There are certainly a lot of four letter words out there, some of which our Mothers had to wash out our mouths for using. I remember the time that I had to take one of my sons to the basement to cleanse his mouth with a bar of Fels-Naptha soap. None of these words, however, evoke more emotions and memories than the word “work.” A wide range of comments involve work from the joy of saying, “I got a promotion at work”; to the anger of saying, “ I got screwed at work by not getting the promotion”; to the wistful memory of saying, “ I did great work there making a big difference”; to the sadness of saying, “ My best friend at work left to raise a family.”
A wide range of comments involve work from the joy of saying, “I got a promotion at work”; to the anger of saying, “ I got screwed at work by not getting the promotion”; to the wistful memory of saying, “I did great work there making a big difference”; to the sadness of saying, “ My best friend at work left to raise a family.”
Besides comments that involve work, what about the progression of work from your very first job through the position you may have aspired to today? Isn’t it amusing to look back on your very first ventures into the workforce? Whether it was shoveling snow, cutting the grass, raking leaves, carrying groceries, making deliveries, or working at fast food restaurants, those first times that you actually were getting paid for your efforts were good feelings.
My first real job was at Baskin-Robbins 31 Flavors at McNichols and Gunston on the east side of Detroit. I remember that part of the job was just getting there because the establishment was about a mile from my house. On the surface, this appeared to be a cake job. Pardon the reference, but what was I supposed to say, ”an ice cream job?” Maybe I should have said an “ice cream cake job.” But, I digress.
Serving up ice cream cones, milkshakes, sodas, and sundaes to the happy people who came into the store should have been a delight for all involved – not so fast there Tommy boy!
Nervous and without experience and the line getting longer and longer on a hot August day, I choked. Not only was the ice cream rock hard, there were thirty-one flavors, duh. Where were they located? Finally, when the order was mercifully completed, the specter of the cash register loomed as a monster that had to be tamed. Shit! Back then cash registers were not like the computerized versions of today that you basically can hit the name or picture of the product and the cost will magically appear and then the amount of change to be returned would be given. Two plus two is not easy to decipher when you are nervous and with a crowd ready to lynch you and are getting angrier by the minute waiting for their treat.
The world of work is a progression that we all must go through. When I hear of someone saying that a certain job is beneath them, I shake my head. All of us must go through our 31 Flavors experiences in order to learn how to work.
