Rant #1,639: Congratulations, I Guess

I hope everyone had a good Easter.

Now it is today, Monday March 28, just one month before my 59th birthday, but today, I want to congratulate myself for reaching another milestone, of sorts.

Today, Monday, March 28, is my 20th anniversary at my place of business.

Yes, I have spent 20 years at this place, and honestly, I cannot believe that I can actually say that.

I remember that 20 years ago, at 38 years of age, I found myself out of work for the second extended time in my life.

My previous employer, a burglar and fire alarm association, fired me for no reason way back when, in November 1995. I became a political football, and I was fired to show how much power one of the association's board members had over another board member.

Obviously, none of these people cared about me at all, as, just three months earlier, I had become a father again, when my wife gave birth to our son. I even came back early off my time that I took off, because the fellow I worked with got sick, so I cut my time off with my new child, and I ended up getting stabbed in the back.

There is so much else to say about that particular experience, but I won't say it here now.

Let's move forward into the winter of 1995-1996.

It was an absolutely horrible winter, and in January, we had one of the worst snowstorms we ever had, where a storm dropped 26 inches of snow on us.

I was working, sort of, as a newspaper deliverer, making all of $150 a week.

I was looking for a new job on a daily basis, could not find anything, and once the government found out I was making the ridiculously large sum of $150 a week for delivering newspapers at 12 midnight to about 3 a.m. in the morning, they were going to rescind my unemployment benefits, because I was making too much money.

In February of 1996, I got a new job, paying me exactly $7 an hour, working in a publishing house that put out directories. The boss signed me there, making me promise that I would not leave for a better-paying job. I assured him that I wasn't going anywhere, but, of course, $7 an hour, plus $150 a week from delivering papers, was not going to cut it.

And yes, I was still paying child support then, so I was literally operating on vapors.

Then I got a call, and another publisher called me in for an interview.

It was a publisher which put out a number of titles, all based on various industries, one of which was military resale, or about military commissaries, which are supermarkets, and exchanges, which are department stores.

Military service members and their families need these stores, because military pay is low, so they need to stretch their dollars where they can, and these stores allow them to do just that.

Anyway, I had two interviews, was hired, and the rest was/is history.

Today was my first day there, and since my two bosses were in Washington that day, I was given a transcription to do. To this day, I hate transcriptions, but I did it, and since then, I have written thousands of stories and probably have done dozens and dozens of transcriptions.

Like everyone else, I wish my job paid me better, and had increased compensation, but I have to say that for one of the few times in my life, I lucked out at getting this job.

It is just 12 miles from my home, I can get to work in a flash, and my job, as an associate editor of a publication that is sent out and read around the world, isn't brain surgery, although sometimes, it truly feels like it is.

Whatever the case, it has helped me to put food on the table for the past 20 years, so I shouldn't complain, but I do anyway, simply because I really, truly, want the job to be better than it is or ever will be, and it just isn't going to happen.

I can say that I am satisfied, but I am not, and honestly, how many people are satisfied with their job, with their lot in life?

I am not, but here I have been for the past 20 years.

I complain when I feel the complaints are warranted, and there are plenty of complaints with this job, but looking back, this job saved me from heaven knows what type of financial and professional pulchritude, so I just have to go with the flow, and grin and bare it, for what it is.

That is the extent I am going to talk about the job in the negative. It is a job, I have filled it for 20 years, and I am damn happy to have it, because I have been on the opposite side of the fence, and it isn't a nice place to be.

So thank goodness I have this job, thank goodness I have had it for 20 years, and I don't know if 20 more years here are on the horizon, but for whatever time period it is, I hope to be there.

The alternative is not good, so I will take what I can get.

Twenty years is a long time at one position, and I have to look at it that way.

Twenty years. Not bad, not bad at all.