In transition: What was your first job and how terrible was it?

 As previously stated, I'm going to be beginning my new desk job July 4th. Until that wonderful date,  I am finishing up a four-summers-long career at Subway Restaurants as a "sandwich artist". Yes, that's right, I have been  performing fast-food customer service for four years! Is there any job that's worse? Well, actually I'm sure there are many (as someone like Mike Rowe could prove), but for me, 4 summers of working a dead-end job that I've always hated is pain and suffering enough for my lifetime thank you! The recent telling of my departure to my boss just reinforced this fact. Instead of wishing me congratulations on taking advantage of this great new opportunity, he was speechless with "nothing to say" apparently. He has ignored and avoided me since I told him and we have had no conversation on the topic since then. It is clear that he is an expert in passive bullying of the high school-girl type and I have been feeling guilty for some insane reason because of all this... In fact, I couldn't sleep last night because I had such a realistic nightmare of him canceling all my remaining shifts and telling me he was angry with me. (on a side note, he actually did cancel one of my shifts this week...coincidence?). But honestly, what do I have to feel guilty about? I gave him two weeks notice. He should understand that if an opportunity presents itself to me (a graduated university student) that is anything more prestigious than slapping meat on a bun, I'm going to take it! But anyway, I digress into another argument. For now, I will focus on a quick summary of my job and why it is so loathsome to me:   

1. Constant criticism - My boss has never said "good job" to me or any other employees really. Instead, there is always something to criticize.
2. Illegal slave labour - Employees do not have mandatory breaks and I have often worked a 7 hour shift with one 10 minute break or less.
3. Cheap, cheap, cheap! - My boss tells employees to save and stinge on everything we can, from condiments to veggies to the amount of cheese we put on the bread. He has one cleaning product for the entire store (which is such a failure against health checks) and he has made me return my previously used uniform at the end of every working summer. Any extra time employees spend working in the store (ie. that extra 10 minutes) is unpaid for. Finally, special deals/promotions are usually never done "at our location".
4. Customer Concern Garners Criticism- Health failures abound mainly from not properly washed containers (because everything must be done in a rapid fire motion and if you care about giving customers actually clean dishes, your boss yells at you for being slow). My concern with giving customers fresh, clean, good food is usually overridden as well by my boss`demands. The ends of tomatoes with the hard cores in them are saved because my boss is cheap and I always feel guilty giving these to customers to eat.

Well friends...that was my rampage on my first job. Do you have first jobs or just jobs you've hated as passionately? Or have you had good first job experiences? I'd love it if you shared your story with me!

Finally employed! It may be cheesy, but the glass is definitely half-full today!

Well... success!! I have finally landed my very first desk job. It is only a summer student job, but I couldn't be happier or more excited for it to begin. This will be the first time I'll have a real "desk job"!  I guess this is evidence that you should never give up applying to positions even when it feels absolutely hopeless. It took me four years to get to this point and along the way, I must admit, I became extremely pessimistic and depressed over my future (or presumed lack thereof). But I always understood that I would eventually get a job. It was never completely hopeless and no one should ever think that their future is either. In my own experience, I applied to so many positions and organizations this summer and summers past through things like internet job banks and government sites and I might have received a few interviews as a result, but never was I offered any positions. And this was a tiring and de-motivational experience, as it would be for anyone but when you know you need a job you don't give up. You can get frustrated that people don't realize your genius and how amazing you would have been as an employee, but in a blink you should be looking and applying elsewhere, because after all there's no use in crying over spilled milk.  

Past, Present, Future?

As a university graduate with a Bachelor of Commerce and a major in Marketing Management, I feel as if the past four years of my life were spent in a futile effort to please professors and T.A.'s and often times single-handedly save group projects from failing grades due to terrible group members. I do not feel like I gained much real world knowledge about the world of business and at the end of four years, I still feel that the program was not the exact "right" choice for me. I'm passionate about writing and reading and my forever growing home library is testament to that. I still feel a greater attachment to the arts then I do science or business. And yet, in all my four years of university life, I never felt a need to change academic fields. I wanted to learn more about marketing before I abandoned it forever. The problem was, that in my final winter semester of fourth year, I still felt as if I did not know enough about marketing to refute it as a worthy field to work in. I'm sure that readers will now be thinking that I am insulting my university and its program, but let me assure you, I am not degrading the program or its teachings. I learned some very practical knowledge in many of my courses, often times with professors trying to instill their own passions in apathetic students. What I am really trying to say is that even with the knowledge I gained and professors' support, I still feel that business is not something that can be learnt in a classroom like other disciplines, but is something that requires actual working experience to understand. And this is something I do not have, nor do I know how to get it! There is a universal catch-22 that plagues the entire working world - "you need experience to get a job, but without a job you can get no experience"! This is the present dilemma I find myself in, along with the knowledge that I am completely un-knowledgeable on how to actually find a job! So here I am, a recent graduate of a program I'm not sure I was completely interested in, no job experience, still wondering if a career in business is where I'm headed! Only the future will tell...along with some heavy resume blitzkriegs on my part!