For most of my adult life, I was simply a housewife and mother, until my marriage ended in divorce, and I (with no job skills at all) had to find work to support myself.. One place that will usually hire people (read "anybody") is direct sales. So I learned to sell stuff. I am a naturally shy person, and had to force myself to get in front of people and tell them about a product. However, i also like people, and always wanted to help a person out; so when I had something that I felt would make their life better, I naturally wanted to tell people about it. I have sold steam cleaners, christmas trees, horses, puppies, life insurance, and all sort of other odds and ends that I came across. I think that the one that was the best for me was working for Combined Insurance Company of America, selling life insurance. They don't work from an office. They have routes, and stop by a town every six months, collect renewals on insurance premiums, and sell any new policies. I almost lived on the road. I drove 1,000 miles a week, week in and week out. I saw most of the Pacific Northwest in my travels. I went to Chicago for training at the home office, as well as earned several trips and other awards for my sales. One trip was to Palm Springs for the annual award banquet, and we spent several days sighseeing in Palm Springs, and also got to actually meet W. Clement Stone, the founder of Combined Insurance Company. They had a lot of motivational training, and it helped me in having a better attitude in life, as well as an interesting work experience.
I had a brief experience of direct sales, fundraising door to door, and was also given motivational training. I expected a lot of rejection, but even if people did not sign up, the majority were nice to me and I enjoyed meeting many of them. I'm naturally quiet and introverted, but out in 'the field' I was expected to pitch100 people a day. Some of my best work experiences were when I was a manager for a book company. Books are a big part of my life and being surrounded by them all day, choosing books to buy from publishers and wholesalers, marketing books and discussing books with customers, I was truly in my element. It was also physical hard work because books are heavy to move around and there are always boxes to be unpacked and books to be packed , but I used to think that many people pay to join a gym and there I was getting paid for the exercise. The only jobs I did not enjoy much were ones where I was stuck in an office all day. I never felt comfortable in an office environment.
Most of my jobs have been administrative or clerical. One of my favorite jobs was grading essays for 4th and 5th graders. Our team worked together to accomplish this massive project for one of the school systems. Over the course of the summer, we graded hundreds of essays which were generally fun insights into the mind of a 10 or 11 year old.
Another job that I really enjoyed was working as a delivery person and sales associate for an online newspaper that also had a printed version delivered locally. By locally, I mean within around a 100 mile radius of where i lived. It usually took me all week to get the RNW bulletin delivered everywhere in the area, and I would to one diresction on one day, and the other direction another day, untill I had covered all of the towns surrounding our part of northern Idaho. I also sometimes went "on assignment with Uncle Bud", one of the feature writers for Ruralnorthwest. Part of his job was to try out local restaurants, take pictures, and write a report about the food, service, and ambiance of the restaurant. When I was doing my delivery route, I left papers at restaurants; so sometimes I would discover a place that looked like it would be perfect for a feature article, schedule an interview, and then Uncle Bud and I would jump in his little VW and head out to enjoy a meal, and he would write up his report. Since I worked on a sales commission, plus a set amount for delivery; i could pretty much set my own schedule. Some days, I would work 12-15 hours, and other days, I didn't go at all. I stayed home and went horseback riding if I had the bulletins delivered for the week.
For one year, my wife and I published a monthly magazine known as All Maine Matters. In each issue, I would profile one small Maine community, including one that had only three year-round residents, while the remainder of the publication was mostly political. The papers were distributed free from grocery stores, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses throughout the state, but mostly the northern part of the state, as we never quite achieved statewide distribution). Each month, I would take a week dropping them off in one business after another, which included roughly half of the cities and towns in the state, and I enjoyed my paper route. Along the way, I would scope out the subject of my next profile.