Limitless Monday – The beauty of dead end jobs

The term “dead end job” gives the impression that we gain nothing from the experience, wasting both our time and energy. However, no job should be considered a dead end, even cleaning the toilets at the airport!

When I was starting out, one of my first jobs was with GE working in the admin department as an “Amendment Clerk”. That meant I ensured changes to customers’ orders were implemented. It was a reasonably responsible job for a 17 year old. Of course I had no intention of hanging around; it was always a stepping stone.

My sister would regularly mock me when she found out my job title. “You’re a clerk! That’s embarrassing”

Most of my friends at the time, including my sister, were busy adding to their education, which they believed put them in an elevated position to look down on the one or two of us who joined the workforce. However, although I was employed in what appeared from the outside a dead end job, it served its purpose. And thinking about it logically, what 17 year old is going to be doing anything but a dead end job when starting out!

Working taught me discipline. While my friends were laying in bed until 9am, I was up at 6am, studying for my own exams then cycling five miles to work. Not only was I earning money, I was getting work experience and studying.

My point here isn’t to demonstrate that you can always be doing a lot more than the bare minimum; although that is a lesson in itself, my point is to show you that you can treat every job as a stepping stone. It’s part of your makeup, your formation story. Even Kamala Harris claimed recently to have held a job at McDonalds, while I was employed for two weeks at Kentucky Fried Chicken and more recently a Russian restaurant.

My Russian restaurant experience was probably the hardest job I ever held down, however, remembering my two year stint at GE where I washed those dishes while on a podcast educated me on the business of cryptocurrency. That job was the bottom rung of a ladder, the bottom rung, of a comeback trail. You have to start somewhere. Worst case, it’s always a great war story.

We are never too good to be taking out the garbage, picking up trash from the floor, or filing. If you are fortunate enough to start your own business, that is exactly what you will be doing. It’s the versatile person who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty and pitching in that will have a far better chance of making a huge success of his life compared to the one who shies away from hard work, and looks around for someone else to do jobs he or she doesn’t like.

That is why that dead end job is a must for all of us. The graduate who goes directly from college to a high paying job without any work experience is likely to end up a referee rather than a risk taker. If that is your ideal life then please unsubscribe now!

Life isn’t all about education. It’s about experiences. Education combined with experience is an even better combination. These experiences have to be about broadening your mind, teaching you discipline, the benefits of hard work, how to work with other people, and how to manage situations. Emotional intelligence, not academic intelligence.

The takeaway from today’s article is if you don’t like a job you find yourself in, don’t worry about it. As long as you don’t overstay your welcome, then treat it as a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Ask yourself, what can you learn from this job, even if it’s not in your immediate job description. When it’s time to leave, don’t leave anything on the table. You will be needing it in your next experience. Whether that experience is your own business, a new job, or providing the source for a winning idea, an idea that would never have occurred to you if it wasn’t for that dead end job!

Happy Monday!

Banner Image: Janitor. Image Credit – Amílcar Vanden-Bouch