F ³: Résumé Revelations

 

In a week where Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has been essentially accused of consorting with dogs other than his own at the dog park, I shouldn’t be surprised that someone tried to pass off the following as actual news:

NEW: Kamala Harris’s missing “summer job” at McDonald’s job. Her resume and job application a year after graduating college — @FreeBeacon obtained through FOIA — don’t mention it. Neither do either of her books, or either of the biographies on her. - - Joseph Simonson, Chuck Ross and Andrew Kerr, Washington Free Beacon

Oh. Good. Grief. Yes, there are people whose jobs include digging up the past but how desperate do you have to be to think that not including a McDonald’s job on one’s résumé is NEWS?

One of my favorite Twitter responses to this comes from Keith Olbermann:

Note: you may have made yourself look like an idiot and your website look like Play-Skool My-First-Computer. At 16 I had a job that involved cleaning out a giant dumpster full of Hostess Cupcake boxes. Oddly I did not put this on my resume or in my autobiography.

But, more to the point: 

How does this piece have three authors and none of them appear to be familiar with the process of "applying for a job"? - - Matt Darling 

This “accusation” has motivated all kinds of folks - - from the famous to the ordinary - - to confess the once-held jobs they never included on their résumés. Here’s a sampling:

• I taught little girls’ gymnastics part time for a while at the Y but it's not on my résumé.
• I worked Sunday mornings at Dunkin' Donuts one summer when I was 17 and you won't find it on my résumé.  Or anywhere.
• I worked the 4-midnight shift on the engine assembly line at Mack Trucks the summer I was 19 but I don't have it on my résumé, either.
• My first job was cleaning bathrooms at NASCAR races at the age of 13.
• I worked at Hardee’s and you won’t find that in my book, résumé, or anywhere.  Because I was 16
• While we’re doing this:  Marshall’s 1994-1995. Swept floors.
• I started my own snow shoveling business when I was 13 called "Melt 4 You" but I've never put that on my CV, and I don't call myself a former "small business owner." I guess I'm a fraud too.

In the interests of complete transparency I find myself to compelled to reveal a job I have long hidden from general knowledge. My first job as a high school student was in a warehouse in Stamford, Connecticut. It was a mail order fulfillment house which processed orders for a number of small mail order businesses. I sat a table with a handful of other high school students who were counting and sorting groups of mailing tags - - the kind which are affixed to those big heavy mailbags that the post office uses.

The job was mind numbingly repetitive. I hated it. I often found I had lost count because I had been distracted by the flashing lights of a telephone extension that sat at our table. The only bright spot in this job was when the coffee truck came. This is where I started drinking coffee, sweet and light, and craving the pastries on offer which were the real thing from a bakery and not wrapped in plastic like vending machine fare. 

The warehouse staff were divided between clerical, what I did,  and “the line” where workers physically processed the orders and prepared them for mailing. I learned quickly that those of us on the clerical side had more freedom and were treated with a bit more respect.  Working the line was physical work and thus considered unskilled labor. They stood the whole time. They had get permission to use the bathroom, too.

I lasted a few months on that job, right up until my boss said I could earn extra money working on Saturdays with him processing product returns. When my father came to pick me up he noticed that my boss and I were the only people there. 

I never had to go back.

This is not why I have tended to suppress this facet of my employment history. As others have mentioned, these are the kinds of jobs that aren’t very important in the long run: low level, low wage, short term positions. But for me the truth is a little more complicated: it was the name of the business itself.

One day I asked my AP English teacher if I could make an announcement before class. I needed a ride to work. He asked me the particulars, then said he would make the announcement for me. 

As he stood at the podium I should have noticed the twinkle in his eye.

“Can anyone drive Julia to ‘Total Fulfillment’?” he asked.

And that is why I don’t talk about my first job. I didn’t include it on my résumé and if I ever write an autobiography it will not be mentioned.  There are just some moments you don’t want to relive.

If this prevents me from seeking higher office…well, I’m okay with that.

Village Green/Town² Comments