When I was in my mid-teens I worked for my Uncle's painting company doing all the 'newb' work: bringing all the paint brushes and paint cans to everyone, laying down the canvas and taping the molding. It was terrible and I hated every second of it. At sixteen, I did freelance art and graphic design for a smaller local company, drawing their products for brochures and designing their logo. By seventeen I was doing web design and designed three or four webpages for different companies. I thought I was rich at that point, ha, but I despised the work because I had such a hard time comprehending what customers wanted. I'd always ask for more explanation and sometimes it'd take a dozen emails before I'd create the page or art. They always ended up overjoyed with the final product, but it was stressful. At eighteen, my family and girlfriend's parents pressured me into getting a 'real' job so I worked the summer after senior year and the summer after freshman year in college at a local car parts warehouse, 45hrs a week. Though I appreciated the fact that it rarely required socialization, my OCD nearly drove me nuts...so many boxes! The danger factor was also very high and I made a number of dumb mistakes (despite obsessiveness towards safety) that led to breaking each of my big toes and driving a forklift into the upper office's floor. Overall, the absolute worst job I've ever had. By my second year of college, I decided to get a part time job as a dishwasher at a campus-run cafe. One of my sensory issues is that I can't stand touching glass or having dry hands so this was a nightmare. In retrospect, I have no idea what compelled me to apply there...no bueno and I quit by spring quarter. A few years later, I was hired by the Montessori my Mom teaches at to landscape. This, unlike all the other jobs, was fantastic! I absolutely loved working outdoors, completely alone and having a very clear and beautifying impact on the school grounds. The teachers and school owner loved my work ethic and found my attention to detail superb BUT, despite their high praise, by the next summer, the owner had hired her son (recently unemployed and older than me by a few years). If I were to work with a legitimate landscaping company, I don't think I would have enjoyed it at all...it was the lack of authority and self-reliance that was so liberating. Anyway, there's my long and mostly negative work history, woot.