Back to The Defiant Few ←The Job That Paid for My Life Was Not the One on My Business Card.
My part-time years at ShopRite helped finance the life my law degree gets credit for, which makes me question how I learned to rank the work—and the people—holding a life together.
Put ‘criminal-defense attorney’ and ‘part-time grocery-store worker’ on the same résumé. Watch which line people lean toward. One sounds like the beginning of a story. The other sounds like something you did until the story started. Apparently, a life becomes more interesting when the work comes with a better noun.
My first job was at ShopRite. I started at sixteen and worked there part-time into my early thirties. That job helped put me through college and law school. It helped make marriage, my first house and raising my first two children financially possible. Parkinson’s was working against me for at least half of that stretch. None of this requires a sentimental soundtrack. It is simply a substantial portion of my life that gets less attention than the title that came after it.