Submitted by rlp on Tue, 06/24/2008 - 09:03.
I've begun a writing project for The High Calling. I'm going to write about every job I've ever had. I started with my first job and am working my way from there. We'll see how far I get. I've have a LOT of jobs over the years. I grew up in a working family, and I began working in 6th grade. Along the way I've done everything from bagging groceries to driving forklifts.
This piece is about my second job. I wrote about my first job here.
My Second Job
My second job, like my lawn-mowing gig, was arranged by my father. A local daycare center needed a janitor to come in every evening and do some cleaning. There was a tile hallway, five or six classrooms, and a couple of restrooms. In return for cleaning these, I would be paid four dollars an hour for two hours of work each day. That was a little more than minimum wage at the time, so I took home about $150 a month. It seemed like a fortune.
My specific duties were clearly laid out for me. I was to empty the trash, vacuum all of the classrooms, sweep and mop the hall as needed, and clean the bathrooms. I wasn't sure what they expected me to do when it came to the tile bathroom floors and hall. Along the baseboards and around the bottoms of the toilets, the tiles were dingy and not very clean. Did they expect me to make the floors spotless or simply maintain them as they were when I began the job? ...Click here to read more.
rlp
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Taking Pride in Your Work
I did janitorial and housekeeping work for a few years before going back to college. My favorite job was probably working as a house keeper in a nursing home. I did feel a sense of pride in the work. I was thorough and efficient. And a lot of the ladies living there liked to talk to me while I worked. Maybe because I was not as stressed out and hurried as the nursing staff was. Unfortunately, I would never have gotten off of food stamps and housing subsidies if I had stayed in that job. (Nothing wrong with our tax dollars going to support the working poor, but I wanted a little bit more out of life.)
Now, I find myself in a much better paying job, but the level of frustration is higher too. It is very hard to stay motivated. Sometimes I think I should look for a different job. Sometimes I feel like I should stay where I am. They do need me where I am. They just tend to ask me to do things that other people found too difficult to accomplish. It is hard to take pride in a job that seems to involve continual failure.
People find out that I work in a research lab and they always ask me if I have "discovered anything." I answer, "Yes. I have discovered hundreds of things that do not work."
Well, "live and learn" is something of a mantra in my life. And so it goes.
Been there too.
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I can relate, too. I spent about half a year with an erstwhile girlfriend cleaning a two-storey office building three nights a week. Garbage, vacuuming, bathrooms.
I think those sorts of jobs are very character-building.
Good post.
Thanks for the encouraging post. I have been inspired to strengthen my work ethic by the book, "Into the Wild", in which Alexander Supertramp was said to treat even the most menial tasks as if they were an Olympic event.
By the way, I am reading your blog from an Oil Rig in the middle of the Grand Erg Oriental Desert right now.
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