Sins of Omission: Suppressed Work History — Part One

My “official” résumé, is, shall we say, a pared down and highly streamlined version of my actual work experience.

The last time I counted, I believe I’ve had at least 24 jobs or occupations. Spanning a period of about 50 years, there is a great deal of overlap as I rarely had only job on the go at any given time. It is also somewhat apparent that many of these jobs were of extremely short duration, so it’s easy to understand why I’ve always whittled down my résumé.

Here are some recollections of those brief experiences that didn’t make it onto my C.V.

The Most Mind-Numbing Job: Unwrapping Chocolate

My very first summer job was at a chocolate factory in the west end of Toronto. For some unstated reason, thousands of “premium” chocolate bars had to be unwrapped then loosely wrapped and packed into large boxes to be sold as “bulk chocolate”. No skills whatsoever were required. It was sufficient to have a pulse and to be able to lift moderately heavy boxes.

I don’t know if this was legal, but we (meaning myself and the other summer workers) were paid by the box. You can imagine that haste was paramount.

Here was the process. Boxes of wrapped chocolate bars were brought to our area by a trolley. We would grab a bar, remove the wrapper, and fling the naked chocolate into another large box lined with plastic. These chocolate bars contained lots of nuts, so one can imagine what piles of these naked bars looked like.

We wore no gloves, no masks, and handwashing was optional at best.

You could sneeze on the chocolate, cough, spit, drop it on the floor — nothing mattered except hair. Those of us with long hair were required to wear it in a ponytail; no hair nets were provided. The odd box would be spot checked for hair and if a strand was found, you wouldn’t be paid for that box. I have no idea what was done with the contents of the offending box, but I suspect they were still sent to whatever might have been their intended destination.

In the morning we would arrive for our eight-hour shift and be somewhat motivated to get underway. Just before our morning or afternoon breaks, and just prior to lunch we would get a little punchy, making silly jokes, shouting obscenities, and launching chocolate at one another (so long as the production supervisor was out of eyesight). But generally, we would slip into a mind-numbing reverie, like automata performing the same motions over and over.

Once quitting time arrived, announced with a Fred Flintstone kind of whistle, we would spill out of the building, staggering, and laughing with a slight edge of hysteria born from hours of boredom and light physical strain.

Total employment time: About 2 or 3 weeks — enough time to earn sufficient money to buy a pair of outrageously overpriced platform shoes. Yes, that is correct. I worked weeks to buy a pair of shoes.

Valuable lesson learned: I did not want to work on a production line, ever, ever again, shoes or no shoes.

The Shortest Job on Record: Orange Polyester Shirt in a Plastic Orange Hut

In my early teens I went for an interview at the mall to work in an Orange Julius stand. It was the silliest looking structure, sitting in the middle of the mall walkway, made to appear like a large hollowed out orange. The “manager” was a slightly older teen with a terrible case of acne (he had pimples on top of pimples) and no discernible chin. The interview lasted less than 5 minutes and he promptly offered me the job, starting right at that moment. I accepted, put on the uniform, and went to the front of the orange to begin my training. Suddenly I saw my reflection on some mirrored surface, and in horror I saw myself inside a ridiculous fruit-like structure, wearing an utterly dreadful tacky orange uniform.

Total employment time: ten minutes.

Valuable lesson learned: Never accept a job that requires you wear embarrassing attire and serve customers from inside an orange.

One of My Stupider Moments: Secretary for an Import Export Firm

This Italian office had maybe eight men working as sales representatives involved in the export of Italian products to the Middle East. I was often alone in the office and the job involved answering the phone, minding the telex machine, and typing correspondence.

One day the telegraph operator called to dictate an urgent message coming from Saudi Arabia. She begins reciting “Ancona, Torino, Torino, Empoli, Napoli, Torino, Imola, Otranto, Napoli…” and so on. These are the names of Italian cities, and I was baffled… was this some kind of coded message? I frantically wrote down each city name, pleading with the operator to slow down in her recitation. I could hear her disdain and puzzlement as to why I was so very slow. It turned out that Italians use city names in the way we use words like “alpha”, “bravo” and “tango” to quickly designate letters. Yes, I was green.

I lasted a couple of months, quitting after several of the salesmen thought it would be puckish to leave several porn magazines strewn around the office and slipped into the stacks of correspondence on my desk.

Valuable lesson learned:  It’s not always a good idea to be the only young woman in an office filled with over-confident alpha males.

The Loneliest Job: Office Manager and Secretary to Absent Businessmen

I had just moved to a new town in Italy and needed a job badly. All I could find was a position where I would be the office-manager and secretary for a small — actually miniscule — import/export firm.

The job: Come to the office daily, stay all day, answer the phone, check the telex (this was before fax machines), type up any correspondence required by the owners, and dust the furniture as needed.

The two partners were seldom there and almost never together. But when their visits to the office coincided, sparks would fly. This is where I learned the Italian expression “chi ha socio ha padrone”, meaning “he who has a partner has a master”. They disagreed on almost everything, and the arguments were epic — shouting, cursing, slamming of fists on the desks. These moments were the most interesting of my short time there.

The office was located in an apartment condo building of sorts. The rooms were largely unfurnished. A few desks, a boardroom table, some chairs, and a file cabinet or two. The decor was dark and tended to gloomy browns. The windows faced north, getting virtually no sunlight, and looked onto a rather nondescript courtyard.

There was nothing to do. Days and days on end, wandering aimlessly around empty rooms, praying for a phone call, a telex, a fire alarm — anything to break the tedium. I would draw, sketch, read, and contemplate how horrible this job was turning out to be. At the end of the day I was exhausted, mentally and physically, from doing absolutely nothing.

After a few weeks I quit. They offered me a huge raise to stay. I doubt this reflected their good impression of me: I’m certain they knew that no sane person would accept the position; rather, said person would quickly lose their mind while aimlessly haunting their offices. I declined.

Valuable Lesson Learned:  There isn’t a salary large enough to compensate for boredom.

Part Two will follow eventually — or not; I may omit it.