beat the parents senseless. Correction, calling those people parents diminishes those of us that try.