As of this moment, my
trench digging post has gotten over 70,000 hits. This is a new experience for me, and I'm not quite sure how to feel about it. It's like the carnival is in town or something. I've been linked to by
EHOWA (warning: adult content) and
Curmudgeonly Skeptical. I'm still getting a lot of traffic from
StumbleUpon, and there's a whole
mini-controversy happening over at Reddit about how big of an a$$hole I am exactly. (Ironically, the one social networking site where the post hasn't made an impact is Digg.)
I still can't figure out what all the fuss is about. That post was just my attempt to make light of what was becoming a rather frustrating situation: I had hired a neighbor kid to dig a trench from Point A to Point B, and somehow I found myself not only having to micromanage the digging process, but also acting as the kid's career counselor. The exchange struck me as funny, so I decided to write it up as a sort of mock ditch-digger's handbook. I wasn't trying to say anything about capitalism or the minimum wage. I didn't write the post out of malice. I just thought it was funny.
"Sure," you say, "It's easy to laugh when the other guy is the one having to dig trenches in the hot sun."
That's a fair point. So maybe this would be a good time for me to let you have a laugh at my expense. I give you, therefore:
The complete list of every job I've ever sucked at and/or been fired fromMy first job, when I was 14, was delivering newspapers. I was terrible at it. Somehow I always managed to miss at least one house. How do you ride your bike past a house that you've delivered a newspaper to dozens of times in the past, with a bag full of newspapers around your neck, and not think, "I should deliver a paper to this house"? I don't know, but I did it. Just about every day, for three months, when I finally quit in frustration.
My second job was bagging groceries. It's hard to screw up bagging groceries (put the bananas on top), but I was terrible at customer relations. I would bag the customer's items in silence, and then glumly follow them to their car, not saying a word. I think the customers used to draw straws to see who would get stuck with me. A lot of people went into that store looking for bread and milk and left wanting to hang themselves.
I was also excruciatingly bad at locating items in the store. A customer would make the mistake of asking me where the spaghetti sauce was, and I would run up and down the store in a panic, trying to remember where I had seen it. Oh, and sometimes I would work at the customer service desk, where you got to do fun things like make keys. Well, until you put the original key in the wrong slot one time, and grind it down so that the customer can't get home. They don't let you make any more keys after that.
We moved when I was 17, and I got another job at a grocery store. I was supposed to re-stock items that would run low during the day, like milk and soda. I was terrible at this. I couldn't ever remember how many I needed of what item, so I had to run back and forth a bunch of times. It took me like twice as long as a normal person to fill up the soda aisle. I think they thought I was retarded or something.
My first job in college was in a Christian book store. I sucked at that too. One time a guy came in looking to buy a Bible. I asked him what kind of cover he wanted. Which is, it turns out, exactly the question
not to ask someone looking for a Bible.
After that I worked in a store in the mall that sold luggage and things like those metal balls that go click-clack on your desk. Another disaster. I couldn't make myself be interested in luggage or metal balls that go click-clack. I only had one tie, and I didn't like wearing it. I tended to hide in the back of the store until customers left. They didn't put me on the schedule after Christmas.
By some miracle of divine irony I managed to get a job at the on-campus job service desk, helping other college students find employment. I was marginally competent at that, although I came in late so often that I was nearly fired several times. After graduation, to the relief of my managers, I was no longer eligible to work there.
Did a bunch of odd jobs after that. One time I painted an apartment. I accidentally painted all of the ceilings with the paint that was intended for the bathroom. It was high-gloss paint. When you walked inside, it looked like the ceiling was wet, and it was going to drip some kind of horrible ooze on you. It felt like being in a cave. They let me go after that.
Got a job cataloging legal documents for class-action lawsuits. Was pretty terrible at it, but through some fluke was promoted to quality assurance, where there was nobody to see all the mistakes I was making. I found that if I arrived five minutes after the previous shift left, I could get a great parking spot. I was fired after being five minutes late every day for several weeks.
Got a job as a pizza delivery guy. Got lost a lot. Delivered a lot of cold pizzas. Didn't like being yelled at to sweep the floors when there weren't any customers, so I walked out.
Worked loading trucks at the Amway warehouse. It was like playing Tetris in 3D. I'm terrible with spatial relations. My line kept backing up and other workers had to keep coming to help me. Got yelled at a lot. Decided to quit before I had a nervous breakdown.
Worked at Blockbuster. I was actually okay at this job. I like movies.
Moved to California. Got a job with Mrs. Diesel's cousin, doing construction. I was bad at this as well, but not bad enough to be fired, considering I was only making $6 an hour. Mainly we worked at dairies. Sometimes I got to glue PVC water lines together. The neat thing about doing this at a dairy is that cow shit is everywhere, so you end up accidentally gluing big clumps of shit to your pants. Good times.
After several months of doing construction, I managed to B.S. my way into a job doing technical support for a company that sold software to auto body shops. I wasn't particularly good at this, but I found a niche writing up troubleshooting guides and other documentation for our department. The documentation grew into a website. I proved so good at building websites that eventually they created a full time position for me to maintain the site.
I quit that job after five years to do some "real software development." Spent 4 months doing "real software development" at a small consulting company before the dot com bubble burst. Seeing the writing on the wall, I left to start my own web development company.
I was, not surprisingly, bad at that too. I'm not a salesperson. I made a gradual transition over several months from self-employed to unemployed. Ran out of money. Had to sell our house to get the equity out.
Finagled a deal to buy 10 acres of farmland outside of Ripon, California, thinking that I could occupy myself while unemployed by building a house. Managed to get a job as a webmaster for a nearby city. Ended up working for the
worst boss ever. Sent an angry email to him about what an ass he was. Got fired.
Spent a lot of time cutting down trees for firewood and trying to stave off depression. Got a call from one of the owners of the consulting firm I had worked at, asking if I was looking for work. Got a job at
Galactic Invertebrates. Worked my ass off for three years on a bunch of projects that never saw the light of day, thanks to people like
Lord Monkeyhands and
Human Inertia. Quit in frustration.
Took a year off to build my house.
Got a call from another former co-worker, asking if I'd like to come do some work for Google.
That's where I work now. Google kicks ass. I build applications for them. I occasionally get lost on my way to work, and I'm late for a lot of meetings, but nobody really minds. It's fun, and I rock at it. I do a lot of my work at home. When I get bored, I go work on my landscaping for a while. Sometimes a neighbor kid helps out.
Labels: Blogging, Work