you don't have to describe them in detail with dates, not trying to get you to doxx yourself

but it's kind of A Thing with neurodivergent folks to have tried a lot of different jobs, and I'm curious about everybody's count

I think I'm up to 21 that I've filed taxes for, which doesn't seem that extreme for 42, except when you consider that I've been unemployed most of my son's 17 years of life because I couldn't handle parenting and that level of outside obligations, so most of those happened before I was 25 – so 20ish jobs between 15-25

how bout you, how many things have you tried?

  • polpotkin [none/use name]
    ·
    19 days ago

    I'm 36, I'll try to list them:

    • CVS employee
    • Circuit city (geek squad equivalent)
    • Interior painter
    • Data entry
    • Autozone, front of house
    • Guy who sits in a basement to bill the government hours (temp job)
    • Light construction (moving stuff around usually)
    • Pizza delivery driver
    • Dumpster diver (made good money actually)
    • Network installer
    • Computer Technician
    • Software engineer, Ad tech
    • Software engineer, big data databases
    • CTO, founder, big data databases
    • Sulvor [he/him, undecided]
      ·
      19 days ago

      If I had to guess, CVS was your worst job?

      You're a bit older than me but that place went downhill staffing-wise every year

      We called it Come Visit Satan by the time I left lol

    • dustbunnies [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      19 days ago

      I remember Circuit City! 🧓😂

      what was the most surprising dumpster diving find or sale? like something you were shocked was worth whatever someone was willing to pay for it?

      • polpotkin [none/use name]
        ·
        18 days ago

        Pulled out a bunch of software from Office Depot and some of it went for full retail price on ebay. The local sports equipment stores would throw out ALL of the ski and snowboard equipment at the end of the season, I also couldn't sell any of it out of season and couldn't hold it. There was a satellite mapping company and they would throw out tapes and hard drives full of what I assume were high resolution maps (hard drives were clean and I didn't have a tape drive). Your local chip distributor will probably have a full dumpster at all times of almost-expired food.

    • bubbalu [they/them]
      ·
      19 days ago

      How do you make money dumpster diving? I've done it for groceries but can't imagine another way.

      • polpotkin [none/use name]
        ·
        18 days ago

        I had a routine that I would do every other day that would hit big box stores and light industrial areas, then ebay it. Not sure it's really feasible now, stores don't throw out as much as they did.

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
        ·
        18 days ago

        Resale and maybe refurbishing. If you know the right places by upscale apartment complexes, you can typically find a lot of good stuff in those.

        Residential dumpster diving is very different from commercial dumpster diving.