In this post, I will list by name all the jerks I have met over my lifetime.
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Just kidding! That post would be entirely too long!
Instead a how about a post about jobs?
Here are some of my job highlights:
My first job was painting the pipes on the flat roof of a shopping center. I was 14 taking summer school classes in town (as opposed to out in the county) and before school each day and before the sun got too blaringly hot, I would climb a 25 foot ladder through a hatch on the roof. The ladder was completely vertical and scared the crap out of me every time I did it, I was convinced someone would find me hours, days later head splattered on the concrete below. The job itself consisted of putting on a plastic glove and then a woolly glove over that, dipping my hand in a bucket of thick-as-pudding gloppy brown paint, cupping it around and sliding it up and down the pipe. It was basically the world's longest handy. It was pretty mind-numbing. I did enjoy being on the roof, before dawn, before world woke up. It was me and just the bakers awake. I would walk to the edge of the roof and watch a bit as the world slowly gained color and the grey slipped away over the horizon.
The summer between high school and college, I worked for the park board watching and doing activities with any random child that happened to wander into the park to which I was assigned. It was pretty sweet because my park had a pool and any kid that came to the program during the week got into the pool free on Fridays. I was pretty popular. Because of pool. Because really, I am horrible with kids. I spent more on craft supplies and snacks that summer than I made pretty regularly. We did our activities in a old native stone shelter full of picnic tables and kept our supplies in musty closet in one corner. One day, while poking around in the closet I found a half strip of photobooth pics of a blond and freckled boy and girl lightly stuck into the mortar between the stones. They were teenagers and the picture was decades old, when I plucked it from its hiding place it cracked and crumbled. I still have that mystery couple pressed in a book somewhere.
My sophomore year in college I became an Resident Assistant. Which I never really know if I should count as a job officially, as I wasn't paid. I worked for room and board. Honestly, it was awesome. My freshman year, my roommate never showed up to school and because I was lucky enough to live in the all female dorm, no one wanted to live there so I just never got a roommate at all. I was so lonely. But with the RA job came 40 girls who had to at least pretend to like me, not to mention the staff. Friends! And once I was nearly stabbed with a screwdriver by a drunk 18 year old!
About the same time I got my first library job. It was in the basement of the university library in the microforms department. I had the best boss ever. Her name is Rita and she was nice and fair and square danced in her spare time. This was my first experience with libraries being full of weirdos. And I am not just talking about the patrons, we were a weird bunch of kids working down there hauling boxes of mouldering newspapers and getting the green-tinted microfilms of Playboy out from behind the counter for the teen boys from the lab school on campus. For the articles! The ARTICLES!
And then I got a job in the public library.....oh sweet cracker jebus, this post has already gotten too long and let me tell you, the public library is like 5 posts worth of crazy. Don't get me wrong, I loved it. If they would take me back (with benefits and significantly higher pay), I would work there again quicker than spit. But, not this post, maybe L will be all about the crazies of the library.
Man-o, I don't feel like I have had a lot of jobs, but I guess since that is not even half of them I have. I have only had a couple that were truly miserable. I have been pretty lucky in that regard. Now I am working for my family and it very well maybe the last job I ever have. That is crazy to think... I mean, I will be working for at least thirty more years yet. Thirty plus years in one place. Wow. I am going to need to get some more hobbies.
I was a page at the Midtown Library from around 1995-1996. Oh memories...definitely learned there are some eccentric people out there (library staff and patrons included).
Posted by: Sarah | November 16, 2011 at 12:34 PM