I thought I’d share my “work history” for shits and giggles.
Because the majority of my acquaintances and friends know me only as the impassive passive-aggressive owner of the ‘white guys’ rafting company that sometimes gets identified as Onion. (The real name is Orion.) I have been pretending to run a business since I turned twenty two years old. That was in 1978.
The company’s slogan, by the way, “The Good Guides in the White Rafts” originated with my father. He coined it. I liked it.
The other thing to bear in mind is that, when we first began using it, our major rival was a company whose predominant color was black. ZigZag was specifically known for its fleet of black vans with their named splashed in white on the side.
Before I graduated from high school, I worked room service at a motel on Central Expressway in Dallas, I bused tables at a cheesy dinner theater, I rejuvenated brass ceiling fans that some aesthetically-challenged dumb-dumbs decided to paint white, I stocked chintzy, overpriced imports at an import shop, I loaded semi trailers with one hundred pound bags of chocolate one-by-one and went home each night with the brownest of boogers, I was hired to work as a jack-of-all-trades for a Housing and Urban Development neighborhood, I flew to Pennsylvania to work for a chemical company on the Reading Railroad of Monopoly fame and got to see the Gettysburg battlefield from the train tracks and I had a ten day stint on a shrimping vessel in the Gulf of Mexico.
Up until the HUD gig, I didn’t learn much.
What I learned being a handyman was that you’d be surprised at what could be fixed or easily replaced. For instance, it was gratifying to know my efforts had kept a dishwasher, or a screen door or a refrigerator from being taken to the dump or placed out of commission. I had no particular skills for fixing these devices, just an open-ended green light to do so.
It appealed to the part of me who liked to tinker and see how things work.
What I learned by working on the railroad was that blue collar workers could have incredibly foul mouths. I had never heard the word ‘fuck’ used so often, and so many times in a sentence. And then in a paragraph. And then in a monologue. I also learned that it pays to be meticulous when you are tending to metal parts, gears and whatchamacallits. Those guys were militant about thoroughly cleaning the items we were working on or with.
They could make the saltiest of sailors blush but, you could also say, they ‘cleaned up well’.
What I learned on the shrimp boat was how dextrous someone named Thibodeaux from Louisiana could be using the thumb on his left hand and the thumb on his right for popping heads off shrimp. While I struggled with them one-by-one, the Cajun would ambidextrously pepper me with shrimp heads with the pinpoint accuracy of a laser. Now I understood how the kids on the other side of the dodgeball court in junior high felt. It did nothing to help my learning curve, but it sure kept everyone entertained.
My days on the shrimp boat were numbered because early in our second week out, quite early in the morning, we awoke to shouts over a loudspeaker for us to cut our engines. It was the U.S. Coast Guard citing us for fishing in unauthorized waters. They were there to escort us back to the port of Brownsville. I can still remember the relief we felt when we discovered it was the U.S. Coast Guard and not the Mexican Coast Guard who arrested us.
None of us wanted to imagine the insides of a Mexican brig or prison.
The only bummer was I had spent ten days of seasickness, stinking of shrimp, working around the clock, risking life and limb - for nothing, except a good story. The Coast Guard confiscated our catch and - undoubtably - fined the captain. In that regard, the crew got off scot-free.
Here is what I did during my fractured college career.
I refereed recreational volleyball despite knowing about as much about volleyball as I did about curling or crocheting, I waited tables (for the first time!) at a crappy rooftop restaurant called New Year’s Eve where a patron once found a used bandaid in their salad and cockroach appearances were not uncommon, I was a sports field groundskeeper for Bellingham’s parks and recreation department, I was an apprentice landscaper arising way too early for my tastes and digging far too many holes, I coached basketball for elementary kids which means I encouraged them at whatever they were willing to do and I was a resident aide, which is how I met all of the cute girls in college.
Oh, I almost forgot. I even had a newspaper route at the age of twenty one!
But the last job I want to mention happened after college which means it also happened after the business was underway.
It was the winter. I had relocated to Seattle from Bellingham, which is where the internship that became a business got started. My funds were tight. I’d tried unemployment and - honestly - it was too much trouble.
My business partner found himself in the same frame of mind.
We saw an ad for clothing salesmen for the upcoming holidays for the Frederick and Nelson department store. F & N, at the time, was Seattle’s cuff-frayed version of Neiman Marcus. They might have been the talk-of-the-town once, but those days were in their past.
Even so, they had standards.
I was long-haired, scruffy and non-traditional. I wasn’t going to wear a suit and tie to the interview, for instance.
My partner was clean-cut with a GQ-styled beard and, being from Chicago, more savvy about dressing for success. He had a business mindset to begin with.
We both set up interviews on the same day.
My interviewer was polite but, when the interview ended, she told me they had no positions open. I waited for my partner in the anteroom as his interview was being conducted separately. When he emerged, looking as pleased as the cat who ate the canary, he told me that not only were they hiring him, they were hiring him at a journeyman’s wage. Not entry level. Journeyman! It was like $20 an hour, excluding commissions.
But here is the fun part.
I decided not to take this rejection sitting down. I got a hair cut. Pulled out my lone suit and ironed it. Ironed it again. Purchased a razor and made myself clean-shaven. Probably polished my faux-leather dress shoes. Called my tween age nephew in Houston and let him know that I was going to list “Barron’s” - his last name - as a place I previously worked and, if he got a call, that he should vouch for my capabilities as a salesman. (I could be a “clothes horse” if I was so inclined, mind you.) I set up a second interview with Frederick and Nelson making sure the interview would be close to lunch hour in the hope my previous interviewer might have gone to lunch.
It worked like a charm.
As I stepped out of the elevator en route to the Personnel office for my 12 Noon interview, my interviewer from the day before stepped in. She didn’t recognize me from the day before. Not even the slightest hint.
I lied on the application as to my experience in clothing sales, used my middle name instead of my first name, got a different interviewer altogether and - the next thing I knew - I, too, was hired with journeyman’s wages!
What did I learn from that experience?
The old adage, fake it ‘til you make it, has a role to play in keeping this old world turning.
Other than that? You’re far less likely to nick a fish while shooting into a barrel than you are to sell clothes at commission during Christmas in a department store.
###
I have not seen this film, but it looks. . . educational, uplifting and inspirational. The Fight is about the ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union - and they have been getting a work out lately.
Donate, or become a member, if you can.
This was sent to me this morning by my sister, Pam. She received it from her husband, Ed, both of whom are AARs, who has a very Irish relative. Anyway, as I told her, it is good to click on such random videos and sites, just to screw with the social media algorithms. However, this does have a catchy tune, the guys are really cute and you just might find yourself tapping your toes or fingers to the two minutes and fifty seconds of music. Enjoy!