This is one of a series of posts about jobs I’ve had during my time on this planet. You can read more posts by clicking the “jobs i’ve had” tag, and read a lengthier intro to the series in the first post.
This is the last of my high school jobs, unless I’ve killed the brains cells responsible for storing the memories of another one. Which is possible. Last one I’m writing about, that is, not the last one chronologically. I can’t remember where in the timeline it falls exactly.
A guy I’d known since the fifth grade worked in a factory that actually made widgets, or items that most closely resemble what I always imagined widgets would look like: little back-scratchers with wood balls that you’d buy at a mall and other similar trinkets. His uncle (or maybe cousin) ran the place, so he was able to get me and a buddy of mine a job.
I started out working Saturdays doing assembly, which consisted of taking metal dowels that had already been cut, bent, welded together, and painted and gluing and hammering the wood balls with holes drilled in them on the end of the dowels. It was somewhat of a family business. The father of the guy I’d known since fifth grade would come in to help on some Saturdays, walking around puffing his pipe, the smoke wafting in the air.
The uncle/cousin who owned the place was a strange dude who wore glasses and spoke with a lisp that made him sound sort of like Jim Carrey in The Cable Guy. Several of us would make fun of him when he wasn’t around. I guess that was mean, but he had a way of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time that made him seem unappreciative of people’s work. He also spent a lot of time telling us things we already knew.
Despite not getting along with him, my buddy and I were two of the most efficient workers in the place, especially after we started working weeknight shifts. We not only did assembly, but got to work with some serious industrial tools in pre-assembly as well. I remember being warned about how quickly I’d lose a finger if I got lackadaisical around the machine that bent metal dowels.
I also remember carrying in deliveries of those dowels in at night from the loading dock, which was quite a workout.
My least favorite part of the work was preparing the dowels to be sawed, because it involved working closely with the boss. We had to wrap bunches of them tightly with duct tape. It was tedious and he always complained about how we did it.
Only three or four months passed before mine and the boss’ personalities collided one too many times, and I was fired from a job for the first time in my life.
“It’s not your work, it’s your attitude mee-an,” he said in his lispy Cable Guy voice.
My attitude was probably as much to blame as him being an idiot was, as I didn’t (and still don’t) suffer fools well. Passive aggression was once again my method of protest when I had to deal with an unpleasant person. We would stuff big wads of Red Man Golden Blend in our cheeks and spit in cups because we knew he thought this was disgusting. Like at the car dealership, he’d tell me not to, I’d stop for a little while, and then start again.
I may or may not have turned it into a “you can’t fire me because I quit” scene at the end. I can’t remember and it doesn’t matter.
If you have been finding these posts interesting, be sure to also check out similar posts from Sara and Garrett.
