CEOs value lessons from teen jobs

What was your first job? Dishwasher, waitress, beer warehouse worker? Did any of those jobs teach you anything about being successful later in life? If you are like most of these CEOs you may say that those jobs most definitely made you want to finish college and do something with yourself. None of them wanted to contiue those manual labor positions for their whole lives. That hard work has made many of us want to find the "Easy Life" and cruise around in our BWM convertibles with our eyeglasses on.

"Demanding jobs motivated me to stay in school," says UPS CEO Scott Davis, 56, a former pear picker and lumber mill laborer.

How the bypassing of summer jobs in the spring of their careers will affect the next generation of leadership is unclear. But Software Spectrum co-founder Judy Odom, 55, all but single-handedly ran a tuxedo rental shop for minimum wage as a 17-year-old in Fort Worth, where the owner showed up at day's end to empty the cash register. She remembers placing cold calls from newspaper engagement announcements and, on weekends, acting as chief troubleshooter as the store turned frenzied with last-minute needs.

"I learned so much about business from that job, both do's and don'ts," Odom says.