Monday, May 4, 2009

The Trials of Jobs



A friend overseas just got themselves a copy of Dead Alive on DVD. They seemed to think I'd respond well to this, but it took me a while until I remembered that Dead Alive is the North American name for Peter Jackson's Braindead.

It's a gore-fest of epic proportions and has both Rufus and Simon in a cameo walk-on role at the start of the zoo scene. I foolishly went to work that day. Jobs really do suck. That job really did. For so many reasons.

As I've mentioned before, I have a degree in Physics. I realized just how useless that degree was going to be in the final year. The department decided in their wisdom to put up a cork noticeboard dedicated to physics related job advertisements. In the entire year they pinned one job notice to the board. We may have been physics students but the twelve or so of us graduating that year could do enough math to know that one job and twelve people equaled unemployment.

So I worked with computers, doing desktop publishing. It was mostly mind-numbing repetition combined with unrealistic deadline pressure. Fun times. I did manage to layout and print some comics while working there. I wasn't sorry when that job ended. I worked in a comic-book store, an English language for immigrants school, and various other odd jobs.

The longest employment I ever had was working at a liquor establishment. For eleven plus years I worked part-time at a bottlestore, Robbie Burns. The staff discount was a major incentive to stay working there. 20% off all alcohol can be a powerful motivator. There were some actual fun times at that job.

My current job, as a full-time father, part-time writer, even more part-time email and web consultant is pretty sweet. It sure beats any other job I've had. The hours are a bit long ... the pay sucks ... there's a huge amount of crap to deal with, literally ... and tears seem to be common, even if they are not usually mine. But I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

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