In November of 2007, I moved back to my hometown of Seattle after two years of living and working in Shanghai, China. For those two years, starting when I was 20, I felt like I had made it. I was making good money for my age, and the living costs there, I had a nice apartment, girlfriends, I had successful expat friends, a monthly poker night, a maid, and I even bought an electric scooter. That all came to a screeching halt when the school I was teaching English at wasn’t able to renew my work visa. In my heart, I knew the timing was right. I needed to go back and finish my last two years of college, I didn’t want to end up as a 40-year-old ESL teacher. But at the time, it was heartbreaking. I felt like I was losing my life.
On a dreary Seattle day, I landed back home. While I was waiting for my application to the University of Washington to go through, I needed to get a job. I didn’t have a lot of cash saved up, or even a car to get around. I applied to a bunch of places within walking distance and ended up getting hired at an Asian supermarket. I’d worked similar jobs before. The last time I had lived in the states, I had saved up money for the move to China by first working on a fisher processor in the Bering Sea, and then a summer of double shifts at Burger King and Dunkin’ Donuts. The supermarket felt nice at first, the owners were Malaysian Chinese, and a lot of the other workers were immigrants or international students. Eventually, I also started working at the IHOP across the parking lot, and then, after a lot of crazy events, including getting fired for eating hash browns that someone made by mistake, I moved on to other serving, short-order cook, bartending, and food delivery jobs.
Most of the time, I wasn’t very happy. I met some amazing people and had fun, but the work was hard and the pay meant living paycheck to paycheck. The treatment by both managers and customers wasn’t always great, and sometimes even crossed the line. From being yelled at or told I would be fired if I didn’t cover for someone with no notice or being forced to record bathroom breaks, to being called racial slurs by drunk diners. It wasn’t pretty a lot of the time, but I stuck with it to pay the bills, at least some of them.
After I started working in marketing, I downplayed this part of my working life as much as I could. To be honest, I was ashamed. For a long time, I felt like those jobs made me less than other peers who went straight from college to working in the field of their major. I felt like I was behind where I should be, and less qualified for “wasting time” at those jobs. I’ve only just started to realise that I wouldn’t be who I am today, both personally and professionally, if it weren’t for those jobs. I don’t mean it in a “I understand marketing better because I used to sell shots of Fernet to hipsters.” or “Cooking brunch for 150 tables on Mother’s Day made me good at multitasking.” sort of way. I mean I wouldn’t appreciate the work I do now or the life I have if I hadn’t eaten all that shit.
Several things led up to this realization, some Reddit threads on people being too “proud” to get a job outside of their field, some Caleb Hammer episodes with guests who looked down on dead-end jobs. And the thought popped into my head that I want my daughter to work a job like that while she’s in school or starts a career. I’m not saying that I’m a boomer who wants my kids to have to work for everything and start at the bottom. I hope to pay for her schooling and give her as much of a head start as possible. But, I want her to experience working in the service industry or doing manual labor, so she understands what it’s like for the rest of her life when she’s a customer.
I actually caught myself thinking the other day when I was flying out of Changi Airport and noticed the staff entrance by the Starbucks, there was a cleaner there already working at 8am. I was picturing her waking up at 5am or 6am and taking a bus, and then the train to get to work, and changing into her uniform to begin a long shift. And I thought to myself, I can’t imagine having to do that. And then I remembered, I actually can imagine doing that, because I did it for years.
I’m sure empathetic and socially aware people can put themselves in the shoes of people working blue-collar or service jobs. But I’m not sure if everyone can truly feel the weight of being stuck at that kind of job, beholden to customers and assistant managers, clocking in and out day after day for minimum wage unless you’ve lived that life. So, going forward I’m not going to shy away from that part of my life story, it isn’t something to be ashamed of or to avoid talking about in fear of being looked down on. I’m proud of working those jobs, they are mentally and physically harder than any stress from deadlines and KPIs in my current career. They made me who I am today, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
On my podcast, Before We Get There, I talk to interesting people like athletes, creatives, entrepreneurs, and more — about their journeys and often uncover times in their life like this that brought them to where they are today. You can find all of the episodes here.