RE: Perusing down Memory and Lane
Nice. And you know what? It's not hard at all to imagine you serving other people... how could that be... ? ;-)
I used to be tending bars in three different Coffee-Shops here in the Netherlands; and that also is a great place to get acquainted with the peculiarities of human lack-of-nature. It's where I learned there's no such thing as human nature, but that there's infinite possibilities in each of us; when you're surrounded by high people all day, discussions tend to get philosophical real fast... at least in our own perception that is ;-)
And after that I've had so much different jobs I don't even remember them all. Best time I had though was in my years as a freelance games-reviewer for magazines like PC-Zone and PC-Gamer, the Dutch versions. I've been all over the world in that capacity and even visited E3 in L.A. a couple times.
Always had work to do with communicating with other people though and there's no better place to start learning that than in a bar, restaurant or coffeeshop...
This is basically what everyone calls the University of Life... Communication is so important, empathy, sympathy, human connection. I don't know if that can be taught with a book.