Return to home, A short bio
First Job

  • Why write this tale?
  • Background
  • But being a "retard" has other problems
  • I got my 1st job, a summer job helping a janitor
  • Lost in College what do I want to be when I grow up???
  • As a part time Teamster at National Biscuit
  • Machine Shop, and the Army,
  • More college, but this is too long already yet -

    I don't know about you, but I had a #$%^&* of a time getting my first job!!

    After engineering college, with computers and the race to the moon blooming, good interesting jobs were as available as cherries in harvest season - what a time - too bad the current crop of engineers is having so much challenge/competition.

    Actually, when I got into computers, the field was so young and open that anyone who could fill out an application form and spell the first for letters of "COMPUTER" could get a good paying interesting job. :-)))

    Now you have to be really smart, and know about memory leaks, UNIX, GUIs, tail recursion ...

    Why write this tale?

    Because I feel so sorry for the black kids in Oakland who are much further "behind the 8 ball" than I was when having so much trouble getting my 1st job.

    Background:

    My mother wanted me to get an early start on school life, so got permission that I go to kindergarten a year earlier than normally allowed. That meant that I was the chronologically youngest person in my class all through K-12, and starting college.

    Add to the above that I matured rather slowly compared with most. My sister (two years younger) was ahead of me in size, social interactions, physical ability, ...
    So, I was present in my "peer" group, but except for some other retards, not part of my "peer" group.
    I am now over 70 and some of my friends say that I am entering my second childhood with out leaving my first :-|

    OK - so life ain't fair - what is new?

    At least I was of the majority (and socially approved) race and of normal form, intelligence and appearance. I was raised (grew up?) in a town where the police were confident of at least a polite greeting in all parts. There were no "affordable" apartment houses were police were afraid to park on the street outside or afraid to enter the apartment complex in groups smaller than 8. No fireman (they were all robust males) was insulted or assaulted. Our neighborhood was not "affluent" - our back neighbor, the butcher definitely had difficulty making ends meet. My parents provided a stable if somewhat imperfect (in my eyes) home where doing homework was definitely encouraged. My parents read fun stories to us when we were young. (TV was not available until years later.) My parents and their friends were respected and only visited jail ;-)) My mother got us to church and tried to get us believe. Our drug problem was a (temporary) neighbor who occasionally mixed Benzedrine and alcohol and wound up locked out and crawling on his lawn. He lost his house and family before he became a police problem.

    In summary, I grew up in an ideal environment compared to many today.

    BUT - still had a terrible time getting my first job.

    But being a "retard" has other problems

    - including getting a first job and some "jingle in my jeans". (My father wanted his kids to "know the meaning of money" and kept us kids pretty much impoverished - if you behave up to his standard (seeming too high for me 90% of the time) you can have a dime or quarter a week.
    (No "here's ten bucks, go hang out at the mall" from him.)

    I had troubles - trying to get a paper route, trying to help another guy with his paper route, trying to do the paper route, ... Selling magazines to captive neighbors was limited. I became a very good, popular baby sitter - being cheapest was good for getting business. I was the Walmart of the babysitters. I was kind of a scab - but got pocket money :-))

    But babysitting is not "real money" - enough for chemistry projects by not enough for car, gas, insurance, ...

    In those simple days, prospective employers did not have to worry about social security forms and tax, federal withholding, state withholding, and the rest of bureaucratic nightmare. If they wanted you to work, you were in - if not -

    I applied for jobs, and applied, and applied - but who wants an under age looking kid with poor social skills, poor mechanical skills, who never had "a real job". The owner of the repair garage where my father parked the family car in snowy weather gave me a chance at helping him with his parts inventory - but I didn't "get it" and was released after an hour, unpaid.

    One summer I got work picking ripe tomatoes at a near by farm. One of the other workers was a girl bully, who threw clots of dirt at me, and said that if I came to work the next day she would beat me up. - I didn't want to get a bloody nose and didn't go back.

    My father knew someone in county highway repair who said to meet him at a given intersection at 7:30 in the morning - I was there, he wasn't - he said I wasn't - and it soon became evident that my father's friend did not want to say "no" and did it this way.

    I met two "losers" who said that if I supplied gas money and food money they would take me up to Duluth (150 miles north) and we could get jobs building the airforce base. Away to the north we went - The foreman took a look at the two loosers and me, the geeky kid, - and you could see "NO" written all over his face - but he went through the motions.
    "Have you ever operated heavy equipment?"

    - "No, but ..." -
    "Have you ever held a regular job?"
    - "No, but ..."
    - and we were out the door. We lived at the YMCA (seemingly the cheapest lodging) and tried to get work at other places in Duluth. In a week our money was gone and we almost had to hitch-hike back home.

    After high school graduation, I got my 1st job, a summer job

    (probably through family influence) helping the janitor at the local (Maple Island) dairy. This worked well, except I learned that if you substitute for someone, try hard to get a complete list of expected duties. The janitor went on 2 week vacation a month after I got there, and when he got back I nearly go fired. Apparently some inspector had come to the dairy and found excessive dust on top of the big powdered milk dryers, and raised Cain. The administration raised Cain with the janitor who blamed me for not cleaning of the several year accumulation of powdered milk and dust on top of those dryers. :-((

    Then I went to college and 50% supported myself cleaning dorm toilets until I was fired after about a year for trying shortcuts (waxing the tile floors so I didn't have to scrub them every day), and as a Teamster, (at double the pay) emptying freight cars and loading trucks with National Biscuit crackers.

    Lost in College what do I want to be when I grow up???

    When I was "lost" in college
    - what do I want to be when I grow up????
    I was given a "Strong Vocational Interest Test" -

    My interests paralleled "Play Ground Supervisor" :-((
    Figuring I couldn't raise a family in that trade,

    I took the test again - trying to bend the answers -
    The result was "Play Ground Supervisor"
    with "inconsistencies" -
    They detected I was trying to cheat !! :-((

    As a part time Teamster at National Biscuit,

    I worked about a half a night shift (mostly unsupervised) with two interesting guys. We worked until the assigned trucks were loaded - usually three to five hours. One guy was currently studying to be a Lutheran minister in the day time. The other had very seriously considered becoming some kind of Catholic Brother, but changed his mind after a time in some religious institution - but still a good Catholic. We had such interesting discussions about religion and life. I could parrot the atheistic viewpoints of my college friends and instructors - and the others were well versed in their respective viewpoints. No body was out to "convert" anyone - just lay out their viewpoints. - Great fun -

    Not quite so much fun - while most other students were studying, drinking, girl chasing, going to sporting events, I was working nights and studying weekends - and figured to take that maximum credit load to get out sooner. Well - I had a girl friend - mostly innocent, nothing "heavy". - Hi Edna Wotilla (maiden name) of Floodwood, Minnesota. hope you had a good life :-))

    Machine Shop, and the Army,

    After 4 years at the University of Minnesota, I got tired of drifting, purposelessly, and quit. "worked" at a machine shop (handy man/boy) for six months, got draft notice (Korean War). Actually, this saved me from being fired, and the machine shop owner and I were agreeing that my mind was more into electrical stuff than mechanical stuff - and that I not a good machinist apprentice.

    With the draft notice in my hand, I enlisted for three years in Army to get a 1 year techie school and nicer techie job.

    Edna had checked with me when I dropped out of school - by the time I checked again with her, after a year in the Army, she was already married to some engineering student and had a kid. She said she had waited a while, but hadn't heard further from me, and had to get on with her life. :-(( bumber!! Got out of Army after the three year enlistment was up.