Big bad changes for the world net

[BIAD]

...Careers are for suckers. They depend far too much on other folks' good will, and not nearly enough one one's own ingenuity.
I recommend entrepreneurial enterprise in vocations that people NEED, rather than stuff people just WANT. If they just want it,
there is far too much competition, and folks can end you at the drop of a hat, ruin your vocation altogether.

On the other hand, if they NEED it, they can't very well do without it. Call it job security. if you don't have a boss, then the bastard
can't very well fire you over a social media post or whatever...

The one thing I remember when I was made redundant from the local newspaper, was the career-minded woman
who I had to visit for 'consultation'. Before I started my solitary nightshift, I was asked to wander into this woman's
office and sit in front of her.

She didn't work for the newspaper, she was fighting for the top-slot in another newspaper, but the Managing Director
of paper I worked for didn't have the balls to speak to me.

"How long have you worked here..." she asked without looking up from a file on her desk. I wondered why she asked
as the document she was reading was about me. "Just over twenty-six years" I replied and that was when she looked
at me.

"You know, to me..." she said with a smile, "... you've only worked here five minutes" and I immediately knew what
she meant. That was why I thanked her for her honesty and I think that threw her.
....................................................

I had spent almost two decades humping trash when everyone else was asleep. Standing in an unlit garage that
smelled of stale booze and old urine, I'd crush rubbish with a busted machine that would switch itself on during my
wrapping of the compressed bales with wire.

I'd shovel lead slugs and melt them down in a shit-hole full of burning string and splashing molten metal.
My only companions were bare-breasted laminated beauties that lured the curious into the room under the
pretence they wished to speak to me. This usually involved my ability to obtain something that they wanted
and that I could -they assumed, gain for them.

Later, after attempting to acquire the first-time position of the paper's Graphic Artist -on the company's first
-purchased computer that I'd carried into the building, the Editor carefully explained to me over six interviews
that it would be inappropriate to allow me to fill the vacancy because I was working-class and it would reflect
badly in the Journalists I would be serving.
(Dirty hands and overalls, local accent and a job that spoke of manual drudgery).

So I went back to working manually on the newspaper, cleaning the toilets and getting rid of the trash.

It was only when it was discovered that I'd created a racket where -for a few newspapers, all of that rubbish was
being taken away by a group of Council-paid Refuse Collectors that would've normally cost the company around
£6,000 ($8,000) a year, that it was pondered on that I may not be the dullard that they thought I was.

As a bonus, I created a currency-system within the company that didn't involve cash... I kid you not!
I'd have also thought the many requested items I managed to procure for the Managing Director and all the way
down through the management to a supervisor would have given them the heads-up that I wasn't the dim-wit the
well-articulated Editor had taken me for!

Eventually, I was given a post that dealt with photographs and computer manipulation, a vacancy due to the kid who
used to do it dying in a road-crash. So much for perceiving skills!
It was easy and could've been an ideal job for a lazy person. So during those lonely nights, I'd vacuum-clean the department
and clean out the two fish tanks I'd 'acquired' for the dayshift.

Ten years later, this woman told me the truth, I was nothing... the hamster-wheel I'd been running in would still rotate without
me and to save some money, any self-imagined loyalty was now sitting in the trash-basket that I used to empty.

That was why I thanked her.