Have you ever wondered what we all did before we were knighted as kitties? What were our first jobs in high school? What type of jobs led us or, in some cases, forced us to adorn the fantastic title of an ESK kitty? Follow us as we go from dead end to dream job!

Jenny – From Barbizon modeling to her first job in high school as a Custard Queen at Jeannie’s Custard Palace, our darling Illustrator, Jenny, has had a very interesting journey! Her favorite job was working at the Saint Louis Science center as a Designer & Illustrator where she designed signage, came up with the wall art & color schemes for exhibits, made posters & invitations for events, and started her day at morning meetings with a rousing game of Boggle! She also freelances – designing logos, invitations, etc. for a slew of awesome companies.

Jessica also has a colorful “resume.” She started her working years as a Grocery Clerk at Publix! Then she moved on to become a Preschool teacher where she loved throwing holiday parties for her hilarious 4-5 years olds. After snack time & playgrounds lost their interest, Jess turned her gig as the “door girl” at a nightclub into a position that suited her better – she got to decorate for themed parties & events! Right before she blossomed into our Photographer, Jess worked for an apartment management company doing clerical work.

Still in high school, Emily teamed up with her 2 sisters and manned Guido’s Pizzeria in the heart of 6 Flags where she slung pizza, traded on the “6 Flags Black Market” for lemonade & cotton candy, and made some of her best memories sweating in the summer heat. During college, she worked part-time in an elementary school after school program and had the same fantastic group of kids from Kindergarten until their 4th grade year when she graduated college. Marketing-wise, she worked for a Canadian steel company, then a Realtor, and finally ESK!

Our Maine-native, Tracey, first worked as a waitress in a local diner named Grant’s Family Restaurant. As she describes her time at Grant’s, she says, “I basically just topped off coffee cups for old men.” Once out of the diner business, she got involved in Environmental Consulting as a Marketing Manager where she would write proposals & run trade show booths. In between, she was a Test Knitter and Research Assistant before moving down South to avoid the harsh Maine winters.

Janine – The first job Janine ever accepted was as a Receptionist at a car dealership. She answered phones, crunched some numbers, and met some very interesting people. During college and a little after, she hopped around a few retail positions before finding her true love – working in a research lab. She worked in a Cognitive Neuroscience Research Lab where she measured study participant’s brainwaves as they read different sentences! Janine loves Science almost as much as she loves knitting!

Our oldest kitty, Lindsay, has a fairly short work history – she is a very dedicated employee as you all can tell by our super fast shipping. Her first job in high school was at her local Piggly Wiggly as a cashier. Once she graduated, she accepted a position at a Marriott hotel where she did laundry, made breakfast, helped at the front desk, managed the housekeepers, and even drove the Marriott van. She says, “I housed tons of baseball teams, plunged a lot of toilets, but I loved the variety! No two days were alike and I never knew what I was going to find in a room!”

Lindsay’s loyal shipping assistant, Amy, took her first job at a neighbor’s catering company. She spent her after school hours decorating cake, cookies, and hand-dipping confections in chocolate. Amy then helped at Kitchen Affair, the same neighbor’s store front, where she helped prepare for cooking classes. She ran copies of recipes & helped with clean up. After graduating college, she worked & eventually retired from Commercial Real Estate as a Director of Project Management. She managed renovations at resorts from Hawaii to the Caribbean and everywhere in between. Though she spent 45 weeks out of the year traveling, she says, “They don’t build resorts in ugly places!”

Erin – Our head kitty started her journey at Hoit Cinema taking movie tickets for a mere $5.20/hr! She then moved up and spent the rest of high school as an Express lane cashier at Shaw’s Grocery. She loved competing with herself to check people out quickly which is no big surprise. After graduating college, she took a position as Copywriter. It was so terrible that she left for her lunch break and never came back! Her most recent, pre-ESK job was VP of Products & Services at a small company where she mastered search engine optimization and user conversion. After 4 years there, she started ESK, and actually remained working for another 2 years before she finally got up the courage to take on ESK full time.

We all started somewhere and were molded in different ways but ultimately, we ended up together..amongst these piles of yarn!