I have had continuous gigs as a laboratory scientist since January of 1992 (spring term of my sophomore year). A whopping 97% of my professional life has taken place on the fifth floor. That encompasses five labs in five different buildings on three university campuses.
This is an improvement, I guess, from my early days on the ground floor. My first job was washing dishes at a greasy spoon restaurant called the Kopper Kettle in Osseo, Minnesota the summer when I was 16 years old. (A web search assures me that the place still exists, twenty years on.) The next summer I worked at Sears at the Brookdale Mall in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota and was a soccer referee on the side. (My siblings played youth soccer, and I got involved as a ref.) The refereeing was hard work and not always fun, but I enjoyed selling paint. I think I enjoyed that more than I would have enjoyed another retail gig because most people who came into the paint department had a project in mind, and it was just a matter of figuring out what they needed and selling it to them.
My favorite story is of a customer who came in and said quite certainly that he would like to buy 634 gallons of exterior paint for his house. Even the largest houses don't need more than 20 or 30 gallons, so I knew something was wrong. "Your paint covers 400 square feet per gallon, right?" "Yes, that's correct, I replied.” “Then I need 634 gallons,” he asserted confidently. “But your house can't be that big," I responded with polite amusement. Eventually we figured out that to calculate the number of square footage he needed, he multiplied the length of the walls that needed painting times the width times the height instead of calculating the surface area of each wall and adding them together. He really wanted to fill the volume of the inside of his house with paint. Heh heh.
I feel like I've stagnated, though, in that I can't seem to get past the fifth floor. I've got friends who work on the 20th floor or loftier. Why can't I climb any higher?
This is an improvement, I guess, from my early days on the ground floor. My first job was washing dishes at a greasy spoon restaurant called the Kopper Kettle in Osseo, Minnesota the summer when I was 16 years old. (A web search assures me that the place still exists, twenty years on.) The next summer I worked at Sears at the Brookdale Mall in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota and was a soccer referee on the side. (My siblings played youth soccer, and I got involved as a ref.) The refereeing was hard work and not always fun, but I enjoyed selling paint. I think I enjoyed that more than I would have enjoyed another retail gig because most people who came into the paint department had a project in mind, and it was just a matter of figuring out what they needed and selling it to them.
My favorite story is of a customer who came in and said quite certainly that he would like to buy 634 gallons of exterior paint for his house. Even the largest houses don't need more than 20 or 30 gallons, so I knew something was wrong. "Your paint covers 400 square feet per gallon, right?" "Yes, that's correct, I replied.” “Then I need 634 gallons,” he asserted confidently. “But your house can't be that big," I responded with polite amusement. Eventually we figured out that to calculate the number of square footage he needed, he multiplied the length of the walls that needed painting times the width times the height instead of calculating the surface area of each wall and adding them together. He really wanted to fill the volume of the inside of his house with paint. Heh heh.
I feel like I've stagnated, though, in that I can't seem to get past the fifth floor. I've got friends who work on the 20th floor or loftier. Why can't I climb any higher?
At least if there is a fire and you're on the fifth floor, you're likely to make it down the stairs in time. We had a scare in my building a few years ago, and let me tell you that walking down 20 flights is no cup of tea. Plus, "fifth floor" has nice alliteration.
ReplyDelete