I've worked as a outdoor parking attendant, in winter, in Canada, for minimum wage. Not a hard job but standing up 8h per day in the cold with nothing to do sucked big time. After that I worked as a metalworker in a factory. It paid extremely well, but the shifts were long, the factory was blazing hot in the summer and ass-freezing cold in winter and the work was physically gruelling.

Then I worked retail for 4 years. During those 4 years, I worked the night shift, the evening shift, the fucking early morning shift, the day shift, full-shift, half-day shifts, double day+night shifts, 2h shifts, 16h shifts, all the while going to school part-time to get the prerequisites for the degree I wanted to get.

I've had shitty bosses, wonderful bosses, shitty coworkers, crazy coworkers, great coworkers. I've deal with all kind of people in retail.

University was a fucking breeze to go trough after all that. And now I appreciate my current cozy boring desk job so much. It might not be much, I had some people laugh at my job title, I had friends say I was a sellout, I had family members say it's a waste of my talents. Fuck them all.