Grunt Work, Hard Labor...
...the Daily Grind
From ethic (eth'ik) n. ethics or a system of ethics: ethics (eth'iks) n.pl. 1. (with sing. v.) the study of standards of conduct and moral judgement 2. the system of morals of a particular person, religion, group, etc. and;
From work (wurk) n. 1. effort exerted to do or make something; labor; toil 2. employment; occupation 3. something one is making or doing; task 4. something made or done; specif., a) an act; deed; usually used in pl. [good works] b) [pl.] collected writings c) [pl.] engineering structures 5. a place where work is done, as a factory 6. workmanship --adj. of, for, or used in work --vi. worked or wrought, working 1. to do work; labor; toil 2. to be employed 3. to function or operate, esp. effectively 4. to ferment 5. to move, proceed, etc. slowly and with difficulty 6. to come or become, as by repeated movement [the door worked loose] -- vt. 1. to cause; bring about [his idea worked wonders] 2. to mold; shape 3. to sew, embroider, etc. 4. to solve (a mathematical problem, etc.) 5. to manipulate, knead 6. to bring into a specified condition [they worked it loose] 7. to cultivate (soil) 8. to operate; use 9. to cause to work [to work a crew hard] 10. to make (one's way, etc.) by effort 11. to provoke; rouse [he worked her into a rage] -- at work working --out of work unemployed -- the works 1. the working parts (of a watch, etc.) 2. [Colloq.] everything; also the whole works -- work off to get rid of -- work on (or upon) 1. to influence 2. to try to persuade -- work out 1. to accomplish 2. to solve 3. to result 4. to develop 5. to have a workout -- work up 1. to advance 2. to develop 3. to excite
Yes, I temped in an actual Condom Factory. (Insert obvious question here: "So, didja test them? <nudge nudge wink wink>") No. I was a secretary. "Oh, so you DID test them!"
People die. That's the way it works around here, unless you've found some neat new trick. If they've thought about it, maybe they're good enough to have signed a donor card, and maybe the next of kin didn't argue. Well, somebody's got to harvest the parts. Then someone's got to test them for all kinds of things, and then test them a few more times, just to be sure. Finally, those parts have to be shaped to fit the new body they'll be living in...that's where the labs come in. I temped in one part of the lab, doing a lot of data entry work for tracking body parts, tissue samples, and the like. I had to sort and organize hundreds of tubes full of tiny snippets of once-human flesh. That was the easy part. If you want to know what was hard, read the monologue I wrote. As for the guys who worked in the chop shop, well, all really nice, chill-out kind of people...except you need a gonzo sense of humor to take a human femur out of a freezer where it's been wrapped up like a lamb chop (they use actual meat freezers), open it up, carve down the bone while keeping it sterile, wrap it back up and ship it off to be put into John Q. Public's leg. Not all the good people in the world actually get acknowledgement. I wrote about it.
One of the biggest banking conglomerates in the mid-west has a processing center for all its checks not, as you might think, in Chicago or Cincinnati or some such place nearby, but just outside of Boston, Mass. They may have moved to bigger, brighter locations, but when I worked there, it was a little cave-like place where the light barely made it in through the windows. There was one back room full of little desks with register-tape calculators, where people sat day in and night out double checking numbers. Then there was a massive room with a computer that would have done HAL proud...the checks come in, the checks go out. The checks come in, the checks go out. Mostly I did word-processing and cringed at the writing (ahem) skills of the Bank's then-Vice President. How people can handle billions in transactions each day and not be able to write so much as a mediocre business letter is beyond me.
One jammin' type-o-rama fun-fest of a word-processing assignment had me re-keying a hospital's entire nursing manual for almost ten hours a day for three days straight. (Can anyone say "TAPE BACKUP"?! I knew you could.) The language used in the manual was a bizarre mix of human and medical legalese...so, of course, I got a script out of it. It started as a monologue, became a major dialogue, and went back to being a monologue with a few lines of dialogue interspersed. (Well, I guess it's not technically a monologue, now, is it?!) In that final form, entitled "Neonate," it was produced by the WaterFront Ensemble of Hoboken, in NYC, at the Raft Theatre. It was an Equity Showcase, which meant that, at age 22, I had my Off-Off-Broadway debut as a playwright and was thereby invited to become a member of the Playwright's Guild. If you like this script and want to see the full one-act it comes from so your professional theatre company can produce it, e-mail me and ask about "The 'Who-Me?' Generation."
Yup. Same company, two businesses. No, the ski track wasn't in the same place as the canoeing...the canoeing happened on the Charles River, in Newton, MA, and the skiing happened in nearby Weston (I think). On a golf course. Which led me to discover that golfers are only slightly less fanatically insane about their "sport" than runners. Three inches of snow on the ground and you're out there trying to putt. Look. White ball. White snow. Filled cup. Get a clue! But at the time, they were both sports that interested me (canoeing and skiing, NOT golfing!) and the pay was good and the people were great, and the hours worked for me. Most of the time I was also working one or two other jobs, so --duh--I'll wake up soon. Of course the ski track was in Weston. Hence the NAME of the place, the WESTON Ski Track. Oye. Sorry. Where was I? Oh, yeah. More than one job...well, most of the time I was also getting paid to be a techie* at Newton South High School. Those were the days when David Breen was the Technical Director, before budget cuts changed things (oh, how I know about budget cuts). Now, I have no idea what they do with that spectacular theatre space I grew up in.
* Techie - a member of the technical crew in a theatre.
My mother tells very few stories about my childhood, and those that she does tell are the sappy yet endearing sort. She tells me that she knew I would be a millionaire by (insert next year's birthday here) when I was in first grade. Apparently, Mom'n'Pop and all the family friends were doing the usual ooh-ing and ahh-ing about a set of fingerpaintings I'd done in school. Well, l'il ole me decided that if they were THAT good, maybe people would buy them! Mom, in her ultimate wisdom, stifled her giggles as I trotted off around the neighborhood, paintings in hand. When I came back an hour later, my supply depleted, and my painty little paws full of a buck-five in change...that was when she knew. So, Ma? WHICH birthday do I make my first million by?
When I lived in Oklahoma ("Y'all come back now, y'heah?"), there was a fantastic art 'school' of sorts, called the Firehouse Art Station. I did just what I continued to do later in life and barrelled my way through all the classes that interested me, whether they were designed for kids or not (I was in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade while in Oklahoma). Somehow, I managed to get into the adult enamelling and silversmithing classes. The teacher's name was Joe something, and if he's out there -- thanks! I didn't get too far in the classes, but I learned some basic metalworking techniques, did a wax-relief piece, a couple of stone setting pieces, and discovered I had a real interest in enamelling. I still have the agate ring I made in his class, though it doesn't even fit on my pinkie now. Wish I still had whatever it was I made in wax-relief.
The lure of jewelry making held up for me...I made some nice pocket change for a --what, 9, 10 year old?--selling my wares at craft shows. Even got a front page picture of me in the somethingorother Daily, making glass beads at the fair. No small task to deal with a propane torch at that age. So, when I moved from Oklahoma to Massachusetts, my little business moved with me. I found a local craft shop run by a woman who was very polite about telling me that she only sold hand-crafted art, not "put together" art. When she discovered I actually made the stuff from scratch, she added me to the roster and even gave me work running the shop on her afternoons off. Going so "full scale," I needed a real business. Hence was born Uniquorn Crafts (from "unique" and "unicorn" -- I was in 6th grade, so sue me) She also happened to run one of the best craft shows in the area, so I was in that for several years...the show went to pieces when Judy got cancer after years as a chain smoker. The shop closed a short while later, and I found out she died of her cancer sometime during my junior or senior year in high school.