Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Day 59 - We Worked Hard for the Money. Kind of.

October 6th, 2009

My very first job was at I Can’t Believe it’s Yogurt. I did mention this rite of passage endeavor in a previous blog, Day 23 - Dude Looks Like a Lady. http://jacquelinekabat.blogspot.com/2009/08/day-23-dude-looks-like-lady.html. I will quote myself from this entry, “I did question if this severely processed high sodium dairy concoction really was yogurt. I was 15 and too young to have the sought after high powered job as “server”. So I was stuck in the back making waffle cones and cutting up Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.” The ICBY Yogurt where I was employed was located in the “county”. In Greensboro, NC, we had the city schools(where I went) and the county schools(where the rednecks went.) The county schools were also referred to as “directional schools” because they all had rather unoriginal names like Northeast, Northwest, Western, Eastern, Southern, Southeast and Southwest. A lot of graduates didn’t go on to college and ended up working with me at the Yogurt chain. For example, let me introduce you to Tara. She was a petite bleached blond 19 year old with a knack for yogurt and putting out. She had recently started “dating” a hockey player on Greensboro’s new “professional team”. These players were a bunch of poor Canadian guys who didn’t reach their “Ice-Dreams” and ended up losing teeth and dating directional school alum in North Carol-tucky. Tara was about to have dinner with her new beau’s parents who were visiting from Toronto. As I was choppin’ chocolate, I got to watch her spray cheap drug store spray perfume on her who-ha. I quit the next day.

In an effort to feel my readers and understand how their past experiences in the workforce might have tarnished or enhanced future life happenings, I threw out a question: Please tell me the most fu**ed up job you've ever had and I will expand on it through blog. First come gets the blog.

Adam Holtz, the husband of one of my best childhood friends replied to me inquiry with impressive haste. His answer:
“Lasted a few hours. White Jewish kid to read water meters during a college summer break in the projects of the South Bronx. Funny thing, it was for the same company my Dad worked for.”

There were several angles that I had the option to explore with his response. The thing is, I assume all my blog readers are already fluent in devices used to measure the volume of water usage. I mean, who doesn’t know that one rotation of a water meter’s sweep hand is 1 to 100 ft.3, 0.1 to 10 m3. That’s Water Meter Reading 101.

So I looked at Adam’s brief run-in with his questionable (yet character building) employment memory and began to see some key congruencies to ...well…me.

Adam and Jax similarities:

-We’ve both done some water maintenance work with our dad. He worked with the H2O in the projects and I skimmed the pool at my childhood house.

-He did water work in the South(Bronx) and I worked in the Southern US.

-We’re both Caucasian and Jewy

I did receive a STRONG response to the bizzaro job question. To vent is to heal. Interesting note, when piecing some of the answers together, I discovered a delightful cadence that seemed to write itself: Let’s take a look:

Most Fu**ed up Job?

Assistant fluffer.
-Ted Kim

Weed delivery dispatcher.
-Tanya True

And Jax loses points for not introducing me to Tanya.
-Ted Kim

Is Tim for real!?
-Emily Fitch

If by Tim you mean Ted...don't underestimate the trials and tribulations of a sassy Korean from NJ.
-Jacqueline Kabat

Nursing home, sorting dirty silverware. I didn’t wear gloves.
-Mary Schneider

Neither did I.
-Ted Kim

1 comment:

  1. UPS Driver...took a truck under a bridge that was too short in Stratford, CT while delivering Next Day Air envelopes.

    ReplyDelete