Jobs: Part 1

Jobs

So I had my review at work this week.  It went well, but that’s not the story.  The story is that I’ve been working for the same company for fifteen years now.  I started there the day after I graduated college.

Now, before you say, “How boring,” let me explain.  It’s not like I have done the same exact thing over the last fifteen years.  I have had a wide variety of responsibilities at my current place of work and I even worked in four different buildings over the years.  But it got me thinking about two things: have any of my friends had the same job this long?

I can think of two people I know in my circle of friends who work have the same employer now as when they started their working careers.  Wait, make that three.  One, who doesn’t really like her job, one who works for the Military-Industrial complex, and one guy who I’m pretty sure is looking for a new job.

Why don’t people stay at the same jobs for a long time now?

  

Then I started to think about all of the jobs I’ve had in my life.  Now, granted, it’s been a long time since I’ve worked elsewhere and I’ve had the same boss for the last fifteen years, but I did get a variety of works experience when I was younger. 

Being a Newsie!

I was a badass on this big boy. 

I started by delivering newspapers.  My brother was a carrier for the Countryside Reminder, a weekly paper made up mostly of advertising.  He’d be on his bike and I’d be pedaling behind him on my Big Wheel (insert big wheel picture).  I was four years old.  Sadly, the Countryside Reminder ended its print run, and my brother lost his route.  As I got older, I had my own route, delivering the Weekly Advertiser, a paper I’m pretty sure every recipient immediately tossed in the garbage.   I had 120 townhouses to deliver to every Thursday before five p.m. at a rate of four cents a paper.  I earned a solid four dollars and eighty cents a week, paid bi-weekly.  It felt great to deposit nearly ten bucks in my passbook savings account every other Saturday morning.  Later on, I split a Daily Herald route with a friend.  Two days a week he’d do it alone, two days a week, I’d do it alone, and three days, the big paper days (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday) we’d both do it.  That worked well until the paper wanted its deliveries to happen before six a.m., effectively squeezing out any kids from the route.  Besides filling in for someone occasionally, I was done with the newspaper business.

In junior high I spent a lot of time doing the easiest job I ever had: babysitting.  Come play with your kids, eat your food, watch TV and get paid to do it.  Now, mind you, the kids I was babysitting were not babies or infants, but five, six and seven years old.  It was so easy.   They would tire out by eight o’clock and I’d get to watch whatever I wanted on TV and talk to my friends on the phone.  My favorite family had a stockpile of microwave popcorn and Sunny Delight always in the fridge.  On a good night, I could make ten or twelve dollars.  Sadly, that is what baby sitters earn an hour these days.  Baby sitting ended for me when high school rolled around and, well, I wanted to go out with my friends on the weekends.

I never read this book

One summer I spend time working for a temp agency.  I had some great jobs there.  I worked moving furniture at a tent sale for a furniture rental company.  It wasn’t too bad, until the last night, when a huge storm rolled in overnight and the parking lot where the tent was set up flooded.  We came in the next morning and had to clean up the mess while loading these wet couches and arm chairs into trailers so they could move on to the next sale.  Great times.

Other jobs that summer included working at a warehouse stacking box displays for shipment to Borders and Barnes and Noble.  I never hated Tom Clancy until seeing the cover of "Debt of Honor."  I touched at least  five  thousand copies of that book in a single day.  Plus, if we set the display up incorrectly, we had to start over.  I was also one of the few English speakers at this job.  I learned lots of Spanish curse words.

Worst Job

Imagine this filled with rolls of paper instead of the Ark of the Covenant

I once worked in a paper warehouse sweeping.  That’s all I did.  From three o’clock to seven o’clock I manned a giant push broom, like they use to clean up a gymnasium floor, and swept the warehouse, starting on one end, weaving up and down the aisles and slowly working my way to the other end.  It took the entire week to do the whole warehouse.  The next week, it started all over again.  Oh my god, was it boring. Remember the closing scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the ark is stored away in the never ending warehouse?  That’s what this was like.  I wasn’t allowed to use headphones because the operators were out on bobcats, stacking rolls of paper, loading and unloading trucks.  What kept me going is they promised me I’d get to run the washer, a ride on sweeper they used once a month to wash the floor, the next time they needed a wash.  A few days later I came in and one of the operators was on the washer.  That was my last day there.

Look for Jobs Part 2: Coming soon...

Thanks for reading!

What did they say?

When you are a kid, you are always learning language, how to use words, what words to use when.  I stare in amazement at my kids as the struggle to find the right word. Sometimes, they come up with their own words  As a kid, I had some of my own words, including “butch car,”and "aach."

My kids are no different.  One of the most interesting aspects of being a parent is trying to figure out what they are trying to say when they come up with new words and prhases.  Some are simple.  I know when my daughter asks for bonilla, she is looking for a bowl of her favorite ice cream flavor, vanilla.  Below, I present for you words and phrases my children use, their definition and a sentence including their usage.  And, no , this is totally not a rip off of Bill Cosby’s Kids say the darndest things.  But, hey, pudding pops for everyone!

Word/Phrase: On this day

Meaning: Today.

Example:  Daddy, on this day do you have to go to work or are you staying home.

Word/Phrase: On that day

Meaning: Any day that is not today, either in the past or in the future. 

Example: Mommy, on that day, is Mimi coming to visit us?  Or Mommy, on that day, when I was a baby, we went swimming in a pool.

Word/Phrase: On the next day

Meaning: Tomorrow

Example: On the next day can we watch Yo Gabba Gabba?

Word/Phrase: Sorry

Meaning: A word used to end a disciplinary action by the person saying, regardless of whether the action is actually completed by the person giving the disciplinary action.

Example: Me (to my daughter):We do not hit people.  You wouldn’t like getting hit, would you?
My daughter (to me) Sorry, daddy.  (My daughter then runs out of the room laughing.)

Word/Phrase: Butch car

Meaning: any car of late sixties / early seventies vintage that is red and has a black convertible top, most likely to be a Pontiac GTO.

Example: Why do the Henderson’s keep their butch car in the garage under all of those boxes?

Word/Phrase: Bitamins

Meaning: These things, overwhelming in the shape of Flintstones characters, that are full of vitamins and given to children daily.

Example: My Daughter(to me): Daddy, I want my bitamin.  Me: You had it already today. My Daughter: I want another bitamin.

Word/Phrase: Batmanmobile

Meaning: Batman’s car.  Not to be confused with the batmobile, which is Bat’s car.

Example: Daddy, look a Lego batmanmobile.

Word/Phrase: Womancat

Meaning: One of Batman’s arch villains. 

Example: Womancat is often chased by the batmanmobile.

Word/Phrase: Bonzani 

Meaning: A vehicle that runs on an ice rink between periods smoothing out the ice. 

Example: Dad, I want to drive the bonzani. 

Word: Mike 

Meaning: what my daughter calls me sometimes instead of Daddy.  Jesus, not even three and she is mocking me by calling me by my first name.  At least she isn’t calling me Mikey or Michael.

There's more but I'll save those for another post.  Hopefully this will help you all understand my children if they are ever speaking to you.

Thanks for reading.

 

To My Friends Who Got Married and Had Children Before I Did

Dear Friends who had Children before me,

Let me start off by apologizing to you.  It’s not that I expect for us to remain friends forever, or that we’d hang out and do dumb things like we did in high school and college years after we’d finished school.  I know we wouldn’t be going to trivia night at BW-3 on Wednesday for the rest of our lives.  I should have known when you got married and stayed in the suburbs, or moved to the suburbs in some cases, that we were on a different schedule, that we had different paths.  I still valued you as a friend, but it was hard to hang out.  I lived and worked in the city and you lived and worked in the suburbs.  And you went to bed early.  I mean really early, on every night of the week.  What’s up with that?  Seriously, at nine o’clock one Tuesday night you shooed me off the phone because it was bed time.  I was just sitting down to dinner.  So I stopped calling so much.  So did you.  And that was okay.  Until THEY came along and it was over.

Not that I was ever against children or having them.  I always figured I’d have some kids of my own but I was sure not ready when I was twenty-five to be in charge of any living thing.   If you don’t believe me, ask my cat from those years (which you can’t do because a) he’s dead, and b) he’d bite your face off because he was a little bastard).  I mean, if there were ever groceries in my refrigerator, they were probably old.  And there was that summer that every weekend I’d jump on my bike and go ride seventy miles each day.  You couldn’t do that.  You had kids.

And you couldn’t talk about anything but your kids.  If we were talking about the Cubs, you’d talk about the pink Cubs onesie your wife’s aunt had bought for you daughter.  If I talked about anything that was on TV past eight o’clock, you looked at me like I was on the moon.  If I let you talk, I heard incessant stories about what Joey or Amber or Caitlyn, Or Kaitlin, or Catylyn had for dinner, or how much she weighed, or how many words she knew.  In fact, you could talk about nothing but your children.  Ever.  And I listened, I just didn’t understand it.  So we stopped talking.  You had another kid.  I had another drink.

Then a few years later I got married and my son was born.  Two years later my daughter came along.  My life changed, I stayed home more, went to bed earlier (not at nine o’clock much) and there was no sleeping in on weekends.  Then, one day, it hit me.  I was at work, talking to a single co-worker who was  twenty four.  And I was telling a story about my son’s preschool play, and how he likes to sing the words to Foo Fighters songs and this guy was giving me a blank stare, like I was from the moon.  And it hit me.

I had become just like you, like anyone who has children.  I was incapable of talking about anything but my children.  And I understood why.

It’s not that I don’t have other interests, or like to read, or see movies or watch the Blackhawks anymore.  But when you have children, especially young children, they ARE your entire life.  You talk about them because that is all you do.  Okay, some people still work but who wants to talk about work.  So you talk about your kids, the things they do, how they used to say “Dummy,” every time they saw a picture of George Bush, or that their favorite show is Yo Gabba Gabba.  In fact, that’s pretty much the only show you get to watch.  And you go to Disney on Ice and read “Goodnight Moon” and “The Little Red Caboose,” which I can recite from memory.  You’d love to talk about other things, but your children are you entire world.  They are your everything.  They absorb every minute of your life, some are wonderful, some are hard, some, especially anytime the get sick in the middle of the night and throw up all over and you are on the third load of laundry and its four am and there is not a clean sheet anywhere in the house, at five am your alarm is going to go off and you are going to have to figure out how to drag your ass through a ten hour work day then come home and do it all over again, are exhausting. 

But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

So, I’m sorry, friends of mine who had children before I did.  Thanks for inviting me to birthday parties, even though I snuck out as soon as I could since I was the only single person there.  I still want to be friends, and now we can trade stories about our children.

What?  Your first born is fifteen now?  In high school?  Learning how to drive.  Wow that was fast.  Mine are still newborns.  No wait, almost five and almost three.

Where does the time go?

 Thanks for reading.

-M

Hey, Alexander

On my way to work this morning, walking from the train, a sign taped to a streetlight caught my eye.  It was bright yellow, maybe goldenrod and it was taped around the pole with clear packing tape.  In Times New Roman font, large size, were two words:  

Hey, Alexander

I walked past it at first then stopped in my tracks.  Was it a band?  Was it some artsy fartsy thing? What is some person’s crazy rant posted up for all to read like Martin Luther?   I retreated a few steps and read it. 

Hey, Alexander

I’m not sure you’ll remember me, but my  name is Dana and we met one night a few weeks ago when you came to a party I was working and you came outside for a smoke.

Oh, interesting.  One of those I saw you and now I want to find out notes that are in the missed connections section of Craig’s list and the back of the Chicago Reader.  Cool.

In summary, the girl wrote her phone number down on the guy’s bar receipt, but wrote it down wrong (hey, girls have totally accidentally given me the wrong number, too).  She had just lost her old phone and got a new one with a new number and didn’t have it memorized.  She said they hit it off and had really interesting conversation.  My favorite part was where she said she was nervous putting her email out there because she knew she’d get Rick Rolled.

It was cold, so I stopped reading and moved on.  But all day long, I couldn’t get Hey Alexander out of my head.  I started spinning my own story around just the first two words, “Hey, Alexander,” hoping it would turn into a short story (and it still might).   I thought about the girl wondering why the guy didn’t call (six days, right Swingers fans?) or maybe the guy calling the wrong number and wondering why the girl gave him a fake phone number.  Did he give up then?  How long did it take her to realize she gave him the wrong number?

Serendipity.  Good luck.  Fortune.  Fate.  Whatever you want to call it.  These people met once, by chance.  What tiny little change could have prevented them from meeting at all?  What if he had met his friends at another place before going to the party and was having so much they never left the first place? What if she worked a different part of the party and just never ran into him?    What if didn’t catch the first cab he hailed and instead took a second cab, which got him to the party later and as he walked in he bumped into an ex-girlfriend who he still loved.  What if Dana hadn’t left early for work and got the message from her boss who told her not to come in because he thought it would be slow at the bar?  Who controls these things? 

The night before Halloween in seventh grade, my friends and I had a sleepover where we did Mad Libs.  Yes, those Mad Libs. When asked for a girl’s name, I blurted out Rachel Lakeman (name changed because she might be reading this).  My friend wrote in  her name.  The next day while trick-or-treating, we ran into Rachel Lakeman dressed as a punk rocker trick-or-treating with her friends.  

 

Serendipity or coincidence?

My friends called out to her and we showed her the Mad Lib book, which, for some reason I was carrying around with us.  She read it, saw her name, ripped out that page and tossed the book back at us.

After that, our paths kept crossing.  We had a few classes together and now she started paying attention to me and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her.  A couple months later, Rachel and I were going out (or whatever going out means in seventh grade.  To tell you the truth I didn’t really get it then).  We went out for a few months and she even gave me the Mad Lib back.  It had been ripped then taped back together, with one piece missing: her name.  (Aww, how sweet.  She kept it that whole time).

Was this fate?  What if I had written down another girl’s name?  What if we hadn’t seen her while trick-or-treating?  Why on Earth why I was carrying the Mad Libs book when we were trick-or-treating and why did we show it to her?

Fate?  Love at first Mad Lib?

Well, no, it turns out.  We lasted a solid two months going out, which is a long time in junior high, and I was even her first dance at her Bat Mitzvah, but that was  it for our relationship, except for a few awkward moments at our ten year high school reunion, which is a story for another time. 

Then I wondered how enthralled by someone you’ve shared a single meeting with do you need to be to make a sign with your name and phone number on it and plaster it all over the city.  I remember riding my bike past Rachel Lakeman’s house after we broke up because there was something about her I couldn’t get over.  But I’d know her for months, and even had kissed her a few times when we went to the movies.  And I was thirteen, and man, thirteen year old boys are pretty clueless when it comes to matters of the heart.   I got over it eventually, until the next girl came along and broke my heart.  And so on.  That’s how it is.

But was there ever someone who I would do that for?  Well, of course.

My wife.

It didn’t start out as love at first sight.  Not exactly.  We shared multiple awkward moments the week we met.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Without getting into too many details let’s just say there had a been a lull in my love life, and it wasn’t for lack of trying.  I had tons of bad dates, blind dates, group dates, getting set up, trying again with the girls where I had bad dates, doing and saying the wrong thing, doing and saying the right thing at the wrong time.  I was at the bottom.  I had sworn of girls, given up trying.  I was “concentrating on work.” Things were not going well for me.

 

Then I met the girl who is now my wife.  And yes, things were awkward at first, but that’s a story for another time, when our kids are older, much, much older.  Then we got over the awkward part.  And I still remember the first time we talked on the phone.  It was a Monday night, and we talked for hours.  And trust me, It was hours.  I know because I hate talking on the phone but with her it was easy and enjoyable.  When we were done, and I was finally going to sleep, sometime around midnight, I said to myself, “I really want to talk to her again.”  And I can’t remember the last time I’d felt that way about someone.

So, the next night I was going to call her.  But she beat me to it.  She called me.  She could have waited for me to call, and I was going, but she called me.  I'm happy to say things went well. Here we are eleven years and two kids later.  Things are great.  Going back in time, if we had only talked that one time, than one night and somehow, I had lost her number or she had lost mine, or something had kept us from talking again, I’m sure I would have gone back to where we met and posted up a sign and tried to track her down.  And if I only got the one time, well, I’m sure I would have survived but you gotta try.  If you feel that way, you have to try to go hunt that beast down.  Take the chance.  What’s the worst that can happen?  You are no worse off for trying.  So what if you get a few crank calls. 

 

What if Alexander is at the bar drinking with his friends and he walks outside to have a cigarette (the poster said he smokes).  He’s been down in the dumps because this girl he met the other night, who he thought he totally hit it off with, gave him a wrong number.   As he’s cupping his hands around his lighter to keep the winter wind from blowing it out, he sees the goldenrod paper out of the corner of his eye.  His eyes lock on the words Hey, Alexander, and he steps to it and reads it.  He starts to smile, takes a long drag on his cigarette then pulls his phone out of his pocket.  He dials the number he sees on the poster.  A woman’s voice answers.  “Hello,” she says.  It’s her.  It’s Dana, the girl from the party.   “Dana?  This is Alexander,” he says.  “You are not going to believe this, but I’m standing outside of Jak’s and I saw your sign.”

This is the perfect ending for a movie, maybe with Ryan Reynolds as Alexander and Rachel McAdams as the plucky Dana.  Man, I hope it turns out this way.

All day, I keep thinking about the poster.  I wish I had read the entire thing.  I leave a couple minutes early hoping to read the whole poster on my way home. But it’s no longer there.  In fact, there’s nothing posted on any streetlights or street signs on the entire block.  They’d been stripped away sometime during the day, left bare like a mini mart before a hurricane.  There had always been things posted on this block, band signs, Radiohead Hail to the Thief stickers, lost dog signs, political signs.  Why, of all days did they clear them today?

Damn.  I will never know the fate of Dana and Alexander.

So, Dana and Alexander, if you are out there, I’m pulling for you.  I hope you find each other.  Call it luck, fate, serendipity, whatever you want to call it.  I just hope it happens.  After all, Valentine’s day is in a few days.

Thanks for reading.  All 36 of you.

Things about Traveling that I like

Last post I ranted on all of the bad things about traveling.  This week I’ll put a positive spin on traveling.

1. Frequent flier free drink coupons.  Beside the ones I earn, I have a few other souces.  Now, before you get all in a huff, I’m not downing gin and tonics at seven in the morning on my way out.  But a nice jack and coke on the evening flight home is great joy.
2. When I get the free drink, and they actually give me the entire can and entire mini bottle of Jack Daniels.  Yum.
3. Food I can’t get at home.  Don’t over think it people.  There’s nothing  better than a double double at In-n-Out burger accompanied by a facebook post of the meal.  My friends who love In-n-Out and don’t get to eat it post profanity laced comments while those who can get it any time mention how much they love it.    Chick-Fil-A in the south (although we have them in Chicago now).  Del Taco, well, never.  It’s just not very good.  But you get my point.
4. Do it yourself waffle irons.  Some of the mid-tier hotel chains entice you to stay with them by offering a free breakfast.  Many are nothing more than a box of cereal, some tasteless cut up pineapple and watermelon and luke warm, bitter coffee.  The good places have a waffle iron.  You fill a tiny cup with batter, pour it onto the waffle iron and in just one hundred and thirty seconds, a perfectly browned Belgian waffle is yours.  With practice, I’ve been getting better at not overfilling the waffle iron and causing it to spill on the table.
5. An entire row to myself.  Remember back before 9/11 when planes didn’t seem to care if they sold all the seats on the plane?  There were always empty seats.  Nowadays, airlines are scraping for every penny with bag fees, ten bucks to check in early, headset fees, snack fees, barf bag fees, don’t even think of asking your flight attendant for anything fees.  It seems that every flight is full.  But I keep running into one except.  One place I fly, the flight there is always full, but the flight home usually has empty seats.  It’s nice not to get elbowed by the guy next to me who is asleep, or have the person in front of my jack their seat back the second I open my laptop.  This week I had the entire row to myself.  I stuffed my bag under the seat next to me, stretched out my feet and kept my books and magazines on the seat next to me.  It was awesome.  Now if I just knew why so many people fly to Oakland but so few out.
6. ESPN’s Sport Center.  I don’t watch Sports Center much anymore.  In college, I watched it religiously.  But in hotels, I start my day with Sports Center, because no matter what time I get up, in exactly one hour, I will have seen everything I need to.  I still want to find the person who thought having news people standing up while on camera was a good idea.  They are always fidgeting and rolling their scripts, and rocking back and forth.  Get back behind the desk.  Make me wonder if you are wearing pants or not. 
7. Fun rental cars.  This doesn’t happen much.  I usually end up with a Ford Tarus with 30,000 miles, and there was that one time I had a Hyundai Sonata where the power steering didn’t work,  but every once in a while, you get a car that’s fun to drive.  On this last trip, I had a Buick (insert).  Once I got used to starting the car without the key and the terrible blind spot, it was fun to drive.  It had some balls.  It helps that my normal cars are lacking in acceleration and are, well, very practical.
8. Having extra time to relax.  On a good trip, I get to stop working at a normal time.  Usually the hotel is close to the office, so my normal commute is gone.  I get to work out, then head out for a nice dinner, with no cooking or cleaning involved.  Since I am not at home, there are no after dinner chores to do.  No taking the garbage out, no sifting through piles of junk mail, no cleaning the litter box.    I don’t have to worry about picking clothes for tomorrow because I’ve only got three shirts with me.
9. Coming home.  This is the best thing.  I know, totally cheesy, but  I’ve never been on a trip that I didn’t want to come home from.  Even better than that is the rare time the flight home lands early and the kids are still awake, not knowing that I’m getting home before they go to bed.  The welcome home hugs and kisses are a lot longer and tighter if I’ve been gone for a few days.