At the RGA meetings this week we asked people what was the worst job they had in their younger days and what was their best. I had one that I considered my worst and in some ways it taught me more than any other job I had … so does that make it my best?
When I was in college, one summer, I took a job to make money for the following semester. I lied, like all students do, and told the interviewer that I was looking for full time employment not just some summer job. No college for me, told them … my pants, of course, on fire big time.
The job was at a cookie factory (true story). You older cats may remember the Lucille Ball episode where Lucy and Ethel packed candy at the factory. It was something like that. I stood at the end of a big conveyor belt and cookies came down, pretty fast I might add, and my illustrious job was to pack them in boxes for shipping. 8am – 5pm with a 45 minute lunch break and a 15 minute, get away from the impossible noise, break. You know the drill.
I lasted until August and about two weeks before the fall term, on a Friday at lunch, I bolted with my check in hand. I needed a couple of weeks to hang with my friends at the beach. I needed a break before school started. I had worked all summer in that loud factory with … factory people!
What did I learn?
I learned the following:
I wanted to do more with my life than work in a factory and was lucky to be in a great school getting an education and securing a future I wanted to live.
I learned that there were people who were not so lucky, some not so smart, some just not fortunate but they were hard workers and the factory was clean and decent and they felt lucky to have a job that didn’t completely suck so I learned a little humility.
I learned to respect hard work and people who do that work every day and need the job, so they don’t walk out in the middle of a shift and hit the beach like I did.
But the most important thing I learned was this:
The conveyor is going to keep sending the cookies down the belt at you at a steady and sometimes overwhelming speed and no matter what happens, you have to try your best to get the cookies in the box. Someone is waiting for them. Someone is expecting them. Someone needs the boxes of cookies to sell at their store to put food on their tables at night and hell … people just want the cookies.
Never quit putting them in the boxes.