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that's a punishment job

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I was reviewing some old photos and was reminded of an even older event in my life.

There was a time called the 1980's and as they started to wind down I was living in Calgary Alberta and working in a garden center. I was fifteen or sixteen, and my job consisted of hauling things to people's cars and of course lots of sweeping. Somehow, I became the focus of the ire of one of the adults that worked there, an unpleasant woman who somehow filled her entire day being miserable. One fine day I was sent to the back-side of the main building to sort fork-lift pallets. I went about this job for some time, keen to not return to the main garden center and the people who were making the job so lousy. I must not have seemed sufficiently miserable, because they sent a friend of mine to inform me that it was a "punishment job". It struck me as being a decent break and more productive than endlessly sweeping the patch of parking lot that had been turned into a garden center.

I never really got the hang of Calgary. Such a hostile place, so many miserable people. Maybe it was the weather.