Yessir, I can surely sing ’em. I come from proud working-class roots. Except my mom was a teacher, but society kinda treats teachers like glorified babysitters instead of professionals. Though I’ve had a couple of professional careers, I ain’t ashamed to have used more muscle than mind in many jobs throughout my life. My first were menial, like baby sitting or cashiering at an ice cream parlor and later a barbecue joint. Once I became of legal working age, I was thrilled to work part time at Sears at the mall. It was the ’70s, and though Sears was losing out against rivals like JC Penney, I was happy to finally be one of those high school teen-agers with a secure job: one where I didn’t have to deal with food (except when scheduled to work the store’s nut stand) and could wear nice clothes like an adult. I was assigned to the children’s clothing department which featured a Dallas Cowboys’ fan shop. I wore dresses, hose and platform shoes while folding and hanging clothes but mostly picking up after customers. It was then I realized how inconsiderate society is when shopping. But it was a job, so hey.
A year later I wound up working part time as a newspaper reporter, covering the high school beat for my hometown paper. The pay was $10 an article, which in those days had to be retyped by a typesetter. I was a natural at the job, turned in two or three stories a week plus a column, and wore whatever I wanted though always dressing professionally when interviewing. I got my first taste of a profession, a career.
I worked my way through college. As a freshman, I tried hard to get a job at the local mall or the town newspaper. But the timing wasn’t right. Desperate for some source of income that would provide the incidentals of a young lady, I ended up working at a sandwich shop across from the university. Never was really good at handling food though. And then the customers wanted their food fast. I was … too neat. And slow. And after a couple of months got the heave ho. Just as well. I dreaded closing by myself late at night, having to sweep and mop the entire cement floor, and then cleaning the toilets in the men’s and women’s restrooms. P U!
I ventured into the logical working gal’s job of waitress. But again, me and food jobs don’t get along. After six weeks, I was informed I was unable to manage five tables at a time and was summarily fired during the shift. Shoot, I hoped that job would be my college gig for spending money. Cash tips could be $60 a night. No one ever told me I wasn’t doing a good job.
But the close of a door opens a window, and mine was a much better job as a reporter for the university news service. I was in my element, sniffing out stories and whipping up articles, using whatever typewriter I could find on campus because I did not have one of my own. This was in the days before personal computers and laptops. This job, however, was grant funded which meant it was precarious. I earned $200 every two weeks and lived in an on-campus apartment, really feeling grown up for a college kid. I was praying this job would be my lengthy gig to get me through college. But ’tweren’t to be. The Reagan years ushered in the Gramm-Rudman budget cuts interestingly toward colleges and universities and work-study students like me. The job lasted one year.
Of books and nooks
The college helped me find another job, this time in the library. I was the assistant to the assistant music librarian. And again proved to be a natural with the prerequisite clerical tasks: naturally organized, accurate, thorough, respectful of deadlines—I proved to be the whole ball of wax. The job required researching copyright and other publishing information for hundreds of sound recordings, books and journals—all in my college major of music. I learned to use the computer in this library job. Part of the work dealt with typing all data to replace the card catalog drawers. The work had to be completely accurate, not one mistake. Or you’d have to get back into the computer and fix it. Anyway, I was paid the hourly wage of the day and worked a few afternoons a week. It was enough to get by a little. My boss and I got along fabulously. She gave me a birthday gift, an album of Gershwin’s classical music.
Along my college route, however, another snag occurred. Long story short, I wasn’t graduating as soon as I had planned. I prematurely quit the music library job and ended up searching for another work-study position. All along, throughout college I wrote freelance articles for the city paper but never was hired for steady work like in high school. Reading the posted campus want ads, I saw a job for writing tutor in the library writing lab. I applied and was interviewed. The tutors were paid slightly more than minimum wage due to our proven college-level writing expertise: We helped peers formulate and write better papers for required coursework. The writing lab director was impressed with my clerical background and hired me not only to tutor but to keep up with and file all the paperwork. Again, I excelled at the chores. But by my final year of college, even a poor college student as I was no longer qualified for federal work-study. The writing lab director kept me on, shuffling my salary into another account, as she explained it’s all just paperwork.
Cutting to the chase, I graduated … only to be unemployed for a year and a half, tried my hand at piano and voice lessons and substitute teaching before getting a job back at the college library as binding assistant. I prepared hundreds of books and journals for professional binding and oversaw a crew of college students with repairing ripped and missing pages and worn spines. The job required no degree and was indeed blue collar. Everyone at the library knew me, so I was hired quickly. It was a living for several months, but I ended up in the big city to pursue a profession: teaching or newspapering—wherever life leads.
Life is a journey
Even as a graduate, I realized I would have to pay work dues. Like I did in high school, I walked the entire mall and applied everywhere (except the food court where I wasn’t wanted anyway). I was called by the art-frame store manager several times to be assistant manager. Though I love art, I kept passing, holding out for something else. Heck, I probably should’ve just taken the job.
Realizing I wasn’t going to be teaching the upcoming school year, I earnestly looked into joining the Peace Corps. They were hiring college grads to teach English in the former Eastern bloc nations of Europe. On the application I also selected to work in Africa or India. But life took me back to the newspaper biz as a clerk at a big-city paper. We clerks hung out together during lunch, worked on all kinds of projects like compiling contest entries including the Pulitzer Prize. We glued and pasted articles in scrapbooks while chatting about our college days and wondering what to do now as graduates. We earned like $6 an hour. But I took full advantage of the opportunity before me, frequently tossing story ideas to the features editor and got one approved to write and publish, a huge triumph. In a couple of years the paper went out of business as cities became one-paper towns. This was before the internet, social media, blogs and dubious news outlets.
How did I survive? By getting hired part-time at the homeless shelter at which I had been volunteering. Now I was the weekend night monitor, sleeping overnight Fridays and Saturdays with the homeless. Dressed in jeans, Beatles T-shirt and sneakers with walkie-talkie and master keys in hand, I patrolled the hallways and checked the rooms, making sure occupants were where they were supposed to be and that there were no drugs or booze of which I kept a partial blind eye. I also had to oversee guys working community service by serving meals and cleaning the kitchen. By day, well I subbed as a public school teacher anywhere anytime any school any subject. So I had to switch mindsets from professional to working class, know how to act professionally then dress down to hang with the underprivileged. I was careful not to be smug with the homeless or less than a consummate professional in dress and deed with school students and principals.
This exhausting whirlwind ended when I was hired full time at a used book store. With my library experience, it was more my speed. I could see potential for moving up in the corporation but still pursued other jobs, casting my net across the state. On my two weekdays off, I drove all over Texas seeking work, filling out job applications (none were online yet) and doing some interviews. To my complete surprise, I ended up back in the newspaper biz as a real-deal reporter. I took to the job like a fish in water. A few years later, I was hired at another newspaper. A career was building. Several years later, I wound up at another big-city paper then within a couple of years crossed over into teaching, building my original career aspiration sixteen years after college. I kept up the pace with all this career stuff for close to thirty years, even earned a master’s degree along the way.
Free as a bird
Then boom. Right or wrong, I took early retirement, pursued some risky ventures (like that nonprofit still in federal limbo due to the shutdown) and applied online for close to a thousand jobs—all easily done these days with one click. Even so, finding a new job has not been easy. To pay the bills, I’ve returned to my working-class roots … handling food, this time at a grocery store: schlepping gallons of milk and heavy bags of dog food or cases of bottled water across the counter, carefully handling cartons of eggs and bread, packing every little thing as if it were my own. I’ve developed a chronic numbness from shoulders to fingertips and when a full day is done, my body aches like I’ve been run over by a train. But I experienced similar pain by the end of each school day teaching a decade and a half; it comes from mandatory standing. Yet I handle grocerying with a friendly smile and sincere kindness. After all, there’s no need to be hasty or rude to paying customers. I get the picture of what business is all about. To make a long day go by faster, I remember my newly created mantra, one for the working folks: Work, break. Work, lunch. Work, break. Work, leave.
As for my third act, this blog is part of it. Who knows what else may come along in life, the thing John Lennon said happens while we’re busy making other plans? Now that I’ve grown comfortably into middle age, I am more at ease. The urgency to get on with the rest of my life and make a spectacular splash and workworkworkworkwork is pretty much gone—though I’m not dead yet. I figure another twenty years or more remains of work energy.
The inadvertent time off from career has been reflective. Diving back into the working class, a job that requires no degree, has been not so much humbling as for me expected. Growing up in a family that would rather be the hired hand than the big boss man, I’ve come to see a job is just a job. No need to look down on yourself for what you do for a living.
I’ve never thought any job I’ve had as dead-end. I always saw potential for advancement, maybe not in the exact career I wanted or anticipated, but management maybe. Looking back at a working life, I’ve thrived on hard work with few rewards, keeping busy while earning never-enough pay, earning my keep best I can, doing my part to help others, maybe leaving folks in a better frame of mind. Building a career, like building a life, takes everything within us: energy, smarts, foresight, and the ability to roll with the punches because there are a lot of them and they hurt real bad. Life is our own creation. Relying on the internet with its plethora of ‘job’ listings—real and bogus—cannot take the place of our individuality, experience, expertise and self worth nor the spiritual bond among people.
For all the kids out there starting out, the journey toward work and careers is really an individual pursuit of happiness. Don’t ever forget that. If a working job comes along while waiting for the big career profession, consider taking it for awhile. The work we do, the job title and menial tasks, is not what makes us who we are. But it develops the interesting trait of character and most of all teaches us what we still need to learn about ourselves and how to treat others who come in and out of our lives. In other words, like life itself, no job lasts forever.
social commentary & political humor