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To Work Alone (But I Repeat Myself)

November 30, 2009 7 Comments

[Editor’s Note: Something like three years old, this one is.]
{Author’s Note: Something like Yoda, that comment was. An editor there is not}

I work alone.

Not always, of course, but generally. This was not always the case.

I’ve worked in about every kind of work setting. Mill building. Clean room. School. Office. Concrete block building. Ditch. Shed. Barroom. Boat. Hospital. Home. Above ground. Below. Hot. Cold. Dry. Damp. Boring. Terrifying.

The vagary that makes any setting go is the other people. And now there aren’t any.

I’ve been responsible for hundreds of employees at one time, and just a few at others. Hundreds of employees is much easier. When you only have two, and one is named “Rob,” and you find out that “rob” is a verb, not a noun, you’ve got a fifty percent failure rate. I had a guy constantly found sleeping at his workstation “working” for me once. He was just one in a hundred. No big deal.

But to work alone is to be your own annoyance. You’re the laziest, stupidest person present. There is always a person to encourage sloth — you; but there is never anyone to shame you into holding up your end. You’ve got both ends. And the end in the middle.

Sometimes, the light is good. The tools are sharp. The wood is flat. The mosquitoes are on vacation. Your shoes fit. There are no splinters. Whatever you look for is on the shelf. The dimensions add up. Vivaldi comes on the radio. The money comes. The floor is swept. Nothing is late. The phone does not ring unwonted. The blade does not wander.

And when all that happens…

How the hell would I know? I’d settle for two of those things at the same time. I’m all alone.

Have A Pleasant Thanksgiving (Yer Mother!)

November 26, 2009 6 Comments
[Editor’s Note: From 2006. I was Thankful I could run it again instead of being original]
{Author’s Note: Happy Thanksgiving. And there is no editor}

There are lots of news stories available –the majority of them, I think– expounding on the horrors of Thanksgiving. “Send us your dysfunctional family Thanksgiving disaster stories” is the lede on every radio program I can find that hasn’t jumped the gun entirely and started with “Tell us your Christmas horror stories.”

I’m not having it. Thanksgiving is lovely. Or it should be.

Thanksgiving doesn’t beat around the bush; right in the name it tells you it’s a day to be grateful. Complaining about it seems to me to be like going to the art museum and complaining that the paintings are obscuring your view of the walls.

Hmm. Perhaps that’s a bad simile. I’ve been to many museums where the dropcloth daubs they hang on the walls aren’t as interesting as the off-white paint, now that I consider it. So please insert “Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy” in the preceding paragraph where “art museum” appears. Thanks.

Anyway, it’s not about you. For one day, at least, I don’t want to hear about your crabby attitude towards your assembled family and your overcooked turkey. I don’t want to hear about the lousy TV you’ve got to watch the football game on. I don’t care if you don’t like the floats that drift by Macy’s like garish barrage balloons. Put a sock in it. It’s not about you.

It’s not about any one of us. It’s about remembering that everything all of us have is a gift, and we could lose it, and we should take time out from our lives for one day a year and acknowledge that.

Have you ever been in a soup kitchen on Thanksgiving? I hate the preening socialites and politicians that visit there on Thanksgiving to get face time on TV. I think much more kindly about the people that feed those poor souls on November 25th and November 27th, when the cameras aren’t interested.

There’s a look on a person’s face, when someone gives them something they need that they might not have otherwise. It’s the look on the face of the man in line at the soup kitchen. It’s gratitude.

I’m going to give it a try today, that look. It looks like Thanksgiving.

Month: November 2009

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sippicancottage

A Man Who Has Nothing In Particular To Recommend Him Discusses All Sorts of Subjects at Random as Though He Knew Everything.

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