As Robin Sparkles would sing, “Lets go to the mall…today!”About 9 years ago, a new mall opened up literally a few minutes away from my house. Over the following years, I ended up working at four locations in this mall, each completely different jobs from one another. They were not the best jobs I’ve ever had, but I learned a few things here and there that have proven useful to me. If you got some time, let me walk you through the four past jobs I’ve worked at in the mall and what I’ve taken away from each experience.
1st Job: Dairy Queen/Orange Julius
Time worked: Freshman year until sophomore year of high school
How I came about this job: My mom knew the managers, so getting hired wasn’t too hard. My friends and I ended up being one of the first employees at this mall because of this job, so that was kind of cool.
Overall Job Satisfaction (from 1-10, with 10 being the highest): 7
Perks: All the ice cream, hot dogs, and smoothies I wanted!
Drawbacks: Smelling like ice cream, hot dogs, and smoothies all day 
. Also, I became lactose intolerant shortly after leaving this job. How ironic right?
Random skill learned from working here: I will forever remember how to make soft serve ice cream cones that looks like the picture above. It’s a fun little trick I bust out occasionally at buffet restaurants.
Something the typical customer might not know: If you wait until around the time the place closes, you’ll most likely be able to get some highly discounted smoothies as we couldn’t save ones that we have pre-made. $1 smoothies as opposed to the typical $3-$4 ones? Sweet (no pun intended) deal!
2nd Job: Random Eucalyptus Oil Stand
Time worked: End of sophomore year of high school
How I came about this job: Guy that ran it recruited young, naive me from Dairy Queen by promising I could make potentially higher money from them. Big mistake.
Overall Job Satisfaction: 2
Perks: Some long periods of inactivity, so I was able to study while working.
Drawbacks: 1st, this was all commission, so there were days I made little to no money. 2nd, I was selling freakin’ ointment oil and had to give out free samples to anyone that wanted it. By free samples, I mean actually applying this oil stuff on people. Unfortunately, most people that would volunteer for free samples were elderly folks. Lets just say rubbing smelly oil on old people all day is not how I ideally wanted to spend my Saturdays.
Random skill learned from working here: I sure know the body locations that need the most relief on elderly folks. Trust me, I had to rub oil on those body parts many (too many) times XP
Something the typical customer might not know: Most of the people that worked at these types of stands knew how annoying it is when we tried to convince you to stop and try our products. We had to do it in order to make some commission, otherwise the day would be a waste for us. I will never want to work in a place like this again.
3rd Job: Movie Theater
Time worked: Summer between junior and senior year of high school
How I came about this job: Applied with a group of friends. Funny enough, I was the only one that made it through the screening process (yes, they gave us a personality test. Random huh?)
Overall Job Satisfaction: 5
Perks: Free movies! Also, I can watch movies during my shifts by saying I have to go scope out a theater to make sure everything’s alright. Of course, they didn’t have to know I was checking the same theater over and over again. hehehehe….
Drawbacks: The long, late hours were killer. Many times I had to work 10 hour shifts ranging from 4pm-2am (damn those late movies urgh!). Cleaning up sticky, spilled food off the floors of theaters wasn’t so fun either. Well, I hope that sticky stuff was food 
Random skill learned from working here: I can guess with about 98% accuracy which movies and times will be crowded or not. I also know all the fastest ways to get out of theaters.
Something the typical customer might not know: In general, most of the workers there don’t care if you bring food in. We had an unwritten rule that if you were able to sneak pass the workers that take your tickets, we would turn the blind eye on those illegal items. Besides, most of us felt wrong to force you to buy our overpriced food.
4th (and last) Job: American Eagle
Time worked: Summer between freshman and sophomore year of college
How I came about this job: I never worked at a clothing store, so I applied to the places that were hiring which ended up being Aeropostale and American Eagle. I got rejected from Aero (those punks!), but American Eagle hired me.
Overall Job Satisfaction: 7
Perks: Big discounts on clothes. That probably explains why almost all of my wardrobe was AE during most of my college years. I have since seen a great decline in AE wear as I’ve transitioned to stores like Banana Republic, Esprit and H&M.
Drawbacks: Pay was sucky (but then again, most of us were working there for the discounts, not the pay). The way they do scheduling wasn’t convenient either. There were weeks I wasn’t on the schedule at all and there were some weeks I was just on call. Thus, I couldn’t really plan anything for those days until the day before since I could get a call from work at any time.
Random skill learned from working here: I’m now a great person to take shopping with (a wingshopper?), whether I like it or not. That is, due to my new found knowledge on clothing, style, sizes, etc. I’m actually capable of giving informed opinions as oppose to the past “that’s nice” type of responses.
Something the typical customer might not know: We got really annoyed when someone would walk in and out of our store multiple times because it screwed up our conversion rates (for those that aren’t sure what that is, there’s a thing that records everyone that walks in and out of the store and compare it to the sales. The higher the percentage, the less grief the employees get from the managers).
There’s my mall job history! Hopefully, some of this stuff may prove useful for you.
P.S. This entry is now featured over at Dollarish.
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