My Life’s Work
While mulling over my historical conflicts with employment and employers, I decided to document my numerous attempts at gainful employment. Hopefully, this will be somewhat entertaining and through documentation help me to forget these efforts permanently. I was first employed at age 13 as a “basket boy” at the Seminole, Oklahoma, municipal swimming pool. My duties consisted of taking people’s baskets of clothing and giving them a numbered pin that they could exchange to get their basket back when they finished swimming. I was also assigned to clean the restrooms and dressing rooms and other unsavory tasks for which I received $15 per week, free use of the pool and was eventually told the location of the peepholes into the women’s locker room. This “career” continued for a few summers during which I gained a Red Cross certification to be a lifeguard (shallow end only) in spite of the fact that I was not a good swimmer. I suspect this began a life-long trend of getting jobs for which I was at least partially if not wholly unqualified. I eventually had a falling out with the pool manager, and began another long-standing habit of quitting when offended.
After falling out with the pool guy, I regained employment at the city park driving a miniature train that one could ride in a not very scenic loop around the park. However; this position required mechanical skills which I did not possess and set the stage for yet another characteristic of my working history: having potential employers lie regarding the actual duties of a job. This trend was once again manifest at the end of my working life by my most recent employer — more on that later.
Following my junior year of high school, tradition dictated that boys of my age attending Seminole High School be sent to Belvedere Illinois to work in the Green Giant cannery. This was supposed to instill an ethic of hard work and get rid of the troublesome boys for the summer. Upon arrival, I was placed in a bunk house with other marginal characters next to the “waste treatment pond” where the contents of the pond were aerated periodically by spraying high into the air. The foul smell generated by this “treatment” made one want to retreat into the almost equally smelly factory. I was assigned to be the “onion boy” whose duty for each 12 hour (6pm to 6am) shift was to scoop up onions from a giant vat and dump them into a machine that eventually produced cans of various vegetables with onions. Since I had to stand next to the machine that was washing the onions, I was forced to wear a raincoat in a vain attempt to stay dry. It goes without saying that I quit this position quickly and took the Greyhound home, once again a failure in the working world.
At age 18, I became a student at Oklahoma State University (OSU) and worked intermittently beginning with employment at “Sandy’s,” a burger joint eventually bought out by Hardees. My duties were typical of any fast-food employee and I aspired to become a “grill guy” or at least the “fry guy”, but alas, I was fired for telling a drunk customer exactly where to place his burger. I did manage to learn how it feels to pour hot oil down one’s hand and arm before leaving this position.
At some point later in my college career, I obtained a “real job” working in the warehouse of the Swan Rubber Company on the 4 to midnight shift. In case you don’t know, Swan produces a huge amount of hose of all types, which needs to be loaded onto trucks for shipment. For $8/hour, they allowed me to do so until, once again after a few months, I got fed up and quit (or maybe got fired). Either way it continued one trend or the other. So much for the real job!
For some unknown reason, as I certainly was not qualified, OSU allowed me to enter graduate school and pursue a MS in limnology. This was the highlight of my educational career and I actually did well in graduate school and at some point was granted a graduate assistantship, which I think paid around $5000/year. As far as I remember, I actually completed that assistantship along with gaining the degree. I most certainly should have continued my education somewhere as things really went to hell when I started looking for a job related to my education.
I accepted “sight unseen”, a job as “environmental specialist” with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to work in a water chemistry laboratory for DNR’s “research” division. The salary started at $850/month but did include some benefits (a new experience). Continuing the employer misrepresentation trend, the hiring authority failed to explain a few things: first the job wasn’t in Madison where I interviewed and was led to believe it was but instead was in the small town of Delafield near Milwaukee, secondly, they failed to mention that the position was “project” and had to be refunded annually and lastly also failed to mention that due to duplication with the State Laboratory and poor quality control (and attitude) that the Delafield lab was scheduled to be closed asap. My boss there was a 40 year-old virgin still living with his mother and older brother in Milwaukee who had no qualifications to run a laboratory and spent most of his time leering at the women who worked there and sitting in the restroom reading about bowling (or porn). Therefore, the lab was indeed shut down a year after my arrival, but….
Never fear, I managed to transfer to a job in Madison with the fledgling nonpoint source program; aka, pointless program. Nonpoint source pollution is that which runs off the surface of the land as opposed to point source which comes out of a pipe. Good intentions; however the bureaucracy by utilizing people like me managed to create a hopelessly complex program and attempted to force it on the “locals”. The “locals” although indeed the guilty parties were not contrite and for the most part used every tool in the book to thwart the “program” (always a damn program). I managed to endure this hell for 7 miserable years before….
Quitting and heading for Alaska from which I hoped to never return. In retrospect, this was one of the most intelligent things I had done to date and I often wonder how things would have turned out if I hadn’t become very ill while in Alaska and felt the need to return to Madison where I at least knew someone. At some point after my return, I got well and began a new career in transportation as a cab driver. Driving the cab was the most honest work I had done to date because one simply takes customers where they want to go and accepts payment for doing so, no “program”. I persisted as a cabbie for about a year; however; wages were low and my needs high, so I made the huge error of returning to DNR — right back to the pointless program where I remained for another 10 years or so; although, over time I did move into some other slightly more tolerable positions. Finally I could take no more of the grinding boredom and quit, but with the purpose of being re-trained in computer networking….
I signed up for Novell CNE courses at “Valcom” and after a few months did, indeed, become certified as a Novell network engineer and was hired by Valcom to support networks in public schools, which was low priority for the company, but a reasonable first job, then as usual the company went out of business. My friend, Dave, jokes that my primary talent is in taking companies out of business if they make the mistake of hiring me. Next I had a couple of short-term, non-memorable jobs with other companies, but finally got a good job with GE Consulting and was out-sourced full-time to a local, silk stocking law firm where I worked for 3 years until, you guessed it, the company went belly up. Up until then it was my best experience as an employee.
At about this same time, my second wife died following a 5-year ordeal with cancer, which is another story, but being at loose ends and very sick of all things Wisconsin, I made plans to move to Florida. The move did eventually happen and during the interim, I became a Scuba instructor, worked part-time at a dive shop and had other “silly” jobs, but nothing “real”. Silly jobs are those one enjoys and real jobs at the horrible drudgery one experiences in the “real” world.
After my arrival in Florida in 2006, I continued working as a dive instructor as I learned about and became “full cave” certified — the highest level of cave diving certification available at the time. Eventually, I answered an ad on Craigslist asking for someone with a Master’s degree in anything who thought they could work with difficult people. Although not sure of the 2nd part, I applied to what turned out to be a sleazy company offering substance abuse counseling to probationers ordered to do so by the court. So began my excursion into substance abuse counseling and working with law-breaking, amoral, addicted individuals. Over the course of this employment of 3 years, I began gaining the state certifications to actually be a counselor and eventually obtained the highest certification offered which allows me to counsel and review the work of other counselors. Although the owner of the company was a crook himself, I did learn a lot about counseling. However; I decided that I needed a full-time job and easily got a job with a company sporting the absurd name of “The Unlimited Path”, which operated programs in prisons.
I began work in Lowell Correctional Institute, the country’s largest women’s prison, near Ocala, FL., where I persisted in amazement for a year. Amazed at what goes on in a prison and how the DOC as well as the company I worked for operated. This experience was not successful and I quit after a year and found a much better job working for the 5th Judicial Circuit drug court.
For the first time ever (age 62), I was pretty satisfied and happy working at the drug court. The environment was pleasant and co-workers for the most part enjoyable. I am not convinced that the drug court actually accomplishes much in the way of treatment or reduction of recidivism, but the pay was good and I only worked at most 4 days per week. As usual, in the government world some bureaucrat decided to fix what was not broken and after 6 more months, I was laid off in a failed attempt to “outsource” the treatment component of the drug court program. No consideration was given to the fact that the clients have little or no money and generally can’t travel all over the area for treatment. After being laid off, I made the final and largest error in the long series of errors called my “career”.
Against my much wiser spouse’s advice, I took a job with a horrible company called Community Education Centers that feeds at the trough of government funding pretending to care about improving life for inmates in various correctional institutions. This was another entirely misrepresented position in which I was stuck at Suwannee Correctional Institute, a long commute, for about a month before they accused me of various infractions. Never mind that I had no computer, no phone, and no office and nothing to do — I was in prison! My so-called supervisor provided no guidance or assistance. Seeing the writing on the prison walls, I quit without notice after a month and sincerely hope that this caused someone at least a small amount of difficulty.
Finally my failed careers and countless jobs were at an end and I slipped thankfully into retirement! In retirement I continue to work, but only on things that interest me and make me happy; such as photography and writing the occasional article. Please let me know if you identified with any of the above or found a little humor in it.
