Wired but not fired: part four

Here's a brief recap for those who may not have read the previous blogs in this series:

• Barb and I work the conveyor belt - we whine - we get moved.


• Barb and I work the bending room - we whine - we get moved.


• Barb and I work the warehouse - we whine - we get moved.

That should catch you up. So we come to our fourth day of our stellar work for the electronics manufacturer and they bring us to these tables where there are high-top stools in front of stations with weight scales and some boxes.

The job is to take the electronics parts from the boxes, weigh the correct amount and put them into little plastic bags. It's lucky that Barb and I have reached a sufficient level of high school math to be able to handle this one. Who knew?

Amazingly, we sort of take to this work. We are even more jazzed when we learn that this is one of their more skilled positions in the company. We last almost a week before we begin to get that familiar old "let's run" look in our eyes. Sensing our displeasure, the management finally does something we don't see coming. No they don't fire us - they offer us a raise!

But Barb and I aren't falling for that one. We pack up our little lunch bags and leave, never to grace the electronics industry again.

Somewhere in a small town in Wisconsin they tell of tale of two young, working girls who knew what a diva was long before the Paris Hiltons and Nicole Richies were even conceived.

Wired but not fired: part three

Having failed at the assembly line and the bending room Barb and I are sent to the big electronics warehouse across town. The main part of the building is filled with these insanely tall metal shelving units holding boxes of every kind of elctronic thingamabob imaginable.

The two of us are handed brooms, dust pans and rags. The job is to clean off all the shelves, sweep the floors and dust the lighting units above the aisles. A chimp could do it.

At first it doesn't seem so bad, at least we are moving around and getting to climb these big honking shelves. Our contact with actual electronic parts is minimal. Except for Barb getting impaled on a pencil in my back pocket as I climbed up a shelf and she climbed down one, all was serene.

By quitting time that afternoon we look like something that came out of a shaft in Coal Miner's Daughter. Our outside appearance is nothing compared to what shows up when we blow our noses. This is when we whine to the management that this job is just too filthy.

For some unfathomable reason they still don't can our butts, but tell us to come back the next day and they will find something cleaner for us to do. Like moths to a flame we come back. They bring us over to some tables against the wall that...

(Will I get black lung disease? Will Barb go all "postal" on the management? Tune in for the final blog in our series Wired but not fired: part four)

Wired but not fired: part two

When we last left our two inept employees they had just finished the first day of their new summer jobs at the electronics plant. Barb,close to a nervous breakdown and myself, bored but fearing what the folks would say if I quit after one day.

After whining to the management about not enjoying the assembly work we were moved to this little, airless room with a couple long tables. On the tables were thin blocks of wood mounted on a wood base next to a pile of diodes with long wires coming out of them.

The job was to pick up a diode, put it on top of the block of wood and bend the little wires down so they made a kind of an upside-down goal post shape. Then repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat, and - oh you get the picture.

After a few hours of this mindless repetition Barb had to grab both of my hands and wrestle the little diodes out of them before I poked the little wires into my eye sockets. It seemed like a good idea at the time. By the end of the day we whined to the management that this job was just too boring.

Instead of firing our asses they told us to come to work at their warehouse in the morning and they would have something different for us to do. You can see where this is going, can't you.

The next day Barb and I show up at the warehouse and are given...


(See my next blog Wired but not fired: part three or "whose stupider the employer or the employees?").

Wired but not fired: part one

I recall a summer job my good friend Barb and I took at small electronics manufacturer. She and I had spent our earliest forays into employment as waitresses but something possessed us to go in another direction. Perhaps it was the fact that we were still in high school and had no skills of any kind. We did however have our looks and we were breathing which seemed to be resume enough to land the jobs.

The first day of work they put us on an assembly line. The job was inserting these tiny diodes into little boards in just the right teeny holes as the conveyor belt flew past us like a bat out of hell.

I was barely managing to keep up, but Barb was sporting one inch nail extensions making it virtually impossible to pick up the parts nonetheless place them in a circuit board. At one point I think I saw her crying while riding the convey belt in an act of sheer desperation. Finally, the much older and more experienced workers (picture Rosanne Barr and Sandra Bernhard in hairnets) took pity and pulled her off while tossing her a nail clipper.

As we took our lunch bags out on the lawn that day Barb came up to me, clutched my arm, pointed to the woods behind the factory and mouthed two words, "Let's Run!" I got her through the rest of the day by having her visualize us as Lucille Ball and Viviane Vance in the sketch about the candy factory.

The next day we whined that this job was just too hard and asked to be moved to a different section. They put us in this little room with...

(See tomorrow's blog Wired but not fired: part two where Barb and I screw up and whine our way through an entire company).

For rent - one ulcer

Have you had some real crappy jobs? Let's talk.

After I was separated, the kids and I lost the house and I had to find lodging and work fast. As I looked at an apartment I was asked to be the manager of 56 units in 3 buildings. It was sold to me as a part time job.

Had I ever done this before? No. Did I know what the hell I was doing? NOOOOO.

With two little boys needing a home before school started I did the SB thing and signed the lease and the contract. I was getting my rent plus $300 a month. (I had another part time job too). There was a caretaker on site and maintenance guys that came in. It sounded good.

However, I was also getting the landlords of the damned! Oh my God.

Here's a sample of the calls I got all day and all night (quotations are my thoughts):

"Did you walk the all the buildings today? You need to walk all the buildings every day." (Sorry, I forgot to leave breadcrumbs) "You recorded the answering machine greeting wrong." (They called about 10 times on this and every time I had read it off the sheet they gave me - with gusto). "I just drove by and there was a hanger in the middle of the street, go out and pick it up." (Response not printable in polite society) "There was snow on the steps when I went by this morning. Why?" (Well, maybe it was the blizzard outside) "Why are the washing machines breaking down all the time?" (I don't know, maybe because they are cheap pieces of crap) "There were newspapers outside the front door when I drove by, go put them in front of the everyone's doors." (What is this place, the Hilton?) "There was a piece of dust in the hallway. Why?" (There's going to be a foot up your ass and you know why)

And here's my favorite, "Find a stick and test the fire alarms in all 56 apartments." (Whaaat?) Which was all I could say for the next week because I was completely deaf; at least I didn't hear the phone ringing.

The funny thing is, the tenants, maintenance folks and I got along great. I might add that at the same time I was being berated by Lord and Lady Hemorrhoid, I was getting bonuses and raises at my better-paying, highly skilled, part time, then three-quarter time and then full-time salaried job.

My eyes opened wide when the apartment owners wouldn't show mercy to the two newlywed soldiers who lived next door to me. When they were suddenly re-deployed to Iraq, Juan and Eva Peron wouldn't honor the agreement of the previous manager and charged the couple a bundle to get out of the lease and go fight for our country. So much for democracy. I quit. I still have the nightmares.

SB lesson #1

I am so ready for the 3-day weekend. I work hard at a job that is fabulous but totally out of my league. My co-workers are educated to the hilt with Masters in subjects like Urban Planning, Economics and Public Policy and I walk in with my little Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Arts. Wait! I am not knocking the arts, on the contrary, more people should understand their value in quality of life, understanding and connectedness. However, with my schooling occurring in the distant past my learning curve in this job was (and continues to be) a mountain. After 8 years as an at-home-mom who did consulting work on the side, catching up to the technology alone was enough to send the strongest SB screaming into the night.

I mention all this because it is a lesson in SB-ness. I thought I had about as much chance of getting this job as Dick Cheney has getting his Boyscout safety badge. What I did have going for me was a divorce with no place to live and two little boys to protect. Another thing to add to the list of SB traits is the ability to rise to the occasion. Sometimes the rising occurs when our backs are to the wall and the wolves are circling , but we rise. I was going to get a job, and a good one and I was going to do it quickly. The bonus came with loving the job I found (much praise for an employer who is the model for all employers). You closet SB's out there, whatever you need, really need...go for it. I'm rooting for you.