For your amusement I have also included some of my earliest jobs. You could call these traumas "formative."

1982 Softwaire Centre International

Sales

I was unemployed for a few weeks after leaving Burger King, giving me plenty of time to contemplate my next big career move.

One day I went to my favorite Radio Shack to pick up some parts for a project. Two doors down, the long-closed Karate studio that had given me self-confidence years before was being demolished. Curious, I walked in and met my future boss.

He said he was opening a new kind of computer store, one that sold software only. I mentioned that I had a CP/M system at home and that I was familiar with the Radio-Shack TRS-80. He offered me a job.

I worked at his store for over a year, getting a great exposure to all kinds of commercial software -- accounting, spreadsheets, languages, games, etc.

My biggest accomplishment there was winning a manufacturer's award for selling the most copies of the Dbase II database management system. Being a programmer, I could make dbase do just about anything, so it was easy to steer customers who outgrew Visicalc or Lotus 1-2-3 to a database system.

My reward was a silver "Dbase II" jacket from Ashton-Tate. I recently sold it on ebay for $30 to some guy from Luxemborg.

Softwaire Center also provided my first exposure to consulting. One day a large man charged in, chomping a cigar, and asked me if I could teach his daughter word processing. I told him that the store didn't offer training, and he gruffly said "How much do you make here? I'll double it!" I later found myself at his ocean-front mansion helping his gorgeous daughter with her Apple II for the princely sum of ten dollars an hour.

That seemed quite lucrative, so I aggressively pursued consulting opportunities as they walked in the store. The better engagements are detailed on the consulting page.

I enjoyed my job at Softwaire Centre, but I had a bit of wanderlust. One of my college professors had assigned MegaTrends, a book which among other things predicted growth in computer networking. I loved on-line bulletin boards and email, so I scanned the Daily Breeze for want-ads and took a job at Local Data.

Two explosive evenings -- my work at PyroSpectaculars

In 1992 I was watching a cable special on fireworks. It reminded me of a Kentucky shopping spree years before:

Rockets were my favorite. At one point I was a model-rocket hobbyist. I lost so many of the re-usable rockets that I transferred my hobby to the single-use type - that's the kind that go up and explode.

This TV special mentioned that PyroSpectaculars ran most of the shows in Los Angeles. I called them and got a job. For one day. I shoveled dirt, aimed rockets, tied fuses, and so on. Standard hard work.

At night, I saw my fireworks fantasy fulfilled - lighting the big bombs and rockets and running part of the show from the front lines. For ten hours of work, I received $28. Less than minimum wage, owing to some kind of apprenticeship clause.

In the year 2000 that same old feeling came over me again and I had to get back into the game. On July 4th I worked on a show at CBS in Studio City. The pictures below are copyright Timothy N. Holly.

Pizza delivery brings out the best in people

My friend Alan A. Reed had a pizza delivery job and occasionally he would need someone to fill in for him at the last minute.

I had a full-time computer job, but this seemed like fun and for a few weekends I was in the delivery business. It was fun! I enjoyed dealing with the drunks, frantic housewives, and people of all sorts. I was also able to express my dormant theatrical side -- wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses at night, shouting "pizza" after ringing the doorbell, and so on.

Why I never made made a single sandwich for Subway

When I reported for work a few days later, the manager asked me to run a meat cutting machine. The fine print on the back of my crisp new work permit said no radioactive substances, explosives, mines... or meat cutting.

I casually mentioned that to the manager and that was the end of my sandwich making career. All in all, I only made one sandwich for Subway -- and that was for me. 

Ahhh, my first workplace lesson. I went across the street to Burger King....

How I was fired from Burger King

I worked for Burger King for over a year starting in 1982. I enjoyed it! My high-school buddies worked there, and we generally had a good time. The genuine concern for product quality surprised me.

I was fired when I asked for a day off to take the SAT college entrance exam. This was a good thing, because in a week I got a job at a software store.

Chuck Norris took pity on me

As a late bloomer, I really needed some self-defense training to help me confront the typical schoolyard thugs.. Unfortunately, I didn't have a lot of disposable income at the time.

I started off by paying for lessons at the main office of Chuck Norris Karate. Eventually, I asked for a job. Since I was too young to work a regular job, I swept the floors and cleaned up the place in exchange for lessons.

You can call me a name-dropper if you like -- Chuck was shifting his career from running a nationwide chain karate studios to making movies. He rarely came in to his main studio, and I never met him.

In an odd twist of fate, the studio closed and became a software store, where I worked in later years. It was no coincidence that only two doors away was where...

I unwittingly stole from Radio Shack

I hung out in the Radio Shack to fool around with the TRS-80 computers. They actually had graphics, while my home system only had a 24x80 dumb terminal.

The company didn't hire people under 18, but the manager gave me a job for the winter holidays. I assisted customers, stocked shelves, and did some minor electronic repair work. While I was running the store, he locked himself in the bathroom for extended periods to "review" his porn collection. He paid me with equipment and left me alone. My favorite "payment" from him was a 300 bits-per-second modem. This introduced me to the wild world of bulletin board systems and email.

I didn't realize it at the time, but while I was running the store the manager was looting the place. I returned to school and discovered later that he was fired after the store was audited. I thought he actually owned the place.... but I learned my lesson from there and have since become quite a scholar of scams, fraud, and urban legends.

Ten years later I saw my old boss at a restaraunt. He was the manager at the local McDonald's.

Some Kid Jobs

Lawns - I had a little landscaping business, mowing lawns in the neighborhood for a few extra bucks.

Papers - I had a paper route and delivered the Daily Breeze. This gave me enough money to subscribe to Byte, Creative Computing, Internet Age, and Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics and Orthodontia.

Printing - My best friend Evan Cohan had a print shop in the family, so some weekends I would go to downtown Los Angeles and work with him. Tasks included cutting, collating, packaging, quality control.  And the skid-row locale also provided my first exposure to the homeless.