Jobs

When I was very young I was always coming up with schemes to make money. Around the age of 6 I collected plain old rocks from outside and went door to door trying to sell them. I think I actually made a little money, too, not because of my amazing product but because people thought it was cute to see a 6 year old doing something like that and wanted to encourage me. Or something :) Soon after that I gathered up all the toys I didn't like and tried to sell those as well. I don't think that was as successful in financial terms as my rocks scheme had been, but I met my across the street neighbor who was a nice grandmotherly woman and we became good friends. I went over their occasionally for cookies and milk after that :) As I got a little older I started mowing lawns with a hand-powered mower, which was a lot of work. I had to get a running start and get as far as I could into the tall grass before I ran out of momentum, then back up and try again. There were a couple of women that lived a few houses away from me and I offered to mow their lawn for 50 cents. They liked my work so much that they offered me a weekly contract at $2 per week. It was one of the best days of my life :) We had a parsley plant growing near our front porch, and I tried selling parsley at one point - but it was a product with surprisingly low demand. One time I had all of the kids in the neighborhood working in my back yard helping me weed the garden (because who wants to work alone?) I had told them I would pay them, but only after the work was done. Then when they asked for money I gave them some snacks instead and told them I was paying them with food. That was the last time they did any work at my house :) I had a lot of ideas that never really got off the ground, like charging people to come watch movies at my house (which my parents informed me was illegal, sigh) and even teaching aerobics. I tried playing poker with some friends for loose change, but I just ended up losing friends so I gave that up pretty quickly.

Around age 12 I started delivering newspapers for the Utah County Journal, a free newspaper. I also started working at my grandparents house doing household chores and yardwork for minimum wage ($3.25 at the time). I would take the bus to Bountiful and stay with them for a few days at a time. It was the most money I had ever earned, and they always had ice cream in their deep freeze. It was a pretty good gig, although to this day I dislike weeding my own garden because I feel like I should be getting paid for it. My parents also assigned me periodic chores like taking out the garbage, cleaning the garage or basement, weeding, mowing the lawn, etc. I didn't have a very good worth ethic, though. For example, when it was time to clean the garage I usually moved everything into the basement, and when I cleaned the basement I moved everything into the garage. One time I was weeding using the techniques my grandparents had taught me (pull the weeds out by their roots, shake off the dirt and then throw them in the garbage). I thought it would be a lot more efficient if I skipped the "shake off the dirt" step and just shoveled weeds & dirt into the garbage together. I didn't have a good understanding about the importance of topsoil at that point in my life, but it didn't matter because I still learned my lesson when I tried to move the garbage can. It was so heavy that it wouldn't move and fell on my leg instead. I managed to crawl out without any injuries, but I never skipped the "shake off the dirt" step again!

Around age 13 or 14 I started delivering newspapers for The Daily Herald. My first paper route was in a trailer park where the Provo Towne Center Mall is now located. Delivering the papers wasn't usually too difficult, except on Sundays or holidays like Thanksgiving when each newspaper weighed like 10 pounds and could barely be folded in half. I usually had my mom drive me on those days, or really cold mornings, but during the week I delivered the papers after school so it was usually warm enough. I had to collect payment from the subscribers and keep track of the money myself, which was good for me except that in the trailer park I had to keep track of when everyone got paid (if I came before or too long after payday I wouldn't get my money). I never understood why the residents couldn't just set aside $8.25 when they got paid and give it to me whenever I happened to show up to collect, but now that I understand a little more about finances and the pressures facing many adults (particularly those living in a trailer park) I can understand why it was hard for them to set the money aside. One time I brought my dog Sara (a german shepherd/doberman mix) with me while delivering papers, and this obnoxious jerk on a bicycle chased my dog away (she wasn't on a leash). I finished delivering my papers and then went looking for her, but had no idea where she was. I went back home and told my parents and we started driving around the trailer park with no luck. As it started to get dark we gave up and drove home, but on the way we spotted Sara about a mile from the trailer park standing in the middle of the railroad tracks. I was so glad I didn't lose her, and I never took her to that trailer park again. A little while later I got a better newspaper route closer to my home. This time it was in a neighborhood with a lot of senior citizens, and it was much easier to collect payments. Although there was one guy who took about 30 minutes to write a check :) But I actually made friends with one older lady. Her husband was in a nursing home and she would visit him every night, which I thought was cool. We discovered that we both liked David Lanz and she even let me borrow the "Nightfall" cassette. On Sunday mornings my mom would help me with my paper route and then we would go to the genealogy center in the back of our church and do data entry of census records on old green screen computers while listening to KSTAR LDS radio. I remember listening to Chris Heimerdinger's "Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites" audiobook (over the radio) while I was there.

My first "real" job was at Sounds Easy Pizza and Video on 900 east near BYU when I was 15 years old. I was a cashier, but there was no cash register so I had to do all of the math myself (and, strangely, they didn't even provide a calculator). The job interview questions consisted entirely of "how much change should I give?" math problems, which were pretty easy. But I rarely had to use those skills on the job, since business was extremely slow. A normal work day consisted of coming in, making myself a pizza and picking a movie to watch. It was rough :) I earned minimum wage and was paid in cash, which made my parents raise their eyebrows but was exactly how I had always been paid so I didn't understand what they were so worried about. I got fired about a month and a half later, probably due to a combination of slow business and maybe because I was eating all the inventory (which was allowed!) I looked for and found a new job as the onion ring maker for a fast food restaurant. Every day for 3 weeks I was shut into a little tiny room with a 100 pound bag of onions and a ceiling vent. I think I have a worse-than-usual response to onions (they make me quite stuffed up and my eyes water constantly). It was a pretty difficult job -- NOTHING like the cushy pizza job I had just left -- and I smelled like onions everywhere I went even though I never even ate any of the onion rings I made. One day I went in for my usual shift and then left for home. They called me a few hours later to say that my onion rings were unusable (I hadn't mixed the batter correctly so it was falling off the onions). They needed me to come back to make a new batch, and after I had finished making the second batch I quit. It was the only job I've ever quit without first giving 2 weeks notice. That job convinced me that I would be better off working as an unpaid intern in the computer industry (my hobby/passion at the time) than working a minimum wage job, so I worked with our intern coordinator at my high school and got a position as a summer intern with Provo School district. I learned a lot about networking, and in the fall I did a brief internship in the writing lab at our high school. One of my jobs was to keep students from accessing the computer systems and running programs on them that they shouldn't (games, etc.) Unfortunately I made the systems a little too secure and no one could use them for anything (oops). I was pulled out of another class to fix the problem, and I think I was kind of fired after that ... but it was disguised as a promotion. The internship coordinator told me there was an opportunity to work as an intern at Novell, which was one of the two best computer companies to work for in Utah Valley at the time (the other one was WordPerfect). One of my scout leaders worked at Novell and took us on a field trip there. I was so impressed with what that I saw that I decided I wanted to work there someday. So of course I jumped at the chance to be an intern there. I learned a LOT and being able to put Novell on my resume gave me a ticket to almost any entry-level computer job I wanted. I took a job with a company called ICS, but I made a mistake while building a computer and they stopped calling me to come in after school (I never even got a paycheck from them).

A few weeks later my girlfriend drove me to several local companies where I dropped off my resume. One of them was called Computershow, and in April I was hired to build computers for them. I was working on a computer one day when one of the employees noticed me about to make the same mistake I had made at ICS -- and showed me how to do it right, which I will be forever grateful for. I was hired mostly to clean up surplus equipment, and my work ethic really hadn't changed much since the days when I did chores for my parents. I'm embarrassed to say that sometimes I even fell asleep on the job. After I hard worked there for a few months, I asked my boss for a raise and he quite literally laughed at me -- in this obnoxious/exaggerated way (to prove a point). I was mortified, and after we discussed some of the problems I rolled up my sleeves and went to work in a way that I had never done before. I quickly worked through the rest of the surplus equipment, built a network and a program for the company to use to create & print service tickets, and honed my computer and printer repair skills. I developed a good relationship with my boss (who never laughed at me again, thankfully) and received a couple of raises. A few months later Novell asked my boss if he had any employees that would be willing to consult there to repair computers. My boss recommended me and I started working at Novell as a contractor. I remember my very first day on the job someone asking for help with Netscape. I had used the Internet before, but only in a University setting (and Mosaic was the only browser I had heard of). It was the early 90's and the Internet was just starting to take off, and my career was taking off along with it. I quickly learned the required skills and was so good at my job that Novell decided to hire me full time even though I was only 17, and they offered me almost double what I had been making as a contractor. Soon after that Computershow fell on financial hard times, and I was grateful that I had left before the company folded.

I worked at Novell for two years and learned a LOT. I had quite a bit of autonomy and loved what I did. Every day when I left the building I knew I had made a difference just by being there. I was a "building technician," which meant I helped people in a particular building with just about any computer problem they had. I fixed printing and networking issues, installed software, setup networks and computers and troubleshooted Internet connectivity issues and made regular trips to the hardware repair department (it was about a quarter mile away, but the buildings were all connected; Novell's Provo campus was VERY large). After I had been a Novell for about a year I applied for a job in the support department. I was offered the position and would have received a $5,000 raise if I had taken it, but when I told my wife about it she had a really horrible feeling. So I told them no against my better judgment, and another guy on my team took the position instead. He was laid off 3 months later (as I would have been if I had taken that job). Instead I studied hard and passed my Novell certification (which required taking 7 different tests). I memorized the OSI layers so thoroughly that I still remember them (even though I didn't and still don't know how this knowledge applies to the real world): physical, data link, network, transport, session, presentation, application. Once I completed that certification I was offered a $10,000 raise. My dream was to be a network administrator, because those guys had all of the network privileges. I informed my boss about this, and he told me he'd try to help me out. But a department reorganization occurred shortly afterwards, and the nature of the network administrator job changed significantly. Instead of sitting quietly in an office and responding to issues via email, network administrators were now required to be on phones and take calls from Novell employees all around the world. My boss offered a "phone operator" network administrator position to a co-worker, and he turned it down. Then he offered it to me, and I told him that since the nature of the job had changed I was no longer interested. He told me I could take it or be fired. A few months before someone I had helped at Novell and who was impressed with my work had moved to another company (Nu Skin) and contacted me to see if I wanted to leave Novell. I was happy at the time so I said no, but when this change occurred I called him back and asked if the position was still open. Fortunately it was, and I gave my 2 weeks notice after only a week of being on phones (for a total of 3 weeks).

Nu Skin was and is an amazing company. Whereas Novell had a very "cutthroat" kind of culture (the CEO had a "fire the worst performing 10% of employees" every year approach to management), Nu Skin was very people-oriented and I fit in right away. They did occasionally do layoffs, which was pretty hard for me (I consider co-workers to be family, and losing them was like disowning them). I recognize that I don't have a very business-oriented attitude in that regard (other people seem to be able to say "that's just business" much more easily than me), but it seems to be the way I am made. I had 5 different jobs during the 9 years I worked for Nu Skin. I started doing work that was similar to what I did at Novell, then moved into software testing, programming, project management and finally people management. During that time I completed my schooling (including an MBA degree) and was offered a position as Director of IT for a local company. I felt good about taking the job and worked there for about 18 months. I had 11 employees and a two million dollar budget and a great boss. The work was intense and time-consuming, and I always took it home with me. When the company was purchased by venture capitalists who didn't seem to appreciate me or my opinions, I applied for a position at another company. It required a pay cut, but it was worth it to feel valued again by my boss and peers. Unfortunately the excitement of my new job was quickly dampened by the discovery that the owner of the company was erratic and regularly fired people when his mood soured (he cleaned out his executive staff about every three to four years). I had the opportunity to spend some time working very closely with him and he seemed to have absolutely no regard for anyone's feelings except his own. After my boss, whom I respected highly, gave his notice I stayed on for a month or two longer and then applied for and received a job at Nu Skin, where I still remain happily employed (the night I interviewed at Nu Skin was the night the Provo Tabernacle next to the Nu Skin building caught fire). I don't know what my future career will look like, but I am grateful to have found a good company that allows me to balance work and family time.