Labor Day 2020

This day, dedicated to working, is important.  It is a celebration of effort to make our human world work.  I am retired.  Have been since March 1, 2006.  And I enjoy it. 

These days, I celebrate it for the people who work now and make my life easier.  The people at stores, the people who keep the electricity and internet working, the farmers who grow the things I eat, the people who make the clothes I wear and the appliances I use.  The people who do things I don't even know they do...

So today is a good day to review my own working career.  Read it if you wish, don't if it seems boring and routine.  Some of it is certainly more exciting than other parts.

To start, let's just say that, as The Eldest Child, I got assigned work early in life.  Trash removal, dishwashing, weeding the garden, etc.  I did advance to kitchen helper at 10 (a duty I enjoyed).

From there came mowing the lawn.  That was actually too early, but apparently Dad hated doing it.  The handlebar of the mower was about as tall as I was.  I mowed the lawn for 6 years until I went to college.  But mowing was something I did know how to do even if it was difficult.

So my first paying job was mowing some neighbors' lawns.  After that, I worked at a gas station each Summer.  Below minimum wage of $1.25/hr.  The owner said it was justified because the cash register was always a bit short (never mind that he took money out and put it in his pocket.  But it was a paying job, and I still know how to clean a windshield properly.

The next Summer, I took my experience mowing lawns to a job mowing an Army Base.  Talk about "endless grass"!  8 hours in Summer heat.  I always thought i was going to die by the end of the day.  But I didn't and that was a good lesson.  And at 16 I was also working a Saturday and Sunday newspaper delivery with a neighbor friend.  Sunday was night work and I learned to keep odd hours as a result.

When I got out of High School, I took a Govt test for jobs for Summer work in an office.  The local Naval Base was transferring old paper records of retired naval personnel to microfishe and 6 of us had to go through a folder at a time, organize it by date, and remove everything older than some year I forget now.  The removed files were reviewed by the Office Manager (he had a Naval rank, but I've never been able to remember any military ranks). 

He met with us individually once a week for accuracy ratings and suggestions.  After a few weeks, he showed me the group chart.  He said he was showing it to me because I had the highest productivity and greatest accuracy of the group.  Not by just "a little", I was almost off his chart.  And because he wanted me back the next Summer.  And he suggested I had a talent for administrative work and might want to consider that for my future.

But I went off to college.  I wasn't all that interested, but my parents assumed it and I wasn't about to argue against getting out on my own a bit.  Classes came in 2 kinds.  Stuff I easily understand and stuff I couldn't figure out,  And it was 1968 to 1972  and I became very politically active.  Let's just say I took some courses that were easy for me and learned some stuff, but failed at some rquired ones and left.

So I spent a few years in department stores.  Worked my way up to being in charge of 1/4 of one and realized I was going nowhere.  The difference between being a floor clerk at minimum wage and "1/4 store manager" was 25 cents per hour. 

A friend suggested the US Government "Professional and Administrative Career Exam and I took it.  Scored in the 100th percentile in all 5 categories.  I got an offer from 1 Federal Agency (General Services Administration).  One was based on knowing Fortran 4 and COBOL programming languages (saw no future in computers, LOL!).  One was based on my SAT math skills in the Finance Office  (sorry, but skills at geometry and solving simultaneous equation doe NOT mean you are good with a caclulator and an accounting sheet).  The last was a more general administrative support office. 

I went there.  General stuff is more my forte.  Jack of all trades, Master of none; that's me.  I fit right in.  I went from Temporary Hire to Permanent in 4 weeks.  We kept track of furniture and office equipment.  As with my Naval Base job, I was outstanding at it.  The office kept track of GSA stuff, but also Presidential Committees and Committees and Senate and Congressional Offices. 

I was quickly assigned the latter inventories.  And then we gained Pennsylvannia as part of out "Region".  The Congressional inventories were all crap.  I spent 6 months conducting furniture and equipment inventories in PA and then tracing all the purchases and transfers from the earliest records.  When I was done, we had a clean inventory of all Government furniture and equipment.  I got an award.

After that, I was competed for in various office.  I stayed where I was, but changed to Fleet Management, Space Management, and finally Telecommunication Management as a GS-12.  But I couldn't advance beyond that there.

I would have had to become "Management".  And quite frankly, I'm not good at it.  I hate to tell other people what to do.  As a self-starter, I tend to think you either know what you should be doing, or you are just incompetent.  And I only met one "Manager" in my career who was actually good at "management".  I am a strong proponent of 'The Peter Principle'.  Most Managers are people who are no longer productive, but can transmit orders from above...  I still routinely read 'Dilbert' for reminders of basic management stupidity.

I had to move to a new office with a higher non-management pay-grade to get a promotion. Fortunately, most of my suoervisors left me alone to do my work.  I benefited, they benefited, the agency benefited.  I basically saved the agency $1-2 million a year. 

And that's not mentioning being the Team Leader for White House inventories for 2 years.  At GSA, we had one 50character code for executive desks.  The White House is full of them, and wanted differentiation.  So I created a 6 digit code complete with pictoral examples of the differences.

My last job was to manage voice telecommunications costs.  We got digital records from our vendor, but they were unreadable (proprietary).  It took 6 months, but I learned how to read the data.  Databases are weird.  The useful data can be divided in many ways, usually punctuation or spacing.

The vendor was pissed.  The agency contractor was impressed (they hadn't figured it out).

I told management that I would be retiring in March 2006 (the first day eligible).   I told them about 3 regional employees who were qualified and willing to take over my job, but they didn't want to offend a Regional Office. 

So we interviewed newbies. None were qualified, but one did have some computer skills and a customer-friendly attitude.  I taught her everything I knew for 6 months.  But she was mostly just a clerk. 

After I left, a co-worker emailed me to say the entire program had fallen apart.  The new hire had immediately moved to an IT support position, and Management had eventually assigned 3 full time people to do what I had done and they all said it was "impossible".

So I leave off today saying that I was a "worker" and never "management" when I could avoid it all the useful days of my working life.  I worked hard at mowing the grass on my first days and I never ordered other people around after that.

So, Happy Labor Day to all...