I have chased toddlers around jungle gyms, administered endless lists of phone calls in an office, ushered families to their restaurant tables, thrown pizza after pizza in the brick oven and brought the boss coffee whenever he felt like pressing the little red button on his receiver that buzzed me. I had had six different jobs by the time I was 16, and was looking for a new one. Considering the fact that one cannot legally hold a job until they are 14, that means that I had had an average of three jobs a year for the two years that I had been working.

Why the constant recycling of positions, you ask? It wasn't that the pay wasn’t good enough, or that a job was too much to add to my already-chaotic student schedule. It was the fact that I hated every single job I had ever held. I hated being there. I hated that it wasted four to eight hours of my day when I could be doing something that I actually enjoyed. I didn’t need the money badly enough to keep the jobs. So I would slap down my two-weeks, empty my desk drawers into a cardboard box and be on my way.

I didn’t know why I hated them, of course. I had assumed that I was doomed for the rest of my life because I thought I was one of those people that hated to work. I imagined myself a 27-year-old hot mess who fished in the pockets of her dirty jeans for coffee money because she’d rather scrounge then bore herself to death sitting behind a desk all day.

It wasn’t until the summer of 2013, when I landed my seventh job, that I was able to recognize why I previously had had an easier time getting myself to do homework than to go to work. It didn’t take much for me to want the new job. It never did. What mattered was what got me to keep the new job.

It was the drive there that hooked me. Not the smell of waffle cones that flooded your nostrils and made you light-headed as you walked through the front door. Not the colorful display of toppings filled in transparent milk jugs aligned for the customers to see. Not the heaping sizes that confused all customers who ordered a small and thought they were accidentally given a large. No… it was the drive that hooked me.

The “bumpy road,” as I first called it, with bends and turns and hills that unfold as if they never end; what a funny place to build an ice cream shop, I first thought. Who would have figured that selling ice cream on a farm out of a barn would be such a successful idea -- and in the middle of nowhere, I might add. But it’s therapeutic, that bumpy road. Those fields dotted with bails of hay and the perimeters lined with pines. You just shut up, turn down the windows, turn up the music and enjoy the experience that starts before you even reach the destination. The farm houses, the barns, the cows. And eventually, you will come across a red barn plopped in the center of nowhere.

There were so many things I loved about the Ice Cream Barn. I loved the way the birds in the fields across the street would all fly up in tandem when the bulls would trample through their huddle. I especially loved this at sunset. I loved watching the farmer ride his tractor through the hayfields with his straw hat resting crooked on his head. I loved bursting through the back door late at night after close and hearing the symphony of the crickets. I loved the fog that rolled out through the trees on warm summer nights. I loved the fireflies. I loved the drive.

But these are only the things that get you to apply for the job… the extra, the toppings on top of the ice cream cone, if you will. These are not the things that get you to stay. What was it that kept me from burning through jobs faster than I burned through the paychecks?

The clock strikes 10:00 PM. But Andrea already has the keys and is walking towards the front door to lock it. She lets the last few late arrivals in. Kate, who is Windex-ing the windows to get a head start on closing, turns off the neon “Open” sign. Shannon takes the drawers out of the cash registers to start counting money. Owen makes his way over to the sink to start washing dishes. Jenna is cleaning the waffle cone machines. Casey and Corrie race over to the auxiliary cord because the rule is whoever grabs the cord first gets to play their music. They fight. Corrie wins. And then the music comes on, and the “Barn Crew” starts to come alive.

Molly swings her hips and nods her head, Katie starts to hum as she wipes down the dipping cabinets and Ally counts coins to the beat of the music. Jocelyn waits until the chorus starts, to burst out from the back room, wearing her white chef’s hat, and singing into a batter whisk. Every worker in the barn follows suit, and matches her energy, now singing at the top of their lungs. And it is at this moment where I chuckle to myself and wonder how much the customers would pay to be a fly on our wall.

These occasions are the ones that make me never want to leave.

It's the things like “Barn Crew Slang,” when Mercedes is dishing out her dirty details about last night’s date while we are each making the orders, and it sounds a little something like this: “He drove all the way to my house - can I use that scoop after you - with a coffee just for me - Can someone pull another Apple Crisp from the freezer?- and we sat out all night on my back deck and talked and - SMALL MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ON A WAFER CONE - it was honestly just the best time.” Only the Barn Crew can keep up with language like that.

It's running around with the fly swatter in the morning before opening time and looking like buffoons as Nicole hoists Emily up to try to reach the wasp on the wall; Jade runs circles around the dipping cabinets melodramatically screaming because “the wasp is a threat to anyone in the surrounding perimeter.”

It’s crowding in the office at lunchtime, sitting in circles and tasting everyone’s homemade concoctions they cooked up on the stove.

Its hiding behind the counter sneaking bites of ice cream despite the mile-long line that is wrapping out the door and around the side of the building, because we all need an ice cream break at some point.

It’s taking endless snapchats making ridiculous faces to baby Damien in his playpen because who has ever seen a more precious baby.

It’s learning all the names of the “regulars”, and their corresponding orders-- you don’t work at the barn if you don’t know that Wanda likes her coffee milk milkshake made medium sized, extra thin and extra runny.

Some have tried to leave; Molly, Rachelle, Shannon, Ana, Courtney; they try to go off into the world and try to take on a “big girl job,” but just like Tom promised, they always come back in one way or another.

Because you don’t come across a dynamic like this in the workplace every day. But then, if you work with people like that, it’s not really work, is it?

My advice to all who genuinely despise getting up in the morning to go to work, who make any excuse to call out, who offer to give up their shift to just about anybody on the schedule: quit. From there, look for a job that appears to have a positive work environment. Ask the boss during the interview, “What is the employee relationship dynamic like?” Enjoying the people you work around makes working that much more enjoyable.

I’m happy that I didn’t settle. Where you work is a big part of your life if you spend a lot of your time there. Therefore, you don't want to spend the majority of your day waiting for it to be over.

I think about these things when I burst out the back door after close and am greeted by the cricket orchestra. I file out with the 7 other girls walking to their car, and we all fish for our keys, yelling goodbye to one another. They hurry quickly, to whatever festivities they have planned afterward. But I stay for a moment. I watch the fog roll in. I feel the sticky summer air on my arms. I smell the cows. I hear the crickets. And then I slowly get into the car, and I enjoy the ride.