My First Job: John Mark, general manager

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April 16, 2006

My First Job: John Mark, general manager

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John Mark

Current position: General manager, Trader Vic's Bellevue Restaurant. The newly opened restaurant is part of the legendary chain based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Trader Vic's that had been in Seattle for years closed in 1991.

First job: Working for start-up high-tech company making a high-speed printer. Duties included assembly-line work, shipping out product and driving a van around the Silicon Valley picking up parts for the printers. This was in the days before the really big growth of high-tech industries in the area. In those days, there was just HP and Xerox, but no Apple.

Pay: About $5 an hour.

How I got the job: My mother knew the founder of the company. She is a professor of anthropology with no connection to the industry but met the president on a social occasion.

What I learned: Factory work is boring. Unless there was something personally interesting about the type of product itself, it was hard to get motivated to come to work. I learned that just earning the money was not enough for me to accept a job. Jobs I have taken since have always had a strong personal commitment.

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