you don’t have to describe them in detail with dates, not trying to get you to doxx yourself
but it’s kind of A Thing with neurodivergent folks to have tried a lot of different jobs, and I’m curious about everybody’s count
I think I’m up to 21 that I’ve filed taxes for, which doesn’t seem that extreme for 42, except when you consider that I’ve been unemployed most of my son’s 17 years of life because I couldn’t handle parenting and that level of outside obligations, so most of those happened before I was 25 – so 20ish jobs between 15-25
how bout you, how many things have you tried?
1 and tbh I love it and they give me raises, I kinda lucked out hard. Its not a ton of pay but I’m fine with that. I have a side gig I guess helping at an lgbt center off and on too
Not gonna say what it is its hyper specific
This is all over a span of 25 years and a lot of gaps in between. I’ve worked in 3 different states. So unless I forgot some, 24 jobs in 25 years. I’m very autistic.
- pizza cook
- fragrance blending facility (3 different jobs)
- Modular home industry - Appliances
- Modular home industry - ship lose set up kits
- random job sanding messed up metal doors down to fix
- random job in interior door manufacturing - stacked doors for orders
- random job tearing down these hydrolic things that were made wrong
- Modular home industry - FEMA trailers for Katrina relief
- Modular home industry, cabinet doors and drawers installation
- kitchen cook/barhop
- distribution center - order packing
- cabinet assembly kit routing - ran boards through big routers to make grooves
- gas station cashier
- asst manager at Taco Bell
- Computer repair
- Computer repair - self employed
- Web dev intern
- USDA intern working on a Python based project
- retirement funds claim processing
- diliver driver for Door Dash
- diliver driver for Walmart
- IT tech for a school
- Software developer
- failed freelance web dev - current
this is a really interesting group of industries! dying to know more about the fragrance job, that sounds like it could be heaven or absolute hell
I did 3 different jobs the time I was there. The first was doing picking and packing, then I learned how to make blends. Blending is basically taking all kinds of different smelly oils and powders and mixing like a recipe to make something that smells like apple pie or flowers or musk or whatever. The other thing I did there was “pouring” which involved putting large batches of blends or oils into smaller containers for shipping.
The oils and blends are used for making candles or potpourri, and I even used to make knockoff perfumes and colognes with sum.
that sounds like absolutely fascinating work!! how did you end up doing that?
I’m 36, I’ll try to list them:
- CVS employee
- Circuit city (geek squad equivalent)
- Interior painter
- Data entry
- Autozone, front of house
- Guy who sits in a basement to bill the government hours (temp job)
- Light construction (moving stuff around usually)
- Pizza delivery driver
- Dumpster diver (made good money actually)
- Network installer
- Computer Technician
- Software engineer, Ad tech
- Software engineer, big data databases
- CTO, founder, big data databases
If I had to guess, CVS was your worst job?
You’re a bit older than me but that place went downhill staffing-wise every year
We called it Come Visit Satan by the time I left lol
I remember Circuit City! 🧓😂
what was the most surprising dumpster diving find or sale? like something you were shocked was worth whatever someone was willing to pay for it?
Pulled out a bunch of software from Office Depot and some of it went for full retail price on ebay. The local sports equipment stores would throw out ALL of the ski and snowboard equipment at the end of the season, I also couldn’t sell any of it out of season and couldn’t hold it. There was a satellite mapping company and they would throw out tapes and hard drives full of what I assume were high resolution maps (hard drives were clean and I didn’t have a tape drive). Your local chip distributor will probably have a full dumpster at all times of almost-expired food.
How do you make money dumpster diving? I’ve done it for groceries but can’t imagine another way.
- made up bullshit techbro job
- made up bullshit techbro job 2
- made up bullshit techbro job 3
- made up bullshit techbro job 4
10 years and I’ve produced nothing of notable value. Usually i barely scrape past a year at any job but the one i have now is alright cos my team is very ND so I don’t feel like I’m decaying every day. Also technically I’ve moved position inside this company multiple times so dnow if that counts
Forestry (2), car wash, office, education (3), fast food (3), bike taxi, shelter steward, seasonal jobs (4). 16 jobs and I am in my mid-twenties. Plus several periods doing odd jobs off Craigslist and whatnot…
I got my ADHD diagnosis a few years ago but in common ADHD fashion I didn’t do nothing after that.
