Have you ever had a bad job? I mean the type where absolutely nothing goes right? I know I've had plenty of bad jobs due to
incompetent bosses, too many bosses, responsibility without authority,
understaffing, unpaid (but required) overtime, etc. But what I'm referring to is this: everything that could go wrong
does go wrong regardless of bosses, staffing, and so forth.
I once worked as a substitute paperboy. When I was about 13 years old I lived in an
area where there were about 15 different newspaper delivery routes within just
a couple of miles of my home, and all of them had a permanent carrier assigned
to it. But I discovered there was no
one to fill in for them if they were sick, or out of town, so I volunteered for
the job, and I got it.
Each route had a skip list where any address on the list did
not receive a paper. Simple enough, but
no one kept them up to date. My first
day as a substitute resulted in about a 40 percent error rate, yet I was
completely accurate according to the list.
While my boss didn't blame me, I had to spend a couple of hours
redelivering papers. It turned out this
was a problem on every route I filled in on.
After a while it just wasn't worth it.
My next job was at a golf driving range where I was assigned
to pick up the golf balls by using a small tractor with a special device for
scooping up the little round demons. I
discovered there were several golfers who were very accurate off the tee. Still it took me about a month to decide I
was tired of being the target for these sadistic idiots. No wonder I never wanted to play golf.
A local dairy needed a bottle washer, and I thought I was up
for the task. The automated machinery
worked wonders at cleaning almost all of the bottles, but a small amount had to
be hand cleaned (it's amazing what can be found inside a milk bottle). I had an arsenal of special scrubbers and
solvents designed to remove everything from mice to tar. I guess I didn't have the right touch since
I ended up breaking about 1 in every 3 bottles. My employer wasn't upset with me, but I didn't like breaking a
bottle and covering myself with a combination of broken glass, solvent, and the
contents (known or unknown) of the bottle.
After entering college, for one semester I had the job of
driving a bus to shuttle students between the campus and a remote dormitory a
few miles away. The dorm was an unused
housing facility for nursing students at a hospital and was located less than
thirty yards from the quite zone entrance to the emergency room. This would not have been a big deal except
for the bus I was driving was completely uncooperative with any rule or
regulation it had to follow.
The college had purchased the ancient machine from a
national cross-country bus company, and the non-working odometer showed in
excess of 300,000 miles on it. How many
miles it actually had was anyone's guess.
Rather than put money into repair for safety or reliability, the college
decided to paint it in hopes that a good-looking bus would be a good running
bus. It was painted forest green with a
big black splotch on the side that reminded everyone who looked at it of a
giant grasshopper, but I had already named it the Caterpillar due to its slow
lumbering movements.
I can't remember the order everything happened in, and some
things were consistent without any logic behind them. For instance the air brakes would engage at 35 mph unless it was
in fourth gear. The clutch may or may
not return after being depressed. More
than once a window fell out onto the highway while driving, and once the entire
exhaust system fell out just as I entered the Quiet Zone at the hospital. An unmuffled diesel engine is rather
loud. Also every time I pulled up in
front of the dorm I had to cross a speed bump.
No matter how softly I rolled over it the air horn would come on and
stick so that I had to get out of the bus and run back to the engine
compartment to unplug it. But
unplugging it also meant the loss of lights, and much of the driving was in the
evening and night. At least when I
plugged it back in the lights usually came back on without the air horn
sounding off. Usually.
I wasn't alone with these problems as the other drivers all
had similar experiences, but the head of the facilities department, who had oversight
of the bus, never had a problem and refused to believe most of our
complaints. That all changed one day
when he was filling in for one of the drivers and taking it to the hospital to
pick up the students. Along the way was
a routine police traffic stop checking driver's licenses. At the stop, the air horn came on, the
engine backfired and the muffler fell off, and a window fell out. He was ordered to pull the bus to the side
of the road where it caught fire and burn to the ground along with one of the
police cruisers.
I don't believe the students at the hospital dorm made it to
classes that day, but the next morning a rental bus was available, and a few
weeks later a brand new school bus in school colors arrived. The old Caterpillar was never referenced
again by orders of the school's chancellor.
I've occasionally wondered what that old bus cost the school in the long
run. I doubt they ever again purchased
a used one.
