Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin . . .
Apprentice chef in famous big hotel, was a bit of a naughty boy and got my transfer to an even bigger and more famous hotel knocked back, then did "catering" in two hospitals and decided to pack in cooking!
Started casual for a car hire company - supposed to be a fortnight, that ended up as 6 months and then I was on the office side for two years in Edinburgh and another two in Inverness. That's where I learned that once the top was off a bottle of spirits, it stayed off, and how to disguise the fact you had a screaming hangover when you were at work the next day.
From there I went into forklift hire in Stirling - first on the hire desk and then they put me through sales training and out on the road.
My ex-boss from the forklift sales asked me to join him back in Edinburgh and I was selling off-site storage to cramped offices. Someone I sort of knew was cleaning the windows when I was "in" one day, and said if I ever fancied it, to give him a ring. Some time later the boss thought that he and his son could do my job between them and I was rather handsomely paid off.
That pay-off got me set up in window cleaning twenty three years ago and it's been downhill ever since
Oh, and the guy that I served a halfday apprenticeship with ended up working for me a couple of years ago!