Labor Day is always celebrated the first Monday in September. That’s because, even back in the 1800s when Congress made it a federal holiday, everyone wanted to sleep in on Monday mornings. After you finally wake up this Labor Day, I invite to join me in thinking about work. Don’t do any; just think about it. Think about the jobs you’ve had and all they’ve taught you. Think about how what you’ve done for a living has formed you into the unique person you are. After that, you can go back to bed. Like many teenagers, I began my career in the restaurant business. There are few better jobs for teaching one about human behavior than waiting tables. People are cranky when they’re tired and hungry. I know I am. And they get crankier when you mess up their orders. I also learned about faith and forgiveness at the restaurant. Every Sunday morning, the church crowd rushed in, everyone hoping to enjoy one of the restaurant’s famous caramel rolls. I don’t recall the exact order, but let’s say the Lutherans dismissed first. That left the Congregationalists praying, "Oh Lord, let there be caramel rolls left." Often there were not, partly because we Catholics usually had our services on Saturday night and the agnostics had no schedule at all. Watching the ensuing chaos, I learned how hard it is to practice forgiveness when one sits through a church service dreaming of caramel rolls, then gets beat out by another denomination. After the restaurant, I did a short stint at the drive-in where I learned that when you can eat your mistakes, you tend to make more of them. I was working at the hardware store the day Elvis died (other days too). The majority of my time was spent dusting which was lucky because I knew nothing about hardware. I’m proud to say that by the time I left for college, I had learned a few things, for example, that a 10-penny nail doesn’t cost 10 pennies and that it’s a joist, not a joyce. While I was in college, I began my career in radio, first doing news. My boss called me after one of my first newscasts to tell me that before my next one, I’d better change my name to Ann. He didn’t think anyone would take me seriously as Dorothy (think Oz). I’m not sure anyone took me seriously as Ann either, especially changing my name mid-shift like that. Eventually I became an announcer so it didn’t matter if anyone took me seriously. I spent the next 10 years playing requests, giving the weather, and sitting through countless sports broadcasts. During the games, my job was to plug in sponsor messages at the right moment which I did – usually. I’ve never been a sports fan, and more than once, I awoke to a strange, crackling sound – dead air as it’s known in the business. While living in a small town in Iowa, I worked for a daytime station which broadcast every sporting event local students were involved in. The broadcasts were carried over phone lines like regular calls, except when a game was coming in, the receiver was still in its cradle and the buttons on the phone didn’t light up. Even a thinking person could forget the phone was in use. And I wasn’t always thinking. One night, after several basketball games, I signed off the station late and went home, only to be awakened by the phone at 5:30 a.m. My boss had discovered that I’d never disconnected the phone line. The station had been making a long distance phone call for … oh … about 15 hours. Fortunately I didn’t lose my job, but I am still paying off the phone bill. (Thank goodness for weekend rates.) In my current career as a public relations person-columnist, I can’t eat my mistakes, which is lucky because I make a lot of them. I don’t deal with joists or 10-penny nails anymore. But the lessons I learned about human behavior have helped me immensely. Staying awake on the job is important too.
"Around the Bend" appears regularly in the Advocate and about 15 newspapers in the Midwest, including the Rapid City Journal. Rosby, Rapid City, S.D., lives with her husband and school-aged son.
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