I Am So Over This

It has been quite some time since I last wrote a blog post. The main reason for this is, I haven’t written one. Some of the secondary reasons have to do with the flu, a root canal, and ongoing visits to medical professionals for back problems. These issues, combined with trying to work three jobs, has left little time to write; in fact it leaves little time to sleep or eat although the numbers on the scale don’t seem to indicate that I actually have been eating any less.

Up until three years ago, I only worked two jobs. Then my second job, for a company that prints time sensitive documents, cut back and laid 20 or so employees off, contracting their jobs out to a third party company. I was somewhat thankful that they kept me on, even though I went from working 30 hours a week to 10 hours a week. In fact, for a short time, I was working a meager 7 hours a week in the middle of the night, loading trucks.

And then, two years ago, President Obama did something. He made an announcement. I have noticed he is good at announcements. He has a knack for it. He announced that he had created something like a bazillion new jobs in the previous year.

Being a patriotic American, and not wanting to let anything go to waste, I got another job. This job paid, per hour, fifty percent more than what I am making at my job for the printing company. I have kept that printing company job because I enjoy the people I work with. They are a great group of guys, and more importantly, they laugh at my jokes.

Last weekend, some guy, who apparently is my bosses’ boss, and I have only seen once in my eight years at this job, came in for the night. At the end of the night, he said he wanted to talk to me. Now, it is 2:00 in the morning, and I want to go home and go to bed. Instead, I found myself in the unenviable position of talking to this guy.

I could tell he was nervous. His eye lids fluttered, he stammered a little, and he failed to make eye contact. I remained kind and gracious. He babbled on for a few minutes, telling me how much he appreciated the 8 years I have worked with the company and all the things I have helped to do.

It has been my experience that when a boss you have never met starts telling you he appreciates your work, he is either in a chemically altered state, or there is bad news to follow. In this case it was bad news. Although, I suppose bearing bad news and needing to be in a chemically altered state  are not mutually exclusive, and may actually go hand in hand.

To sum up his convoluted, less-than-direct discussion, because I don’t work more than 13 hours a week, they have to pay people overtime to make up for this lack. Therefore, if I don’t work more hours, they are going to hire someone who will work more; then they will take my job and give it to the new hire.

He was kind enough to give me a week to think about it. I accepted his offer of time to consider my answer.

Since I have decided not to take more hours at the printing company, I expect my schedule to open up in the near future. Please, do not tell President Obama, he might take it upon himself to make another announcement.

Do You Know the Look?

Last week I wrote about some training a Registered Dietitian presented at my full-time job. For those of you who have followed this blog for a while, you know that I work more than one job. In fact I work three. When referring to each job, I try to avoid saying, “My second job.” This is because I do not prioritize any job as more important than another by assigning it an arbitrary number.

Let me share with you about my job as a school bus driver. I am not just a school bus driver, but a substitute school bus driver. Consider that fact for a moment. Remember back to your days in school. Remember two important facts. First, the class always took advantage of the substitute teacher. Second, students were always livelier on the bus than they were in the class room.

Now consider the fact again: I am a substitute bus driver.

Thankfully, most of the students I have encountered are very well mannered. However, I have had to speak to the students on occasion.

Allow me to also interject that if you combine all the years my daughters have graced this planet, I have well over 50 years of parenting experience, and that is notable for a 25 year old guy like me.

Consequently, I have mastered the look and growl of a father. It is a skill passed to me from my father, who received it from his father, and so on.

When students are misbehaving, I will pull the bus over and park safely. Then I will unbuckle my seat belt, get out of my seat, stand and turn to face the students. I give them the look, and then growl softly, “Ladies and Gentleman” and a quiet hush spreads across the entire bus.

Normally, I don’t need to get that drastic. In fact, normally, the students are quite helpful. I once had a route that had changed since the directions and a young lady assured me she would help me through the changes. I told her she had to be up to the task, because I didn’t want to get lost. She gave me her assurance that she would be with me every step of the way, and then she told me to turn right; I did. Another student said, “This is my stop,” so I let that student off at a corner.

As I pulled away from the stop, the entire bus called out my recently appointed navigator’s name. She looked up from her phone, startled, and stammered, “oh, you were supposed to turn back there.”

I started to give her the look, but the look on her face stopped me. She looked at me with a mixture of horror over making a mistake and that nervous laughter that comes along with it. It is a look I have seen my daughters use quite often, and it always makes me laugh. Apparently, it is not only Father’s who pass down looks to their sons, but Mother’s pass down looks to their daughters too.

Thank you Mr. President for my three jobs.

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.