God, this is too funny!
Right out of high school I worked with a group of bros. cleaning supermarket floors and pioneering. Memorized hundreds of verses word for word by putting them on 3x5 cards and quizzing each other as we drove between stores!
First fulltime job, once I'd had one child and a second on the way and had to stop pioneering, was literally as a school janitor!
For 17 years as a MS, elder and pioneer, we had our own office cleaning business. God, what a waste of my life! When the kids were grown and gone, my wife and I, still JWs, decided we'd had enough of that and went to work in the mental health field. I also decided I was going to pursue my passion for writing. Within two years I was a full-time correspondent with the best paper in my state, within four years I was making a living full time as a freelance writer. Today, I'm editor of one of the state's biggest weeklies, editor of a brand new glossy magazine (4th edition coming out!) and a contributing editor with another big mag in the state. Not bad for a janitor who switched careers in my 40s!
My son in law, a JW, cleaned supermarket floors for years, and my daughter, still a JW, has done office cleaning as well. Ugh. Witnesses sure are into the cleaning business. That having been said, for the 17 years I had my own cleaning business, I seldom had to work more than 20 hours a week max in order to make a pretty good living. But the incredible level of boredom and lack of interest in that work I will never forget. Damn good thing I could do it all in 15-20 hours!
S4
