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Both my following jobs were received by a member of teh Fire department, the first was working in a Restaurant in North Stonington which after I worked there a few years the owner decided to sell. He sold it to a man who had a dream but not one clue. His dream was to have his own restaurant, and make and cook the foods he wanted to, I told him right at the beginning it was a mistake. The restaurant he bought was always packed, the locals loved the place and being on route two he caught all the beach and casino traffic. People came there because they loved the food the original owner made. The original owner was an ex Navy cook, large portions, standard fair. The middle of farm land is not a place to open a garlic intensive, foreign food dining area. I told the new owner, introduce all the meals you want, if they sell that's great, but don't give up on or change the recipes on the meals that sell like crazy. He ignored me, just about every food started receiving at the minimum garlic. the locals disappeared, as did I. The restaurant is now a Porn store. 

The next job was working for an insulation company. Fiberglass bats and blown in insul. I cannot recommend working either. Fiberglass gets everywhere, you have separate clothes piles. You take cold showers so that the pores don't open and allow the glass in, once you get the surface glass off with the cold water, you switch to hot to clean up. Fiber glass in your eyes doing ceiling jobs, even with goggles, fiberglass up your nose even wearing masks. Blowing in insulation wasn't any better, these jobs were usually in summer, you were hot, you were sweaty, you had insulation caked to you. There was one job we did that I can say I enjoyed, we were to put insulation under the floor of an old wooden tenement style building, the access was through a crawl space located in the laundry room. As we were getting ready to crawl in under the house a girl came down with a basket of laundry, wearing nothing but a baby blue and white baby doll nightie. very nice. I crawled in one location my coworker in the other and the truck driver brought new material to the access holes when we needed more. After about 15 minutes of stuffing glass between beams I was getting low so I called the driver for more bats, none came. I continued working till I ran out. I called and got no response, I crawled out and after a little investigating I found him in the Baby Doll nightie's kitchen drinking a beer. I sent him down into the crawl space. the Baby Doll was very...VERY hospitable, it was probably my most favorite day at work ever. When I left her apartment i went back down to the laundry room, I told my Co-worker (in the second access way)..."Your turn"

We were at that apartment house for three days to get the job completed.

This job had one major down side, the owner made the move from old houses to new construction, new construction means you have a lot of hours and product tied up in property's that don't pay until they sell. We had to go to a different package store every week to cash our pay checks, the banks wouldn't even look at us to cash a check. One morning I meet my friend at the firehouse, instead of going to work we blew the day off. At around 2 pm I received a call from the owner, "You didn't come to work today...your fired". I said, "Did you notice we didn't come to work today...we no longer work for you."  Three days later I was driving a Peterbilt.  and smelling like fish.

Here's a taste of "my" decision making powers, When I graduated from high School (GED) my father told me he had a guaranteed job for me at Pfizer if I wanted it. I was 19 years old, let's see, chemical operator, smelly, rotating shift job....NO.

If I had taken that job I would have had 30 years in 2009....

klay