Day 50. My school called. To say, “You remember the course you registered for?” Well, there are 11 chapters of advanced reading due. Thanks for the warning. Maybe they did try to call me two weeks ago but it shows you how inward-looking these places can be. They assumed I’d be in North America waiting for their call. I was in India.
Rumor is I’m reclassified. That means put into a clerical position, hard to bit out of. I got my truck home from Eugene's by 12:30 (in the morning), still jetlagged. I programmed in some graphics and learned sound FX.
[Author's note: I worked for a closed shop union, the phone company. Since they rarely fired people, what they do is reclassify the type of work you're supposed to do. In this particular case they took 262 craft workers, such as myself, and moved us into data entry positions. This is always enough to make a certain amount of people quit. Of course it doesn't work on me, because I'm excellent at clerical work.
This embarked on an era of peace and prosperity for me, something I called “The Happy Time”, 1984-1989. Being a speed typist, I could complete my entire day’s quota before 11:00 in the morning while being paid full craft wages. If I took a few extra hours off, nobody said anything as my work was leagues better than the department standard. I was making $40,000 a year doing nothing. Wisely remember, however, that I dislike clerical work for a living – in this case I knew it would not last forever.
[Author's note 2016: this $40,000 is about $93,000 in 2016, which doesn't sound like much, but remember, back in 1984, both taxes and prices were, relatively, quite a bit lower.]
In this case, temporary wound up being five years. You name it, I traveled there during that time. I went back to school, often four nights per week and earned the equivalent of an MBA. I even bought a Cadillac. While I have nothing else to show for that time, I have no regrets or illusions about the alternatives. When I meet new people, I’m so glad I wasted the money, not the time.
Eugene was a friend of mine who let me park my truck, a 1977 Ford F150, at his place near the airport when I traveled. I usually made a special trip to get it back, since I suffer badly from jet lag and won’t usually plan to drive home.
I had an early model Apple IIe computer and was studying programming. I decided to leave graphics and sound effects, since I was no good at it. This was around the time I developed a series of spreadsheets (called Visicalc) to recalculate mortgages.
But I would like to point out two things. One, I could not find anyone else in the area to collaborate with on advanced programming projects (there wasn’t anybody) and two, I could not find a banker who knew what I was talking about on the mortgages. Both ventures failed for being years ahead of their time. The fact is, whiz kids had not been invented yet.
Additional note 2016: this job reclassification turned out to be one of the biggest events of my life, but it should not be presumed a golden plumb landed in my lap. I was one of hundreds affected, but I was the only one who made good on it. By having a steady paycheck (nothing uncommon about that in 1984 but a union wage was nice), I committed to returning to college to get some education I could use.
It was a bitter victory. It took nearly ten years to fully graduate, during which time I joined no campus teams or organizations, took up no student activities, never hung out on campus except to study, and only dated two women from my classes. Sounds like fun, huh?]
Last Laugh
Remember Lori Singer?
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