Should you share your entire work history with the world?

I’ve omitted almost a decade of work history from my CV and LinkedIn profile, because I wanted to keep things relevant.

But the truth is, every bit of work experience has been worthwhile, and made me the person and professional I am today.

And while they might not be linked to the language service industry, they still count.

Here’s everything I learned from the jobs that weren’t meant to mean anything.

The Garden Centre

My first part-time job was pretty unusual. It started out as three hours on a Saturday morning, £12 a week, with extra shifts over the holidays. I loved working outside in the summer, and I hated having to pick snails off the plants and lob them over the fence. They always came back.

I stuck this out for a couple of years, then left because I wanted to find something with more hours, and I was then old enough for restaurant work. But after my first year at university (after a couple of years had passed), I had an unexpected call. My former boss rang me and asked me if I would think about returning, on better pay, with better conditions and more responsibility. Sadly, a lot of people had let her down, and she came back to me because she trusted me.

It didn’t matter how useless I might have been in the face of choosing the right compost. Trust and reliability was more important than anything else. What she needed at the time was for someone to look after the place because she wanted to spend as much of her limited time left as she could with her family. I worked there for most of the summer, whenever I could. A lot of the time I was opening and closing on my own and left to get on with a list of tasks. Other times she was there too, in her happy place. We had some great heart-to-hearts while we were doing jobs, and she was very open with me. I was devastated to hear that she’d passed away a couple of years later. Grateful to have known such a wonderful person, and I still hear her talk to me whenever I’m potting up plants or weeding the flowerbeds in my garden.

Private gardening

I spent a summer gardening in a big garden near home every afternoon after working in the garden centre. It was tough work, but I loved it, and I was paid really well. I bought myself a new wardrobe and thought I was the bee’s knees. Despite my employer being a wealthy member of high society, I never felt like I was being treated as a lesser person. They set the respect bar pretty high and reinforced what I already knew from my upbringing: to treat everyone as your equal.

Bar work

I’m a September baby, which was actually pretty useful when looking for a job while I was still studying. When I turned 18, I was legally old enough to work behind a bar in the evenings, and during weekends, which fitted around school. I also had a year of experience behind my belt when I went to university, which meant I was able to snag a coveted job in the halls bar in the first week.

I occasionally do transcription jobs, which can sometimes be tricky if people are talking fast or not looking at the camera. Taking orders from tipsy people under the blaring music most definitely helped me hone my listening and memory skills. Sometimes it can take people a loooong time to reel off their round of drinks. Then you have to serve them, and punch them all into the till correctly. For anyone wondering how we do it. It’s a cocktail of listening skill, lip reading, remembering what their last drink was, and guesswork sometimes. Ever ordered a drink and the person behind the bar repeated it? They’re checking they heard you correctly.

When you’re behind the bar, your first job is to serve drinks, and your second job is to make people want to buy more drinks. I’m not talking about anything dodgy here. If someone walks into a pleasant, friendly atmosphere, with good company, then they’ll want to stay there. It’s also about reading the room. Knowing who wants to talk to you, and who just wants a quiet drink on their own.

Saying no to unreasonable behaviour and unwanted advances is a must, and it can be tough, especially when people have a physical advantage on you. But I learned to put them in their place. Also, don’t try the whole ‘But I gave you a twenty’ or ‘but there’s no vodka in here’ with me. It won’t work.

Retail and MLM

I worked at Ann Summers for a couple of years while I was studying for my MA. A small cog within a multinational company. I learned a lot about humans. Retail workers often get the brunt of people’s bad moods, and people will often try and bully you to get their own way. I got insulted more times than I can count.

But on the flipside, there were some lovely customers, and many of them opened up to me and I felt like I helped them. Yes, I was selling stuff to them, but ultimately, I wanted them to walk out the shop feeling confident and happy.

🤐  I could tell you many stories from that shop, but 99% of them aren’t professional, so I’ll save it.

Alongside this job, I worked for the same company doing ‘party planning’, a MLM scheme. It was a good practice for being self-employed and doing tax returns, but after doing my tax return I found out that I’d made £900 profit in a year as one of the top sellers in my region. Not worth it in terms of money, but it was good to get me out of my shell, driving around, and learning business skills.

From the combination of the two, I learned a lot about marketing and selling. Although I don’t look back on those years very fondly, I’m glad I did it. And to be fair, bra fitting is a life skill that I think everyone should learn.

It’s been a long time since I thought about my past work, but writing this blog has helped me realise that although my first jobs were not relevant to the translation industry, they were still important in different ways, and I’ll never write them off as ‘not proper jobs’.