Once I woke up in my own vomit after a night of heavy drinking. I’m lucky I didn’t choke in my sleep. I remember carefully washing my bedding and mosquito net the next day. It should have turned me off to drinking but didn’t.
Alas, all good things come to an end and so I returned to the US in December 2009. It was the bottom of the great recession, and the job market was tough. While I waited for a job offer, I took up stand-up comedy as a hobby. I was so good at it that 5 years later, I ended up joining the Army. Anyway, in October 2010, I got my first engineering job at specialty glass manufacturer in Chicago. It did not go so well. I got fired a year and half later and the experience was so disappointing that I decided to start my own tutoring business. I never quite broke even, so I took another engineering job about 9 months later. Even so, it was fun to be my own boss for a while.
About this time, I went to an Army recruiter to see what my options were. He tried to rope me into Officer Candidate School, but when I saw that the application required a photo, I gave up. Not sure why becoming an Army would require a photo, like an audition for a movie. When I asked about being a linguist, he told me there’s a five-year cool-off period between being in the Peace Corps and any military intelligence job.
From time to time, when I told people I was unemployed, they’d say: oh, you lost your job? And to that I would say: no, I still know where it is; they told me not to come back. My first engineering job was dull, and I spent many hours discreetly reading Wikipedia to pass the time. My second engineering job was in a bubble wrap factory, which was about as exciting as it sounds. And yes, one of the quality tests involves make sure the bubbles pop properly, though it is done with a special machine rather than by hand.
It was at this job that I had one of my famous run-ins with a tall but clueless boss. See, Illinois gets very humid in the spring and there was a frequent problem of water condensing in the silos that stored the plastic pellets. The tall, clueless boss suggested a blower to dry out the silo. I tried in vain to explain the concept of dew points and that a heater would work better. I could tell he did not like it when I asked him if he could keep a cup of coffee from freezing by blowing on it (hint for the physics-challenged: you can’t).
I only lasted 3 months at that job and my first day there was April Fools’ Day. I can’t prove the universe has a sense of humor; however, the circumstantial evidence is plentiful.
My nemesis in Chicago was a guy I met doing comedy. He ran one of the better open mics and I thought well of him at first. That changed when I made the mistake of debating politics with him on Facebook, and he resorted to various insults when he had no counterargument. So using his Facebook profile, I was able to track down his address and I knocked on his door unannounced. He wasn’t home, but he freaked out and never insulted me again. It was amusing to see the sudden flip from tough guy to coward so quickly. I should add that I later found out he was registered sex offender in Illinois because he went on a 3-year groping spree in his 20s. People who live glass houses should not throw stones.
Although I applied to the Chicago police and was invited to sit for the exam, I decided to take an engineering job at a plastic bag factory in Texas. It turned out about the same as my first engineering job, though it was great that I could walk to work. It was so boring that I drank a six-pack most days after work. My weight went up to 207 pounds vs the 150 I weighed in college and the 130 I weighed when I got back from Tanzania.
The biggest problem though, was my boss- my tall, clueless boss. Once, I ordered a part which was delayed by my company’s refusal to follow the supplier’s rules. I went to my boss for help. He then spent an hour giving me a lecture that began with him bragging about his high IQ and ended with him threatening that the world would chew me up and spit me out. I have no patience for people who demean me, so I responded by refusing to sit with him at the conference table at meetings. He didn’t like that and complained, which I found pathetic and amusing. When he gave me a sample of his own writing as being an example of good business writing, I replied with a list of the dumbest things he had written.
I didn’t think it was possible for a college-educated native speaker of English to write so poorly until I met that man. The phrase of his I remember best is ‘human-operated manual process’. I replied that all the manual processes in the factory are human-operated, unless we have trained monkeys. The last straw came when he asked me to write an essay about what I thought he wanted. I am neither a mind reader nor in elementary school, so I refused. When I was fired, I was given a nastygram which he clearly wrote but was too cowardly to put his name on. I was proud of the reply I wrote which was covertly delivered by a work buddy. It read:
***
Dear Fred,
I missed you in HR today. I figured you would want to savor the moment when the ax fell. You coward. I see also you couldn’t resist the urge to cram in a few more lies into my “get lost” letter. I’m sure you rubbed your oily hands together and cackled with glee. Since you were too chicken to face me, here are some parting words:
Remember that long chat last year? It was the one that began with you bragging about your high IQ and ended with you threatening that the world would chew me up and spit me out. I thought about walking off the job then, but I thought I could impress you with results. So much for that. I guess I just don’t have the Right Stuff for the heart-pounding, high-stakes world of plastic bags. People like you are the reason Dilbert cartoons exist. You’re a buzzword-spouting stuffed shirt with as much depth as a sheet of paper. There are engineers there with patents and PhDs. You really think you’re more impressive than them?
If you’re lucky, you have another 50 years left. I suggest using that time to learn how not to be a royal prick.
Peace & Love
***
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