Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Workin' fer The Man every night an' day

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, ol' Balbulican over to StageLeft got a little bloggin' tag game goin' on. Here's how it goes:
It’s simple. Just list all the jobs you’ve had in your life, in order. Don’t bust your brain: no durations or details are necessary, and feel free to omit anything that you feel might tend to incriminate you. I’m just curious. And when you’re done, tag another five bloggers you’re curious about.
I posted up my list over to StageLeft but here goes again:

Odd jobs - painting, yard work, snow shovellin’ (startin’ at age 13)
Refundable pop bottle sorter (corner store)
Flier delivery kid
Stockboy
Shipping clerk
Furniture, flowers and corpse pickup/delivery helper (combined furniture store/funeral parlour)
Steel mill labourer
Good Humor man
Machine shop labourer
Flooring installer’s helper
Temp worker - day labourer
Janitor (I got fired the 1st day - only time I was ever canned.)
Carpenter/remodeller/jack-of-all-trades - fixin’ up slummy apartments
Pie factory worker
Carpet and flooring installer
Photographer
Contractor
Web developer/host
Volunteer
Bigtime blogger
Shit disturber (age 59)

I fergot a couple when I made that list. I also worked helpin' out on deliveries of stuff like washin' machines an' big screen TV's and upholstered furniture.

Balbu asked me how I coulda got my dumbass fired from a janitor job. Here's how it happened.

The year was 1970. I was a hippie university student. I got hired and started the next day. I showed up at the offices we were contracted to clean. The other guy had been there a week. His partner got fired and I was the replacement. He wasn’t exactly sure what the partner was supposed to do but he told me what he thought were to be my duties. Next day, the boss called me and said I hadn’t emptied the wastebaskets in a coupla offices and they were bitchin’ and I was fired.

The worst part was he made it seem like he figgered I wasn’t smart enough to do the job. He knew I was a 3rd year uni student and I reckon he didn’t have high school. Punk hippie students weren’t prime employment material back then. But… maybe I was jes’ plain stoopid.

Funny how you remember shit like that, ain’t it? One day, 38 years ago.

I learned a valuable life lesson from that situation: Blame someone else. If I ever run fer office, that'll be a dang useful skill.

Anyways, ol' Balbu's little game brought back some good memories. I'm taggin' Steve V., Red Tory, Bene Diction, JJ and Chrystal.

JimBobby

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