Working Girl

I was born and raised in New England. In other words, fate dropped me right into the middle of the Protestant Work Ethic (I believe fate, as well as love, is blind and thus did not realise that I was both Catholic and unethical). Even so, I bought the work ethis thing hook, line and sinker.
"Treat every job as if it were the most important job you'll ever have." my father told me. "Work hard and get ahead."
I heeded his advice, more or less. Sometimes, it was hard. At one memorable place of employment, a watch company who shall remain nameless (Timex), my entire job consisted of putting orange stickers on white boxes. It would have been piecework if there had been enough white boxes to go around, but there were not. Grown women would fight to grab boxes. "I can do this," I thought, "there is no shame in honest labor." I lasted 5 weeks.
Towards the end of week 5, I went home for lunch. Now this being the 60's, the days of Peace-Love-Dope, lunch consisted of a sandwich, a cup of Lemon Tie-dye Hippie Yogi tea, and...well, .. let us say I returned to work more than a litle impaired.
I sat on my stool. Actual chairs were thought to breed relaxation and carelessness - wouldn't want to miss the top of that white box. I looked at the rows of women already at work. Their hands flew, their mouths hung open, their eyes....oh God, their eyes, their vacant eyes.... I fled.
But that, I think, was just my worst job. I've had many others in my attempt to find my niche. I was a ski information telephone operator, a cashier, a nurse's aide, a short order cook. I jumped out of cakes (good pay, bad, bad, men). I worked in a laundry putting clothes down a chute. I was a day laborer, a weaver, a waitress, and a nurse. I worked at a machine that put a little long thing into a little round thing, always suspecting that the supervisor had some Freudian problems and just liked to watch. For quite some time, I worked in an LDRP unit at a local hospital.
This was my first experience with real job predjudice - not against women, everyone was female, but against differentness. I noticed right away that all the employees of this department were young, blonde WASPs with a husband, a minivan and 2.2 kids. I tried to fit in. No, I take that back. I've never tried to fit in anywhere. But I did try to demonstrate by my actions that just because someone is different, that doesn't mean they aren't good at their job. I worked my buns off. In the end, I found that my small, dark, mixed-race self overrode my value as an employee. When I graduated from nursing school eigth in my class, they let me go. Although nearly all of the staff nurses tried to intervene on my behalf, the blonde WASP unit supervisor with the husband, minivan, and 2.2 kids was not about to let doing the right thing stand in her way. But that's alright. I learned, along with how to put in a foley catheter, that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
For a while I attended a CETA secretary school. This was a school set up by the government for people who were too dumb or too unmotivated to get through high school. It was a three month program. I finished everything in three weeks, except for typing which requuires a level of manual dexterity that I do not possess. They didn't know what to do with me. At first, I spent class time pecking at my typewriter, bored. Next, I became the designated person to take the students who arrived drunk and walk them around the parking lot until they sobered up. Finally, I taught the math class after the math teacher was laid off. Armed with my new secretarial skills, I left school and immediately got a job as a private duty nurse's aide.
Private duty aide work is not hard. You don't have to do much and you do get to read. However, the job usually involves contact with sick people and small dogs. It did not take me long to decide that I did not want to spend my life with sick people or small dogs. I quit.
"Treat each job as if it were the most important one you'll ever have." How do you do that when you're a waitress in a donut shop? Does doing a good job consist of scrubbing the coffeepots and counters until they shine and keeping the donut case filled? Or does it consist of sucking up to the customers so they'll purchase one more cup of coffee? In due time I discovered that I did not enjoy scrubbing or sucking. I collected my pink slip, which fetchingly matched my uniform, and moved on.
I have been told, "Never work for a boss who is less intelligent than you." Puh-leese. Where do we find such a person, such a gem of authority? We're the ones who have to take those aptitude tests. We're the ones putting pegs into holes and in the time it takes to complete one of those tests, twenty people in America have been promoted past their level of competence.
I work now as a Labor & Delivery nurse. I like this because someone else (the woman in labor) does all the work. Also, they've made me night charge nurse. Yes! I, too, have been promoted past my level of competence. You know, it's not half bad.