Actually for much of my all too common complaints (and memories) of the constant overtime, the, I thought, ignorant and uncaring supervisors, it WAS a much better job/career than I surely could have wound up in. I didn't have to be in "sales", didn't become a career burger flipper, didn't stay in the family business of movie theaters and didn't live in an office cubicle under the constant pressure of an always in your face micro-manager, we had them off and on over the years, I just didn't have to deal with them all the time.
I had freedom, even though I was part of a county organization I worked for myself, assessed the calls and situations, made the decisions, and my office was my truck cab and I could go almost anywhere I wanted and not cost me any money for gas, and get paid to do it too!
Could it have been better? Of course!
Could it have been a worse experience?
I saw those people come and go over the years that it probably had been a poor job choice attempt and resulting bad experience for them.
I honestly feel I was lucky, we we're lucky. I was lucky to have been hired on at a time of the beginning of several years of really good departmental growth and expansion in 1981, and been good enough and competent enough to last 25 years! Lucky that I was able to work in the same department and doing the same job as my wife, even though many thought that was a bad idea and we had to put up with all kinds of crap so nothing could ever be said of 'preferential treatment' because we were married.
We always thought it was so ironic that because we were married, we had to work opposite ends of the valley or one work the valley one work the desert so we wouldn't be "too close" to each other and be a "problem", while others were having hot and heavy relationships that nobody much did anything about, because they weren't married!! When I became a supervisor then I wasn't supposed to ever be on or able to 'direct' Stacy or give her any supervisory breaks at all. Never worked out that way though. I quite often went out on after hours calls with her or for or even for her, and if I was there and a decision needed to be made I just did it! None of the other supervisor's ever complained about it that I heard of and it meant they didn't get called about whatever the call was. You can check a past post about on-call to read what that was like.
And if a new much better life opportunity hadn't come up beginning in 2000 when we bought the property that ultimately became our semi-retirement place to live and work in 2006, we'd probably still be there. But we're very glad we're not!!
Our life away from California is and has been better than ANY could have been in the area we worked and lived. With the constant influx of residents, everything got more of everything. More calls, more and more and more time to get to the calls because of all the traffic, more expensive, more late calls, more on-call and less of the important things. Less people to do all these 'more' calls, less concern of quality over quantity of calls handled, less concern of just plain common sense and how to use it!!!!
Oh well. It is so easy to get going on 'tangents' when writing about working there!
Till next time, Tad
1 comment:
lol! I've got to call you on the "office cubicle" job now. I'll admit you have a lot of freedom in your truck roaming all over the world's biggest county. But not everyone working in cubicles has a micro-manager. I've had it very easy, working with an excellent team and since we're not just paper-pushers but technical problem solvers, we actually enjoy and look forward to much of what the day brings. Not everyone is so lucky, for sure.
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