45 Years of Peeling the Onion for a Paycheque

Hmmm, what is my most
valuable takeaway from 45 years in the workforce?

I am on an unofficial
countdown to retirement. For the record, the clock stands at 3 years and 9 months.
As I look back at those years. I find that I can divide my work history into four
categories each with its own life lesson.

STUDENT-FOR-HIRE

My first job was a
part-time job in a grocery store during high school for the princely wage of
$1.45 an hour. A few summer jobs followed, through high school and college
years, including manual labour and timekeeper at a large facility construction
site. I spend one idyllic summer as a supervisor of six students working for Long Point Region Conservation Authority.

Lesson
Learned as a Student-for-Hire:
Renting yourself out is strictly a means to an end.

ONE-MAN-BAND

My first professional
job out of college was as a one-man-band reporter/photographer for a weekly, community
newspaper for 18 months. On the upside, I gained a lot of great experience. On
the downside, I had to work six and sometimes seven days a week. I knew after a
year it was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Lesson
Learned as a One-Man-Band:
If your heart isn’t it, pack it in and start over.

STUDENT-FOR-HIRE:
ENCORE

I circled back to attend
university and returned to the summer job circuit to pay my way. I spent one summer
as a clerk in the maintenance office of Ontario
Place back when that institution was still a going concern. It was a
tedious job, but it paid the bills.

One of my most
interesting summer gigs was two seasons as a supervisor in the Ground Services
Department of Canada’s Wonderland in
the Happy Land of Hanna Barbera area.
Pretty sweet as summer jobs go, although I could not get the Hanna Barbera music out of my head for
years afterwards!

Lesson
Learned as a Student-for-Hire Encore:
Renting yourself out is a means to an end, but you can have a few laughs along
the way.

MARKETING
MAVEN

I plied my trade for 15
years in the marketing end of legal publishing advancing from copywriter to
supervisor to manager. It was during that period that I had the unpleasant and
eye-opening uncommon experience of being downsized out of a job.

And finally, my longest stint at one job – 18 years and counting as a Marketing Specialist for a workplace health and safety association. I count myself lucky to have landed at an employee-friendly organization in an era when many companies treat their staff as chess players on a board to moved around or disposed of as the spreadsheet numbers dictate.

Lesson Learned as Marketing Maven: The more you know the more there is to know.

A common metaphor for
learning is peeling an onion. After 45 years of peeling layers off the onion,
the most important life lesson I have learned is surprisingly simple but invaluable
beyond measure: You don’t necessarily
need to have the right answer. You just need to be convincing in the answer that
you give.

I’ll leave you to ponder
that assertion as I continue to countdown to the sunny shores of retirement.

~  Now Available Online
from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of
Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet

~ Michael Robert Dyet is also
the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel which
was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s
website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .

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