I've had a lot of jobs. I've been the new guy at work more than I care to admit. It was losing a job that inspired me to start writing this blog. It's bleak, but I've learned that nothing is permanent, and that companies expect absolute loyalty from their employees while giving nothing back. In 2014, when I was let go with an injury, I spent a lot of time in my own head - introspecting, praying, and trying to work out a new plan. It was then that I came to realize that life is a series of moments. I was at a crossroads of every single moment in my life - if any of those previous moments hadn't happened, I wouldn't be where I was that day. I was (still am, TBH) the result of every single moment in my life; every single decision I'd ever made. And, I was exactly where God wanted me at that moment.
The first job I was forcibly removed from was a job at a factory producing plastic wrap. When I got a call from a temp agency, I thought that they were looking for temp workers - you know, because of the whole 'temp agency' thing. So, when I told the floor manager that I'd just graduated college with a shiny, new degree and was looking for something to tide me over and pay some bills while I looked for a career, he didn't take kindly to that and called the temp agency right away to have me removed. Kicker was, phones weren't allowed on the production floor - I got fired halfway through my shift and had no way of knowing. Oh, halfway? Shifts were 4a to 4p, three days a week, then 4 to 10 on the fourth day. Except for this day, when the machines weren't working. 5pm rolled around, and I was told that I could grab a second lunch (which I didn't pack). 6pm rolled around, and still nothing. 7 and 8pm rolled around, and my feet felt like they'd fallen asleep. Even though I had good boots on (Doc Martens Ironbridges), 16 hours standing on a concrete floor kicks your ass. This was Super Bowl Sunday in 2012, for reference. I left, checked my phone, and found out I'd been fired at 8pm, then went to the Super Bowl party I'd been invited to, to show up halfway through the third quarter.
The second job I was forcibly removed from was another temp agency fiasco. This was doing road flagging along construction sites, and the first time I'd had my life threatened on a jobsite. They said "Call dispatch before 5pm for your assignment next day." Trouble was, no cell phones were allowed on job sites, and jobs frequently went over that 5pm. This job never actually hit a full 16 hours like the plastic wrap factory, but again, when I told them that I wanted this job to make money in the interim until I found a better job, they said "No, your contract says that you're available sunup to sundown, within an hour's drive of Grand Rapids, Michigan." I told them that this wasn't what I understood when I talked to the lady in the office, and that I'd be quitting, and the dispatcher went on a tirade saying things like "You don't know the stress you're putting me under," and "I can't keep scheduling things like this with all you people." Ultimately, she fired me for attempting to quit.
The third job I was forcibly removed from was a strictly seasonal job, though I did get to work on a lot of cool road projects in West Michigan that summer. I was a materials tester at a firm in Grand Rapids, doing testing on soil and concrete samples for construction sites - stuff I'd actually learned in college! We did testing on a lot of cool, high profile jobs in the area: The Grand Rapids Farmer's Market, the Jenison Fine Arts Center, the wind farm north of Ludington. I say "forcibly removed" here because, although it was a strictly seasonal gig, I was released early after fucking up one of the concrete tests for the wind farm. Fun little tidbit though: I've got some coasters made from the concrete samples at one of the jobs we tested that I'm still using today.
I landed a gig as a valet, which everyone in the organization agreed was a terrible fuckin' job, and actively encouraged all of us to take days off to interview elsewhere. This was the second job that I'd had my life and well-being threatened at. I have no idea if I'm legally allowed to type this, but whatever. There was a 'cognitively impaired' individual walking around our parking structure, pantomiming the act of shooting everyone. I alerted security, they came down, and scared him off. A second time, a cancer patient threatened to take me out back and kick my ass, so again, I called security. This time, I got the disciplinary write-up because "he's going through chemo, we call it 'chemo brain' when the exhaustion kicks in and he can't control his outbursts, and I should've known better and deescalated things."
After 2 years of that, I got a job at a company that made screen printing machines. This is where I broke my wrist skateboarding, and got fired after a month for "not enjoying my work." "Family business," my ass - We care about our workers, and want them to have the best experience possible, which of course means no health insurance benefits, very little on-the-job training, and dropping new hires on their asses when something comes up. This is when I fell into a really sour mood - between not being able to work, being on doctors orders of not doing any exercise, even walking because increased heart rate could hamper my healing process, and having a $10,000 operation (cut down from $30,000 because we had Obamacare insurance), I was deep in the shit. To further complicate things, the company kept pushing back on my unemployment claims, saying that I was disabled and physically unable to work...despite a doctor's note saying that I was more than capable of doing things like office work, even operating a forklift or other machinery. This dragged on for months before it finally went into arbitration, and the courts ruled in my favor.
The next 2 jobs I was forcibly removed from were touched on in The Trump Article. Ending the Obama-era first-time homebuyer tax credits caused one homebuilder to have to reassess their business plan and scale back operations. Since I'd just gotten a bump up to a new role to help out with increased sales volume and that was no longer coming to fruition, I was cut loose. 2 years at a hotel doing maintenance, and I landed a better-paying job at a cabinet company. The cabinet company was owned by an Italian firm, and was therefore, subject to the Trump tariffs (on aluminum and metal products coming from the European Union). With the confluence of internal shake-ups in the sales department, their income had dropped (for the time being), and their expenses had suddenly gone up 25%. Since, yet again, I was on another temp-to-hire situation, my contract was not renewed at the end of my temp service. The homebuilder has re-formed, and cut down a lot of their material assets - last time I drove by their office, there were literally no company vehicles in the parking lot. The cabinet company had to stretch their 12 month expansion plan out to 24 months, but they've restructured and are doing well. It was here that I started this very blog.
More recently, I was fired from a hotel for adhering too well to safety standards. I brought concerns to management about mold in the walls, and refused to do things like stick my arm in a shit-filled toilet to manually remove a jam, and stand on top of a ladder in a truck bed to reach a piece of tape on a light (as opposed to renting a lift or something). I wasn't getting the jobs done fast enough because I insisted on doing them correctly and safely...and this was confirmed to me by a buddy who was a manager of a different property, who was asked in a managers' meeting if he had any maintenance staff that they could send over because "they were gonna fire the maintenance guy [that was me] at their other property because he refuses to do work like we ask him [that was unsafely]."
And finally, I got let go from a different homebuilder on a weird justification - basically, the guy who hired me fucked the company up so badly that they had to undo his entire legacy (including re-hiring people that he'd fired, and re-instating policies that he ended). Unfortunately, that also meant undoing all of his hires. I was let go a week after one of his accountants, and shortly before one of the purchasing agents. There was an aspect of the CoVid "Stay Home Stay Safe" orders that made my job impossible to be done as timely as they wanted; most municipalities we worked with were brought down to a partial schedule, being open just a few days a week, and public hours for meetings or pickups were scheduled by appointment only.
None of this is saying that I haven't found professional success - I was a statewide leader in the number of building permits I acquired in 2015 and 2016, verified by MLS listings and a few other public sources. I was handpicked by the security team when former Vice President Dick Cheney was in town, and I was employed as a valet. I maintained a solid 30 minute turnaround time on maintenance requests at the first hotel I worked in. At the second hotel, I was able to identify many building code violations and bring them to the attention of management. But, I've tweeted before about intangibles, and how "luck" is such a divisive topic: Successful people and unsuccessful people alike say that the other group puts too much weight on luck: Successful people say that luck is how unsuccessful people mis-attribute the sheer tenacity and willpower of hard work (though that sounds like some manifestation bullshit); and unsuccessful people say that there are many intangibles and things that we cannot control that contribute to one's success.
I tend to fall in the latter group, as I look at several anecdotes from my job-hunting history:
-In college, we had the president and CEO of one of the largest property developers in Michigan's Upper Peninsula give a presentation, wherein he talked about getting his first job. The reason he got hired over any others was because when he was leaving the office, he put his hand on the door handle and pushed out. Everyone else put their hands on the door frame. His interview, qualifications, and experience didn't matter - nothing tangible mattered, except for how he left the room
-At my first hotel, I was tasked with filtering through resumes and online applications. My GM pared the pile of applications down by half by literally tossing every other resume into the trash. This instantly cut the field of applicants from 20 down to 10. Those 10 in the trash - their qualifications, experience, and skills didn't matter. They were randomly (in the most literal sense of the word) disqualified for being in the wrong place in the pile
-At the valet service, I stumbled upon a notebook from one of the managers who had done interviews. In this notebook were written things like "Too much eye contact - do not hire. Handshake too firm - do not hire." These candidates did exactly what they were told to do (firm handshake, eye contact), and were disqualified for doing so.
-At an interview of my own, I showed up in a suit and tie, and was told flat-out that I wouldn't get the job because I was dressed too nicely - dress for the job you want kinda thing. The job was at a soil laboratory, and I would've been better off coming in wearing jeans, boots, and a nice polo.
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