Hi dear friends and followers, this is Saturday, Frizzy Lizzy Day
KEEPING IT REAL by FRIZZY LIZZY
Really, Teresa, I'm not at all surprised to hear that. Sometimes a boss is just a pain-in-the-ass at best and a pain-in-the-ass at worst!
Am I happy that I am retired? Sure, I am, and I would not go beck into the workforce for a million dollars but I don't think that I would sell back my experiences on the job for two million. If I had to do it all over again there are a few things that I might do differently but the whole thing was a lot of fun, now that I look back on it.
I was in the same line of work for a little over 30 years, Teresa. What did I do? I started out counting nuts and bolts in a storeroom and went up the ladder, retiring as a senior person in the contracts and purchasing field. I went back to school and earned my degrees and I loved what I did and that made it lots of fun.
When I was really young I recall looking for a job where I was living at the time. It was mainly a farming area with a few small factories in the neighborhood. I had tried my hand at seling insurance and real estate there but selling just was not me.
I went into this one factory where they were making the bodies for those big garbage trucks, you know, the ones that pick-up a container off the ground and dump it into the top of the truck. That's right, a dumpster. Any way, I was pretty desperate and I was open to any job that I could get my hands on. Sweeping floors sounded good to me.
The plant manager interviewed me and it felt positive. I wrote a thank-you letter in the hopes of getting a call but I heard nothing, so I went back to the plant. I tried to see the manager but his secretary was an effective gatekeeper. She would not let me in or give me an appointment to see him. He happened to hear me outside of his office and he asked me in.
It was then that he told me that he could have hired me to clean truck bodies with a steel brush to prepare them for painting, but that such work would bore me to death. (He was right.) He also told me that he had a job in mind for me and that I would be hearing from him. I thanked him and went home to wait by the phone.
A few weeks later I was their brand-new, just-hired Inventory Control Technician, part of the manufacturing team at Dempster Dumpster Systems! I was working in a plant that made everything "Dumpster," from little containers to huge trailers, and trucks that loaded from the top and back. If it looked like garbage, it went into a Dempster Dumpster!
A few weeks after I started my new "boss" arrived. He was a really nice guy, a fellow from Tennessee by the name of Carl. When it came to keeping a factory supplied, he was an expert, and we needed one of those because our production line was running out of something and shutting down almost every day. He was also as skinny as six o'clock and the guys on the factory floor called him "Zipper" because if he stood sideways and stuck his tongue out - you got it, Teresa, he would look like a zipper! Regardless of the razzing he took he was real gentleman and I liked working with him.
So between us we took a storeroom that was like a department store with no cash register because no one had been taking care of it and turned it into a place where the production managers could depend upon finding the parts needed to keep their lines moving.
It was a lot of fun to me! I learned about hydraulic hoses and fittings, paints and coatings, electrical supplies, raw steel, automotive parts, wire and cable, and fasteners. All of that knowledge prepared me for a promotion on that job to assistant buyer! And that was even more fun!
Now I knew most of the people in the plant. We were friends or neighbors to some degree, and the guys on the production floor were all younger than me. How old was I? I was about 26 and they were not too long out of high school, but I knew their families. All of us were a little crazy because we were still close to that magic age of "indestructible 21."
I remember taking my bologna and cheese sandwich and potato chips out to the break area to have lunch with the rest of the guys.
One day they were playing a game. Have you ever heard of "Name that tune?" It was a popular game on TV at the time. It's a game where you take or make a dare to name a tune in as few notes as possible. It might start with one player saying that he or she can name a tune in 6 notes. The other says that they can name it in 5 notes. Then it goes to 4 notes and so on down until one of the players dares the other to "Name that tune!" How about playing it with "Eat that sandwich?" Yup, someone tried to eat that sandwich in 1 bite! After that I ate lunch in my office.
I learned a lot about plant safety and what I wouldn't do if I was running power tools. I always wore a hardhat and safety glasses when I was on the production floor or in the machine shop, and I urged those I saw to be careful, too.
Some took it to heart, especially if they had been out partying the night before. They punched-in to work and as long as they didn't get injured on the job they were OK but the output of the machine shop suffered and I wondered why. Then I stumbled on why.
There was a piece of culvert pipe behind the machine shop. It was a bit over a meter wide and someone had placed a pallet inside of it. On that pallet there was a mattress and sleeping bag, and the workers suffering from a hangover would go in there and sleep it off while still on the clock!
I never reported it because I thought it was pretty funny but they knew that I knew and the output of the machine shop stayed steady after that.
Perhaps some of the fun came because I did what was not expected of me to do as an assistant buyer.
We went through a lot of band saw blades in the machine shop. I studied what was happening and went shopping for a better blade. I found one that was more expensive but would last twice as long. After I did cost/benefit analysis and presented it to Carl, he approved buying the new blades. And from that point on he stopped reviewing my purchases and trusted what I did.
No, Teresa, not all of my jobs were as much fun. That one didn't stay fun for too long. I was there for about two years and just before Christmas I got a letter that the plant was closing and I was laid off. That was a real bummer. But it's safe to say that I learned from that job that it was possible for me to truly enjoy my work, and most of the time after that, I did.
Have I ever worked for a horse's ass? You bet I have, more than once! Let me tell you about one...
Really, Teresa, I'm not at all surprised to hear that. Sometimes a boss is just a pain-in-the-ass at best and a pain-in-the-ass at worst!
Am I happy that I am retired? Sure, I am, and I would not go beck into the workforce for a million dollars but I don't think that I would sell back my experiences on the job for two million. If I had to do it all over again there are a few things that I might do differently but the whole thing was a lot of fun, now that I look back on it.
I was in the same line of work for a little over 30 years, Teresa. What did I do? I started out counting nuts and bolts in a storeroom and went up the ladder, retiring as a senior person in the contracts and purchasing field. I went back to school and earned my degrees and I loved what I did and that made it lots of fun.
When I was really young I recall looking for a job where I was living at the time. It was mainly a farming area with a few small factories in the neighborhood. I had tried my hand at seling insurance and real estate there but selling just was not me.
I went into this one factory where they were making the bodies for those big garbage trucks, you know, the ones that pick-up a container off the ground and dump it into the top of the truck. That's right, a dumpster. Any way, I was pretty desperate and I was open to any job that I could get my hands on. Sweeping floors sounded good to me.
The plant manager interviewed me and it felt positive. I wrote a thank-you letter in the hopes of getting a call but I heard nothing, so I went back to the plant. I tried to see the manager but his secretary was an effective gatekeeper. She would not let me in or give me an appointment to see him. He happened to hear me outside of his office and he asked me in.
It was then that he told me that he could have hired me to clean truck bodies with a steel brush to prepare them for painting, but that such work would bore me to death. (He was right.) He also told me that he had a job in mind for me and that I would be hearing from him. I thanked him and went home to wait by the phone.
A few weeks later I was their brand-new, just-hired Inventory Control Technician, part of the manufacturing team at Dempster Dumpster Systems! I was working in a plant that made everything "Dumpster," from little containers to huge trailers, and trucks that loaded from the top and back. If it looked like garbage, it went into a Dempster Dumpster!
A few weeks after I started my new "boss" arrived. He was a really nice guy, a fellow from Tennessee by the name of Carl. When it came to keeping a factory supplied, he was an expert, and we needed one of those because our production line was running out of something and shutting down almost every day. He was also as skinny as six o'clock and the guys on the factory floor called him "Zipper" because if he stood sideways and stuck his tongue out - you got it, Teresa, he would look like a zipper! Regardless of the razzing he took he was real gentleman and I liked working with him.
So between us we took a storeroom that was like a department store with no cash register because no one had been taking care of it and turned it into a place where the production managers could depend upon finding the parts needed to keep their lines moving.
It was a lot of fun to me! I learned about hydraulic hoses and fittings, paints and coatings, electrical supplies, raw steel, automotive parts, wire and cable, and fasteners. All of that knowledge prepared me for a promotion on that job to assistant buyer! And that was even more fun!
Now I knew most of the people in the plant. We were friends or neighbors to some degree, and the guys on the production floor were all younger than me. How old was I? I was about 26 and they were not too long out of high school, but I knew their families. All of us were a little crazy because we were still close to that magic age of "indestructible 21."
I remember taking my bologna and cheese sandwich and potato chips out to the break area to have lunch with the rest of the guys.
One day they were playing a game. Have you ever heard of "Name that tune?" It was a popular game on TV at the time. It's a game where you take or make a dare to name a tune in as few notes as possible. It might start with one player saying that he or she can name a tune in 6 notes. The other says that they can name it in 5 notes. Then it goes to 4 notes and so on down until one of the players dares the other to "Name that tune!" How about playing it with "Eat that sandwich?" Yup, someone tried to eat that sandwich in 1 bite! After that I ate lunch in my office.
I learned a lot about plant safety and what I wouldn't do if I was running power tools. I always wore a hardhat and safety glasses when I was on the production floor or in the machine shop, and I urged those I saw to be careful, too.
Some took it to heart, especially if they had been out partying the night before. They punched-in to work and as long as they didn't get injured on the job they were OK but the output of the machine shop suffered and I wondered why. Then I stumbled on why.
There was a piece of culvert pipe behind the machine shop. It was a bit over a meter wide and someone had placed a pallet inside of it. On that pallet there was a mattress and sleeping bag, and the workers suffering from a hangover would go in there and sleep it off while still on the clock!
I never reported it because I thought it was pretty funny but they knew that I knew and the output of the machine shop stayed steady after that.
Perhaps some of the fun came because I did what was not expected of me to do as an assistant buyer.
We went through a lot of band saw blades in the machine shop. I studied what was happening and went shopping for a better blade. I found one that was more expensive but would last twice as long. After I did cost/benefit analysis and presented it to Carl, he approved buying the new blades. And from that point on he stopped reviewing my purchases and trusted what I did.
No, Teresa, not all of my jobs were as much fun. That one didn't stay fun for too long. I was there for about two years and just before Christmas I got a letter that the plant was closing and I was laid off. That was a real bummer. But it's safe to say that I learned from that job that it was possible for me to truly enjoy my work, and most of the time after that, I did.
Have I ever worked for a horse's ass? You bet I have, more than once! Let me tell you about one...
✿ ڰۣ❤In Loving Light from the Fairy Lady❤ڰۣ✿
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