It was Twenty Years Ago Today

(with apologies to the Beatles)

Twenty years ago, on July 23^rd, 1993, I got fired from my job in public television.

While I didn’t quite leave the building humming my favorite Bob Dylan tune “I Shall Be Released,” it was, never-the-less, a real turning point in my life. I’m a very lucky guy.

The only other time I got fired was while I was in college. I had just gotten a job as the night clerk at a prestigious private men’s club in downtown Saint Paul. At that time, visiting businessmen could rent rooms on the upper floors of the building. My friend told me about the all night job that paid well and didn’t require much work aside from staying awake and answering the phone should any of the overnight guests call downstairs.

 

Unfortunately, my colleague (who got me the job) didn’t bother to tell me where the ice was stored back in the kitchen. My first night on the job, two very inebriated guests stumbled downstairs in desperate need of ice for their drinks. I couldn’t help them since I had no idea where the ice was stored. Consequently, the poor souls had to wander the streets of St. Paul late at night in search of ice. That offense was great enough to get me fired the very next day.

The classy manager didn’t bother to fire me directly. He just told my friend that I had been canned. I’ve never checked with the Guinness Book of World Records but less than eight hours on the job has got to be some kind of record!

My second firing, after thirteen years on the job, came out of the blue. Office politics has never been my forte. I’ve always naively assumed that if I did my job and did it well that I was safe. What I hadn’t realized was that behind the scenes all kinds of political games were being played and jobs were hanging in the balance. So I became an easy target to shift the blame away from my boss for short-comings in his department. It was all part of a much larger game of oneupmanship and palace intrigue.  Little did I know what a great favor he was doing me. 

 

It was the people back then and never the place. I’ve always loved and admired the role that quality public television has played in my life and that of my family, especially my grandchildren. In fact, in lieu of mindless time spent in front of the boob tube, I’ve taken to watching PBS documentaries on my laptop at night. It’s a refreshing change of pace and very informative.

It’s never pleasant getting fired especially from a job you love and folks you like working with. Of course, not all of my colleagues were keepers but there were enough of them whom I considered my friends as to make it hard to say good-by and move onto something different in my life. Many of those same folks gradually moved on themselves to other opportunities. Others have passed away. The old place isn’t the same. That’s too bad as well as being a good thing. In reality, the station was just a tiny capsule of time in a much larger equation called life. Unlike a lot of my colleagues, neither the place nor my work defined me.

With the firing my world was suddenly a very different place. What I hadn’t expected was the excitement and fear of being totally self-employed for the first time in my life. Suddenly I had become the master of my own destiny. No longer would I have to depend on the erratic behavior of my boss to second-guess where the political winds were blowing each day. No longer would I have to play the games that new CEO was cooking up as he tried to mold our business into the east coast model he had come from. No longer would I have to listen to the bitching and complaining that some of my colleagues engaged in as they sleep-walked through each day.

It would have been nice if I had taken that giant step on my own. If I had summoned up the courage to follow my heart and strike out on my own before that incident. But with two young kids and a mortgage, I wasn’t about to venture out into the wilderness of self-employment until the time was right.

Politics made it right and I’ve never looked back since. A friend once told me that after six months of self-employment, he had become unemployable. He just couldn’t see himself working a regular nine to five job ever again. I know exactly what he meant. Who says You get to be Boss.

‘WhatColor is your Parachute’ was my guide to future employment opportunities. I was determined to do what I wanted to do. The hours didn’t matter. I’ve never worked a nine-to-five job or an eight-to-four job or a morning-to-afternoon job in my life. Don’t intend to start now.

Like a phoenix I was able to rise up again. I was lucky.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.

                                                                                                     Confucius

Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game is finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the body, but the indifference of the soul.

                                                                                        Andre Maurois

I have a horror of not rising above mediocrity.

                                                    Robert Baldwin

I guess if it hadn’t been for those two drunks and a cowardly boss, I might have followed the same old path as most everyone else around me did. I was a very lucky guy twenty years ago today.

I’m still a very lucky guy.

The Best Job That Never Was

I had to give my son the bad news. His perfect job wasn’t.

He’d recently graduated from Notre Dame. He was working at Arthur Anderson in Chicago. His girlfriend (soon to be wife) was living not that far away. He loved his job, all the traveling, his boss and the company itself. What was not to like?

Trying hard to straddle the line between being realistic and yet supportive, I could only remind him that while everything was great at the time, things do change. While ‘Father doesn’t always know best’, I’d been down that path before, several times. He laughed at me. We laughed at me. But my prediction did prove correct.

Not too much later, Brian’s firm imploded and he was hired on by KPMG, a company that was not even close to the culture of Arthur Anderson.

My daughter interned at the law firm her last year in law school. So it wasn’t surprising when they hired her upon graduation. She found that corporate law wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

Two perfectly wonderful jobs that turned out not to be so wonderful.

No job is ever perfect. Even if all the stars and moon and sun are in alignment, eventually something usually happens that changes the equation.

Brian moved on to Colorado, got his masters in Entrepreneurship and found a job with a new startup called Triple Creek. He’s still there and thriving.

My daughter moved on to the capitol working in politics and found her passion; politics and the sometimes wondrous, confusing, mysterious manner in which bills are made and passed.

Now she has the most important job of her life; being Mom to Brennan and Charlotte.

Welcome to the real world, guys. No job is perfect but you can make the best of any situation.


My first job as a paperboy
On Sundays, I had my little red wagon to haul my 143 Sunday newspapers. Their weight was so great that the front axle bent every Sunday morning. And I had to untwist it before I could proceed. No wonder I can still lift small boulders with ease.

It meant getting up at 4:30am each morning, even if it was twenty below zero and delivering newspapers to my unappreciative vociferous readers. It meant getting short-changed by apartment dwellers, who moved away without paying their newspaper bills. It meant trudging back to some home when the owner couldn’t find the newspaper that hadn’t landed in exactly the same spot every day. Pulling it out of the weeds without even a thank you. It meant listening to the smart-ass district manager haranguing me because I wasn’t making his quota of new customers each month. It meant watching out for the big kids who loved to threaten me when I was ‘collecting’ and had cash on hand.

Yet despite those irritating nuisances associated with the job, it meant I was an independent businessman. I learned to save money and not spend all of it before the end of the month. To a great degree, it meant I was mostly self-supporting from 7th grade on. I got a musical education with my tiny transistor radio that I wore under my parka. All the best of the 50’s Pop music and crossover Country and Western. It was my musical window and fueled a lifelong love of music.

I never considered myself in the newspaper business. I was just a kid, willing to freeze his tush, for a shot at a savings account and the education it might buy. And despite the cold, deadbeats, high-strung district managers, and sometimes-grumpy customers, it was a great first job.

I changed. It didn’t. After high school, it was time to move on.


KTCA Television
My start in television started inauspiciously enough. They didn’t have an opening for a writer so I offered my services for free. I volunteered there for over six months with a great group of people, all of who were much older than I was. There was an atmosphere back then that was electric with interest and excitement for the business of public television. We were all part of the gradual transition from educational television to public television, a huge shift in demographics, in programming philosophy, and production techniques.

Once hired on as a producer-director, my crew and I experimented with all kinds of new production techniques. Field recordings and videotape were introduced during that period. And we marveled at the creative new ways we could tell a story on television. It was another education for me. And I got paid for learning.

Of course, over the years, management changed. My boss moved away and the atmosphere got more corporate and not as much fun. The bottom line superseded the creative aspects of the job and the staff grew stale on repetitive programming and production.

It was time to move on. Again.


Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting
Without a doubt the best boss I ever had was General Manager of the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting back in the 70’s. He was brilliant, generous with his support in every way. He let me run my department without outside interference. He welcomed new ideas and self-motivation.

He gathered around him a wonderful group of people to work with. It was a blast for almost five glorious years.

But then, of course, over the years things gradually started to change. Eventually the GM got a job offer in Philadelphia that he couldn’t turn down. He left and with him, the creative energy that defined the place for so long. The disease was slow in coming but over time it managed to turn a top rated television station into a study in atrophy.

There were other jobs before and after those. Some good. Some not so good. I learned from each and every one of them. Life lessons I’ve taken with me in one capacity or another.

Even the Army brought with it some traveling, some adventures and misadventures, a host of colorful characters I’d love to meet again. And a few, I’d rather not.


Sharden Productions and other Associated Ventures
Sharden Productions, Inc. provided me an opportunity to be my own boss. Of course, you’re never your own boss. Every client, every customer, every potential contract is your boss/master/driver/nightmare/reward. That’s the nature of the business.

I made a couple of bucks.	I can’t complain.
I worked long hours.	I wanted to.
I had some sleepless nights.	Part of the equation.
I did some very nice work.	I take total credit for that.
It provided me an opportunity to travel.	I appreciate that.
It provided some amenities I wouldn’t have otherwise.	Ditto.

Now it’s the foundation for a gradual shift from a video production/distribution company to a publishing company.                                                Thank you Sub-S Corporation.

I guess that perfect job I never had would encompass all the best of what I did have.
Each job brought something special to my life. And my life experiences.

Imagine if they were all wrapped up into on job. The best of best. The nicest people to work with, no limit on possible earnings, no age discrimination, self-motivation as the driver, an opportunity to reconnect with some old friends, or forge relationships with new ones. Wouldn’t that be just the perfect job to have?

But wait, it is.

I’m a writer.