Tag Archives: writing

Flap Flipper

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Posted: April 23, 2015 at 10:26 am

 

I was a robot for two  months.

When I worked in factories, a mechanized packing line of household commodities consisted of a crazy, spider-like machine which built an open carton. The carton moved along a conveyor where it intersected with another conveyor bearing the product. The product was grouped in sixes or twelves and dropped into the carton, which continued along its conveyor until another machine glued its top closed. The cartons were then stacked on pallets and taken away by forklift.

One summer, the Ivory Liquid packing line had a problem. Between the time 12 bottles of Ivory Liquid dropped into the carton and the time the carton’s flaps were glued and sealed, a nozzle was supposed to deliver a tiny puff of air toward the back flap of the moving carton. Without this air puff, the flap remained at a 30º angle, when it needed to be at a 120º angle to be properly glued shut. The air nozzle was broken, resulting in unglued cartons, log jams and crushed bottles of Ivory Liquid squirting their contents on the factory floor.
They brought in the expert, me, to solve this crisis. I sat in a chair beside the broken air nozzle for two months. Each time a box rolled by on the conveyor, I gently eased the offending flap into the correct pre-gluing position with one finger. My pinkie. Taxing. I could have mimicked the faulty nozzle and blown on the flaps instead, but I thought my factory buddies would make fun of me.

What stupid job have you had?

Nudity for the Shoe Salesman

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Posted: April 10, 2015 at 2:05 pm

 

Three shoe salesman incidents are seared on my brain, and unsurprisingly, two involve nudity. At 16, I needed a job to help finance a school trip to England. Why I thought, why anyone thought, I was qualified to sell ladies’ shoes is a mystery. I worked Thursday and Friday nights and all day Saturdays at the Foot Pad, a tiny shoe store plopped in the middle of a large department store. I remember the day I received a five cent raise to reach $1.95 per hour.

Incident One

I was working alone one afternoon, dusting the glass shelves which held only right-foot size sevens, listening to the canned mall-music. A raven-haired, 25-year-old braless beauty in a flowered print sleeveless shift stopped to browse, bending low to grab a shoe. I faked dusting as I eyed her with my superhuman peripheral vision, and was rewarded when her right breast popped completely out of her dress. I don’t know what it feels like to have breasts (an ignorance I intend to maintain), but I would think that one would be aware if one’s bare breast was set free. Wouldn’t its unrestricted weight be noticeable? Wouldn’t it feel cooler from exposure to the air? The woman seemed not to notice, and continued browsing. Obviously, I wasn’t going anywhere, and I openly stared at her, mouth gaping. She stood and faced me, handing me a shoe.

“Do you have this in a size six?”

I looked directly at her breast, a beacon to my desires. It was large, the largest I had seen as a teenager. Don’t judge me – remember, I was only 16 that day at the Foot Pad. I don’t know how much time passed, but the woman finally realized I had neither responded, nor looked at her face. She glanced down, discovered her exposure and immediately……did nothing. Not a shriek, not a coverup. She looked up, looked me right in the eye, and smiled. When my face had completed its conversion to firetruck red, she casually tucked in her breast. I went to the storeroom to find her size six and to recommence breathing.

Incident Two

Late one Friday night, a lumpy woman, continually fussing with a lock of hair which stubbornly fell across her face, rushed into the Foot Pad.

“Yes, can you help me, I have a formal dinner to go to tonight, I need black shoes, open toe, perhaps two straps, something like that,” she said in one long sentence. Before I could respond, she pulled a shoe off of the display and continued, “Oh, this one is nice, and I think it’s my size, let me slip it on, yes that’s good, can you get me the other one, I think I’ll take them.”

I went into the storeroom and found the box with the matching shoe covered in tissue paper. The woman handed me the shoe she had tried on and I placed it in the box with its match. As I rung up her purchase, she said, “Thank you so much, I’m in such a rush, I’ve never bought a pair of shoes so fast before, but I have to run home and get ready right now. I might just make it. Bye.”

I felt very good about myself, helping the woman prepare for her fancy night out. This feeling quickly dissipated the next day when she returned to the Foot Pad in a fury to show me that the shoe I retrieved from the storeroom was not in fact the match to the shoe she had grabbed from the shelf.

Incident Three

A 30ish woman in a short dress asked to try on a sandal. She sat down and waited for me to retrieve her size from the storeroom. I placed the shoebox on the carpet and knelt at her feet to help her try on the sandal. I buckled two straps for a comfortable fit, and without looking up said, “How does that feel?”

The woman did not immediately respond, so I raised my glance, only to see, to see…..uh-oh. While I had been fiddling with her sandal, the woman had spread her legs quite wide, and I assume she knew that she was as panty-less as Britney Spears exiting a sports car. What was she thinking, what was her plan? I wouldn’t say that I quickly glanced away, but to my credit I soon stood up and pretended that nothing was amiss. I can still see details of this woman’s dirty bits in my mind, but I can’t for the life of me remember if she bought anything that day.

What weird job have you had?

Exciting Career Change – Part Two

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Posted: April 2, 2015 at 12:59 pm

 

You may have realized by now that the announcement of my new job with the Vancouver Canucks was a fiendishly clever April Fools joke. Some of you may have received my blog later than noon yesterday, which is technically cheating, but I had a problem with my website.

First off, I would like to thank many (surprisingly many) of you for your heartfelt congratulations – it’s quite a compliment that you actually thought the Canucks would hire me. Maybe you forgot all the nasty things I’ve been writing about the legal profession lately. Don’t feel too badly if you were fooled; many of my law school classmates, who should know that I’m not smart enough to be the General Counsel of anything, called to say they always knew I could do it and that writing thing was never going to amount to anything anyway.

The person most disappointed to learn that this was a joke was my mother, who thought her wayward son had finally gotten a real job.

My favourite response came from my friend Carlo, who said, and I quote, “You are NOT giving up on your dream…….so this must be an April fools joke…..” I didn’t think Carlo knew me that well, but he was right. I am not quitting until my book is finished and I’ve strong-armed every one of you into buying it. And after all Carol has been through, she would never let me give up at this stage anyway. Onward!

Let’s Try This Again!

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Posted: April 1, 2015 at 1:01 pm

My website domain expired yesterday, so you may not have been able to access today’s blog. It’s all fixed now (I hope). Let’s try it again!

 

Exciting Career Change!

As a loyal reader of my blog, you’ll have an inkling of the struggle I have had in completing my memoir. I’ve been at it for over two years, and the current re-write has taken its toll. As my editor told me, I’m not a bad writer, but what I’ve produced so far is such a mess that it does not constitute a book. I am facing another year or two of restructuring and re-writing, before I even attempt to find an agent or a publisher (with no guarantees that any agent or publisher will accept me). Therefore, for the sake of what’s left of my pride, my sanity, and my marriage (long-suffering Carol can only take so much), I’ve reluctantly decided to put my book aside and go back to practicing law.

I know this seems like a step backward for me…it’s also not that simple to un-retire from the Law Society of BC. Since I’ve been out of law for three years, I have to pay re-instatement fees, take remedial education classes and re-write my bar exams. That may seem onerous, but I have been offered an opportunity that will make it all worthwhile.

You may not know that a number of years back I had a billionaire client, a bit of an eccentric, but we got along famously.  I recently bumped into him at a charity event. He reminded me how poorly I took it when I learned that the deal his family made to buy the Vancouver Canucks and Grizzlies from John McCaw had fallen through. That was about ten years ago. But my billionaire had good news….he was just finishing the final touches on his purchase of the Canucks from Francesco Aquilini. Something about Aquilini’s expensive divorce forcing him to give up the team. Anyway, my billionaire asked me to become the Canucks’ new General Counsel. I could never say no to this job; the guys on my beer league hockey team would kill me. I rate this as the best lawyer job in the country. I should have my requirements with the Law Society cleared up in time for the 2015-2016 season. I’m not sure how many tickets I’ll have to spread around, but I’m sure I can arrange something for my loyal readers. Go Canucks!

Exciting Career Change

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Posted: April 1, 2015 at 9:51 am

 

As a loyal reader of my blog, you’ll have an inkling of the struggle I have had in completing my memoir. I’ve been at it for over two years, and the current re-write has taken its toll. As my editor told me, I’m not a bad writer, but what I’ve produced so far is such a mess that it does not constitute a book. I am facing another year or two of restructuring and re-writing, before I even attempt to find an agent or a publisher (with no guarantees that any agent or publisher will accept me). Therefore, for the sake of what’s left of my pride, my sanity, and my marriage (long-suffering Carol can only take so much), I’ve reluctantly decided to put my book aside and go back to practicing law.

I know this seems like a step backward for me…it’s also not that simple to un-retire from the Law Society of BC. Since I’ve been out of law for three years, I have to pay re-instatement fees, take remedial education classes and re-write my bar exams. That may seem onerous, but I have been offered an opportunity that will make it all worthwhile.

You may not know that a number of years back I had a billionaire client, a bit of an eccentric, but we got along famously.  I recently bumped into him at a charity event. He reminded me how poorly I took it when I learned that the deal his family made to buy the Vancouver Canucks and Grizzlies from John McCaw had fallen through. That was about ten years ago. But my billionaire had good news….he was just finishing the final touches on his purchase of the Canucks from Francesco Aquilini. Something about Aquilini’s expensive divorce forcing him to give up the team. Anyway, my billionaire asked me to become the Canucks’ new General Counsel. I could never say no to this job; the guys on my beer league hockey team would kill me. I rate this as the best lawyer job in the country. I should have my requirements with the Law Society cleared up in time for the 2015-2016 season. I’m not sure how many tickets I’ll have to spread around, but I’m sure I can arrange something for my loyal readers. Go Canucks!