My first job was when I was in college down at what is now Utah Valley University. Back then, it was called Utah Valley Community College. But that was many moons ago. I got my first job at the Wirthlin Group. It was an interesting job to say the least. We did telephone surveys. I quickly realized I didn't like calling people and interrupting their day like that. And I also realized I could never be a telemarketer, door to door sales person or anything of the sort.
My second job was at Arctic Circle. I didn't stay there long as I had one co-worker who was rude and mean. I later learned it was because she was jealous that one of the cooks had a crush on me and she had a crush on him. And I had no clue that the cook even liked me as he never spoke to me. Kind of funny to think back and laugh about it.
I went from Arctic Circle to working at Pizza Hut. I loved that job. I, with two of my friends, made the early morning school lunch pizza's. It was a blast. We would have to get to work by 4:30 a.m. to get started on the dough for the school lunch and also to get the place a head start on dough for the day. Once we got the dough well in hand, one of us would stay back to continue the dough while the other two would go up front to start topping and cooking the pizza's. We would have a lot of fun jamming out to music and just plain being goofy while we worked. Our boss was awesome, he would show up about 6:00 a.m. to help us finish off making the pizza's. He would joke and goof around with us. When the school year came to an end, we were let go as there was no more need for the school lunch pizza's and our boss already had a full staff for the regular part of the business. But we had been given the promise to be able to come back at the beginning of the school year to do the pizza's again if we wanted. I also have to say one of the perks of the job was the free bread sticks and personal pan pizza every day.
From Pizza Hut, I went to work in Yellowstone National Park. I also loved that job, well, not so much the job as I loved being up in Yellowstone. Yellowstone is one of the most beautiful places on earth as far as I'm concerned. I started out cleaning the cabins but found the work to be quite hard on my back. My back wasn't as bad as it is now, but I did have the scoliosis back then. They were able to transfer me over to cashiering in the cafeteria. That was a lot of fun. I loved being able to chat with all the visitors to the park and hearing about where they live and what brought them to visit Yellowstone. I wore a name tag with my name and the state I was from. I found it fun to tell visitors the fun and neat places to go see in Utah. I loved my days off when my friends and I would go explore the wonders around us. Watching Old Faithful shoot off under a full moon. Going down to Hayden Valley to watch a meteor shower. Watching nature scamper about. It was an amazing experience.
I was given the opportunity to stay and work the winter in Yellowstone and almost did. The big deciding factor for me...... TOO MUCH SNOW AND TOO COLD!!!! So I left when the season was over and went back home to Utah. I had enjoyed working with the public in Yellowstone and thought I might have the same fun working with the public in any setting, and so I got a job out at the airport working in the exit plaza's. It was there I realized just how much I do not like working with the public. I met good people who were pleasant and nice. But for the most part I met people who had either had a horrible trip, a terrible flight, the airline lost their luggage, or were plain tired from their trip and wanted to get home. I was the last person they saw as they left the airport and so I would catch the brunt of all of their frustrations. Especially if it was busy and the lines were long. And I wasn't the only one who would receive this kind of treatment from the public. No one I knew there like the job at all. I found that I didn't like the way I felt about the job. I dreaded going into work and I would usually leave work in a pretty bad mood. I didn't stay there very long and I had decided that never again would I ever work with the public.
I found a job working at UPS on the graveyard shift. I worked on what they called the "Brown" belt. I was a loader. I had the fun job of loading all of the boxes that went to Utah Valley. It was a very hard job and physically demanding. One would think I would have learned my lesson with trying to clean the cabins in Yellowstone. But it was a job and I didn't have to work with the public. It soon became clear to me that I couldn't take the heavy loads and quit.
I went to Super Target from there again working the graveyard shift stocking shelves. It was an okay place to work. Not my favorite job in the world. I realized that I didn't like working retail as I would have to work on the holidays.
I found myself back out at the airport but this time working for the company that cleaned the airlines, specifically Delta. Still on the graveyard shift, we would be the ones to go in and deep clean the airplanes over night and have them all spotless for the morning flights. I enjoyed this job until we got a new supervisor who was a task master, people were quitting left and right because of her. We soon found we didn't have enough people to get the airplanes done all in one night. We were expected to work long hours and for little pay with a woman who was just horrible.
And that's when I found ACS. I was able to get off the graveyard shift and have a normal job that gave me weekends and holidays. I worked a regular Monday through Friday job. I liked the people, I liked the hours, the pay was okay, and I liked the normalcy it gave me. I started out as a scanner, sitting at a machine all day scanning bank loan applications. I moved from that to doing data entry after the scanning had been completed. From there I was given the responsibility of being a lead supervisor. I really enjoyed what I did, I liked the people I worked with. Several things happened all around the same time; I got married and was expecting my first child. The nice thing about ACS is that they sent a lot of their work to be done "in home". I decided that I really wanted to be home with my children. So I switched departments and did in home data entry for Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield. I loved the freedom it gave me. I was able to stay at home with the kids, but also still earn money. I was able to make my own hours and as long as I had my work done by midnight, no one cared. This job was a very nice thing to have when I had all of my surgeries. I was able to stay and home and heal but at the same time work. However, during the last surgery on my back, I was placed on the operating room table wrong and was left with a Brachial Plexus stretch injury to my arms and shoulders. My left arm and hand have never healed properly. I was not able to go back to my work doing data entry, something I enjoyed and was really good at. I have been blessed with the ability to fight for and win my disability case and now I have a great husband who makes enough for me to be a full time mommy.
