I Used to do That for a Living; Landing and Leaving 108 Jobs Introduction, Chapter 1, Chapter 2 | Page 16

I Used to do that for a Living

the five can make it a bad job.
A bad work-site might be one that’s too hot
or too cold, stinky, noisy, dirty, poorly lighted,
disorganized, dangerous: any of the many environmental factors that compound a job’s difficulty. One worker’s idea of a bad work-site may
not be another’s. I found the inside of boxcar on
a summer day in Kansas a terrible place to do
hard physical labor. Some of the guys I worked
with, who did it all the time, didn’t seem to mind
it so much.
I’ve worked in offices where the boss was
too cheap to provide a habitable workspace,
where the desks and chairs were fit for the landfill, the break-room and bathrooms were filthy,
the supplies were cheap, and the building dilapidated—all while revenues and profits were
strong—where the boss failed to assign any value to employee morale, to reckon as how showing them some fucking respect in the form of
providing a decent place to work might accrue
to his own interest. More than one boss has dispatched me to the junk store to select my own
broke-down desk and chair. Nobody had to tell
me that that was all I was worth to said boss;
it was understood. Upon being hired for the last
regular job I ever had, at a well-heeled software
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