Friday Five

Okay, there's been some shenanigans around here. Dear Willow Tree informed me of a little buggy making it's way around blogs which originated in Myspace. If your blog has been hanging up, (or mine for that matter!) that seems to be the issue. You'll find the malignant code in your template and it refers to d5d1 . com Notice I made sure that didn't come out as a link. You can get it by commenting on infected blogs, or, if someone who is infected comments on your blog. You can apparently find the script if you click Edit HTML under your Template settings. If you then hit Ctrl-F, you can find the script by typing in d5d1. You can find some info about it here, in the Google forums. My template appears to be clean now, and I'm not having anymore issues. But it appeared widespread yesterday.

Okay, on to the list:


My Five Favorite Jobs (in no particular order)


1. Tutor

I worked briefly as a tutor during high school, helping elementary school kids to read. Sometimes I became a glorified baby sitter, and sometimes I had kids who just refused to do anything. And there were a couple of parents who blamed me for tat. I did have one little girl who went from not being able to read at all, to being at the top of her reading group in the second grade. I loved that kid.

2. Frederick's of Hollywood clerk/asst. mgr.

I've never been a girly girl, but I really liked this job. It was the best retail job I've ever had, and it got better when we added the plus size collection. It was so wonderful to help women who felt unsexy realize that they were beautiful, and help their husbands see them that way, too. And it wasn't about "dressing up sexy". The lingerie was just a tool to get people to see themselves a little differently. We had one girl who was so happy that we outfitted her wedding trousseau (and that we carried pretty things in her size), she brought us cookies for a month. And all it took was being helpful, and caring about making people happy.

3. Linco, processor/gluer

One summer while in college I worked for a small local company in Michigan that made cardboard products: boxes, tubing, that kind of thing. I used to cut raw cardboard to make boxes in the morning, and then I'd glue up the sides in the afternoon. It doesn't sound nice, but the people I worked for were great and the job required very little thinking. The best part: they fed us lunch every Friday, usually Chinese. I also learned a lot about people who do "blue collar" work. Ken and Linda, who owned Linco, cared a lot about the people who worked for them. In their eyes, we weren't grunts. We were intelligent human beings who deserved to be treated well. Ken always made me listen to Rush Limbaugh with him while we worked, but he also loved Garrison Keilor. When my summer was up, they tried to convince me to stay, but gave me a big party and a huge cake when I chose to go back to school, anyway.

4. Capital Broadcasting, Raleigh, NC Part-time air talent

This was the best company I've ever worked for, hands down. As a part-timer, I still accrued vacation and sick time (paid!!!), and they were always throwing parties for the employees and their kids. The Easter Party was wonderful, and TFYO got to go twice. All paid for out of owner Jim Goodman's pockets. Capital is privately owned, which is a rarity in the media business today, and it allows the company to be actively involved in employees lives on an unheard of scale. I also worked with some fabulous people there, including my APD Jim, who taught me more about programming in three months than I learned in seven years of radio. I can honestly say I truly liked everyone I worked with. It was the toughest job I ever left.

5. K-mart, receiving dock grunt

I did a lot of temporary light industrial work early in my college career, mostly because it paid better overall than working as a file clerk. I also don't like wearing dressy clothes. I wasn't supposed to be assigned to the receiving dock, I was supposed to be sent with the other women to "repack" where boxes were unpacked and goods repacked for shipment to stores. There was me and one other girl who accidentally got sent down to the docks to unload import trucks. We did it by hand with the help of a mobile conveyor belt called "The Goose". Hence, we were called "The Goose Crew". The first couple of weeks, we had a lot of traffic down our end of the warehouse, as every guy seemingly had a reason to come talk to me and Amber. I even had a company VP ask me what the hell I was doing there and if I wanted to transfer up to the office. I told him no. Even though the floor foreman hated me (and tried to give me some of the dirtiest jobs), I loved the guys I worked with. I loved the fact that they never cut me slack because I was a girl. I lost twenty pounds on that job, and I also learned to drive a forklift. If I'd stayed and become union, I would have been making $50,000 a year driving that lift, but I went back to school.

Okay, there are my five, have a great weekend!

PS I've been thinking about a new template fo rmy blog, but I'm rubbish at HTML. If anyone has any suggestions or would like to help me attempt to write a new template, I'd be most grateful.