I know you must all be dying to hear the results of my contest, where I asked readers to guess what jobs I had done in the past. Let's take a look at the various options:
Elephant Trainer: ok, obviously that was a bit of a stretch. Even if my wildest April Fool's post, I'm not sure if I could make anyone believe I'd ever been an elephant trainer, and this option accordingly got the fewest votes. I tried to do a little research on what salary an elephant trainer might make, but I have no idea!
Omelette Maker: yes, one summer I spent a good amount of time flipping omelettes. I believe I was making around $11/hour at the time, in the late 80's. That was the same place where I also did some time washing dishes, at the same wage.
Retail Clerk: yep, done that, and I may have mentioned it in passing on this blog. My earnings ranged from I think $4.00 an hour to $5.75 an hour, in the late 80's to early 90's.
Mystery Shopper: this is another one I have actually done. I earned $10-15 per shop, plus some free stuff, like movie rentals, basketball tickets or food. This was never a full-time gig-- I think it would be really hard to make enough money. Yes, you make $10-15 for maybe 5 minutes worth of buying something, but by the time you fill out forms and mail in receipts and get to the store locations, the hourly rate doesn't look so good. But it's worth signing up to be a shopper so you can earn a few bucks when it's convenient.
That leaves Administrative Assistant and Runway Model. These were my red herrings! I have never worked as an adminstrative assistant (or secretary, just so you know it's not a semantic thing!) I somehow managed to dodge that throughout my career. That really fooled everyone, as that option was tied with retail clerk for the largest number of votes. And as for runway model, which was the 2nd least-guessed item, well, I have actually done that. It was about 20 years and 20 pounds ago, but I was once a model in a fashion show. I earned $50 and some free clothes for about a day's work. It was fun, but I can't say it's any great loss that I didn't turn out to be the next Linda Evangelista... that is, if you don't consider a multi-million dollar salary differential a "great loss!"
Who wins the fabulous prize? Millionaire Artist came the closest by guessing "everything but the elephant trainer." So congratulations Millionaire Artist and thank you to everyone else for the fun guesses... stay tuned for other contests in the future and maybe you too can someday see your own name in lights, or at least pixels, telling all the readers of My Open Wallet that you are "wicked awesome!"
Monday, September 25, 2006
Contest Results: What Jobs Have I Had
Posted at 9:51 AM
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1 comment:
Ah, sweet! Hooray! I think a wide-range of experiences in work (of whatever form) just makes us all more interesting people — and paradoxically, a great reminder we're all more than our jobs, too. You know, elephant trainer was a red herring for me, I figured anything is possible in the city! :) Keep up the thoughtful posts, yours is one of my favorite blogs!
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