It's been a number of days of broken things, faulty parts and ideas a bit porous. My daughter had a problem with her sewer line which has been problematic on and off since purchasing her house a few years ago. In the city we expect things to go away when we flip the handle. Rural residents are more familiar with those downward directed deposits coming back. The Roto-Rooter guy showed up at eight o'clock and I showed up at eight-fifteen so the daughter/homeowner could go off to her business where something else would probably break, too, or they would run out of critical cafe components.
The Roto-Rooter guy was not a young guy but diligently dragged the monster clean-out machine down the steps and started his work. Having been in the driver's seat of one of those devices a few times I'm thinking about slime-avoidance and the inevitable moment when the snake snags on something bad and becomes irretrievable. On a good day it all goes out and back in and at some point in forty to eighty feet of twirling the obstacle is scraped away and it gurgles and we're back in happy-land with the downward-directed home refuse moving and becoming the responsibility and property of the city sanitary workers who dump it in the Mississippi.
He was pretty quiet and it took about fifteen minutes of me telling every sewer story I could think of and asking him all the details of his snake before I got him talking. It was a nice snake and had a power option to push the snake out and to retrieve it. Nice. Finally, upon inquiry, he responded that he had worked for Roto-Rooter for thirty-two years. As a twenty-seven year washout of the corporate sewer world I was impressed and responded " well they must be a good company to work for or you must really like the work." It's a manageable job. You receive work orders via your smart phone application or a phone call, drive to the location, lug in your machine and a toolbox with a BFH and the ever present ChannelLock, open up the cleanout, do your thing, pack up, clean up, get paid, leave and start on the next work order.
This kind of job probably pays OK, you get to work independently and have time to think about things other than making money for your employer. Wanting to know how he felt about this as a career I pressed a bit and received a two-point response. "They have not made the perfect job, yet." "You have to learn how to let a lot of things go."
In my twenty-seven year gig letting things go was not my standard route because you had to get things done, keep things working and advance the whole environment...all the time. This notion mentioned in yesterday's post of getting your materials together, get your hands dirty and make things, not anticipating the next world-changing product but just plugging along and good work will emerge probably is complimented by the advice to let a lot of things go. You're not going to be an expert at everything and it's probably unusual to be an expert at anything. Just work and try to be good and let things go.
Some of the sewer cleaning people who've worked on my daughter's outbound lines have created horrible images of collapsing sewer tile and monster trees sending their tentacle roots into the sewer lines to create multiple obstacles and problems. High-tech people have sent cameras through the line and shared images of all the problems. The doomsday sewer people always follow it up with business cards for plumbers and solutions costing thousands of dollars. The Roto-Rooter guy charged $229 and recommended six-month followups with a big dose of copper sulfate to kill the tree roots and then "...you never have to call us again." "Like the Maytag repairman?" "Just like that."
So the lesson of the day is to let things go that you cannot deal with and probably a few that you should deal with and the day will go better and it might be a nice thirty-two year gig. Be good at whatever it is that you like to do or what you might be good enough to do.
On a very positive, bonus note, while standing in my daughter's basement I saw my green Igloo cooler from 1974 that I've been looking for since 2008. While that cooler has nothing to do with crafting a job/career plan there are a lot of stories and memories. I was glad to see it one more time and I hope that my daughter and her household add some good stories of their own.
It's still unseasonably cold. I'm burning lots of wood. That's a job in and of itself. You have to let things go and I'm officially deciding today to spend 12/13 through 1/15 re-visiting the LHH resources, picking up a couple of skill refreshers done on their learning/knowledge site and finishing a languishing web project. That's the plan.
Oh, yes, as I was driving home my daughter called and asked me to pick up something at the restaurant supply place. "Sure, I can do that. I don't even have a dumb job." At the supply place I tried to used my electronic ID but failed because I was using my Veterans Administration card. A nice person identified the problem. And so it goes without a dumb job.
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