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Shitty Jobs Saved My Life

It was the straying that found the path direct.

—Austin Osman Spare The only good thing about being a child model was that I got to skip school.

I think I may hold some kind of record for Most Shitty Jobs Held Prior to Turning Eighteen. Or if not that, I’d most certainly win the Most Shitty Jobs That Lasted Two Weeks or Less Award. As a kid, I’d dabbled in employment: lemonade stands, a paper route, babysitting, and a brief stint as a child model that ended when I failed to muster the enthusiasm to jump up and down and shout “Pizza Pizza!” at a Little Caesars casting. My high school years were like speed dating, but for jobs. Maybe none of these shitty jobs really saved my life, but I do believe that my variety of short-lived failures, or as I prefer to call it, job promiscuity, made me an experienced young adult. When you have an attention span the length of an eyelash, it doesn’t take long to learn what you like and what you don’t. I generally have to throw a ton of shit at the wall before learning what sticks (and no, it is no longer literally shit). To the misfortune of all the employers I’ve left in my wake, it was well worth it.

Evidence of the low point otherwise known as Catholic school.

Before the tale of my litany of shitty jobs began, I attended ten schools in my twelve years of education. Because we moved, because our financial situation changed, because I hated it. By the time I was in third grade, my parents didn’t know what to do with me—I got in trouble for being “off task,” reading a dictionary in the back of the classroom. Some miracle qualified me to be placed in a rapid-learner program in third grade, which ended up being a joke—we read newspapers on the floor all day and my teacher “didn’t believe in math.” Obviously, this was not the solution, so I was then placed in Catholic school. And guess what? That didn’t work either!

No matter where I went, I was an outsider (and generally led with poop humor, which didn’t make me many friends). I got along as well with the cool kids as I did with the nerds. That spirit of forced tourism, along with my quickly learned survival mechanisms, eventually also made it easy to jump from job to job. Fortunately, the economy was in good shape when I began working at the age of fifteen, which allowed me to get a job, quit, and get hired again very easily. I was never disappointed when a particular job didn’t work out, since I’d already lived an entire life feeling so far out of place that I’d given up hope that any one thing, place, person, or occupation could be my calling.

Misadventures in Job Promiscuity

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

—Douglas Adams

This difficulty in “getting along” lasted throughout my entire youth. As a high school student, every time I heard the school bell ring, I told myself my life was over before it had even begun. When you’re eating lunch with your über-liberal history teacher instead of hanging with friends, you know it’s time to go. I managed to convince my parents to let me home-school for the last part of my sophomore year. I had a teacher who came over once a month to dole out assignments, but most of my time was spent working. There was a Subway near our house, so I walked over, filled out an application, and became a Sandwich Artist. I wore the green polo shirt and visor with pride, working the day shift and conquering the lunch rush, despite not yet knowing what a lunch rush was.

Part of my job was to wear gloves and massage mayonnaise into the tuna. Sexy! I’d slap the tuna into a bowl and pour out half a gallon of mayonnaise, put gloves on, and massage the mayo in with my hands. Another favorite was the seafood, which arrived in a giant slab of perforated fake crab that I’d break apart with my fingers and go to town on.

I don’t even remember why I quit, but the next job I got was working at a Borders bookstore. I really enjoyed this job. At the time, Who Moved My Cheese? was the book that everyone came in asking for. I didn’t know what it was about, and I still don’t. Sadly, my work at Borders did not involve mayo or rubber gloves, but working the information desk was a big step up, as I got to use my brain.

Borders put their staff through a pretty major training program, which, despite my anticorporate leanings at this point in life, I found highly valuable and still do. For example, they taught me to say “yes” instead of “sure”; or “let me check” instead of “I don’t know” when I was helping customers. A very important tidbit about customer service: just apologize to people. Even if it’s not your fault, they’ve been disappointed by the company you work for and it’s your job to empathize with them. Though you may be paid minimum wage, to the customers you are the face of the entire company. It’s this kind of accountability that gets people raises, promotions, and eventually careers.

As a teenager and into my early twenties, I thought that I would never embrace capitalism, much less be a public champion for it. I was certain that I’d live my years out trying to make a career as a photographer, getting by holding jobs because I had to, not because I wanted to. I’m not that cynical anymore. I’ve learned that it’s typically the larger companies out there that provide the template for employees to chart a path for themselves and continue to develop in their respective fields as well as in their management skills. At Nasty Gal today, we have a little something we call “Our Philosophy” that’s posted around the office. We employ an amazing Human Resources and Benefits team to ensure that our practices are fair and that our employees are well taken care of. Before Nasty Gal, I hardly knew what HR stood for (high rise, as in jeans? Or HR, the lead singer from Bad Brains?), and a philosophy was something that I would have fully rolled my eyes at. But when a company is on a trajectory as crazy as Nasty Gal’s, and becomes as big as Nasty Gal, these kinds of things are more than just corporate mumbo jumbo—they’re integral to having a positive company culture.

My stint at Borders, even though I liked it, only lasted about six months. After that, I practiced more job promiscuity at the local factory outlet mall, working at a couple of different shoe stores (both specialized in orthopedic shoes) and at another bookstore. Then I worked at a dry cleaner’s, where I sat alone, in the back, scrubbing ring-around-the collar out of men’s shirts and separating them by starch level.

The fact that I quit my job at Borders in no way diminishes how much I learned from it.

I worked at a restaurant for about a day, and that I really hated. I wasn’t exactly a people person, and that’s what working in a restaurant is: people, nonstop people. I wondered, if I was going to make the same amount of money no matter what I did, then what should I choose to do? To be a bumbling server (I say that only because I was a major bumbler), get stressed out over spilled milk, or sit here in this dimly lit Dexter shoes? I’d rather work at Dexter and read a book. Even though I always worked hard as an employee, all of these jobs still only used about 15 percent of my brain (max) and each job I loved eventually grew boring. It felt a bit like Groundhog Day—every day was the same, no matter how much I’d done the day before. And with no Bill Murray? No thanks. At this point in my litany of shitty jobs, I’d never reaped what I’d sown, and that, I eventually learned, is the only way I can stay engaged.

Fight the Boredom

To be, in a word, unborable. . . . It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.

—David Foster Wallace

This was the phase of my life where I chose jobs because they were really easy. The last job I had before Nasty Gal, I was a campus safety host in the lobby of the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. I quite literally did nothing, and that was the entire reason I took the job. Hell no would I be making a difference or earning my keep! I wanted to be a cheaper version of a security guard, dick around on MySpace, and periodically yell, “Hey, you need to sign in!” As soon as my shift began, I was waiting for it to end. I realize how lame this sounds now. And guess what? It was lame. It makes me sad to remember how apathetic I was. I hope that I made some of these mistakes so that you, dear hardworking #GIRLBOSS in the making, won’t have to.

What I know now is that nothing is universally boring—what’s boring to you could be totally engaging to someone else. If you’re bored and hating it, it’s a big sign that you’re most likely just in the wrong place. There are some folks who just straight up hate work, no matter what kind of work it is. This book just isn’t for those people. Unless you’re born the child of a billionaire, work is something we all have to do. So hell, make it something you enjoy, because bored is not a #GIRLBOSS’s natural state. At all.

Unless you’re powered by an ungodly amount of spite, it’s pretty impossible to succeed while doing something that you genuinely hate. Personally, I am horrible at public relations. There’s a whole art to PR that’s being you on demand and saying the right thing at the right time, and that I’ve never mastered. A good publicist has to be capable of selling while still being genuine and building relationships. Kaitlyn, Nasty Gal’s PR director, loves her job, and she’s great at it. She’s a total extrovert and loves people, so she thrives on being in constant contact with everyone all the time. I jokingly refer to the financial side of the business as “the boring stuff,” but that’s only because it’s boring to me. Our CFO loves to look at graphs and spreadsheets and all sorts of acronyms that I am only just beginning to understand. That’s fantastic, because if there weren’t people who found finance or international logistics fascinating, none of us at Nasty Gal would have a job.

Using my love for photography to explore the oppressive nature of time.

My biggest weakness as an employee (and also as a friend) was my incurable inability to be on time. Time may be the one thing in the world I can’t negotiate, no matter how hard I’ve tried. It plagues me to this day. I was always grumpy about the fact that I had to take twenty minutes out of my personal life to get to work, considering those twenty minutes were unpaid. To squeeze every last moment of “my” life (as I felt they owned me during work hours), I’d leave as late as possible for work, ensuring I was pretty much always late. Sometimes being late is unavoidable (aka shit happens), but being repeatedly, predictably late is a wonderful way to let your boss know that you just don’t care about your job. No one wants to hire, or continue to employ, someone who blatantly doesn’t care.

I finally found a job at a hydroponic plant store. We jammed out to A Tribe Called Quest while I balanced the pH levels of the water. I took care of a giant banana tree that was rooted in lava rock that resembled enlarged rabbit droppings. I loved that job. After that, I did landscaping, thinking it would be good exercise to be outside, lugging hoses and a wheelbarrow around an office complex. This lasted about two weeks. Go ahead, you can laugh and wonder what I was thinking, because seriously, what was I thinking? But no matter the job, the outcome was usually the same—I got bored and quit.

Yet when I started Nasty Gal, I found that I enjoyed work and thrived on challenges. My days passed by in a happy blur because I was too busy to look at the clock. This was very different from having nothing to do but count the minutes while someone who was no smarter than me dictated eight hours of my day. I’ve always had issues with following the rules, which has made Nasty Gal the only thing I’m capable of doing.

What all of these jobs taught me is that you have to be willing to tolerate some shit you don’t like—at least for a while. This is what my parents’ generation would call “character building,” but I prefer to call it “#GIRLBOSS training.” I didn’t expect to love any of these jobs, but I learned a lot because I worked hard and grew to love things about them. Admittedly, some were way below anyone’s intelligence level. But no matter what, I approached them with a sense of tourism and experimentation. Rather than being tied to how it all worked out, I felt like I was just going to see where things went. When you approach everything as if it’s a big, fun experiment, then it’s not that big of a deal if things don’t work out. If the plan changes, that can be even better. There are secret opportunities hidden inside every failure, which I’ll get into in another chapter, but start looking now—they are everywhere!

And the shitty jobs made the good ones more meaningful. Most people don’t land their dream job right out of the gate, which means we all have to start somewhere. You’ll appreciate your amazing career so much more when you look back at your not-so-amazing jobs in the past, and hopefully realize that you learned something from all of them. What I did before starting Nasty Gal gave me perspective and a diversity of experience, which for me was as important as everything that I’ve done since. It took me a while to recognize this, though, because I wanted a Chutes and Ladders experience with only ladders and no chutes. I was looking for something that would pay me to do nothing and still get ahead in life, and that, my friends, just does not exist (unless you’re Paris Hilton, who I’m not sure is actually ahead in any way, especially when it comes to fashion).

I recently heard someone use the acronym “IWWIWWWIWI,” which stands for “I Want What I Want When and Where I Want It.” One might call this the motto of my generation. We’re Internet kids who have been spoiled by our desires being no more than a click away. We think fast, type fast, move fast, and expect everything else to happen just as fast. I’m guilty of it, too. I didn’t have the patience to finish high school, or to go to college, or to wait for a career that would take a long time to develop. As an employer I see this often from new hires fresh out of college who expect to immediately get an awesome job that satisfies all of their super-pure creative urges and pays well. Hey, that’s a great goal. But, like everything, you’ve got to work for what you want. I see so many résumés of people who’ve interned at 20 million amazing places. That’s great, I’m glad that you were able to explore your interests and gain exposure, but if you’ve been interning for five years, to me it seems as though you don’t need to work. I respect people who are willing to just roll up their sleeves and get the job done, even if it’s a shitty one. Trust me, there ain’t no shame in that game, and I can make one hell of a tuna sandwich to prove it.

School: It’s Not My Jam

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

—Iggy Pop

By now, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that school and I didn’t quite hit it off. Frankly, I have conflicted feelings about that. There have been many times that I wished I had the vision, patience, and discipline to have stuck with college for four years. I have a lot of respect for people who do. But school wasn’t my jam, and the whole philosophy behind this book is that true success lies in knowing your weaknesses and playing to your strengths. In short, when you suck at something and don’t want it anyway, cut your losses and move on. I sucked at being patient and sucked at seeing anything long term, which I have now outgrown. But if you’re driven, patient, and want to go to school, I’ll be the last one to tell you to do anything otherwise.

There were times when I hated school not because of the other kids, but the wacked-out adults I was stuck with. Remember the rapid-learner program teacher who didn’t believe in math? Well, she lived across from the zoo and brought in raw owl pellets, dumping them on our desks for us to dissect. It smelled like barf because it actually was barf. I hated that teacher. In fourth grade, my Catholic school teacher sent me home with a note that detailed my daily transgressions. Ms. Curtis was convinced I was bonkers. My sins included getting up to drink from the water fountain too often, getting up to sharpen my pencils too many times, and taking too long on trips to the bathroom. My mom, completely exasperated at this point, said “We know you’re not nuts . . . right?”

No caption needed: This report card says it all.

“Nope, I’m not nuts!” I said, so we negotiated. If I brought home a good note for five days in a row, then she’d take me to the Sanrio store. Soon enough, every Friday I was picking out Hello Kitty this and Kero Kero Keroppi that, my backpack filled to the brim with positive notes from my teacher.

In seventh grade, I asked my science teacher if I could stand on a chair while giving my presentation, because I was proud of it and wanted to make sure that everyone could see it. He said no. Hey, it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission: I took him literally and stood on a lab table instead.

As the years went on, I only felt more alienated. I went to high school in the suburbs, which was a sterile environment, and not in a good, non-owl-barf-having kind of way. All strip malls and outlet stores, there was little more to do than smoke weed by the river and sneak into apartment-complex hot tubs. High school was all bimbos and jocks, and popularity was a matter of how clean you could keep your sneakers. In those days, I wore flared jeans, platform Birkenstocks, and always a belt, usually one that was covered in spikes. I wore a do-rag, and my septum piercing was concealed inside my nose. Obviously, I was destined for a career in fashion.

The pure mechanics of the traditional school system were spirit crushing. I felt it was the Man’s way of training America’s youth to endure a lifetime repeating the behaviors taught in school, but in an office environment. I felt like a prisoner. I woke up at the same time every day and sat in the same chairs five days a week. I had no more autonomy than a Pavlovian dog. First-world problems, right?

My favorite teacher was Mr. Sharon, the one I ate lunch with on a nearly daily basis. He believed in me. He was vegetarian. He taught us U.S. history from the book Lies My Teacher Told Me and brought in bits of writing from anarchist Emma Goldman. I learned that Helen Keller was a Socialist! I was proud of my video project, which was a series of pans with Bad Religion’s angst-ridden song “Infected” as the soundtrack. Bam, shot of the Nike factory outlet store. Bam, shot of money. Bam, shot of a graveyard.

Mr. Sharon, my favorite teacher and lunch buddy. He wrote poetry, man.

But aside from Mr. Sharon’s one-hour fart of freedom wafting through the jail bars, high school was a wasteland.

It was around this time that a psychiatrist diagnosed me with both depression and ADD. Though there was no doubt I was depressed, I refused to take the pills that he prescribed, instead throwing them away. I knew then that my utter misery and universal disinterest were not due to a chemical imbalance. This wasn’t something that could just be medicated out of me—I just hated where I was.

It’s unfortunate that school is so often regarded as a one-size-fits-all kind of deal. And if it doesn’t fit, you’re treated as if there is something wrong with you; so it is you, not the system, which is failing. Now, I’m not trying to give every slacker a free pass to cut class and head straight to Burger King, but I do think we should acknowledge that school isn’t for everyone. So, #GIRLBOSS, if you suck at school, don’t let it kill your spirit. It does not mean that you are stupid or worthless, or that you are never going to succeed at anything. It just means that your talents lie elsewhere, so take the opportunity to seek out what you are good at, and find a place where you can flourish. Once you do, you’re going to kill it. PORTRAIT OF A #GIRLBOSS:

Madeline Poole, MPNAILS.com (@MPnails)

When I was really young, before I knew what was up, I wanted to be a cleaning lady (because I loved making patterns on the rug with a vacuum) and a basketball player (because I loved the outfits) and I wanted to live in Connecticut and have a royal-purple foyer that I would call a “fo-yay” with a French accent. I wanted to be fabulous. Some things have changed but I’m still striving for fabulousness. I knew I didn’t want to worry—I wanted a well-traveled, creatively inspired life where money was not my first concern.

I’d had countless jobs, usually creative but always low on the totem pole. I wrapped presents at a jewelry store, served snow cones, taught swimming lessons, cut bagels, worked at a coffee shop, and at a few restaurants—even Panera! I was breaducated. I restored posters, I catered, I nannied, I worked on an ice-cream truck, I sewed sequins on headbands, sewed tags on T-shirts, painted walls, murals, removed wallpaper, assisted a prop stylist, a food stylist, and some Devil Wears Prada–type fashion stylists.

My dad gave me a hard time, and all I could tell him was that I wanted to be an expert. Whatever I ended up specializing in, I would make sure to be the best at it. I was a hard worker, I always had been, and finally . . . I saw a lady painting a model’s nails on the set of a photo shoot and thought, I would be really good at that!

I quit my various part-time jobs and enrolled in LA’s cheapest beauty school. I was at my all-time most stressed and poor, sitting under fluorescent lighting, wearing a dust mask, watching a cheesy lady demonstrate airbrush makeup on a fake head. But I always knew it would work out.

Now I’m an on-set, freelance manicurist on fashion editorial and commercial photo shoots, I develop nail products, and I work on lots of creative projects that have anything to do with nails. In short, I’m an expert.

When I’m not working, I’m still working. I’m always observing, I’m taking photos of patterns and colors I see on the streets, I’m jotting down ideas, I’m meeting new people, connecting the dots, researching my craft, trying out new products, giving my friends manicures, working on my website, updating my social media accounts, working on my own products, on collaborative projects, putting together inspiration boards or sketching new ideas. I’m working on my craft and my business not because I feel obligated, but because I love it. I’ve always had to work hard because I had no other choice, but I always believed in myself.

I always knew I’d be a #GIRLBOSS. “Discomfort was where I was most comfortable.”