Brodie’s First Seven Jobs

#FirstSevenJobs is going around the social medias, and it's an interesting look into what mostly celebrities, but also your friends and family, did to pay the bills in their early years. Of course I'm going to get in on it and post a blog version of my early résumé. Unfortunately I don't have pics for most of them, but I assure you... they happened.

1 - McDonald's

My first job. It was the summer between my sophomore and junior years of high school. I lasted all of six weeks before becoming a jobless bum. But school started, and extracurricular activities monopolized my time, which actually leads directly to job number two. Fortunately I never had to watch this video:

2 - Theatre Tech For Hire

For the sake of brevity, I'm just lumping all the contract work I did into one big "Gun-For-Hire" entry. My extracurricular activity of choice was theatre, specifically technical work. Not a school performance happened, be it play, musical, choir, symphony, anything that happened on our stage, that I wasn't a part of. Mostly lights, but also sound and set. That led to working a lot of contract theatre gigs throughout Northeast Kansas. I ran a Patsy Cline Tribute show, a few Christian rock concerts, some summer theatre work.

3 - Front Desk Worker

My first job in college was working for the college at my dorm's front desk. I handed out equipment, sorted mail, was a go-between for students and staff. It wasn't much, but it kept me in beer money. After I turned 21, if my RA ever asks. This is the university I went to, Northern Michigan. Lovely campus, great school, terrible football team. Hockey though... that's the ticket.

4 - Guest Services Representative/Night Auditor

After college, while I was still looking for my foot in the door at a radio station (I eventually got it), I took my front desk experience at a dorm, and parlayed it into the front desk of the area's largest hotel. I worked overnights, so it was mostly paper work and watching shows on Hulu. But it was good times.

5 - Board-Operator/On-Air Contributor

HEY! My first gig in radio! After a remote, when you hear me say, "Hey, thanks to Jack back at the studio making sure we get on-air!" That's a board-op, and that's what I did. Everyone starts somewhere. At this point, I also had experience writing movie reviews for the college newspaper, and working on a podcast, so the morning show guys on both stations would bring me on for movie reviews every Monday. That was the start of Brodie on-air.

6 - Lounge DJ/Stand-Up Host

I took a myriad of jobs over the years, and as I started to transition to full time radio work, and out of full-time hotel work, the hotel started hosting comedy nights. The lounge manager thought I'd be a good host for the show, and a post-show DJ. I like to think I was. I probably wasn't, though. But it was a fun gig and a solid way to earn an extra $50 a week.

7 - Radio Host

I guess it was a short(er than most) journey from starting to work to career goals but I was able to land my first full time radio gig working for WJPD, a country station in Marquette, MI. I had the mid-day slot, called it the Five Hour Lunch Hour, with the All Request Lunch at noon. I eventually had a weekly nighttime show on our sister oldies station, hosting The Friday Night Cruise, a show by my own design centered on rock, pop and R&B of the 50s and 60s. This is me back then. I looked pretty much the same... slightly less beard, and a hairline that hadn't fully receded yet.