December 12, 2008. Bethesda, Md. More Jobs.

Every job teaches you something, very often telling you something that you never want to do again. One summer during high school, I worked at a Trust Company in Toronto. This was probably in 1955, obviously pre computer. Eva, a friend of my Mother and a fellow member of The Danforth Songster Brigade was the head of the department responsible for keeping track of the details. Now she had a big job there. Half of her job was overseeing the machine operators and the other half was overseeing who tracked to be sure the information put into the machines was accurate. I was assigned to the latter part of her job. My job was to learn the work for one week, then relieve the girl when she went on vacation for two weeks. The women were always called girls, even though some of these folks were much older. As the summer went on, they gave me one day to learn the job, so the bosses figured out that I was a quick study. They also probably figured out that I was more concerned with speed than accuracy, not an asset in a Trust Company I would think. At the end of the summer the big boss called me in and doubled my salary if I wound stay working for them, and not pursue my education. He actually told me that I knew everything I knew already to be successful, so urged me to join their team permantly.

I am and was, a cheerful soul, but I absolutely hated that job. I learned during that summer several things that saved my future sanity. First of I realized that I can not sit still and that being in the same office all day was very boring. But the most important thing I learned was that many folks would preserve their position rather than learn a new system. I learned the job in a day, then the following week or two I did the tasks that were done for the task. The first few days I was stressed. The next few days I figured out how to do the job faster and more efficiently, so by the second week I was finished my day by noon each day. At first, I tried to show the system to the older worker when they came back from vacation, but they did not really want to be efficient. They wanted to be paid for the job they were told to do. They received no rewards for being efficient, just to do their job. What I learned about that job that was so important for my life, was that to get better at anything, everyone has to have their brains engaged in getting better at their job, and that if you want results, rewards had to be in place. Whether or not you are doing it intentionally or not, you will bet back whatever you reward, and those bosses were getting back competence, but no creativity. Now those ladies were not smarter than me. They just had a higher quotion of boredom. And of course they could sit still.