kind of snoozing at my desk, and my coworker just walked in with something I requested she do for me. Didn’t quite wake me up, as I wasn’t quite sleeping, but it triggered a memory. Back in my early 20’s I had a job at a now defunct auto parts supplier. Sometimes they would put you on a broom for days at a time, and boy, did I hate that. I’ve always been one to work hard, get it done, and go home–no clock watching in me at all. Kind of why this job is killing me at the moment–soooooo slooooow and booooooring.
Anyway–I can remember going into the bathroom to catch a few winks during endless “broom days”. These people were so anal they’d go into the bathroom and check, so I’d tell a friend to come wake me if I was paged, then I’d go sit on the pot, pants around my ankles, big silver flushing mechanism in the small of my back, and crash. Pretty uncomfortable, a little bit breezy, and definitely not a pretty picture.
So I was wondering–am I out there alone on this one, or have some of you been creative in just such a situation?
My first job ever was working at a newspaper. In the press room, there were all these giant spools of paper (each spool was probably about 6 foot in diameter and 4 feet high). They were stacked in columns of various height, from 1 spool up to 5 or 6. Being a young lad of about 16, of course it was a blast to climb up the columns of spools for fun. And some of the higher spots made for a great place to nap for a while!
That works! I assume they were stacked “eye to the sky”?
Yep! Otherwise it would have been a pretty dangerous balancing act 🙂
Though I’m sure the practice wouldn’t have been OSHA-endorsed either way…
Yeah, those pesky OSHA people….
Back in the late 70’s early 80’s, I scrubbed and waxed floors in big dept stores around San Diego, while trying to get an education and getting loaded at the same time. Not too productive in either job.
Anyway, I worked 11 pm to 7 am and when it would get really slow, I would crawl into the pillow bins or the bedspread bins and sleep for a couple of hours, before finishing up my work area. I never was found sleeping though the owner of the company I worked for did show up one night and wanted to know where the lead was, that was me. I did wake up and snuck to the bathroom and came strolling out asking him what the hell are you yelling for, I was on the john.
Pretty creative. I’ve found that I am often at my most resourceful when my back is against the wall.
I grew up in Concord, West of Jackson on M60, used to spend a lot of time in Ann Arbor in the late 60’s and early 70’s, hanging around the radical element.
A2 rocks, but I’ve never lived over that way. Huge Wolverine football fan, and one of my two favorite disc golf courses in the world is at Hudson Mills Metropark. Hard for me to get over that way these days with my kids (3 of the 4, anyway) being so young. Aren’t you out in like Colorado or something now?
Land of the freeper and home of many 101st Keyboardist, fortunately I live within 30 minutes of a bastion of blue in this otherwise red state. Lawrence is much like Ann Arbor, so I don’t mind so much being here. I miss surfing, hiking in the Sierra’s and all that great ethnic food, in San Diego, but I do not, no I will not miss the congestion of 4 million people.
that should be 101st Fighting Keyboardists
Cut accross that state on the way to Colorado once–so I guess I wasn’t too far off the mark. Sounds like a cool place. Do you get back up here at all?
Haven’t been back there since 92 and that was to a NA convention in GR. Though I did end up staying in MI, for two months, before going back to California. I miss trout fishing.
When I was 16, my father decided I should get a summer job, and so he arranged for me to work in the company where he was shop foreman. They made plastic display cases for department stores. Since I didn’t have any particular skills related to the business, they put me in shipping. Now being a small business (maybe 25 people) they didn’t have a lot of money, and so they bought up old copies of the New York Times to use as packing material. My job was to pack things using the old newspapers. Only I had to get changed to another task (I think it was pushing a broom) because I was spending too much time reading the packing materials!
Hey getting paid to get an education is not all bad.
Yeah, to bad they bumped you to the broom. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve pushed a fair share of broom in my life and it ain’t all bad–but doing it as a “make-work opportunity” sucks.
I walked the Mighty Mac in the summer of 76. Think I was 11. Pretty cool, and a little scary.
What an awesome bridge that is to walk across.
and from a walking perspective…hard to describe. Truth is that bridges scare me, even driving over them. Not paralyzing fear or anything, but extreme discomfort. Walking along and imagining what people must have done to put it up–wow. If memory serves, the number of people who died during construction was somewhere in the teens, with some falling into the concrete pours of the foundations. They wouldn’t even slow down, as I understand it, just kept pouring when someone fell in. There was no point.
Heard about a factory owner in England who solved this problems by using French newspapers as packing material.
I’ve suffered chronic fatigue, as near as I can tell, since birth. So, I have a million of these tricks. The one that worked best for me, both in school, and at desk jobs, was to place reading material on the desk in front of me, prop myself on an elbow, and “read.”
when my coworker (now that I think about it, I guess technically she is now my boss….) walked in. Back to the opening of my cube, highlighter in hand, open mark up on the desk.
I lobbied pretty hard for siestas during my corporate years. It just didn’t catch on, for some reason.
I have one that’s pretty bizarre. Only it never happened on the job, just in my dreams whenever I started a new job. It didn’t matter what I was doing for a living the dream just adjusted itself to that job. Here goes. This is the real part. My first real job(other than babysitting)was working as a waitress/cook in a broasted chicken place. There was a long counter and then on the other side were the broasters, fryers, grill etc. Right after I started I went to bed and in my dream there was a cot behind the counter and I was always getting caught sleeping. My boss, Dick(no really that’s his name…lol)would yell at me to get up and wait on people. I would always whine and say I was too tired. Honest to God folks, every job and here’s just a few, bartender, waitress, travel agent, airline employee, hot dog stand manager, property manager, you get the idea…I have this dream, changed around a little to fit the new job. Bizzaro!!
That’s hilarious. Thanks for chipping in. I was having a hard time getting through my Friday afternoon, but I’m glad I didn’t get to this comment till now–now I have a smile on on Tuesday morning!