Anyone familiar with the (first) name Hayl? Is that a female name, as I'm assuming?

Oooh! I just read something about this subject today. You can use Google Image Search for exotic names to determine if they are male or female.

That is BRILLIANT.

Somehow, during that very early "food or retail" stage of life, I ended up in retail.

I guess I've actually done more food service than retail, thanks to working a couple of weddings with a catering company and a couple of banquets in high school. I've mostly had office and child care jobs.

I never worked fast food or retail. I had a lot of afterschool/weekend activities, so I didn't work in high school. In college I figured out that I could make more doing secretarial temp work (and sit down all day) than retail. I worked at a theatre box office for two summers, though. does that count?

Got 'er. Found my target in a listing of women honorees for something at UMass some years ago. Yay.

Fun science news from Slate:

*********

Parasites turn insects into zombies. A worm grows inside a grasshopper, eats nearly all of its organs, then injects proteins into the brain to make the grasshopper jump into water, where the grasshopper dies and the worm can propagate. A wasp larva similarly commandeers spiders to make them build larva homes before the larva kills the spider.

Britain authorized creation of embryos with three parents. The third parent, a woman, contributes a small amount of DNA found in mitochondria, cellular components outside the nucleus. The idea is to protect children who might get disease-causing mitochondrial DNA from their mothers.

It's funny, 'cause, getting married so young meant my first ever job was a "real" job. It was still a schmuck job, lots of filing, but it had a fancy title "Export Sales" even when it was a temp job. I stayed at that company for five years and before I left was one level down from the board of directors.

I still had way more fun running followspot at the local dinner theater nights.

Edited to say, first jobs are funny, not insect zombies and mitochondrial diseases. Okay, insect zombies are funny, too.

Oh, I was a bank teller, which is sort of retail, I guess. But in general, I'm with Vortex with the easy sitting down jobs.

was still a schmuck job, lots of filing

::looks at all the filing he has to do. Cries.::

I briefly worked at Hungry Howie's (pizza) where I was fired. I'm not sure why I was fired, but I hated the job and didn't care.

Then I worked at a local sandwich shop. That wasn't a great job, the woman who owned it was very cheap, but her daughter was married to the Cisco rep so we always had lots of stuff we didn't need because her daughter needed money.

Mostly I worked retail, which I much perfered. Except when I was doing commission sales, I suck at that.

I couldn't get office jobs until college.

14 - summer job at my highschool cleaning out the dorms, and cooking in the kitchen for a weight watcher's camp.

17 - movie theater concessions sales and register.

18 - grill cook/dishwasher/waitress/bartender at a pool hall bar.

19 summer - waitress

20 summer - office intern

21 summer - nanny

22 summer - office intern AND counter help at frozen yogurt shop