The call to expand horizons could depended on the route selected to get back to home base outside in the lawn and garden center. Electrical was right outside the bathroom door and a danger to all employees as we had a ten foot rule, meaning we HAD to ask a nearby customer if we could help them. More than once I found myself gazing into the eyes of someone speaking Greek to me as he held two
gizmos and repeatedly thrust them together. Was he thinking that if he did this enough times I would reach into a bin
and pull out the part that would solve his problem? I found this amusing. I would good-naturedly explore the problem to
its conclusion, which in Electrical usually meant finding the person who manned
that department, though occasionally it was a problem I had solved once in my
personal life. Plumbing was a good deal
of fun. A couple women were sent into
the garden center by their husbands who told them the part they needed to
repair their broken pond pump system was right inside the door by the cash
registers. In fact, the basic offering
by the registers did not have parts for motors or a standard fits-all irrigation
piping as they were led to believe, and so we journeyed together to the
plumbing section and discussed the possibility of different sizes and just using
clamps, which was my back-up solution for all plumbing connections. I have no idea how many of my suggestions
were in fact useful, but generally we parted ways satisfied.
As for the garden center
itself, well the flowers were awfully pretty but it was bloody hot and humid as
summer wore on. Loading bag after bag of
lumpy, heavy gravel and leaking rain-drenched mulch and then opening the door
to the gates of hell, which was the impression one had when opening the heavy
doors of the straw trailer, getting slammed in the face with a roil of heat
that you had to then crawl into and pull down bales of straw so tightly tied
that the twine would cut through your hand if you could manage to slither a
finger under it. And the itchy straw
would stick to your muddy legs and arms while some large bloke would be waiting
below for you to load it into his pickup.
I’m not complaining. I took the
job, but the fact is that I am a tiny old lady.
Where were the big guys they hired to load you might ask, as I
frequently did. Well, they have
disappeared into the cool shadows in the back of the store, removed from the
customers and the plants.
Inside the garden center.
Front of the garden center
I only signed up for a
seasonal job, which I scheduled to end the day before a tendon surgery…and
while I was mildly tempted to stay in another department like fashion bath, the
truth is that it is almost impossible not to sustain a physical injury there
and I just don’t want to risk it. I may
go back next Spring when the flowers come in again though.
I have another part-time
job as a job coach for disabled adults which I like a good deal. It is impossible to describe what it involves
because I never know from one day to the next, even when it’s the same person
in the same situation. I have refrained
from accepting any of the responsible tasks like finding the right job, though
I have got involved as early as accompanying a client to an interview. I pretty much pinch-hit for other vocational
counselors when they are overbooked and this was one of those situations when I
drove out of my territory and into a neighborhood where I knocked on the door
of the scariest house, unsure if it was even the right one because the dusty
weathered mail spilling out of the overstuffed box on the porch did not include
any names I recognized. Well, when I was
at last able to coax the heavily perfumed young man into my car – he was
wearing name brand sportswear more expensive than the net worth of his home – I
had a hard time getting him to do much more than grunt. In prepping him for questions he might get
asked during his interview, I asked hopefully, “So what will you say when you
are asked why you want this job?” “I don’t,”
he said. I did not slam on the brakes
and turn around, but inquired a little further to determine whether I had heard
him correctly. I did. Again I was faced with a dilemma. The choice is his. But maybe fear was just getting the better of
him? So I told him since his counselor
told me he wanted the job, if he changed his mind he could tell her so after they
offered it to him. That seemed like a
fair compromise. So when we were waiting
for the swinging doors in front of us to open and issue forth the interviewer,
I asked him again. “So what are you
going to say when he asks you why you want this job?” He again replied, “I don’t want the job.” I re-explained to him that he might want the job after it
was offered and he kind of sort of agreed that he would answer that he wanted
it because it was close to his home and he always wanted to work there. So when the guy with the fuzzy reindeer
antlers affixed to his baseball cap took us into the dismal windowless concrete
room and asked why he wanted the job and then looked shocked when my client
said that he did not want the job, I was ready and talked loud and fast. Indicating
that my client was simply nervous and he lived nearby so he would have no
problem getting there regularly and on time and that he always wanted to work
there. The interviewer was relieved with
this explanation and hired him.
Something else I forgot
to mention is that we almost did not even make it to the interview because I
lost my client. Literally lost him,
though he is a big guy and appeared even bigger in his oversized shiny sports
shorts and shirt and the name brand socks, all f this get-up highlighting his
hairy legs the size of tree trunks.
Still, I lost him. Having driven
two hours after two cups of coffee, I had to pee like a banshee and thrust my
notebook with all of the work access passwords I did not know into his hands
and asked him to wait right there while I sprinted to the bathroom. When I came out three minutes later, he had
vanished. I scanned he parking lot
wondering if he could have escaped that quickly. I called his regular counselor who thankfully
did not answer as I felt rather remiss losing him. Then I paged him, though I wasn’t even
certain of his first name, something odd that started with a T or maybe a
P. At any rate, the page worked and he
reappeared. I think he had been admiring
himself in front of the mirror near the dressing rooms as he knew where it was
on our way out and stood in front of it for quite a while smiling at himself
until I was at last able to get his attention and take him back home.
He quit the job before he
started because he could in fact not work the hours he applied to work.
That is just one example
of one day, but I have to say I never regret the experiences because there is
always something that makes me wonder and smile, if not giggle. The downside generally always involves the
caretakers who, in my experience have no regard for the fact that the job
involves an income for me and if I do not know in advance my client is not
going to show up, this limits my opportunities to find an alternative income to
fill the gap. I find this inconsideration
quite frustrating when they either know well in advance when the client is not
going to be at work or whimsically decide it’s not convenient for them. In the past month, the mother of a client
failed to provide advance notice three times, for interludes of one day, two
weeks and another week, respectively. Add
that lost income up for a month. Perhaps
she thinks I work for a government program rather than a private company and
get paid anyway; more likely she doesn’t think of me at all. Each time it was my client who delivered the
news that he was going to the doctor’s or to camp. And how was I to know if it was true? He also told me that he has ducks in his sock
that squish like mustard and that he had a poor night’s sleep because Curious
George the monkey was chewing on his toenails all night.
Still, oddly each time
my schedule has opened up something cool has filled in its place, so it’s not
even fair to complain.
The third job I have I
absolutely love too. I am part of the
editorial team of greentumble.com, an environmental blog. I am assigned specific articles weekly. I have learned so much about the world around
me researching these topics. Things I
should have known and had no idea about.
Like the fact that we use a trillion plastic bags annually and hardly any
are recycled. That our oceans have
hundreds of thousands of square miles of toxic garbage floating in five large
patches and the toxins are magnified as they pass up the food chain from
plankton to our dinner plates. I knew a
good deal about air pollution from working for the environmental engineering
firm in Los Angeles years ago, but I did not know the number and severity of
health problems it is presently causing, especially in developing countries and
how the thinning of the ozone layer is endangering so many species, having already
caused the extinction of many. I did not
know how easy it might be for me to get off the grid entirely. I will find links to some of the articles I
have written recently. I write
cautiously and conservatively about things that absolutely blow my mind.
On a brighter note, I grow organically and life is beautiful.