We often laugh, moan, and complain about our first jobs

There are lessons to be learned from every position we hold in our careers. A 16 year old working at a fast food restaurant learns how to run the fryer and operate a cash register, but more importantly they begin to understand responsibility and the implications of the decisions they make day to day.

My first job was as a hostess/cashier at a local barbeque joint in Kansas City (makes my mouth water just thinking about it!). It wasn't a glamorous job, but it was near my house and gave me the opportunity to earn some money the summer before my first year in college. And when I think back about it, I gained several important life skills that have helped me immensely during my marketing career. One, the customer (or principal or project manager) isn't always right, but listening attentively and maintaining a calm, positive attitude helps ease difficult situations.

Two, multi-tasking and prioritizing is inevitable. During the busiest times of the day at the restaurant I was often juggling multiple carry-out phone orders, customers standing in line to pay, and a room of 20 people waiting to be seated for dinner. Today, 20 years later, I similarly have two proposals sitting on my desk, four voice mail messages to return, countless unread emails, and in the past hour alone three principals have walked into my office to ask about some issue that needs attention.

Each week in The Zweig Letter, we interview Hot Firm leaders from various industries and ask them about influences from their past. I enjoy reading these insights and notice many common lessons we all learn early in our careers — collaboration, time management, customer service, and teamwork. I asked this question of my ZweigWhite colleagues and found some interesting answers.

"The popular summer job for kids in Indiana was detassling corn for the seed companies. I was 12 when I first started. We were on a bus en route to the fields by 5:30 every morning and worked in the humidity, heat, rain, and muddy fields. Not many teenagers sign up for that voluntarily, but I learned the job is mostly the attitude you pack along with you — and we made it a positive one." — Christine Brack, PMP, principal, Strategic Advisory Services

"My first job after high school was at a truck wash in Coralville, Iowa. (Truckers are meticulous about the appearance of their rigs). From that experience I learned that people place an inordinate value upon the outward appearance of things with seemingly lesser regard for their actual practical use. In other words, in the human economy, presentation has much more value than individual merit." — Jeremy Clarke, director, Executive Search Consulting

"My first paid job was helping maintain drilling equipment and drill pipe in the [storage] yard. It involved lots of painting, sand blasting, and weed eating during hot Louisiana summers. It taught me the value of working smarter, not harder." — W. Hobson Hogan, principal, Investment Banking

We often laugh, moan, and complain about our first jobs, but if you think back to your start in the working world I bet you'll discover there are many lessons you took from that experience that still help you today. Please share!

Debbie Frederiksen, CPSM, , is director of Marketing Consulting Services at ZweigWhite. Her career spans 17 years in the architecture/engineering/planning industry.Contact her at dfrederiksen@zweigwhite.com.