Take This Job and...
When former Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater quit his job in spectacular fashion, he became an overnight media sensation. I’d bet that most of us, at one time or another, have wanted to quit a job in a similar way and go out in a blaze of glory but the truth is very few of us do so. Instead we give the requisite two weeks notice of our intention to pursue other options rather than announce in a dramatic voice, “I quit!” before storming off to those other options.
After Mr. Slater became a hero of sorts I began to think about jobs I’ve had and left under somewhat sudden circumstances. I had to go way back to my youth to find examples of times I’ve actually quit and unlike Mr. Slater, I did not become a celebrity afterward. But also unlike Mr. Slater, I never faced felony charges that could lead to up to seven years in prison when I quit.
It turns out that I’ve only quit a few jobs in my life, each of them before I was twenty. And while, none of my exits were as dramatic as Mr. Slater’s trip down the emergency slide, each comes with a story.
Discounting my time delivering newspapers, the first job I ever had was washing dishes in a well-known restaurant chain. Although I was primarily a dishwasher, there were times I would also be called upon to wait on customers. I was only sixteen and it was a good first job but it was mostly nights and eventually began to seriously cut into my burgeoning social life. When the summer rolled around I found myself dreading my shifts on a regular basis until finally one day I realized I just couldn’t do it anymore. And that’s exactly what I told the stunned manager who’d hired me. “I just can’t do it anymore.” And from that moment on, I didn’t. I do recall some guilt over my sudden departure but overall I felt (as I’m sure Mr. Slater must have) a great sense of relief.
While my restaurant job lasted a fairly long time (in teen years), my time at the self-service gas station did not. Such stations were relatively new in those days and I had no idea what to expect when I arrived on the day that would be both my first and last day on the job. I was supposed to be trained by the assistant manager but he had other ideas. After the briefest of explanations regarding my responsibilities, he produced a stack of pornographic magazines and disappeared into a back room, leaving me to fend for myself. I suppose I would have been bored silly if I wasn’t so busy trying to teach myself how to work the electronic machines that ran the pumps. It was easily apparent that this was not the job, nor the coworker for me, so later, when my shift was over, I left and simply never returned.
The gas station stint would have been the shortest period I’ve ever been employed were it not for my time in the machine shop. A friend of mine and I got ourselves hired at a shop that made little pieces of metal that were no doubt important to someone somewhere but to me were just, well, little pieces of metal. The big boss was nice enough. He had an office with glass windows overlooking the floor where the little pieces of metal were made. On our first (and yes it would be my last) day, he gave us a long lecture about what a great career we’d chosen and how ultimately we’d have to invest a large sum of money (otherwise known as the first red flag) into our own tools. After the lecture we were dispatched to the floor for training where each of us was assigned to an experienced employee. I remember two things about the guy who was training me. First, he was older than dirt and had apparently been making the little pieces of metal since some time in the early Roman Empire. And second, he smoked, not a lot, just constantly. This man was never without a cigarette dangling from his lips and in the 70’s this was never questioned. I managed to make it to lunch with all of my fingers intact (did I mention the danger involved in making the little pieces of metal?) and even more remarkable, in an effort to avoid the second hand smoke, somehow held my breath for the entire training period. When lunch finally came I sought out my friend and told him this was not the job for me. He tried to convince me to stay but when lunch was over I made my way up to the bosses office where naturally the entire shop could see me anxiously waiting for the boss to return. When he did I explained that I didn’t think I was cut out for this kind of work and I didn’t want him to waste a lot of money training me. To my surprise, he couldn’t have been nicer about it and my machine shop career was over before it began. As it turned out, two days later my friend would quit as well.
I will admit that since I began to work in the film industry over twenty years ago there have been a few times I’ve wanted to jump into the proverbial emergency slide (especially as Slater did with a beer) but fortunately those times have been few and far between. Even on the worst production job I’ve ever had (a Hidden Valley Ranch commercial in the 90’s), I stuck it out to the bitter end. After all, as bad as that one was, it only lasted a week and it could have been worse. I could have been stuck making little pieces of metal or perhaps, facing felony charges.
