In places like London or France (i.e. the bigger cities of the day) during medieval times, what did people do for jobs? Did the farmers live in the city or all outside of it?
Was it basically like current but everything's on a smaller scale? Some people work in the market selling food, a few seamstress, leather-workers, bakers, inn keepers, etc?
There weren't like Best Buy's or big grocery stores or office buildings so I'm having trouble thinking of what everyone did. Or did those things basically exist and my mental image of the middle ages is way off?
London Lickpenny is a source I return to again and again, but it's an extremely useful one so I make no apology. It's commonly attributed to John Lydgate, a monk and poet writing in the late 14th and early 15th centuries, although this has been questioned. London Lickpenny is a satirical work which follows a poor Kentish farmer who goes to London to seek legal recourse, and takes the reader on a vivid tour of 1300s London and Westminster.
As the anonymous narrator travels from the Westminster courts through the city, we meet a variety of different professions, or situations which imply certain professions, within the city:
In Westminster, we meet judges of the King's Bench and "clerks a great rout, Which fast did write by one assent", magistrates, and "clerks of the Chancerie".
Passing through a Flemmish quarter, the narrator meets milliners, felt-workers and opticians:
"Master, what will you copen or buy?
Fine felt hats, or spectacles to read?"
Passing on, the narrator meets cooks, brewers and vintners, spice merchants, hawkers selling a wide array of street foods, drapers and cloth merchants, spinners and weavers, fishermen, clothes sellers, merchants of ceramics and metalwork, metalworkers (specifically pewter), singers, musicians and minstrels, actors, taverners, bargemen and lawyers.
We have a ton of information about the people who lived and worked in Paris in 1292, when a census was taken. It was edited and published as "Le Livre de la taille de Paris” in Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, ed. Hercule Géraud (Paris, 1837), pg. 1-179. There is a list of names, where they’re from (if not France), where they live in Paris, what they do, and how much they owe in tax.
It’s doesn't list every single person who lived in Paris, just the ones who paid taxes in the more commercial areas of the city. So it might not be a perfect representation of what everyone in Paris did, but it’s still very helpful for this question.
The published version by Géraud is a huge amount of info to take in, and it’s all in French, but there's a website that has done most of the hard work for us, compiling all the names and professions:
An Index to the Given Names in the 1292 Census of Paris and a separate list for the occupational bynames
The top 20 jobs done by men were:
And the top 20 done by women:
There are a few hundred other jobs on the list too. Of course it's also possible that some of these names were family names and not occupations, but in the 13th century that was still pretty rare, and given the nature of the census (to find out who was doing what and how much tax they should pay), they're probably mostly actual jobs.
(Personally, my favourite person in the census is Tiffany, the floral hairdresser. People were named Tiffany in 1292! It's the French pronunciation of the Greek name Theophania!)
For more about medieval Paris, I also recommend Paris, 1200 by John W. Baldwin (Stanford University Press, 2010). That's slightly earlier than the census but still be very informative.