Doing Other Jobs

by on 10. Mar, 2006 in Everything

I consider myself lucky in that from a fairly young age, I knew that I absolutely loved science and technology and that there was absolutely nothing else on the planet that I would rather do.

Although my encounters with machines began at a young age , my parents inform me that I started life out as kid known to be the singular cause of the destruction of many machines that had the misfortune of crossing paths with me. When I was 14 months old, I was in some distant relative’s house somewhere in Andhra Pradesh, India, when I took a fancy for their rather expensive LP record player and ended up breaking it merely by touching the needle. When this story was recounted to me many years later (when I was still a kid), I remember feeling rather proud that at 14 months, I was strong enough to wreak so much damage!

As I grew older, I would assist my father in various repair tasks around the household. The opportunity to work with tools and to see things in action always excited me , probably one of the many reasons I love engineering. One thing led to another and before long I was working on mini projects of my own. In the 6th grade, alongwith some friends of mine, I made a still projector using a cardboard box, a lens, and a light bulb. Our next project was to make a moving film projector and although we started off with great gusto, it turned out to be far more complicated than we had imagined and so we quickly had to give it up. It was those small things, as a 10 year old, that established many years in advance what I would end up choosing for a career.

Alright, so I’m all gung-ho about being an engineer but will I ever know what it’s like to do some other job? It was a conversation the other day with a friend, Nandana, that brought to my attention that I’ve never had the opportunity to work in a non-corporate environment.

I don’t know what it’s like to work in a restaurant, or a bookshop, a music store, clothing store, or even a library. I guess a lot has had to do with growing up in India where the concept of school or college kids doing part-time, mostly unskilled jobs is completely alien. The emphasis here, of course, is on unskilled. You want to make some money writing code as a whizkid? Not a problem – you’ll find yourself praised to the skies. Want to work in the coffee shop down the street? Rest assured, you will find your parents (and anybody else you suggest the idea to) positively choking on the thought that their child wants to do such a “menial” job. Sure, India’s economy is booming and creating many different jobs, fuelled by a massive growth in consumerism. But will the bigshot IT executive like to see her teenager work at a Pizza Hut, Barista, or Music World? I don’t think so.

But I digress. My point is that there are many jobs that a lot of us would love to be able to try out but have probably not had the opportunity to. For instance, I would love to work at a Music World or a Blockbuster kind of store. I would have loved to be an apprentice at a sound mixing studio, or a helper at a bookshop. Maybe I would get to meet a different bunch of people (vs. the corporate, highly educated folks I meet everyday, given what I do) and appreciate the effort that goes into each of those jobs.

It’s definitely not too late. Maybe a part-time job at the local Barnes and Noble or Borders store would let me experience something I never have so far :-)

What interesting jobs (outside of your mainstream career, i.e.) have you had a chance to do? Leave me a comment if you’d like to share your experiences.

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This post was written by who has written 136 posts on Things Ravi Pratap Is Up To.

  • Amarjeet

    Hi Ravi,

    I had the opportunity to work in different kinds of jobs,positions and roles in my career which happens to be 4 years old.I started off my career as a Technical Support Engineer in a company which was into multimedia etc.I was a hardware guy and I was working on a product named Qjam which is a digital jokebox based on a touchscreen interface.This jukebox used to be installed in Cafe Coffee Day and Pizza Hut outlets.I used to visit these outlets about 2-3 times a week and I used to get free coffee etc.

    My second experience was as a Technical Support Expert in Dell where I used to deal with customers on the phone.It was good because I improved my communication skills and I learnt a lot about interacting with different customers etc.Once in a while I would bump into a guy who was a techie or a software engineer and I learnt a lot of stuff.

    My third experience is currently as a QA Engineer testing software which is what I have been doing since the past one year.It has been a lot of fun and I have learnt a lot of cool stuff.This is what I have become very good at doing.It has been a long way I have come since the time I started off my career.

    Thanks,

    Amarjeet

  • http://ash.webhop.net/ Ashwin Nanjappa

    Sadly no. I haven’t done any work outside of my framework. In recent years, I’ve realized that I should.

  • Thaths

    Interesting. I too have been a geek all my life. I just did not learn about the term till I was in college. One of my earliest memory is going to Moore Market (an old, beaten down and thriving market selling all imaginable odds and ends next to Central station in Madras) with my dad and him buying me a battery pack and a couple of electric motors. I was fascinated. My parents tell me of events before this that I don’t remember. I recall wanting to be an aeronautical engineering without knowing what eronautical meant. There has never been a doubt in my mind that geeky stuff is what I wanted to do.

    As for odd jobs, in Grad School in the US when I did not have funding for a year I worked as a bus boy wiping tables in the cafeteria. I also worked, illegally, as a waiter in an Indian restaurant. It was funny. Among those half-educated Punjabi chefs, Bangladeshi fellow-waiters and Mexican dish wasers, I was the leading authority on Indian matters. When a customer asked some pesky question or the other about Indian culture, I would be wheeled out to answer it. Even though those were dark days in my life, I consider the waitering to be some of the most rewarding stuff I have done. I have since acquired a great love for cooking and hope to, someday, open a restaurant.

  • http://www.hoopyfrood.net/ Bill Npier

    In high school I worked as a dishwasher, and then later a cook at a Steakhouse (Ponderosa to be exact). And what that has really given me is an appreciation for how much I like my current “Knowledge Worker” position. Yeah, it would be nice to have a job where you knew you were done at 8:00, and then didn’t have to worry about anything until your next shift. But you are basically doing the same stuff, every day. I wasn’t challenged. And most of my co-workers at that time were fine with doing the same stuff every day and never expanding.

    But I digress. My wife want’s me to get a job at the Apple Store on the weekends so we can get discounts on apple stuff.

  • http://www.numenorean.net/blog Vishy

    You’re right. Unskilled jobs may not need you to know a lot but a lot of the time they teach you a lot.

    I’ve never considered working in a non-corporate environment, but I suspect, like Bill, that I wouldn’t be challenged as a dishwasher either. A bookstore, hmm… now you’ve got me thinking. Another thing is the legality of such work. While on a work permit like the H-1B, to work for any employer they need to petition CIS for your services (you can be employed concurrently by more than one employer). I think many employers with open unskilled positions would rather just hire an illegal immigrant than go through the proper channels like this. That said, being a student on an F-1 visa was a LOT more limiting.

  • http://manjunaths.livejournal.com manja

    As a kid, I used to be very excited abt sitting in the front seat in my uncle’s goods carrier (or tempo as they call). Whenever I did that, my folks at home used to yell at me asking if I wanted to become a driver/cleaner when I grew up. And sadly, they stopped me from getting into the front seat (probably they feared for my safety) and eventually as I grew up, I lost interest too.

    And later, when I didnt’ have funding in the first sem at grad school, I started working in an indian restaurant and a library. My job at the restaurant was serving food. Till date, I love the job though I no longer work there. I once happened to spill daal makni (an indian curry) on one of the client’s shirt and while working in the library, one of the library members yelled at me when I told them that the book they were looking for was already taken by someone else. Nothing that I learnt in schools or colleges had prepared me to face such a situation where the client was so mad. There were some of my friends from India who also worked as a server at the same restaurant, but told their folks at home that they were cashiers and hence were not doing menial labour for the fear of what the society back home would think abt them.

    Frankly, those were the best days and I personally would recommend everyone to go thru such work. I’m sure very few things we learn at school/college will come in handy.

  • Ravi

    Thanks everybody for sharing your experiences!