Work, work, work

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

Most people will celebrate Labor Day weekend with a campout, backyard barbecue or perhaps they’ll sneak in a final lake day before we transition to raking leaves and wearing flannel shirts.

Me? This time of year often finds me ruminating over all the jobs I’ve held and the unbelievable number of years I have left until I can retire.

Don’t get me wrong, I like working. The freedom that comes with earning your own living is amazing, and there is an incredible satisfaction that comes with a job well done. But I’ve worked some pretty terrible vocations over the years, each one leaving a lasting impression.

My first job was at The Garden, a restaurant that used to be located on the edge of Sand Creek just south of where Spud’s is today. I started as a dishwasher — one of the most thankless jobs in the entire service industry. If you’ve never felt the pruny mush of your fingertips after washing dishes for hours, you’re not missing much. 

I began taking shifts helping prepare food for the chefs, which mainly meant cracking open thorny king crab legs and removing the meat and deveining bus tubs filled with shrimp. Because of this, I didn’t eat seafood until my late 20s. The smell was just too much to handle.

I loved many of the people I worked with at The Garden, but when I gave my two weeks’ notice so I could work more shifts at Hidden Lakes Golf Resort, where I was hired to wash golf carts and help customers, the head waiter sneered at me and told me I was fired — to date the only job I’ve ever been fired from. C’est la vie.

I later worked at Gas ’n’ Go, where I stocked shelves after school, pumped propane and ran the cash register until the graveyard employees started their shift. Again, I liked many of the people I worked with, but to this day the smell of propane makes me think of long workdays as a high-schooler who’d rather be anywhere else.

College work experiences didn’t turn out any better. Unable to find a job in my college town, I finally settled for working at a Foley’s department store, which is like a low-rent Macy’s. I had to wear a suit and tie every day and soon found that working in corporate retail is its own circle of hell. My favorite moments were when they placed me in ladies’ handbags and pantyhose, which I knew nothing about. Customers would ask my opinions about which item to buy and I’d just shrug and go back to folding my purses.

After college, I moved to Los Angeles and started working in the film industry as a production assistant, which is like a gopher who the higher-ups send to accomplish menial tasks that need to be taken care of during film shoots. While many of my work days were spent in the office during pre- or post-production, the shoot days were always exciting, if not miserably long. 

As my producer said at the time, “We pay you for a day’s work, and if we want to work you 24 hours in a row, that’s just the way it is.” 

Once, I literally worked for 36 hours straight on a spec job for which I didn’t get paid, only to wedge the camera truck under a gas station awning on the 37th hour, just before I was to drop it at the rental shop. Instead of dealing with the problem, I called the producer and informed her she could pick up the damn truck at a gas station on Wilshire Boulevard.

On another shoot day, the crew wanted to use a public park for a commercial. My supervisor handed me a shovel and a garbage bag and showed me the acre of park that needed to be cleared of goose shit. I ended up spending eight hours that day shoveling excrement, only to learn the director changed the location at the last minute. My work was all for naught. I then entertained the notion of dumping the garbage bag of poop through his sunroof.

We’ve all worked a job we didn’t love. We’ve all experienced long days on the clock, no matter if you’re just starting your journey or finishing up a long career. We’ve all been there.