Workin' For A Living

by Beth

We've been spending quite a bit of time at my house discussing careers. My son just started his senior year of high school (sob!) and is looking at colleges which means he's also trying to decide what the heck he wants to do with his life.

Luckily, he has some working experience as over the summer he held three part time jobs. He mowed three lawns, worked as a busboy/counter guy/dishwasher/some-time cook at a local restaurant and is a Dietary Aide at our hospital (which is a fancy way of saying he washes dishes and fills food trays :-)

His job experience had me thinking of the jobs I've held over the years. My first job was counting and wrapping change at a bank downtown. Really. They had this little room with a huge change sorter/wrapper where I'd work for a few hours a week. I had to cut open the bags of loose change (already sorted, thank goodness) pour them into the machine and then load the wrapped coins onto metal trays. The trays were then stacked in the safe.

My next job was at the same bank but as a teller. I held this position twice: once the summer after high school and then later right after I got married until I had my son.

I didn't go back to work until my son was a few months old. I put my cosmetologist license to good use and worked in a hair salon for all of three weeks before deciding my true calling was that of a stay-at-home mother.

When my kids were little, I worked for my father and two brothers in the office of their contracting firm. And let me just say that as much as I love my family, and though I stayed at that job for years, there is no way I'd ever work for them again. 'Nuff said *g*

Luckily, by that time I knew what I really wanted to be when I grew up: A Romance Writer! Today I'm blessed to be able to do what I love for a living and I hope to have this job for many, many, MANY years to come ;-)

So let's talk jobs! Here's my husband's list:

Hardest job - lawn care at a local cemetery. The mowing wasn't so bad but he had to trim around the 100+ headstones. And since this was before weed whackers, he had do to them all by hand *g*

Weirdest job - growing crystals that were cut in to wafers to make the chips for integrated circuits.

Shortest amount of time he held a job - 30 minutes. That's right. He'd just started a new job when he got the call letting him know he had a better offer at a different place :-)

What was your hardest job? Your weirdest? Most fun? And can anyone beat my husband's record for shortest time employed?

Are You An Invasive Species?

by Caren Crane

The old adage "bloom where you're planted" has its uses. I've used it on myself and to help friends at certain times. It can help someone accept a situation that is necessary, but maybe unpalatable. Like, for instance, a Dreaded Day Job (DDJ).

There is also a problem where I live - and probably where you live, too - with "invasive species". Plants or animals that are not indigenous to an area, but were imported. Usually, the results are unintended and disastrous for the native flora or fauna.

I've had a DDJ where I turned out to be an "invasive species". Let's call the employer "Company X". This DDJ was one I took because I had a family to support and needed medical insurance. Despite my best efforts to assimilate, it simply didn't happen there. I did my best to suck it up and play their game, their way. But for ethical reasons, I felt compelled to speak out about certain business practices at the company. I was an invasive species. For their own reasons, management decided I would never be happy there and excused me from employment. I wasn't sad about it. *g*

You see, I had already decided I was not a native plant in their shady garden. I required sunny, ethically sound soil in order to bloom. They got rid of me, but I had already decided that was not a place where I could grow and thrive. BUT, I had learned things there. Valuable things. The sort of things that made me ideally suited for the job I secured two weeks after Company X and I parted ways.

But sometimes you find out something more hurtful than simple incompatibility. You take a job or position thinking it will be perfect - a most natural environment for you. Then, after weeks or months of heartbreaking disillusionment, you find out things are not as they seemed from a distance. Despite thinking you were naturally-occurring flora in a veritable Garden Of Eden, you find out you are, despite your hopes and dreams, an invasive species there.

I sometimes feel like I didn't try hard enough at the Company X. That somehow, I should have been able to straighten things out there. But then, in my more philosophical moments, I realize that invasive species are only invasive when they are where they should not be. Plant them where they are meant to be and they thrive!

Have you ever decided there was a situation where it was in no one's best interest if you stayed? Ever left a place for greener pastures and found out they weren't all that green once you got there? In either case, how did things turn out? Were you really the invasive species you thought or did you deny some garden a reluctant, but potentially beautiful, bloom?