FTV: I Hate My Job!

 

     How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I hate my job!’?  Entering my ninth year in retirement in July of 2026, someone asked how I was filling my time.  The standard answer is, “I am so busy it makes me wonder how I had time to do all this other stuff when I was still working full time.”  Part of the answer lies in the fact that we all can burn the candle at both ends when we are younger.  It suits me just fine to be busy because, unlike a ‘real job’, retirement allows for unlimited time for coffee / tea breaks, naps (as necessary), spontaneous changes to the daily  plan, and playing unlimited TIAD cards (Tomorrow Is Another Day).  

     As we discussed the pros and cons of retirement vs working for a living, it dawned on me that A) I really do enjoy being retired and B) even when work life dominated my time, I can not remember having a job that I hated.  Let me clarify that last statement.  We all have times when we don’t like aspects of a job and in moments of frustration, many of us may even state it in the stark terms listed in the above title.  With those moments aside, the eternal optimist in me always seemed to find more pros than cons in the jobs I held at any given period of time.

     With parents who survived the deprivations of both the Great Depression and World War II, we were raised to make productive use of our time.  Being the youngest of  three kids, the chores passed down to me were the ones my older brother and sister did not want to do (especially if they interfered with their ‘older sibling obligations’ (some job related, many others social or recreational in nature)).  The first ones that became ‘mine’ were mowing the lawn and shoveling snow.  The truth be told, neither of these seemed like work to me and the latter became infinitely easier when we invested in a new Ariens snowblower when I was in fourth grade.  It took me many years to realize there was no need to rush home after school to crank up the Ariens before brother Ron got home because I don’t think he was trying to win that race (sister Barb was not one who ever shoveled snow).  Even when we found ourselves home on snowdays, nobody else made a move to do the snow work except your’s truly.

     We were accustomed to ‘making wood’ as every home I remember living in had a fireplace and/or a woodstove (be it in the sauna, garage, or basement).  Dad’s ‘building chimneys and fireplaces hobby’ translated into the need to cut firewood.  This was a job brother Ron usually didn’t escape, especially in the winter.  Dad would cut tops left behind by logging operations and we would employ our trusty Ski-Doo and a sledge to haul the blocks to the truck.  Once the folks made the decision to indulge their drum crazy youngest with a new set of Ludwig drums in the spring of 1966, making wood took on a new meaning.  When we had enough stockpiled for our own use, Dad would sell pickup loads to neighbors and friends for the princely sum of $8 per load (note, not $8 per face cord) which eventually went up to $10 per load.  “Come on boy,” he would announce on Saturday morning, “Time to pay for those drums.”  By then, Ron had a steady job at the Red Owl grocery store so assistant wood maker became my exclusive domain.

     Technically, this would count as my first ‘paying job’ even though the money never went through my hands.  I vowed to never own a house with a fireplace (even though we still had one at camp plus a wood stove and a wood fired sauna).  A decade later, I owned an all electrically heated home (yes, very expensive) and ended up putting in a forced air wood furnace.  My years of hauling and piling wood must have been good training because I actually liked getting back into the game over the forty plus years we heated our house with wood.

     By my senior year in high school, my band The Twig began playing regularly enough that I didn’t have to follow big brother to the Red Owl for employment.  I never really considered playing music to be a ‘job’.  I am certain that the folks were happy to see their investment in the Ludwig kit had not been for a passing fad.  The Twig kept me in spending money until June of 1971 when we graduated and The Twig headed off in three different directions.  When I inquired how Mom put up with having me pounding on the drums and three different bands rehearsing in the basement over the years, she laughed and said, “Well, we always knew where you were.”

     My first job outside of the ‘family home chores’ and ‘getting paid to play music’ categories was as a dishwasher at the Huron Mountain Club.  Failing to find summer employment after the band broke up (after applying at Shopko, the Holiday Inn, and Ramada Inn),  Dad came home from work one day with an opportunity.  He said, “I had coffee with former sheriff Tom Jernstad today.  He works as the resident manager at the Huron Mountain Club so I asked if they had any openings for summer help.  He said all their positions were filled, but by mid-June, someone always decides they don’t like being so far from town and they quit.  Have him put in an application at the club office on Front Street.”  The next day, the office girl gave me the same line about no positions being available but after I handed in my application, she smiled and said, “Good luck.  Don’t call us, we’ll call you if anything opens up.”  

     The next day, my phone rang:  “If you are still interested, be at the Club and report to their office tomorrow by noon.  Pack enough clothes for at least the first week.”  “Hey, Dad,” I asked when I called him at work, “Where is the Huron Mountain Club and can you drop me off there by noon tomorrow?”  He simply said, “Start packing and I will take you up to Big Bay in the morning.” 

     Having never ventured farther northwest of Marquette than Big Bay, I may have begun to have second thoughts myself as we motored another ten miles beyond Lake Independence.  When we hit the club’s gate and guardhouse, it was another ten miles of gravel road to the HMC club office.  The secretary there told me someone would be along in a bit to show me to my quarters and that my day off would be Thursdays.  “We have a way to contact the office in Marquette if there is an emergency,” she told us, “but the nearest phone is the phone booth next to the General Store in Big Bay.”  Dad said, “We will pick you up after your evening shift Wednesday evening and before then, I will see if we can figure out a car so you can get yourself back and forth.”  When the folks picked me up the next week, he said, “With Ron in basic training (he got his draft notice on Christmas Eve of 1970), he said you can use his Camaro for the summer.  If you wreck it he promised he would take it personally.”

     This was all new to me.  Living across the street from the Northern Michigan University campus, it had always been my plan to live at home while attending college.  Now, I was going to spend the summer living fifty miles from home with one day per week off the clock.  My job was listed as ‘bus boy’ but it soon became apparent there was a lot more involved than just busing tables for the breakfasts, lunches, and dinners served in the club dining rooms.  It also included things like unloading the trucks delivering produce and other kitchen supplies, sweeping and mopping the dining room floors, raising and lowering the flag each day, and starting fires for the members in the club house adjacent to the dining facilities.  We had to sub for the dishwasher and pot washer when they had their day off on a rotating basis.

      For some reason the other bus boys did not like the dishwasher job.  I only had to sub for the pot washer once as the other bus boys were happy to swap with me on the pot washer’s days off.  I liked running the Hobart dish machine so I subbed for the dish washer for the first half of the summer and took over full time when he later quit on very short notice.  We were expected to work through Labor Day weekend and the head bus boy and I ended up covering the last four weeks of the season alone when the other bus boys followed the dishwasher and bailed early.  The kitchen manager told us it was too late in the year to find replacements but if we were okay with finishing up the season (just the two of us), he would give us a little extra at the end of the season.  John and I busted our tails three meals a day, seven days a week for the rest of the summer and got a pat on the back and a, “Hey, thanks guys, I knew you could do it!” from the kitchen manager.  Apparently that was his idea of ‘a little something extra’. 

      No matter how we were slammed, we found the two of us could still finish off all the shifts during the busiest part of the season earlier than we had with a full crew.  With the former head chef taking over the kitchen manager’s job over the next two summers, I was able to hold down the dish washer job and play band jobs with the band I joined in the spring of 1972.  Burning the candle at both ends meant I was pretty worn down by the time NMU resumed in the fall semesters of 1972 and 1973, but there wasn’t any point in time when I said, “I hate this job!”  I often told my students, “Being a dishwasher is a very satisfying work.  You start with a pile of dirty dishes and end up with piles of clean cups, glasses, silverware, and plates.  If it had paid better, I might still be a dishwasher today.”

     Playing music kept me in spending cash during the next three years of college.  Between my junior and senior years, I had already decided to not be the oldest kitchen worker at the HMC as everyone else I had worked with was moving on.  A twenty hour a week office job (which I inherited because the previous student worker left school in the second semester of my junior year) fell into my lap.  I walked in the Geography Department office one day and my up the street neighbor, Professor Pat Farrell, pointed at me and said, “Hire him.  You want a job?”  I said, “Sure – what job?” 

      Answering the phone, filing, typing memos, duplicating – it was typical ‘office work’ and my boss, Ceta, the regular secretary, was a hoot to work for.  The only time I ever saw her get mad was the day my Methods of Teaching instructor (who was also my advisor) came in and complained loudly about how many typos I had made on the exam he had given me to type for an off campus extension class.  Ceta glared at him and said, “You dropped this on him yesterday and said ‘I need this typed and 20 copies in two hours.  If it had been me, I would have told you to do it yourself.  Don’t you dare complain and even think about doing this again.”  As she said this, she rounded the office counter and backed him out the door.  When she came back in, she read my mind and added, “And no, he better not hold this against you in your class work or he will have me to answer to.”  He must have known this as it never came up again.

     One thing led to another and by the time the semester ended, Pat asked me what my plans were for the summer.  “We usually hire a graduate student to be the Assistant Manager at the NMU Field Station by Munising, but none of them want to spend the summer out there.”  When I told him I had not planned to return to the HMC and needed to take my Geographic Field Methods class that summer, he hired me on the spot.  This summer of living away from home would be a much better resume filler than ‘dishwasher’.. 

     NMU held what were called ‘Intersession Classes’ between the spring semester and summer school classes.  I spent the last six weeks of the semester and the run up to the intersession classes as the department secretary when Ceta’s husband was transferred to Dubuque, Iowa.  In the spring of 1974, I had signed up for a ten or twelve day geology trip that took us to Sudbury, Ontario and then on the circle tour around Lake Superior.  I asked Pat if this would be a problem but he assured me that I would have a couple of days to spare before we had to go out to set up the Field Studies camp at Cusino Lake.  “Oh, by the way,” he added, “You will have to get a chauffeur’s drivers license so you can drive university vehicles.”  I took care of that before we left on the geology trip but it made me wonder what other little surprises this new job would hold for me.

     True to Pat’s words, we got back from our jam packed geology tour and I had a week to recover.  We met at the Science Building at 9 AM to pack up two university cars with all the materials Pat would need to teach the required Field Mapping class I would be taking.  One of the conditions of my employment was the need for me to take at least six credits – Field Mapping accounted for four credits.  The other two I was able to audit a class that paired teachers and high school students in a four week session of field trips around the Pictured Rocks National Lake Shore and other assorted places of interest.  I knew what to expect from Pat’s class, but the Biology professor herding the teachers and students around was completely unknown to me.  The audit class was going to be the second half of my summer schedule so it got put on the back burner for a few weeks.

     When we arrived at the Field Station, there were many tasks lined up for me to get familiar with.  Once we opened up and cleaned the two dorm buildings, the kitchen, and the classroom areas, we had two days to get up to speed.  Pat’s high school age son was given the task of attaching the flat bottom skiff used as a swimming platform to the anchor point fifty feet off shore.  We hauled out the canoes that would be available for class and recreational use.  There was a gas powered pump down by the lake we had to fuel up and test – this pump was for the emergency firehose mounted in the center of the compound.  At this point, Pat mentioned we would be building a new shelter for the firehose and he wondered if I had any ideas.  I sketched out the type I had seen at the Huron Mountain Club with an estimate of the materials we would need.  He came back from Marquette the next Sunday toting what we would need and we put it up in a couple of evenings.

     I knew that one of my primary jobs would be to stay on the job on the weekends when the professors and most of the students went home.  The Field Station was off the grid and relied on gas powered appliances and a diesel generator for electricity.  All of the kitchen appliances save the stove and oven were electric so someone had to tend to the generator.  After every so many hours of operating, the diesel generator’s oil had to be changed.  Pat had me do it once and then informed me it was now my job to monitor the hours and do the oil and filter changes.  Toss in lawn mowing and cooking for myself and anyone who did not go home for the weekend and there were not very many slack moments in my schedule.

     I enjoyed living off the grid for three summers at the club and one at the field station.  I got some bonus hours in the fall of ‘74 when I would go out to Cusino Lake and open up the station for various campus groups who would hold retreats there.  Some were ‘working sessions’ and some were purely social.  All I had to do was open things up, fire up the generator and the gas water heaters and then stay out of the way.  The one perk was the underground gas tank that was located near the generator shack.  Pat made sure I knew my last job every weekend was to gas up my trusty truck before I locked the gate behind me.

     In a span of five years, I had played in two bands and worked three years at the club and nine months for NMU.  Maybe it was the variety of jobs I held, but I never felt overwhelmed nor did I ever hate my jobs.  Upon graduating in the spring of 1975, I was actually looking forward to finding a teaching position so I could concentrate on doing just one job.  It didn’t take long to learn that one wears more hats as a teacher than all my part time jobs combined.  Down the line, we will revisit this topic to find out how I managed to still not hate my job for the 43 years I spent in the public school trenches.

Topo Piece Video:  There are so many good songs about working for a living . . . so we offer Huey Lewis and the News!