The following pages
are just a few of the jobs I’ve had during my life. I understand it is a lot to read, but don’t
do it all at once. Just come back to it
every now and then. The jobs are not
listed in the order I held them, just in the order I remembered them.
The reason I called
this section Two Eggrolls is because of one particular adventure that took
place in a Chinese restaurant. The lady
who wanted to sell the egg rolls and the man who wanted to buy the egg rolls
kept tripping over the language. You’ll
see.
Approximately one hour after reading this,
you’ll want to read it again. You may
even experience the aroma of Chinese food as you turn the pages. Don’t be alarmed, that is just the power of
your brain having a little fun with you.
The pages have not been sprinkled with a blend of sesame oil and
mischief.
Once in a while I’ll be reading along and
suddenly the author takes a sidestep. He
or she does something completely unexpected.
I love when that happens.
Predictability is boring. I’m
sure it throws some people off, but so what.
Life is not a sure thing. Every
step isn’t always going to have deep, fuzzy carpet beneath it. The river is full of loose and slippery rocks
that look like they might be a good place to step, but then
you find yourself floating downstream, soggy wallet and all.
Many years ago, I lived in an apartment complex
that was shaped like a three-sided box. There were
rows of apartments that went around three sides of a large grassy area. It was like having our own park right there
in the middle of everything. One day I
came home with a model airplane. It had
a little gas engine and actually flew. I
would hold on to a long cord and slowly turn in circles as this plane flew
around and around in a larger circle.
That was the day I discovered the freedom of
flight, for when the cord broke, I stood and watched as the plane was no longer
going in a circle but flying straight and crashing through the window of
someone’s apartment. The plane and my
allowance were now gone, and I had some explaining to do. Mentally, I can still see that plane flying
away from me.
Over
time I’ve come to know that the important aspect of flight was not lift or
thrust but how cheap the manufacturer is.
A few more cents spent on a better cord could have changed the course of
my entire life. (Okey, maybe not, but for sure, the course of the plane)
I worked as a bagboy at a Wrigley's
supermarket some time ago. It was one of
my first jobs. On this particular day,
the store was busy and everyone was hustling.
As I walked down the candy aisle I saw that someone had spilled a large bag of
M&M’s. I couldn’t just ignore it but
in order to clean them up I’d have to get something to put them in. There were too many to just scoop up in my
hands.
As I headed towards the back room to get a
dustpan and wastebasket, the assistant manager yelled across the store for me
to come up front immediately. I turned
and went to see what he wanted. He then
proceeded to yell at me for walking past the M&M’s and not cleaning them
up. Then he said, “Go and get something
to put those in.” I thought how nice it
would be if that assistant manager had a better cord. He wouldn’t be so quick to fly off the handle
like that.
Once upon a time, in Torry Pines, California, I
worked as a lead technician. The project
was a fusion reactor, and my bosses were engineers and scientists. I was pretty much a gopher.
The day was warm and sunny, as it always was in
California, and they sent me out on a forklift to retrieve a large scaffolding
and bring it to building C.
I bounced along on the forklift and eventually
found the scaffolding they were talking about.
I pulled up to it, sliding the forks under the lowest rung and lifted it
enough to clear the ground so I could drive back to the building.
As I was heading towards the building, I
noticed two of my bosses back by the building waving at me, so I waved
back. How friendly, I thought. However, the closer I got to the building the
more frantic their waves became. When I
was close enough to hear their voices, I understood they were yelling for me to
stop. The top of the scaffolding had
snagged the powerline that was sending power to the building. I had pulled it clear off it the corner of
the building. Not my finest hour.
We had a craving for Chinese food, so we called
the local restaurant and placed our order.
When I arrived to pick it up, I thought I should add a couple
eggrolls. We both liked eggrolls and so
I asked the owner, who was operating the cash register, to please add two
eggrolls. She said, “No. Order does not
come with eggrolls.” I tried to explain
that I knew the order didn’t include eggrolls, but that I wanted to buy
two. Again, she said, “No. No eggroll with order.”
We went back and forth like that a couple
times, and then I gave up. We never got
our eggrolls.
The phrase – fish out of water, became very
clear to me on a job I had working in the world of 401K’s. I sat in the interview and answered all of
their questions truthfully. “Do you
speak Spanish?” No. “Are you familiar
with retirement plans and 401K programs?” No.
“Have you ever worked with multiple computer monitors at the same time?”
No. “Have you ever worked in customer
service before?” No. “When can you start?”
Apparently, they were in desperate need of a
warm body. They hired me, even though I
knew nothing about what they did or how that did it. There were very thick binders full of rules
and laws, and monitors that wrapped around as far as you could see.
We were
not allowed to put anyone on hold. We
just had to be quick at researching the answers to their questions.
This was, for sure, my least favorite job. (Not of all time, but it was right up
there). I stayed a year and ended up
making more money being fully vested than I did with my paycheck. You see, I was already retirement age when
they hired me.
I walked into a candy store and asked if they
were hiring. It smelled sickly sweet,
but also pretty good. The owner of the
company hired me, and my first assignment was to sit on a barstool, and as the
freshly made chocolate covered cherries came down the conveyer belt, I had to
lightly touch the top of each one with a curled-up piece of wire.
That formed a C on the top of each candy, to indicate it was a chocolate covered cherry. That was my job. I wasn’t at all expecting what happened on my
second day.
When I showed up to work I was met at the door
by the owner. He explained that the cook
and the truck driver had gotten into a fight and the cook was in the
hospital. Today, the owner and I would
be making the candy. I think he was even
more nervous than I was.
I learned how to make peanut brittle, and that
is what we did for a good part of the day.
I never did wander into the storefront again. I spent all of my time in the back of the
building where the candy was being made and packaged.
It was fun but I thought I could make more
money elsewhere, and so I eventually got a job at a factory that made M-60 Army
Tanks.
That was the second time I had to join a
union. The first was at the supermarket,
where I had to join the retail clerk’s union.
This time I had to join, what seemed like a more adult, serious type
union, which took even more out of my paycheck.
My job was working on a drill press.
I had to drill holes in tank wheels.
I had to drill 28 per pallet and seven pallets a day, then stack them
and band them up for shipping.
After my first day, when I shut the drill press
off, I grabbed a broom to sweep up around my work area.
Suddenly
it was like 20 voices yelling at once.
“Hey! Put that broom down. What do you think you’re doing?”
Apparently only union sweepers are allowed to
sweep. Who knew?
Joe, the old man who made the wheels, before
they were given to me for drilling, had been there for years. He never did more than what was required, but
once he discovered I would play checkers with him at lunch time, he picked up
the pace and we got production out in half the time, spending the rest of the
day playing checkers. On day I went with
him at lunch to grab a sandwich. That’s
when I discovered Joe didn’t eat lunch but would down a pint of whiskey
instead. It never seemed to affect his
work, or his checkers.
No good deed.
My
cousin and I were walking along a dirt road when we came upon a construction
site. There was a flatbed truck with a
large load of bricks on it. The driver
got out of the truck and asked us if we would please unload the bricks for him
and if we did, he would pay us.
He
said the reason he couldn’t get any closer to the job site was because the
reverse in his truck stopped working. We
believed him and so we unloaded all of the bricks by hand, carrying them from
the truck to where the driver said he needed them to be stacked.
After
about two hours, we were dead tired and had sore and bloody hands. When we had finished the driver handed us
five dollars, saying we could split it between us.
Thinking
I needed to do something productive with my spare time, my friend talked me
into joining the Sherriff’s search and rescue department. This seemed like a worthy cause, so I signed
up. Little did I know that I had to go
through the Sherriff’s academy, buy the uniform and carry a gun. Hokey-smokes.
That
seemed like a lot to ask of a volunteer, but I did it. It turned out to be excellent training, as I
learned about tracking, first aid and how to spend an entire day searching for a lost
hiker, through underbrush and bramble while still looking sharp and fresh,
should the media show up at the end of the day.
Here’s
the problem I may have neglected to mention.
I have zero sense of direction.
I’d be hard pressed to find my nose with both hands and a flashlight.
So
where did the Sherriff’s put me? Driving
the rescue truck, of course. There were
no GPS systems back then. I had a paper
map of the county on the front seat of the truck with me, that’s it.
It
was up to me to find where we were to meet and set up the command post. Keep
in mind, no one ever gets lost on a warm, clear day. It’s only at night, when it is raining and
there is no moonlight.
One
such adventure involved a downed aircraft.
The report was that a small plane had crashed somewhere in the hills of
East County. The black box was sending
out a distress signal, so we were all called out to find the plane and any
survivors.
A
large number of us spent a good part of the day searching everywhere for any
sign of wreckage. Late that afternoon
the search was called off. It turns out
that the black box signal wasn’t coming from the back hills but from a boat, in
San Diego harbor.
One,
all out search, involved a lost child.
He had gotten separated from his family.
They called the parks department, who in turn called us, the mounted Sheriffs
and the fixed-wing department. Everyone
and their uncle were out looking for this little boy.
They
took turns calling different sections to come in for lunch. One of the Sherriff's on horseback rode into
the command center to get lunch and tied his horse up to a manzanita bush.
As
he stood there tying up his horse, he heard something beneath the bush. He bent down and saw the little boy under
there with a couple Hershey bars.
The
Sherriff asked him if he’d been under there the entire time. The kid shook his head, yes. Then the Sherriff asked him why he hadn’t said
anything. The boy began to cry and said,
“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”
Not
all stories had a happy ending, so I’ll stop there. I must admit it was a fun adventure.
Here’s
a story that fortunately didn’t happen to me or because of me, but I was
fortunate enough to see it when it did happen.
I
was working for a company that made heating systems. Their one and only maintenance guy was
running connecting sections of iron pipe along the ceiling. This
guy had no fear whatsoever. He would
climb up on anything and everything to reach something.
On
this particular job, this pipe had to run the entire length of the
building. It required several trips up
and down this large A-frame ladder.
About
halfway through the building the maintenance guy discovered he had run the pipe
through the ladder. Just underneath the
top rung. There was no way to solve the
problem other than to undo a great deal of what he had just done.
No
matter where I worked or what it was I was doing for a living, my desire to
write didn’t stop.
I
was working at a hospital, as a dietary aid, helping to fix and prepare meals
for the patients. Whenever the
opportunity presented itself, I would write a poem, greeting or short story on
the backside of the paper placemat that was on their tray.
One
day, while doing the dishes and cleaning off the trays, I noticed someone had
written back to me on their placemat.
They introduced themselves and said they were in The Cracker’s Ward. That was their term of the mental portion of
the hospital. “They think I’m crazy.”
She said.
It
has been too long now for me to remember everything she talked about, but I do
remember she was very happy to her from the outside world.
On
most bridges there is a sign showing what the clearance is. That allowable space where you can pass under
it without incident. There
are no such clearance signs for under buses.
When you’re thrown under the bus, that’s it. You’re toast.
One
company I worked for built sections of the space shuttle. Needless to say, they were massive. Although huge, they were quite fragile. On
the day it was scheduled to roll out and be presented to the public and the
media, there were American flags everywhere, a band playing and a smattering of
important people. It
had been tied down onto a flatbed trailer and after the ceremony it was to
follow a prescribed route to its destination.
The
part that didn’t make it into the paper the next day was that the head of transportation who
had put the route together, and organized the police escort, had failed to
verify the clearance under one of the bridges. As
the large space shuttle section hit the top of the bridge it was trying to pass
under, it crumpled as if made of paper.
Worse than an accordion at a Polish funeral.
All
of his years of service without a single blemish didn’t matter. The head of transportation was toast. He was gone before the flags were lowered. We
tend to do that to people. We seem to
need someone to blame. Not that it
changes anything. It’s just how we are.
I
suppose I could blame the restaurant owner for not having a better command of
the English language, but that wouldn’t get me the eggrolls. (I know, I need to let it go).
zc
