Good Company to Commiserate With

For anyone who may not know, it’s busy season in the accounting world. It’s at this time that I’m feeling the deadlines and pressures of my job more than ever. I know Andrew worked a rigorous schedule at the hospital in what I can only imagine was a pretty high stress job.

I recall times when Andrew and I discussed our working lives. It wasn’t so much in our careers that Andrew and I found common ground, but in our crumby part-time/summer jobs. Both Andrew and I, like most people I’m sure, had a variety of, if nothing else interesting, summer jobs that provided much needed cash for the upcoming school year. On numerous occasions Andrew and I would describe these jobs to one another to see who had the most unbearable part-time job. Although I feel that being a 10 foot toothbrush mascot would trump most peoples’ best worst part-time job stories, Andrew would come back with one particular summer in Kingston when he had multiple jobs. One job in particular I recall him describing in detail. He worked at a bakery on Wolf Island. He described how he had to get up early (extremely early in the life of a student) to make the trek down to the early ferry, which took him over to Wolf Island to get to the bakery and start the day’s bread and pastries. He would describe how hot the bakery got in the hottest of the summer months. Worst of all, it seemed, was that he had to continuously clean his hands with what must have been the hashed soap ever. Without going into detail, I recall his hands being pretty raw from his time at the bakery. Looking back, perhaps this job was the worst of the bunch, having to have put his hands through such an ordeal and seemingly mundane task of making bread, given his eventual career as a surgeon.

Sitting here at work wishing that busy season would end, what I really wish for is to have a laugh with Andrew about who had the worse part-time job and how glad we are that we don’t have to put on a toothbrush costume or bakers clothes ever again.