6 Jobs to Have Had by Age Thirty
Time was, your first job after high school or college was likely to be the only one you ever had. Then, in 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that younger baby boomers (those born between 1957 and 1964) held an average of 10.8 jobs over the course of their lifetime, and that between the ages of eighteen and forty-two, 23 percent of the respondents even held more than fifteen jobs.
Fast-forward a single generation, and people nowswitch jobs more than everespecially in the teen and young-adult years. Ive watched my Generation Y cohorts bounce from job to job, many reaching that 10.8-job average in record time. In fact, at age thirty, I have held fourteen steady jobsnot counting babysitting, temp work,freelance gigs,odd jobs, and the few times my tenure at a particular establishment lasted only a day or two.
The jobs that I held in high school, college, and early adulthood didnt make me rich, but they were all enriching experiences because they exposed me to many people, situations, and industries that I never would have encountered otherwise. I would even go so far as to say that the worst jobsthe most menial, underpaid, name tagrequiring positions I ever heldwere the ones that taught me the most about life. While young people are switching back and forth between jobs, theyre not just learning about what career they want, theyre also learning about what kinds of people theyre going to be. ! Before s ettling into a career, any well-rounded person should have these six different kinds of jobs on his or her rsum.
A Service Job
Whether its waiting tables, folding T-shirts, tending bar, scooping ice cream,serving coffee, or ripping tickets at the movie theater, any job in the service industry teaches you more about people and their bad behavior than you ever wanted to know. Customers complain, and theyre demanding, messy, and unreasonable. When you deal with them, youre forced to learn patience, mental toughness, and how to let that rudeness, anger, and ignorance roll off your back. Service jobs also teach employees to take pride in what they do, even if it the tasks are simple, unglamorous, or painfully easy. If you can learn to take real pride in something as inconsequential as a neatly folded pile of shirts or a perfectly chilled martini, you can learn to be proud of any work you ever perform.
