Glass Half Full

Good day to you, Loyal Reader.

In light of my recent "Ultraman" confession I've been doing some soul-searching regarding my entries up to this point.  After reviewing what I've written thus far I fear that the tales previously told may have left you with the impression that I've hated every single job I've ever had.  This is simply not so.

Truth be told I've had as many as...um, two jobs in the past that I've liked!  So, there!  To all of you that think I'm being unreasonably Emo about my main topic of discussion I lob a hearty "HAH!" in your general direction.

In thinking about these past two cherished gigs I've managed to nail down what an ideal working environment would be for me.  As a corollary, here's a list of workplace conditions I'd ideally want to avoid in the future if possible:

•  Being completely sedentary by sitting in a chair in excess of eight hours everyday.  Especially if sitting down for that long isn't by choice but because you will fail to achieve the inhumane level of production being asked of you on a daily basis if you don't.  I.E. If by getting up to pee, stretch your legs, have a quick chat with a friend or (perish forbid) eat lunch for thirty minutes makes you fall behind in your work to the point that your day is considered a complete failure you may want to seek an alternate vocation.
• I don't want my primary mode of communication to be by phone.  Now I'm not opposed to communicating my phone at all but if your new boss hands you a headset to wear from day one onward, you can officially take this as an omen (or an ottoman, I'm not sure which).  I generally hate to deal with people exclusively over the phone because (1) You can't read people very well (2) Wearing a headset for eight-plus hours every day will give you a chronic case of swamp-ear and (3) I'm not a thirteen year old girl.  Or at least I haven't been for a long, long time.  Ahem, you probably should ignore that. 
• I don't want to stare at a computer screen for hours on end.  Again, this isn't bad in short bursts but if you're zoning out on that sucker for more than two to three hours in a sitting, it's time to move on.  Especially if combined with the previous two conditions.  Every health professional I've talked to has told me that the sort of modern Dickensian sweat shop created by big business for their drones to toil in is slowly killing them.  I know for a fact that my posture is completely f#@&#$ and before I left work I had the beginnings of an nicely-developing "Mr. Burn's"-style hump from slaving away continuously at a workstation designed by former Nazi scientists who were fired from the S.S. for "excessively cruelty".
• As a grown adult I want to work in a trusting environment where my employer believes that I can think independently and apply positive tenants to my daily work experience.  These tenants include, but are not limited to, intelligence, free will, independence, wisdom, training, experience, and common sense.  I don't want to work for someone that has (theoretically) hired me for all the above reasons and then promptly demands that I sit down, shut up and "do exactly as I'm told".                 
• I don't necessarily want to be paid gobs of money.  It's been my experience that if you work in an environment where you get compensated disproportionately for a job you have no control over, it's a recipe for inevitable madness.  The robotic, practical side of your brain will pursue the perpetually dangling carrot to the point of exhaustion while the creative, active portion of your skull slowly atrophies like Joe Bonham in "Johnny Got His Gun."

Now, conversely, for the sake a maintaining a positive, "glass half full" outlook, here's a l'il sample of what I would consider to be a great working environment:

 


So basically I'm looking for face to face interaction with real-live people, the freedom to be snide to the grossly ignorant, the ability to discuss relevant topics of interest in a vaguely abusive setting and be semi-mobile at least.

That's not asking too much, is it?   I know these jobs exist; I've had two gigs in the past that I absolutely loved and embodied this philosophy somewhat.

Back when we still lived in residence at St. Mary's a buddy of mine managed to weasel his way into coordinating the student elections.  So, for every election, he'd retain his cronies (myself included) at the amazing rate of $10.00 a hour to mark names off a list and facilitate the voting process.  And by "facilitate the voting process" I mean hand someone a ballot and direct them to the slot after they'd managed to scrawl their secret "X" on it and fold it up.

The guy that ran the whole affair was a notoriously bad speller (and still is to this day).  I remember cracking up at the schedule for the first day because the name of two friends (Mike and Cheryl) had been mangled so badly it looked as if "Milk and Cereal" were working a shift together.  To this day Cheryl still answers to "Cereal" (along with "Roadie", but that's another story).

These elections were a blast.  I've always wanted to work with my friends and this was a real treat.  After someone cast their ballot at one poling station we'd have to use walkie-talkies to transmit their names to all the other stations so they could cross them off on their own lists, thus preventing them from voting again.  In the evenings when things got slow inevitably this would degenerate into the following call-ins:

"Yeah, new voter here...first name, 'Adoodie', first name 'Ahmed'."
"Head's up, people.  We got last name 'Torres', first name 'Clint'!"
"Alright, I need you to cross off 'Ocksmall', O-C-K-S-M-A-L-L, first name 'Mike'."
"Okay, I can't find this name on my list.  Last name is 'Weiner', first name 'Drew', middle initial is 'P'!"

Oh, some of the poor, naive girls we worked with.  We'd get them every time.  Sometimes it would take minutes for them to clue in and we'd just be dying on the other end of the 'talkie as they repeated the 'names' over and over again, their volume growing in direct proportion to their level of frustration:

"Mike HUNT!  Jill, can you see 'Mike Hunt' anywhere down there?  I can't find the friggin' thing at all!" 

Now that's not to say that we didn't do a great job. We actually drove up the voter turnout considerably.  It got to the point where we'd come up with all sorts of comically vaudevillian ways to get every SMU student to vote in the elections.  This obsession got so bad that one night I had a dream that we'd set up a voter station at 'Jumbo Video' and got Lenny Kravitz to play there.  When I shared the idea next day everyone laughed at me and thought  I was nuts.  Jerks. 

This goes to show a truism that big business often forgets: if you trust your people to get the job done and allow them some freedom to have a bit of fun occasionally, you'll empower them, keep their morale up and production will follow naturally.  Funny how these kernels of common sense don't seem so common sometimes. 

Like the "Festival Coast Tourism" gig that I talked about in a previous entry, the other assignment that I liked a lot could scarcely be called a job as well.  It was another make-work type project where I was hired by our local community college to compose and assemble a thousand student orientation packages and also determine the feasibility of an alumni association.

First some background info.  The "College of the North Atlantic" that at worked at has gone through so many name changes I've lost track.  From what I can remember it started out as the "Bay St. George Community College" (limiting it's range a bit) then morphed into the "Western Community College" (vague but catch-all), then became the blatantly trendy "Westviking College" and now it's known as the desperately rugged-sounding "College of the North Atlantic."

Kinda conjures up mental images of classes filled with students dressed in identical rubber boots, yellow rain slickers and Sou'wester hats with cock-eyed, pipe-smoking instructors espousing nuggets of wisdom like: "I sees he, says I to she."    

Anyhoo, I was charged as a twenty three year old kid to tackle these barely-legitimate make work projects.  Energized by the blind trust, responsibility and freedom only granted by employers who's own money they aren't spending, I launched into my duties with tremendous vigor.


Perhaps too much vigor. 


I remember my supervisor taking me aside two weeks into it and telling me: "Look you gotta slow down!  You're gonna work yourself out of a job!"

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  My parents had it installed like software into my brain, "Matrix"-style that you never slack off doing a job.  NEVER EVER.  You kept hammering at it every second of every day of every week of every month until it's done.  You are never supposed to be IDLE.  That's just lazy.

So, once again, the things that I'd been taught about work were proving to be less than accurate.  I nearly had a mental breakdown consciously forcing myself to slow down.  It's still impossible for me to stop working or slow down until something is completed to my satisfaction.

Considerable stretches of time were spent taking stock in my surroundings. A buddy of mine had been hired in the library to do archiving and both of us had a blast trying to quantify all of the interesting characters at the school.  His supervisor, the guy who ran the library, was an interesting cat who looked like a combination of special effects wizard Dennis Muren and oddball physician Dr. Lawrence Jacoby from "Twin Peaks".  He even had the off-colored lenses for his glasses.  After being a first-hand witness to some of his quirky behavior we both concluded that doing whatever rabbit-hole academics it took to acquire a Master's Degree in Library Studies took too great a toll on the normal human mind and we hastily ruled it out as a future career path.

Another mutual friend would often stop by the school for lunch.  He'd managed to snag a summer job as a DJ at the local radio station CFSX and would regale us of how he nearly got fired for playing Led Zeppelin's "Over The Hills and Far Away" versus such corn-pone classics as Ian Tyson's horrendous "Navajo Rug" which was in heavy rotation at the time.



I guess we all had our crosses to bear.  

Speaking of music, at the time U2's much-maligned "Zooropa" album had just been released.  For some reason we became completely obsessed that summer with the song "Lemon" and made every possible opportunity to warble the lyrics to anyone within earshot.  In an inexplicable twist to residence pranks, if either of us left our office doors open (which was a disused classroom idle during the summer break) for any length of time we'd come back to find the blackboards completely covered in the song's lyrics, making the room look like the secret inner sanctum of the world wussiest serial killer.



More often than not one of our supervisors would pop in on us unexpectedly.  Can you imagine trying to have a respectable, serious conversation with a barely-legitimate authority figure while surrounded by mad scribblings like this:

Lemon
See through in the sunlight
She wore lemon
But never in the daylight
She's gonna make you cry
She's gonna make you whisper and moan
And when you're dry
She draws her water from the stone  

In between all this wacky tomfoolery I had to procure 1000 condoms for the orientation kits.  For months I  had tons of prophylactics lying around in my "office".  If (perish forbid) a girl I wanted to impress popped in to visit I had to dedicate at least ten minutes trying to convince her that I wasn't predisposed to any freaky-deaky Wilt Chamberlain-like propensities.

I also had to include a letter from our Mayor with the kit.  This story likely explains why I hate trying to do things over the phone and often have a constant state of anxiety associated with it.

So I call the Mayor's office and speak to a nice secretary that sounds like she has a problem with her adenoids.  Eventually she patches me though and this is the first thing I hear:

"A-KACHK!!!  *COUGH, COUGH, COUGH*   BLAK-HUUURRRRKKK!!!  HAWWWWWWK!!!   Snort...(sniffle)."

The voice on the other end of the line seemed to be suffering from severe emphysema.  I waited patiently as the hacking died down and then struck up again.  On an alternate phone line I hastily dialed a "9" and "1" and was poised to dial "1" again if I heard a thump hit the floor.

Eventually the cacoughany ('Cacoughany?'  Geddit?  Huh?  Dooya?  I'm tellin' ya, every one's a friggin' Maserati!) died down and I heard: "Yeah, (first initial of first name omitted)?"

"Yes, Mayor (Omitted), my name's David Pretty.  I'm calling on behalf of Western Community, er...Westviking College."

Endless awful silence.

"And I'm, uh...assembling an orientation kit for the students in September."

"Uh-huh."

Finally a sign of life!  I hung up the other line, happy that I didn't need to get a paramedic on speakerphone to try and talk me through some sort of emergency medical intervention. 

"And we'd love to have a letter of welcome from you to include in the orientation kits."

"A what!?"

"A letter, sir.  A letter signed by you that we can include in the student orientation kits welcoming them to the college and to the town."

A disproportionate span of time was once again consumed by terrible silence.  I held my breath and prepared to hang up, hoping to cut my losses and write this off as the worst crank call in recorded history.

"Yes, 'by!" the Mayor suddenly shouted, forcing me to hold the phone away from my ear for a second time.  Suddenly the man became animated as the venerable, respectable senior statesman I'd expected.  "Come on over tomorrow afternoon and I'll 'ave something for ya."

I swung by his office the following afternoon and true to his word, he'd composed a perfectly professional letter and hand-signed every one.  Although the phone conversation had been terribly awkward, the man certainly came though nicely. 

For the other part of the job I had to determine if an alumni association was feasible for the college.  I contacted a slew of other schools with already-existing alumni groups like Kwantlen College (now "Kwantlen Polytechnic University", Ooooooooo!  Fancy!) to see just how they'd determined the likelihood of first setting one up.  They were very helpful, sending back survey templates that they'd mailed out to graduates in an attempt to gauge interest, determine what activities and privileges they'd like to see and if they'd be willing to pay a small dues to ramp up their benefits.

I composed the package, got it approved, procured the mailers and return postage, then fired it off to about two-hundred graduates.  And then waited.  And waited.  And waited some more. 

Barely any of them came back.   

At the time I wasn't really that surprised.  The economic recession at the time had hit Newfoundlanders particularly hard.  It must have been galling for many graduates to have invested their time and money in a practical trade only to see no career results materialize upon graduation.  Hell, if I was them and got a survey in the mail asking them to confront their folly and if they'd be willing to pay dues for what amounted to wound-worthy salt, I would have turfed that f#@%^& thing as well.

Regardless of the reason, I was stuck.  What the hell was I going to do?  As per my own supervisor's advice I'd taken my sweet time getting to this stage in the work term and within a week or so I had to go in front of a board of directors with the results.

I went to my supervisor and he told me all the right things: "Well, you did your part. It's not your fault that people didn't respond.  The questionnaire you sent to them wasn't particularly long or difficult to answer.  It was the exact same format that other schools have used to good results.  I'd say work with what you got back and don't worry about it."

Even still, the meeting with the higher-ups was pretty awkward.

"So, what was the survey return percentage?"

"Um...about thirty percent."

"Okay.  And what percentage of people who responded wanted to join an alumni association?"

"Er...about the same."

"And your conclusion?"

Yeah, as if that wasn't self evident.

"I'm afraid that there just isn't enough interest at this time to justify establishing an alumni association for Bay St....er, Westviking College just yet." 

Uneasy exchanged glances followed but I saw in this a chance to be optimistic.  Glass half full, as it were.    

"But, perhaps mail isn't the best way to correspond with alumni about this sort of thing.  For the past two years at St. Mary's I've been using this thing called 'email' to keep in touch with friends.  I'm fully confident that there's tremendous potential here and one of these days you'll use more sophisticated and easy ways to reach these people and for them to reply to you.  In light of this and how enthusiastic the responses were from  those people that actually did respond I just sense that the college will have an alumni association sooner rather than later."

Their collective faces brightened considerably.  The mood in the room seemed to relax.  

"Well, we thank you very much for your diligent and honest efforts, Mr. Pretty.    We'll take your report into consideration and we wish you all the best in your upcoming year at St. Mary's."

And that was that.  

Y'know I kid about this stuff but I think it's quite telling that in many ways I had more trust, responsibility and opportunities to be creative and self-determining in a workplace as a twenty three year old kid than I did as a man close to forty years old in his last "real" well-paying gig.  In tune with this entry's title I'm trying to stay positive here but I gotta tell you that experiences like this really set me up with unrealistic expectations for what was to come.

But still I remain your humble, eternally positive, potential servant.

Drink?

EPIC:  http://www.cna.nl.ca/alumni/

BONUS EPIC: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/pa-the-series/
As another example of a dream workplace, if Mike and/or Jerry ever see this and want to hire me I can tell them right now that I can string a sentence together, have sales experience and work cheap.

BONUSER (?) EPIC:



FAIL:  http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article2528.asp Maybe I did better than I thought?

Did You Know That The Television Show "Wings" Was Actually A Documentary?

Hello, Kind Reader.

In the intervening summer months while going to university in Halifax I'd often limp home to save money.  This usually involved make-work-project-style jobs designed to give university students just enough scratch for a coupla text books, a flat of Kraft Dinner, or at least allow us to put a few shekels towards our primary student loan in the hopes of avoiding a mid-semester tete-a-tete with a pair of large swarthy men seeking good karma.

One year I was retained for the "Festival Coast Tourism Association".  At the time Stephenville and the Port-Aux-Port peninsula in Newfoundland was going through a marketing identity crisis for potential tourism.  It was an historical site but didn't have any museums or orientation centers to promote this.  It had beautiful scenery but no infrastructure to access it safely.  It had very little to attract shoppers (unless you counted the "Arlims" on Main Street).

But it did have a pretty decent little theater festival every year and celebrations like "Une Longue Veillee" attracted a fair share of interest in French heritage.

Then it's decided!  We'll call ourselves the Festival Coast and set up a student Tourism Association to promote it!  Awesome!

A part of the job was spending a few hours at our small airport manning the tourist information booth.  Needless to say, not a lot of traffic came through but the characters that did were memorable.  As an avid people watcher, I started to make a semi-fictional log from pages from the Tourist Register to amuse myself and a co-worker who shared the same duty.  Here's a segment of that log:

DATE       TIME          FLIGHT

Aug 10      1:20pm      Air Atlantic: Twin Peaks-Halifax-Stephenville

Odd assortment of humanity emerges from aircraft.  They all look as if their original flight went down somewhere but they just dusted themselves off and hopped on the next plane that happened by.  People in neck braces.  People missing arms, legs, eyes.  Little gnarled Hobbit-people.  Looks like a David Lynch casting call.  Very interesting.         

Supplemental 1:40 pm.  

A man with more hair on his back then on his head is waiting at the "Avis" rent-a-car booth.  A present-but-bored "Tilden" employee is trying to lure the man away with obscene hand gestures but he remains slavishly loyal to "Avis" 

Intense dude who habitually screams at archaic "Donkey Kong" video game seems in the throes of turmoil.  Unbeknown to him our Robo-Commissioner is stealthily approaching him from behind with a syringe of tranquilizing drugs, and not a moment too soon.  

Cute girl with long, curly brown hair in unfortunate "Raiders" jersey and very fortunate cut-off denim shorts seems oddly out of place.  

Video game dude stalks off in a huff.  The tranq has had no apparent effect on him.  For the first time in his storied career, Robo-Commissioner is forced to draw his gun (film @ 11)

DATE       TIME          FLIGHT         

Aug 10      1:55           Air Atlantic 1453 : St. John's-Gander-Cow's Head-Jerry's Nose

Airport flooded as a grand total of three people get off flight.  I am involved in a frantic twenty-minute information exchange orgy...NOT! ("Hey, kids, remember when that was funny? No?  Ooookay, then," - your humble narrator)  

Guest #1 looks lost as if he wandered back from lunch to a construction site but got on a plane by mistake.  

Guest # 2: yet another pretty brown-haired girl in minuscule denim shorts.  Things are looking up!  

Writing and ogling briefly interrupted by woman resembling Morticia Adams, curious as to what I'm going sitting at this booth.  I glare at her until she becomes uncomfortable and slowly drifts away.  

Guest # 3 whizzed by so quick I am unable to confirm gender.  Appeared to be clad in bizarre fashion-disaster formal sweatshirt and baggy M.C. Hammer pants.  Figure moved so fast it could also legitimately make claim of "untouchable" status a la source of fashion inspiration.  

DATE       TIME         FLIGHT

Aug 11      9:00am      Supplemental

Spent bulk of night watching Clint Eastwood western.  Between lack of sleep and violet content of film I am as cordial as a rabid wolverine this morning.  

Two genetic casualties are rubbing their heads together trying to figure out how to operate the payphones.  One lady looks in purse for help, doesn't find it within so throws in the proverbial towel.  

Dude who looks like reject from "Really Me" Canadian TV anti-drug PSA walks by.  He refuses the heroin I offer and asks me if I want to hop on a skateboard, get some pizza and play some "b-ball" with him.  As politely as possible I tell him to go f#@& himself.  

Another woman is denied phone gratification.  Is there something wrong with the phones or their potential operators?  

Unclaimed "Children of the Corn"-like brats are beginning to coalesce around my booth.  I will proceed to set out some poisoned "Spaghetti-O's" to address the problem.  

Actually helped someone looking for ferry information.  Go figure.  

Chick who announces flights sounds like she's been gargling with battery acid.

DATE       TIME          FLIGHT

Aug 11      9:30am      Air Atlantic Flight 1459 from "Gurgle...nargle...(unintelligible)"   

Cabbie who looks like he's not old enough to shave let alone hold a legitimate driver's license awaits new crop of potential passengers with vain expectant hope.  When no fares materialize he slinks out of the terminal presumably to go back to his vehicle and listen to Pink Floyd and play with a loaded revolver.  

Passengers themselves look like they're headed to a convention celebrating dreadful television show "Thirtysomething" ("Hey, kids, remember when that show was on T.V.?  No?  Ooookay, I'll just shut up now," - your increasingly crusty-sounding host).  Watching wanna-be yuppies acting obnoxious forces me to ask cabbie to borrow his revolver.   

Big, tall, imposing-looking dude who looks like a hit man for the Greek mafia approaches and asks where he can find my boss, Kelsey (named changed to protect the innocent).  During our exchange he chain-smokes and seems oblivious to a pronounced facial tic.  Since Kelsey is such a good friend, I give the mountainoid precise directions to his office and even helpfully provide a convenient map.  Who am I to impede a reunion between old friends? (Heh!  Heh!)  

I then proceed to convince a bewildered English gent who resembles a geriatric James Bond that he's still a member of the known universe.  He asks me some obscure questions about a rock quarry near Port Aux Basque so I follow standard procedure and laugh in his face.  He wanders away muttering thanks, seemingly content that at least he still has one foot in the material world (more or less).  With him is a diminutive midget bodyguard/manservant who seems prepared to protect him from enemy S.P.E.C.T.R.E. agents.  Which is good, because Stephenville is over-run with the bastards.  

Aug 11 1:00 pm.  Supplemental.

Although this is only the second day for my journal I believe I have stumbled upon a very therapeutic endeavor.  I've discovered that writing about this bizarre purgatory is a wonderful catharsis.  And, oh, yeah, it helps kill time too.  

Actually helped (?) a charming East Indian family from Gander (??) select an itinerary of "Things to see" on the Port aux Port Peninsula (???).    That's a grand total of two people I've helped today.  I feel like going out and getting drunk in celebration.  

Woman with facial mole the size of an Eggo takes a seat close by.  Stay tuned!  

DATE       TIME        FLIGHT

Aug 11      9:30am      Air Atlantic Flight 1458 from Half-a-lax

Very casual crowd.  Perhaps the greatest assemblage of boring human beings gathered together in one place.  I fear a vortex of banality will open up to another plane of existence any moment and suck all of us inside. 

Mole-lady re-unites with her less-than-enthusiastic husband.  How touching!  

Man who looks like the kinda guy to get beat up in a "Twisted Sister" video asks my favorite question in the world: "Hey!  Is all this stuff free?"  I ask him to sign the register but this doesn't "register" with him.  

Just finished talking to two pompous Americans and two relatively civil guides (turns out "Mark Metcalf" there is one of the jackass Yanks).  One guy has lost his suitcase so they've been loitering around blasting me with rapid-fire questions that I'm forced to bulls#!^ through ("Hey, at least I sound like I know what I'm talking about!").  When the topic of Gros Morne National Park comes up and I let it leak that I've never been there the most obnoxious specimen says: "Typical!  Live here all their lives and have never seen the attractions!"

I vow to recover the prick's suitcase first and replace all his personal effects with incriminating lost and found detritus: leather gimp suit, ball gag and vibrating dildo dubbed "The Anal Intruder".

Now I know this all sounds churlish, but there is little truth in what you just read.  I was still a pretty shy, retiring kid at the time so the sass featured here is not just exaggerated but non-existent.  Anyone who knows me can vouch that I don't have a rude bone in my body, but sometimes it doesn't stop the sort of thoughts we all have when working with our fellow homo sapiens!   

Truth be told, especially in retrospect, I loved this job.  The airport gig only took a few hours of the day and the rest of my time was spent actually drumming up awareness about our region: doing press, composing reports and analyzing trends in our area.  Since it wasn't my employer's money being spent, often I'd be granted a level of autonomy as a twenty year old kid that I assumed I'd be afforded for the rest of my life as an adult.  These assignments left me with a lifetime of unreasonable expectations regarding employer trust, employee independence and freedom of process and procedure.      

Looking back at this, I'm stunned by how relatively idyllic these tentative steps were towards becoming a working man.   I actually enjoyed more autonomy, responsibility and leeway as a twenty-year old kid than as an adult pushing forty at my last gig.

I'd wager that's sadder than any sight in that airport...  

EPIC: McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland  If you found my descriptions of the airport denizen's funny (which mean's you're going to hell, by the way), check out this book by Pete McCarthy.  The chapter "Boats and Planes" nearly killed me...

My review of this book and other books can be found here: http://apps.facebook.com/ireadit/redirect.php?next=view%2FmyReads.php%3Fuid%3D580791580%26refuid%3D580791580%26src%3Dprofileuseratom%26reviews%3D1

FAIL: http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/  Tread carefully, here there be dragons!  (Not to mention an inordinate amount of people who believe that pants are optional when you go shopping)

Also, here's an older comic I did a few years ago.  Hopefully you can see a bit of progress compared to the one I hope to post a bit later this week: 

Lowered Expectations: Part I

Greetings, Gentle Reader.

'Tis that magical season when a student's thoughts turn invariably to summer employment. Many make an effort to look for work vaguely related to their prospective fields of interest but more often than not they're forced to begin the painful process of LOWERED EXPECTATIONS. Some become so desperate as to resort to calling phone numbers on cryptic-looking signs stapled to telephone poles:

STUDENT SUMMER WORK
$12.95/h
CALL: 555-2134

I'm telling you right now from first hand experience: if it looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Every time someone mentions a job posting in a newspaper ad I'm destined to wake up screaming in a cold sweat sometime the following night. Let me take you back a few years, to a time of fear and darkness...

Graduation is a bittersweet moment of limbo for a person. Invariably you've just invested anywhere between seventeen and nineteen years being educated and the last paper you turned in is the scholastic equivalent of a long distance runner loosing control of their bowels just steps across the finish line.

In 1994 I was a fresh-faced graduate of St. Mary's prestigious (?) Honors English program and ready to take on the world. Unwilling to incur any more soul-crushing debt at the time and armed with an incredibly expensive piece of paper proving I was "right some smart", I decided to dip my toe into the employment market and test the waters. To bad I decided to do this smack-dab in the middle of a recession.

During that same summer I was living in a house with my girlfriend, two other friends, their respective better halves, and one other single, considerably more bitter friend. By June all the ladies were working and all the guys were sitting on the back porch like a pack of unarmed rednecks. About that same time I remember one of my friend's dads dropping by just long enough to call all the males in the house "a bunch of pimps" and then leave again.

But I was looking, dammit! When you begin this embarrassing odyssey of trying to get a complete stranger to grant you some semblance of a future, your naive expectations are systemically crushed in order of importance and how removed they are from reality.

I started with publishers, editors and print houses. No dice. Then I tried libraries, archives and museums. Tough roccos. Finally I began to dredge the last semi-respectable strata: bookstores, restaurants and...shudder...malls.

Y'see, the city of Halifax is like a tiny pool with a million piranha. Several major universities are spitting out new, hyper-specialized, freshly-scrubbed go-getters ever January and April. Rather than crawl back to the tedium of the backwater burg that spawned them these people are gonna try and embrace the "Bright Lights, Big City" lifestyle they've all come to know and love through many semi-memorable years of consuming it's readily available vices.

This will get you the sort of social experiment that would have Charles Darwin drooling like a Pavlovian dog. But if you're actually amidst this brutal feeding frenzy, it sorta feels like being trapped in a boxcar during a slow-motion derailment.

So, like many others, going home for me just wasn't an option. I was just about to begin the difficult process of shedding the last vestiges of my self-respect ("Would you like to super-size your combo for only .44 more cents, sir?") when someone suggested some impossibly juicy-looking gigs that had just materialized in the local paper.

Undaunted by the vague nature of the postings and blindly following promises of boffo wages like a friggin' "Scooby Snack" I dressed to the nines to answer my first call to interview.

It was downtown. In a real office building. I thought this rather promising until I arrived to find that a small classroom filled with people would be sharing my "interview".

The instructor soon made his entrance, not unlike someone with a British accent hawking blenders at 3 am on television just after the seventh episode of COPS has concluded.
He was a dapper, Middle-Eastern gentleman, dressed impeccably and sporting more jewelry than Croesus himself could ever fathom. His hair was an unmarked sculpture of resinated gel, mousse and possibly model glue.

During the presentation he was a house on fire; moving in a continuous St. Vitus-like dance of aerobic greed. Eventually he passed out a sheet of voided checks representing the company's recent payroll. The amounts seemed very generous but oddly flat.

"People here are making anywhere from five-hundred to two-thousand dollars EVERY WEEK! And how are they doing this? Please, let me introduce you to the highly lucrative world of Home Educational Reference Sales!"

Okay, let me just boil this down for you, Gentle Reader. We're talking about ENCYCLOPEDIAS here, folks. Door-to-door ENCYCLOPEDIA sales. The most stereotypical foot-sales job you could possibly imagine. I mean, let be realistic here, if a stranger came to your door and announced themselves as a serial rapist, you'd be more likely to let them in than a door-to-door ENCYCLOPEDIA salesman! "Home Educational Reference Sales", my ass! If you spray-paint a German Shepperd turd gold and stick a daisy in it, it don't make it a Ming vase, people.

Anyhoo, the deal was, if you sold a set of 'cyclos at $2000.00 a set (!) you'd get a commission of $500.00. This obviously went leaps and bounds to explain why the minimum paycheck they let up see was EXACTLY $500.00. What it didn't address was what you might do in the unlikely event that these beautiful "Home Educational Reference" Aides didn't sell themselves every week like proverbial hotcakes

After the "interview" our host made sure to meet privately with each of us in turn. I still remember his sagely words to me:

"I've had a chance to study your resume and I can see during the interview that you are alert and motivated. I would like to offer you a job with our company."

Like some of the more naive idiots in the class who hadn't walked out in the first three minutes, I was still bewitched by the sugar-plum like visions of $8000.00 checks cavorting unhindered in my head.

I thanked him for his confidence in me and rushed back home to report the good news. But half-way on my bus ride back a creeping fear began to gnaw on my guts. This steadily evolved into the sort of nervous state in which it feels as if your testicles have been dipped in liquid nitrogen and you know the ride ahead is rife with potholes.

When I got home the rest of the cat-house denizens explained to my lame green ass just why I'd suffered this panic attack.

"Did you notice if the checks you were shown were for the same employee or cut over the space of say, six months?"

"No."

"Did you consider that in an economically depressed area like ours how often people will be willing to habitually shell out two-thousand dollars for a set of generic encyclopedias?"

"Ah, well, they are nice..."

"And can you visualize yourself walking door to door in some of our more dodgy neighborhoods trying to invade the homes of people who routinely kill mailmen?"

"Hey, I delivered ad-mail when I was in High School. It can't be any worse than that..."

"Oh, yeah? What about making a sales presentation in some mutant's living room during a domestic dispute with kids spitting on you and strange dogs sniffing at your crotch?"

"What are you talking about?" I wailed.

My parent even concurred. I called the nice Middle Eastern gentleman back and broke the news to him. He told be he was "Berry, berry disappointed" in my decision.

Undaunted I continued to pursue my conviction that not all jobs advertised in the paper were of the same caliber as "meth whore".

But I wish I could say this story was the worst of it...

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART II

EPIC: http://www.job-hunt.org/hiddenjobmarket.shtml

FAIL: http://www.worst-jobs.com/