What I Did For Money

A CAREER – OF SORTS

Turning 65 is long behind me. For me, there was no gold watch, institutional eulogies, or golden handshakes. Fact is, I never lasted longer than 4 years in any job. I think the Minnesota Preference test imploded when I took it. Freedom 55? Hah!

But this is not a look-at-poor-little-old me story. A wealthy retirement may not be mine but look what is: Health (5 years clear of throat cancer), love (wife and friend of 43 years, 2 wonderful daughters, 3 challenging grandchildren), friendship (a wide circle that has lasted with humor, goodwill, and honesty for over 40 years), and the hope and joy that comes with every new day.

And what a ride that ‘career’ was. Maybe I should have skipped reading Hemingway’s ‘In Our Time’ at a young age because my working years were spent diving into every new venture and task that came my way (save anything involving heights or power drinking). For whatever reason jobs were either discarded because I was bored, had developed a strong antipathy toward them, or economic factors took the job out from under me. I was not a so-called unskilled worker - although I believe that description is one that should apply to effort and not education or training - with high school, university, and a professional accounting program under my belt– but none of it led me to the stability of an extended career at any one place or organization. In fairness, too, it all might have been a lot rockier if it weren't for my long-suffering and understanding wife who took me as I was.

So for any of you young people who might be despairing of long-term damage resulting from ‘career indecision’ and a wretched labor market, listen up. Commit to enjoying the voyage you’re setting upon, try your best, don’t be afraid of hard work, laugh at idiots and the peddlers of meanness, keep your honesty, remember your bias, and trust yourself to muddle through, no matter what. Giving up may be the biggest sin but quitting when you have had enough seems only sensible to me. Just don’t quit because you don’t think you have what it takes or the job is still unfinished. Unhappy with your resume? Try this one on for size:

1. Washed windshields at the drive-in theatre
2. scraped ice in between periods of hockey games
3. washed pots and pans in an army hospital
4. poured sidewalks with a wheelbarrow
5. built sidewalks with treated fir and a hammer
6. operated a steam roller
7. pruned lettuce for a grocery store
8. drove a delivery VW van
9. cleaned up puke in a reserve army officers quarters
10. cut grass with a scythe
11. drove an ambulance for the infantry
12. set type for a small printing company
13. delivered 80 lb. cement bags to oil service rigs
14. made caramel popcorn in a candy store
15. wrote seven 500-word essays in three weeks on the same subject (Christian culture) for bonehead English students
16. drove a moving van for 3 summers
17. unloaded bananas at a rail depot
18. washed cars at a car wash
19. worked as a teller in a bank
20. did the accounting for an insurance company
21. sold insurance, door-to-door for another company (topping my list of

odious jobs)

22. handled accounts payable for a oil well drilling company
23. worked as a partner in a camp construction firm (success story! Sold company for huge sum, became vice-president at age 29, was fired at 30 – Peter Principle lived!)
24. sold op-ed articles to newspapers
25. helped a large community spend their community chest monies
26. wrote and delivered political satire commentary for national radio
27. helped another camp construction company get back to profitability
28. acted as leasing agent and building manager for office tower (#2 on the odious list)
29. helped promote rock concerts
30. became part-owner of a dance hall
31. collected rents from a slum apartment (#3 with the added fillip of extreme danger)
32. punched meal tickets and managed student workers at a university mess hall
33. mopped floors and cleaned toilets
34. evaluated real estate portfolios for wealthy ‘players’
35. helped set up a high-end restaurant
36. acted as lawyer for a warm and wonderful Ukrainian clan who loathed and mistrusted lawyers (go figure)
37. did business plans for a patented golf accessory, a summer resort horse rental business, a big-game outfitter, an outdoors writer who wrote for the Nordic market; a rancher, a day-care, a service station, a janitorial firm, a landscaper, an office supply firm, a wholesaler, a trucking company, and a roofer
38. drove used cars to new markets
39. wrote a book of short stories, two novels, and a memoir of life in Dubai.
40. wrote sales and accounting manuals;
41. managed an accounting software company (#4 on odious list, only because senior partner who hired and fired me was seriously unhinged; company had great product and might still be around if it had listened to me (had to get that in – I was good at turnarounds)
42. computerized and modernized the systems of an ngo AND helped bring it out of debt. (An interesting postscript to two of my turnarounds was that upon reaching profitability the principals immediately began to ignore my advice, forged ahead blindly in new directions and promptly went back into debt. Sigh …)
43. helped a marketing firm manage its funds
44. sat on the boards of three service agencies
45. delivered milk in -30 temperatures
46. bought and sold a property in reverse order (you had to be there and, no, I am not proud of it)
47. worked a turnaround for a real estate company
48. speculated in the stock market
49. became a teacher of cost accounting at a large technical college
50. later a teacher of computers, math, and business at an Arab Men's College
51. worked as an oiler on a backhoe on a pipeline (after working with a pick and shovel smoothing out the pipeline ditches)
52. helped the elderly keep their money safe from money marauders (read large investment firms)
53. carried 15 thousand dollars in cash (small bills) 20 miles through a city in the back seat of my '59 Beetle to pay an army regiment its bi-weekly pay
54. with 2 helpers and a skid, moved upright pianos down steep hillside
55. peeled potatoes in an army kitchen
56. speculated in rural land deals during oil booms
57. bought property in Scottsdale sight (site?) unseen
58. worked (briefly) in a tire shop
59. rented mobile offices to oil companies
60. ran a one-night casino (quite illegal and, as it turned out, unprofitable – we couldn’t spot cheaters fast enough) for drunken construction workers
61. wrote and directed a television commercial (the principal said he was happy and that it helped sales – I seriously doubt it)
62. wrote puff pieces for trade magazines (hell hath no fury like a pea-brained business owner who’s purchased a full page ad and wonders why you can’t be more effusive about his godawful product)
63. shoveled grain
64. mopped floors at a law school
65. sat in a private dining room of a downtown hotel and, over wine and dinner, accepted an envelope containing one hundred thousand dollars in share certificates (at the time, a 3-bedroom bungalow in a new district ran under $30,000
66. sold beer to freshmen
67. taught accounting over the phone (the first distance learning university)
68. lectured seniors graduating from a college on careers in manufacturing
69. helped build service rigs (#1 in job satisfaction; when I arrived, the small plant couldn’t produce one rig a month and was losing money; in a year we were building 3 a month and making fistfuls. The secret? Pay

good people well and keep them in the loop)

70. tried out for Jeopardy (passed the q and a, failed the charisma test)
71. became a tax consultant
72. worked as campaign manager in civic/provincial elections (thankless and a discouraging encounter with venality)
73. delivered truckloads of potato chips from railspur to warehouse (Nice work if you can get it)
74. shot at a gopher with a sub-machine gun to keep my boss, an army lieutenant, happy. (75 rounds, 9mm, 25 yards – missed)
75. worked as a short-order cook
76. sold travel trailers

I never worked for a government.

Keep smiling! Who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Robert Alan Davidson

Naked Leadership

Naked Leadership

Remember the fable about the king wearing no clothes? If you don’t, it told of a vain king who believed he was wearing the most opulent outfits when, in fact, he was wearing nothing. He would parade around his kingdom in the altogether and his subjects, afraid to tell him the truth, would applaud his choice of garments while chuckling behind his back.

For some reason, I see this fable having relevance to today’s political/economic environment in the U.S. Those who proclaim to be leaders in these fields are presumably proud of their achievements and success and are generally lionized by an ever-accommodating media. But . . . . Don’t you get the feeling that they, too, have ‘no clothes on’ - that they believe they are doing a job of leading the nation but are, rather, empty of ideas, morals, consciences, any hint of real leadership qualities, and self-awareness? Now I don’t know if things were ever really different but I’d like to think they were and that one of the reasons we progressed as far as we have (until 1980) was in part due to responsible leadership. And I know there must be several happy exceptions to today’s cadres of incompetents. But . . . .

What, really, constitutes leadership qualities? This is trickier than what first might appear. Usually, our first thoughts revolve around the great leaders of history – Alexander, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Henry V, Lincoln, and Gandhi. We all think we know why they were leaders. It’s funny, we all think we know a leader when we see/hear one? And we probably do. They lead for reasons of strength of character, will, intelligence, passion, vision, and moral fibre. Yet, excluding Gandhi, it seems to be more difficult in this era to reach any sort of critical concensus as to who might have been a genuine leader. The main reason, of course, is that we know so much more about those who would have us believe they are leaders. The Big Lies that underpin any military or political campaign find it harder to take root amongst a more critical and analytical public. Arguably, one would have to go back to the Second World War to find much agreement on calling anyone a real leader. We’ve spent almost all the last half century dissecting our so-called leaders and finding them wanting to some degree. It’s the real world’s version of ‘No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus’. God knows we’ve bought in many pretenders and from experience alone I can only think of three who may have measured up– Lyndon Johnson, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and Jimmy Carter, respectively for reasons of strength of character, intelligence, and moral fibre. In my estimation, there’s no one else even close (although I admit to ignoring – for reasons of ignorance – Ho Chi Minh). It’s an odd feature of the modern age It’s easier, for a start, to examine some of the types we are led to believe are leaders and by looking closer, discover they’re really something else entirely

We’ve had 3 years of Barack Obama and discouragingly little has happened. The medical plan was ostensibly a step forward but it is seriously flawed and it’s hard to find anyone jumping up and down to proclaim its virtues. The economy is still in the toilet, Congress is grid-locked in shallow partisanship, and the ship of state has no idea where it is headed.

So how can the country get back on track? The truth is that it will take a special person or, ideally, several special persons, working independently, to lead us out of this downward spiral. Committees, associations, and clubs won’t do it. Grassroot movements must lead the way and, through it, we will find the leadership we need. Political parties of today seldom cultivate real leaders. The inner circles are caught up with finding candidates who are malleable. Leadership is, by its nature, individual. ANY organization that has been around long enough (what constitutes ‘long enough’ is, in most cases, discouragingly short) finds it intrinsically difficult, if not impossible, to recognize and reward a true leader. Vested interests and the inevitable turning of vision inward to deal with the future of the organization rather than focusing on what it was originally set up to do, poisons the selection process and we end up with the George Bush’s of this world; corporate CEO’s who refuse to think beyond this year’s bottom line and University presidents who think listening to the corporate world is more important than providing a real education.

Many of us thought Obama had the potential to be a true leader (it would be interesting to know what he thought he had achieved when so many real people put their faith in him because he behaves like his taking of office was nothing more than being selected by some mysterious committee), but he has proven to have surprisingly little substance. For all his flowery oratory he certainly SEEMS to be amenable to agendas we don’t see or understand. But it’s not only him. Looking over at the current political/economic horizon, is like peering into a Bosch painting, madness personified. Character warps of astonishing mediocrity cavort in corrupted system and thumb their snouts at the notion of a responsible democracy. Theirs is a world of entitlement, venality, cockamamie theorizing, and insensitivity. For all their faults, the founding fathers would have jailed most of these brigands and scofflaws.

Where does this wretched situation leave you and me? Well, we can start looking for real people to follow; start believing in all that Hallmarkian cliche about believing in yourself (Such truths have no business being peddled via greeting card – they belong in the school curricula). Which means thinking for yourself. Which means evaluating what you hear and see – independently. And if you find someone, don’t be so quick to try to tear them down. We’re all imperfect. We can cooperate. Remember, this isn’t a struggle to get people to agree with you as to the path we take; it’s a struggle to let civilized debate take preference over selfishness, narrow-mindedness, puritanical screeching, and institutionalized deception. Take responsibility for yourself as a citizen. Be your own leader. There are no other solutions.

Robert Alan Davidson