Work and Calling

The Curly Q and the Chili Dog

My first real job was at the Dairy Queen, just a few blocks from my house. I was fourteen years old.

They started me in the back making Dilly bars. Once I mastered that—dipping frozen ice cream bars in chocolate coating and sticking them back in the freezer—they brought me up front to teach me how to use the soft-serve machine.

Each cone size is supposed to hold a specific weight in ounces of ice cream. At first, I couldn’t get the weight right. I’d either underfill or, worse, overfill the cones. Once, someone asked for a dipped cone, and I dropped the entire scoop of ice cream into the hot vat of chocolate coating.

But getting the weight right wasn’t my only problem with the cones. It was the curly Q—that little swirly loop at the top of the cone that was their trademark. I couldn’t do it to save my life.

So they took me off cones for a while and let me make Mr. Mistys, floats, and top the banana splits and Peanut Buster Parfaits. That, I could handle.

The couple who owned that franchise were very nice and treated me well. When they hired you, they told you that you could eat as much of whatever you wanted as long as it was on your break.

That was smart.

For the first two weeks, at every break, I’d gorge on hot fudge sundaes, Peanut Buster Parfaits, Dilly bars, and banana splits. For a fourteen-year-old kid, that was heaven!

After the second week though, the thought of soft ice cream wasn’t so appealing. Let alone heavenly. By the end of the first month, when my friends suggested we go to Dairy Queen, I felt queasy.

But you know what I’ll never forget? The feeling of receiving my first paycheque. A real check with my name on it that I had to take to the bank and deposit in my own bank account.

I felt almost grown.

One day the owners announced that they’d be opening a Brazier—they’d be making and selling hot food. Cool, I thought. I was still struggling with those curly Qs, so when things weren’t busy, I was kept in the back making Dilly bars and stocking up. No one trained me on anything to do with the Brazier, and I was okay with that. I was content being the backup person who put the toppings on ice cream and kept things stocked.

The first Saturday they opened the Brazier, we got slammed. People came in from everywhere! Things got so busy that they pulled me out of the back to help.

At one point, my boss asked me to make a chili dog.

I had never had a chili dog before. I didn’t know what it was.

He pointed to a poster on the wall with a picture of a chili dog. I looked up. I saw a bun with chili in it, so that’s what I made.

Of course, the customer complained that there was no wiener in his chili dog.

I didn’t know that was supposed to be in a chili dog. The picture only showed a bun with chili in it.

Anyway, we got through the rush of customers, and at the end of the day, the boss pulled me aside. He said I was a good, hardworking kid, but it just wasn’t working out.

I felt stupid that I didn’t know how to make a chili dog. But I understood.

He said he felt bad letting me go, and since I was such a great kid, I could come by anytime for the rest of the summer and have anything I wanted on the house.

I turned green.

I shook his hand as he gave me my final cheque, and I left.

He was such a nice man that I didn’t have the heart to tell him that what they sold as ice cream cakes didn’t have any cake in them.

Why This Theme Matters

We spend a huge portion of our lives working. Earning our living, contributing our gifts, filling our days with tasks and responsibilities, and the labour that makes our lives possible.

Some of us found work that felt meaningful, that aligned with who we are and what we care about. Others worked jobs that paid the bills but didn’t feed our souls. Most of us experienced both—meaningful work and soul-crushing work, sometimes in the same job, sometimes on the same day.

Work shapes us whether we want it to or not. Our first jobs teach us about responsibility, money, and what we’re good at (and what we’re not). The work that mattered most taught us about purpose and contribution. The struggles with work—burnout, uncertainty, the gap between what we do and what we dream—teach us about identity and what we value.

And now, whether we’re still working or retired, whether we found our calling or just earned our living, we look back and ask: What did my work mean? What contributions am I proud of? How do I define meaningful work now?

When we share stories about work, something interesting happens. Your first job was different from mine, but the feeling of getting that first paycheque—we both know that. Your meaningful work looked different from someone else’s, but we all understand what it feels like when work connects to something deeper. The gap between what you dreamed and what you did—we’ve all felt that tension, even if our dreams were different.

This month, we’re harvesting stories about work—not to compare careers or measure success, but to understand how we’ve spent our days, what we’ve learned from our labour, and what we want our work to have meant.

What We’ll Explore This Month

Over the next four weeks, we’ll explore work from different angles.

This week (Week 1), we’ll focus on first jobs and early work—those formative experiences with earning money, taking responsibility, discovering what we were good at and what we absolutely weren’t. What did your first job teach you? What surprised you about working life?

Next week (Week 2), we’ll look at work that mattered—the job or project that felt meaningful, when you felt most purposeful in your work, what makes work feel like more than just a paycheque. When did your work feed something deeper than your bank account?

In Week 3, we’ll explore work and identity—how much of who you are is tied to what you do, struggles with burnout and uncertainty, the gap between what you do and what you dream. How do you make sense of the relationship between your work and your sense of self?

And in our final week (Week 4), we’ll consider the legacy of labour—looking back at your working life, what do you want it to have meant? What contributions are you proud of? How do you define meaningful work now, from this vantage point?

Each week, I’ll share prompts to help you harvest your memories about work, and I hope you’ll share your stories in the comments. Last month, we explored what we inherited. This month, we’re exploring what we’ve contributed—through our labour, our days, the work of our hands and minds and hearts.

This Week’s Prompts: First Jobs and Early Work

Your first paying job. What was it? How old were you? What do you remember most vividly about it? What did you think it would teach you, and what did it actually teach you?

Your first paycheque. Do you remember receiving it? What did it feel like to earn your own money? What did you do with it?

A mistake you made at an early job. The thing you messed up, the thing you didn’t know, the time you felt incompetent or embarrassed. What happened? What did you learn?

What surprised you about working life. What did you think work would be like, and what was it actually like? What unexpected lessons came from early jobs?

A boss or coworker who taught you something. Someone who was kind, someone who was difficult, someone who showed you how to do something or how NOT to do something. What did they teach you?

The job you hated (or loved) that shaped you anyway. Sometimes the jobs we can’t wait to leave teach us the most. What early job did you think was meaningless but actually mattered? Or what job did you love that influenced your later choices?

Invitation to Engage

Last month, we explored inheritance—jewellery boxes and beliefs, moxie and powerlessness, patterns broken and gifts passed forward. You shared stories about what you received and what you refused to repeat, about making peace with complicated legacies.

This month, we’re turning our attention to work—how we spend our days, what we’ve learned from earning our living, the jobs that shaped us whether we wanted them to or not.

This week, we’re thinking about first jobs. Not the careers we built or the meaningful work we found later, but those early jobs where we learned we weren’t as competent as we thought. Where we got our first paycheques. Where we discovered what we were good at and what we absolutely weren’t.

I got fired from Dairy Queen for not knowing what a chili dog was. I couldn’t master the curly Q. But I learned that hard work matters, that kind bosses make being fired survivable, and that unlimited ice cream isn’t the gift it sounds like.

What was your first job? What mistakes did you make? What did you learn that you didn’t expect to learn?

Share your story in the comments. I’d love to hear about your chili dog moments—the times you felt incompetent, the skills you couldn’t master, the surprising lessons from work you thought didn’t matter.

First jobs aren’t about being good. They’re about learning what you don’t know yet. And that’s okay. That’s the whole point.