The first year of university was an eye-opening experience in many ways. First, I learned that when you move to Ottawa, and leave your girlfriend in Hamilton, you blow all your rent money on phone bills, forcing you to get a job selling fries in a mall. And because your girlfriend is six hours away, you don’t exactly go home to a warm embrace, if you know what I mean. Brutal.
The school year ended, and incidentally, so did my relationship, and I returned home for the summer. My friends had scored jobs with the government and other places that would look fantastic on their resumes. I hit Hamilton without a single prospect, because, I had been so wrapped up in my big fry job that I didn’t really think to spend the time on getting a career-boosting summer job.
This was a period in my life where I wasn’t making my parents too proud. First, I spent way more money on absolutely nothing than my super-saver father could ever imagine. I called home for more rent money eighteen times in the eight months I was away, and Dad had decided that my second year would be a different story. Never having spent one second unemployed from the time he was sixteen (or however old you were when you started work in the olden days), my hardworking father couldn’t possibly fathom how I arrived home with no hope, and a general lack of desire to work.
I looked for jobs in the newspaper. Remember, I’m of the generation that lived the first 25 years of their lives without the benefit of the internet. No jobs. I went to student job centres, and asked around. Nobody ‘networked’ back then. One day, after I had long past given up hope, I found myself face to face with a Help Wanted sign, stuck to a pole. Wanted: Evening Help in Garden Centre, and a phone number. It sounded like cash, so I called.
Turns out it was one of those garden centres that sets up temporarily in the corner of the grocery store parking lot. Evening help turned out to mean overnight help. I had never worked with plants or flowers, and I had never once worked an overnight shift, so you can see how I was perfect for this job. The manager told me to come back at 11pm, and I would start my training. Minimum wage was about six bucks an hour, and that sounded like about six bucks an hour more than I was getting sitting at home. It also offered the added benefit of being able to escape my dad’s looks of disappointment and disgust that I was unemployed.
11pm arrived, and training commenced. First, the rules. There’s a trailer, but don’t sit in it. In fact, it’s locked during the night. There’s a cube truck, but don’t sit in it. Unless it’s pouring rain, and only after all the tasks are complete. It’s dark and it’s night, but don’t sleep. These plants cost lots of money, don’t let anybody steal them. Watering isn’t as easy as it looks, there’s a process, so don’t screw it up. If the plants die, nobody’s gonna be happy, and somebody is gonna pay. Enjoy your night, see you in the morning. Training over.
If you’ve ever been to the corner of a parking lot by a grocery store, you’ll have noticed that there is no tap from which to get water. Who knew? As turns out, in the back of the cube truck, there was about 8 miles of hose. I had to schlep that hose about 4 blocks to a gas station where my boss had negotiated some kind of deal to let us use their tap. I then had to walk back the four blocks, and spend the next two hours painstakingly watering every freaking bloom in the garden centre with exactly zero water pressure. The first night, this two hour job took about six hours. I then had to go back, roll up the hose, and return it to the cube truck, nicely coiled. I very clearly knew nothing about watering.
I should have quit in the morning, but I didn’t. I went home, exhausted, and slept until it was almost time to go back to work. It had rained during the day, so when I arrived at work, they told me I didn’t have to water. I know that it wasn’t digging ditches, or mining for coal, but a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders with that news. What I didn’t know was that there was a much worse task waiting for me instead. That day, they had received a shipment (a huge freaking truckload) of manure. It was bagged, but bagged manure still smells, and after a day in the rain, forty-pound bags of manure are some slippery shit.
My job…move the pile of bags exactly three feet to the left, and stack them neatly. That job took all bloody night. Some bags ripped open, some flew out of my hands, and neither my arms nor my back were at all prepared to move a ton of cow shit. Again in the morning, I thanked my boss for the privilege, and went home exhausted. The next night, same job, but this time, sheep manure. Have you ever smelled sheep manure? I don’t know what those fluffy bastards eat, but holy crap, it’s the most sickly sweet gross poo you’ve ever experienced. Again, a full night’s work, but this time, I also had to do the watering. My shift was supposed to finish at 7…that day, I didn’t get out til after 10.
The following night, all I had to do was water and organize the plants, which was welcome news after two nights of poo duty. I was getting pretty excellent at the whole watering thing, and had my chores done by about 12:30. That left about six and a half hours. I couldn’t sit in the trailer. I couldn’t sit in the truck, and I couldn’t bring a lawn chair. I was however, allowed to bring a book. That night, I fashioned the most beautiful throne out of bags of cow manure that I am sure anyone had ever built. I perched myself on the pile of poo and read the night away, stopping just in time to re-stack the manure before my manager arrived.
I would like to tell you that the garden centre job ended well, but it didn’t. After a couple of weeks of absolutely no contact whatsoever with my boss during the nights, I let my guard down. I was exhausted and feeling cocky, so I decided that a little sit in the truck would do me a world of good. It wasn’t raining, and my jobs weren’t complete. I don’t remember closing my eyes, but I certainly remember being woken up by my boss pounding on the window. He obviously didn’t know the rule about jolting a chubby dude out of a sound sleep. He asked if I had seen him moving the geraniums on the perimeter of the centre, and when I looked at him stunned, he relieved me of my duties, right then and there. Canned at two in the morning. Very uncivilized, and no HR or Outplacment representative anywhere in sight!
No more manure thrones. No more shifting shit from one spot to another spot, just two feet away. No more watering. A whole lot more disappointment from my dad. The story does end well, as from there, I got a summer job working for the Ontario Human Rights Commission doing intake on new human rights complaints. It was a great job, but ultimately it was still dealing with shit…just a different kind of shit.
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