One of the worst jobs I had was a temp job over Grinnell’s winter break. I had to file for eight hours a day in a room solely filled with files. What made it the worst job was if there was no established place for a file, I couldn’t create one but had to put it back in the to-file box. By the end of the day I was just walking around the room with files that I knew had no place to go. I learned about the absurdity of real life.
Prompted
Fall 2017
Prompt: Tell us about a job you’ve had, either while at Grinnell or afterward.
At Quad during lunchtime in the early ’90s, you could often find me unloading the dishwasher. Sure the work wasn’t all that stimulating, but I made a game of it. In order to avoid a Lucille Ball-style catastrophe, the dishwasher would shut down its conveyor belt if the dishes weren’t unloaded before the end of the belt. The goal of the game was to make sure that I unloaded dishes and trays fast enough so that the conveyor belt never stopped during my shift. I typically won. It helped that the person loading the dishwasher didn’t know that he or she was playing the game.
In my second or third year at Grinnell, 1950 or 1951, I worked in the Carnegie Library as a stacker, putting returned books on their proper shelves. There was roof repair in process, the work site covered every night with large tarps. One night a storm, with fierce winds and much rain, blew away the tarps and drenched the second floor stacks and reading room. For several weeks I had much extra work, at 55 cents an hour, helping lay out damaged books to dry, among blowing fans, on the reading tables. My love of reading was thus enlarged to loving care for printed books.
My first job after college, I worked for The Grinnell Magazine as an editorial assistant and researcher, and my first assignment was covering Reunion. Within about 5 minutes of arriving at the bagel brunch, Rebecca Quirk ’86 had made me an honorary member of their class and brought me under their tent physically and metaphorically. That class gave me such good advice, I started adding my own question to each interview — if you could give one piece of advice to someone like me (young college grad), what would you say, and why? Being adopted into that class year gave me the courage (and advice) to survive early grad-hood and kick-start my first career after my time at Grinnell.
I wanted to try something different, so one December I worked in the order-packing department for Signals magazine orders. We stood at a station and got orders in bins, chose the right size box, packed the items as efficiently as possible, affixed a label, and sent them in a bin to someone else. I enjoyed being busy, having time to think, and the constant challenge of packing each box just right. I hated the way all those people moved together like sheep when the bell rang for break time, their souls draining away with each shuffling trip to the dreary break room. Office work seemed pretty sweet after that.
Like many Grinnellians, I worked in the dining hall, which had some high highs and low lows. Getting busted in the walk-in cooler, giggling hysterically, with a co-worker sitting on my shoulders to grab mushrooms off a top shelf was a real high point. Meanwhile, the time a supervisor told me not to pick up the big box of onions because I “have to have babies” was a definite low. Another time, during a particularly tough week, I hid in the freezer and ate a whole unbaked big cookie. Still not sure if that one’s a high or a low.
I lived for my Grinnell paycheck of 85 cents an hour from working 20 hours a week. I had the highest-paying job on campus, 20 cents more than waiters got at Cowles Dining Hall. I washed pots and pans during Saga Foods’ management of cafeteria services in the 1960s. This paid for my daily coffees at the Union and my 3.2 percent beers at the Rex off Route 6.
When there was an opening for another pot walloper, I invited my roomie George Santoni ’61 to join me. Fifty years later, after his retirement as a professor of French at SUNY-Albany, he said, “Walt, that was the worst job I have ever had!”
The work wasn’t that bad, except when the cook made scalloped potatoes. Then I needed a putty knife to clean pans of baked-on food. If they’d given me anything sharper, we’d have had a mortally wounded cook.
By graduation day, I still had no postgrad plans, but I did have increasing anxieties about “success.” I found a job selling ad space in a local Yellow Pages-like publication. I was too relieved to finally have a plan and enticed by their awesome “success stories,” promises of “promotion within,” and potentially high salaries to see all the red flags. I was constantly pushed to undertake “successful” sales tactics that made me uncomfortable. When I realized I needed to quit, I promised myself I would only allow myself to quit if I put more thought into this job search. I found a new job that I loved and thrived in within two days of searching and have vowed to never prioritize my anxieties over my professional comfort again.
Summer 2017
Prompt: What's the best advice — or worst advice — you've either given or received?
In his youth my grandfather was a boxer. He taught me how to follow through on a punch by advising “always aim for the back of the skull.” It’s served me well and I think it could be a good metaphor for going all in.
He also taught me to know my limits, though, through his example of declining an offer to box a kangaroo. He said the guy who did was never quite right afterward. The ’40s were a different time, indeed.
Before applying for the promotion that would take you the next step up the corporate ladder, take time to deeply consider whether you really want that job or not, including careful consideration of (1) what it will take to get that highly competitive promotion and (2) whether you are prepared to meet all of the demands it will impose.