The Ghosts of Jobs Past - Part 4

Part time college jobs

I am one of the few people I know who moved away to go to community college.  I wanted to study film production, and there were all the expensive schools on either coast, but being the thrifty girl that I am, when I realized that there was a community college in state (Lansing Community College in Lansing, Michigan) that offered an Associates Degree in Film Production, I decided that I would go there.  Credits were under $13 an hour at the time (not a typo), and rent was pretty cheap, so I saw a way to move out with the savings I had from my accounting job.

This was more than thirty years ago, so we were shooting 16mm stock, having it processed, and editing actual chunks of film.  It seemed impossibly high tech and exciting at the time, but I had not counted on how expensive even rinky-dink little films cost.  Even then I was spending about $100 a minute for a finished film, and that was using friends for actors and borrowing all the school’s camera and sound equipment.  As my seemingly vast savings dwindled quickly, I came to two conclusions.  The first was that if I wanted to make films for a living I would be spending as much of my time begging for money as I would filming, followed by the realization that I needed to get a job fast, or I’d be moving home soon.

Over the three years I went to school at LCC (I eventually ended up getting a degree in still photography because I was not well suited to begging for money) I had a wide range of part time jobs.  I babysat, photographed weddings, sat in pitch darkness and spliced together huge reels of film that became driver’s licenses (no matter how bad my photo is, I have seen much, much worse) and even cut together a training film one of my instructors made (he had done all the editing and I put the A and B rolls together from his work print).  The job that stands out in my mind though was the 6 months that I spent as a phone solicitor for a cemetery.

Monday thru Thursday from 5 pm until 9 pm, myself and four or five girls just like me would sit at folding tables and attempt to set up appointments for the sales staff who would then offer a two plots for the price of one deal.  Needless to say, since we were calling at dinner time to discuss dying, we were not exactly popular.  From this I learned to take rejection.  It has also made me more empathetic to people with crappy jobs since I was always grateful to talk with someone who was able to say “no thank you” pleasantly.

What made this job memorable (besides the fact that the crematorium was in the next room with a temporary body storage room next to that and it got really dark out at night), were the team of women I worked with.  They were all fun and interesting and ready to hang out after work.  We dubbed ourselves “The Cemetery Girls” and that was the absolute best opening line ever.  We would go to the bar or to parties and just own the place.  We used to compare bad opening lines, and wound up with a tie between "Are you a model?" and "You have the lips of a fawn."  It was the first time that I realized that the people you work with can make a crummy job better or even great.  I really enjoyed it then, but had I realized how long it would be before I’d work with such an exceptionally entertaining group again, I’d have savored it so much more.  

The Butcher

The Ghosts of Jobs Past - Part 3

The Accounting Department

As odd as it seems, when I went to high school in the late 1970s, college didn’t seem all that important.  Instead of taking a lot of college prep courses, I’d taken half day data processing classes at the brand new vocational school our district had opened.  I remember the counselor trying to talk me out of going to the career prep center.  She tried to lead me to a more academic path, but I knew that what I wanted was a job and computers sounded like fun and they also sounded like a path to a job, so I stuck to my guns and went to vocational school.      

I am the oldest in a family with seven kids, and I knew that if I’d had a plan for my life and really wanted to go to college, my folks would have done what they could to help.  I also understood that since I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, college seemed like a waste of time and money.  I’d earned some cash in high school and I really liked the freedom that came with having my own money.  I didn’t really mind the responsibilities that came with it either, so after two years of training in data processing, I graduated from high school and my computer teacher kindly recommended me for a job in the accounting department of a local trucking company, and I entered the full time workforce.

Since I was still living at home and I had a cheap but dependable used car, I was able to spend a lot of my earnings on myself.  I bought clothes and tickets to concerts, I went on trips, paid my own car insurance, had a blast, but really had nothing to show for it.  I am glad I had that time when the stakes were relatively low and I could make mistakes with little consequence and was able to get a lot of dumb ideas out of my system. 

All the time I was working I noticed something about a lot of the people, particularly the women, I worked with.  Most of them were not that much older than I was, but most of them seemed so defeated.  It wasn’t just one kind of person who fell into this category, but almost everyone seemed miserable.  I still don’t know if they felt trapped by their circumstances or if the were just profoundly unhappy, but for the first time I took a good hard look at my future and decided that I needed a better plan for my life. 

Luckily too, a lot of my friends did start college right out of high school.  None of my friends went away to school, but there were two good universities and a community college all within an easy commute from our homes, so they all worked part time and went to school full time.  I wasn’t ready to quit my job, but I did decide to start taking basic classes at the community college in anticipation of going to college full time once I decided on a plan. 

I worked at that trucking company for about two years, and learned that sometimes the best thing a job can teach you is what you DON’T want to do with your life.  Sometimes a job can give you a place to take a break and gather some resources to make the next big leap.  Lest you think everything about that job was terrible, one of my coworkers set me up on a blind date with her fiancée’s divorced buddy.  I went out with him a few weeks before I moved away to go to film school, ended up dating him for eight years, and we’ve been married for over twenty five years.  All in all, it was not a bad deal, if I do say so myself.

The Butcher