This was written in May, 2012. If you are reading it now, thank you.
Today, it is expected that the
Labor Department will announce the creation of 165,000 new jobs. I have three
of them. I work three jobs, not because I am a workaholic. I could be a card-carrying
member of the local Union of Procrastinators, except I keep putting off sending
in the application. Nor do I work three jobs because I am greedy and want to
make lots of money, since none of them pays extraordinarily well.
For my regular, 40 hour a week job,
I go to the home of nine people who score lower on IQ tests than the majority
of people score. Working in an environment like this can be quite stressful. I
have been lied to, lied about, misused, maligned, and mistreated. In truth, if
it weren’t for the nine residents of the house, I would have quit a long time
ago.
Let me explain with a story. One
afternoon I was particularly grumpy. I was not happy with life, particularly
life at my 40 hour a week job. Yet, here I was walking in the door for another
8 hour sentence. When I walked in the door, Max met me with a huge smile. Max
is not short for Maxine, Max is not even her real name. Everything Max does is
100% full of heart and today was no exception. I walk in grumpy, and Max comes
around the corner with a huge smile and a big greeting. “Hi Wob!” That is what
she calls me, Wob, not Rob, which is too formal for her I suppose, but Wob. “Hi
Wob!” she grinned, “Welcome home. I am glad you’re here Wob. Are you hungry?
Come in the kitchen, I will get you some snacks. You want a banana Wob?” The
words came so fast and with such enthusiasm, I did not have time to blink
before she had my hand and led me into the kitchen for a piece of fruit. Grumpiness…gone.
My second and part time job is at a
printing and distribution center for time sensitive documents. Whereas my full
time job is the most rewarding, this job is the most enjoyable. I work in the
middle of the night, usually until 3 in the morning, in a noisy building, with
cold, hard concrete floors, pushing heavy carts of documents into trucks to be
distributed throughout the surrounding counties. If a mistake happens, it means
lots of grumpy managers and customers. The equipment used is complicated and as
you know, the more complicated a machine gets, the more likely it is to break
down. When machines break down, things run late, when things run late, there
are grumpy managers and customers.
What makes this such a wonderfully
enjoyable place to work? The team of men I work with. Each person expects the
other is eventually going to screw up and keeps checking what the other is
doing. Eventually one of us screws up and someone else catches it and disaster
is averted. Usually. If not, then we brace ourselves for grumpy phone calls.
My third job is my newest job and
will hopefully take the place of my full time job in a few months. In the morning,
I assist students to transition from home and community environments to the
school environment. In the afternoon, I assist students in decompressing and
smoothly transitioning from school to home environment. On top of this I get to
drive a big yellow bus and stop traffic, which is way cool.
Thank you President Obama, for
creating my three jobs.
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