Take This Job And…

Now that I am retired and do not have a job I sometimes think back to jobs I did have and how a few of them did affect my life. Well more to the point I should say that leaving a couple of these jobs taught me a lot about life and myself. Come to think of it most of the time when I would leave one job, for whatever reason, there seemed to be a sense of loss. You would think I would be glad to be out of there. I even had a job once that I knew had to be the worst job there ever was. The work was hard, the boss was a tyrant, and my co-workers hated me. One morning things were really, really bad and I just couldn’t take it any more. Therefore, I did the only logical thing and turned in my two-week’s notice. Yet at the end of those two weeks, when it was time for me to go, I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to loose what I had no matter how bad it may have been.

I spent many long hours trying to reason why I didn’t want to leave a job that I hated. Truth be told, at the end of those two weeks I would have stayed given half a chance, but why? I know it was not the comredery of the co-workers whom I didn’t like. Nor, do I think it was the weekly paycheck. That thing was so small it never ever came close to covering my bills. Perhaps it might have been the loss of routine in my life, although I doubt it. No the real reason for me quitting that job and then wishing I hadn’t; I would have to chalk up to age and stupidity. I know because not once in those two weeks did I look for another job. The real lesson here was; do not quit a job when you are mad and never quit until you have another job to go to.

Nobody ever accused me of being a fast learner. I may learn well, it’s just that sometimes it takes two or three times to get the message through my thick skull. Time passed but not enough time to cure me being young and stupid. This time I had a job I really liked. The people I worked with were great, the work was challenging, and on top of that the money was fantastic. However, there were a couple draw backs. You see this job was on a boat that sailed around the Gulf of Mexico looking for oil. We had to stay onboard for ten days at a time. To make matters worse I would get a little seasick but nothing I couldn’t handle. The real draw back to this job was my boss or perhaps I should say the bosses. You see they rotated them every ten days too. Every ten days the home office would send out a new boss for the same old crew. Most of them left us alone to do our jobs, but occasionally we would get one that knew, or thought they knew, more than we did about what needed to be accomplished and how to accomplish it.

Now this is where the young and stupid part comes in so pay attention. It was day six of our ten day cruse. Things had not been going as smoothly as they should have. The reason they were not going smoothly was that the home office had sent us the most stupid, boneheaded, ignorant individual they had. Sure enough on 6^th day I found my young and stupid self being chewed out for something I was sure was clearly the fault of the idiot doing the chewing.

I do not know what a more reasonable, more adult person, might have done in this situation but I did the only young and stupid thing I could think of; I quit. I quit right then and there, fifty miles out in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, with three and a half days to go on my shift. Maybe I thought I could hitch a ride back to shore on the back of a dolphin. I suddenly had no work I could do on a working boat. Just to rub it in that idiot boss would not let me go anywhere but the galley and my bunk. He said that the type of work they were doing was dangerous; work I had been doing for almost a year. The real reason I could not even go out on deck was because I was no longer covered by their insurance. Once again I learned a valuable lesson by losing a job. Never let my crocodile mouth overload my humming bird ass. Can you imagine anyone quitting a job fifty miles out in the Gulf of Mexico with no way to get home?

Remember when I told you that I learn well but sometimes slowly? Would you believe I quit being a photographer and went into retirement without enough money and nothing to do? Okay I get it now.