​​​​​​Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.

College jobs

When you have college expenses, and you’re not born into Bill Gates’ or Warren Buffet’s family, you typically need a scholarship, a grant, a loan, or financial aid of some sort. Me? I needed to find summer work. 

My first official college job was working for a so-called landscaping company, thrown together by a sketchy high school classmate. The pay was low and spotty, and worse, my friends and I were being bossed around by said classmate. So after that pre-college summer, I realized it was time to get serious about making money. 

The next summer I was happy when a friend’s mother found me a job cleaning the offices at her company. Okay, maybe “happy” was too strong a word for an engineering student who thought he was worthy of a more dignified technical job. But I could sleep all day, do the janitor thing at night, and still have time to hit the bars after work. Groovy. 

I later found out that this job was only available because the previous janitor, Nicky, left the job so that he could move up the ladder to a production job in the plant, where he could earn more money. Another American success story. 

My job was fairly easy, as the offices just needed a little sweeping and vacuuming, some mopping, and some emptying of trash baskets. I later realized that there was a counterpart janitor, Luis, who had parallel cleaning duties out in the plant. Unfortunately for Luis, he had a much rougher time of it as the plant workers were pigs. Not only was the plant floor trashed every night, but the plant restrooms were disgusting. It was reported that in the women’s room they sometimes smeared used sanitary napkins on the walls so that they stuck there! And he had to clean them off. I felt very badly that Luis had to deal with all that. But not badly enough to switch jobs with him. 

I was enjoying my easy money when one day, I was told that I was being let go. What? Somewhat like Rain Man, I thought I was an excellent janitor. Turned out that Nicky was failing at his new plant job, and according to union rules, rather than fire him, they had to let him take back his former janitor job if he wanted it. And he did. Damn. My easy money train came to an early stop.