God

Let's assume for the sake of discussion that God exists. What do I mean by "God"? For now, let's just say I mean what the average American means when they refer to "God". We'll circle back to that eventually. In the article I will be referring to the Abrahamic God with an upper "G" and other deities with lower cases "g's". 

In the United States the predominant religion is Christianity in its many forms. Christians, as well as Muslims, claim to worship the same God as do Jews, who worshipped him first. Even people who aren't officially part of any of those three religions, who can in no way be considered religious, would default to the Abrahamic God when talking about "God". (We're specifically talking about the United States here, and even within the U.S. exceptions would include people who follow non-Abrahamic religions). Where did belief in the Abrahamic God originate? Is there anything to suggest that he really is the supreme creator of the universe? Or did he just have better press agents than all the other gods?

I doubt that there is any serious argument against the idea that every little tribe, every kingdom, every group of nomadic clansman had a god. I'm not going to argue about the probability that any of these gods existed in any real sense, but certainly people believed that they did. The people we know as the Hebrews and later the Israelites had a god as well. It's also certain that the Hebrews believed that there were other gods in addition to their God - just that their God was the best. Eventually the company line became that there was only one god: God...all the other "gods" were just demons in a different guise; but it's indisputable that early on (it's in the Bible, people) worshippers of God acknowledged that there were other gods. If we acknowledge that early followers of God believed that the gods of other nations were just as real, it follows that if we believe that God is real, then those other gods must be real as well. 

But what about the first few chapters of Genesis? Doesn't that say that God created the heavens and the Earth? Doesn't it say that he created the first man and woman and communicated with them? Yes, it certainly does. But every other tribe had a creation myth as well. Every other tribe had a story about how humans came to be. We still know what some of those were, and there are still people following the religions from whence those creation myths originated. 

We've already, for the sake of discussion assumed that God is real. We're further assuming that other gods are likewise real. Let's extend that assumption and assume that God talked to someone and told them what how creation came about which eventually got written down in the Bible. Wouldn't it make sense that other gods talked to their worshippers and told them their version of the creation story? From an objective viewpoint we don't know which of these deities is really the creator. Or maybe the various creation myths aren't meant to be historical records, and were written down by people who liked to tell a good story. It's pretty well established that no creation story is physically possible. So, at best what's written down in the Bible about creation is God bragging about how great he is and other sacred traditions are other gods doing the same. We can extend this to the other early parts of the Bible as well. The "Law"? Sure, God setting down rules and regulations. Fine, other gods had their own rules, why not God? The books of "history"? Why not? Later writers assembling a legendary history of a people. Doesn't even need God to be involved. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon? Some good poetry and lots of talk about how different human beings viewed God. The Prophets? People trying to make sense of current events. Again, not the only people who wrote books about legendary times or wrote down their opinions about what the gods thought about various issues. 

Let's stop and take a breath here. We're still assuming that God exists. What we're not assuming is that anything that is written down about God is necessarily true. It might be, but it also might be just the opinion of one of God's followers. Or it might be the self-aggrandizing opinion of one god among many gods. 

Around 2,000 years ago a new sect of the followers of God sprung up. There had always been factions within the followers of God, who mostly were confined within the ranks of the people who were by that time known as Judeans (aka Jews). There were Pharisees and Sadducees, factions we know about from the Gospels, but also Essenes, Hellenists, and probably, like today, people who just got on with their lives and didn't give God much thought. This new faction centered around the figure that we know as Jesus of Nazareth. After Jesus' death and alleged resurrection, this faction, unlike previous iterations of Judean religion, aggressively proselytized, spreading their beliefs about God outside the bounds of their nation. At this time the various peoples within the Roman Empire still had their own national or tribal pantheons. But it was also a time when for various reasons people began to experiment with new and exotic religions from outside the borders of the Empire. 

Let's stop and take another breath. Remember, we're still assuming that God exists, but we're not assuming that he is the only God around, or that the book purporting to describe his will for mankind is in any way superior to the many other "holy" books or mythologies. There's a running argument about whether Jesus existed. I tend to follow the logic espoused by Bart Ehrman, a professor of Biblical studies and author of many books on the subject. He views the four Gospels as historical documents. Not in the sense of "true", but in the sense that they claim to describe events that happened once upon a time. I've been listening to a podcast about the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. One of the subjects that continually comes up is the reliability of the sources. Sometimes there is only one source for a period of time. That source is then analyzed for biases, compared with what is known from other writers as well as internal consistency. Sometimes the only source was written decades or even centuries after the events it purports to describe. The Gospels in this respect are similar. The earliest one was written around 30 years after Jesus lived. Historians can examine each of the Gospels and study them in the same way that a historian would study an account of the Byzantine Emperor Basil II, looking for inconsistencies, points of agreement and many other points that I won't get into here. My point is that in addition to assuming that God exists, when it comes to Jesus, I'm reasonably sure that he existed as well, but with a lot more certainty.

So, we're now assuming that God exists, but only to the extent that he was one deity among many, but now we have Jesus, which we can assume with a lot more certainty existed. What does that tell us? Not as much as you might think. While we have historical documents attesting to Jesus' existence, and can reasonably conclude that a lot of what is recorded therein are things he actually said and did, we don't have any evidence that he was who he said he was or that his teachings really came from God. Which brings us to another issue. There are numerous contradictions within the Gospels regarding what Jesus taught and who he said he was. Each of the Gospel writers, not to mention Paul and the other writers of the New Testament, seemed to have different opinions about who Jesus was, what he taught and what the purpose of his death and resurrection was. Like the writers of the Old Testament, we can't be sure that the Gospels and Epistles weren't anything more than men's opinions about God. 

As the years and decades and centuries ran on, a lot of arguments were made and even blood spilled attempting to determine precisely what the Bible actually said. The doctrine of the Trinity was the result of an attempt to reconcile the various Biblical views of who Jesus was, with opinions regarding why it had to be a certain way were tacked on every few years. Factions multiplied in Christianity's early days, shrunk as power was centralized and multiplied again at regular intervals. Today there are thousands of Christian sects and denominations, some differing from others in barely noticeable ways, others hardly recognizable to each other as having sprung from the same roots. In addition to the myriad institutional variations of Christianity, there are even more personal variations on who God and Jesus are, what prayer is, and what a Christian is; people whose image of God conforms to nothing in any creed or holy book. 

And why should it? We act as if the Bible is an unassailable source of truth and that God's existence and his basic attributes are beyond argument. But if you're worshipping God, you're worshipping a tribal god who had a very good press agent and whose followers eventually pushed their beliefs outside the insular tribal ethno-state and out into the world. There's, of course, a lot of good in some versions of Christianity, and I believe that people who follow the more "love thy neighbor" strains of the faith are generally good people. But for myself I see no reason to ascribe to Christianity over that of any other religion, at least not on the basis that any of them have a lock on "The Truth"...or even "truth". I can be a bad person all on my own without justifying it with Bible verses and I can also "love my neighbor" without worshipping a Middle Eastern tribal deity. 

We're responsible for our own actions. 

Subjective Truthiness

Many years ago I got into a discussion about faith, how what one chooses to believe regarding a deity is subjective. That is, even if you are certain that your god has delivered this information straight to your brain, or was manifested as some analogue of a five-senses experience, you are the only one who was privy to this particular "revelation". Therefore, it's subjective. Even the conclusion that some people reach that nature, beauty, or the laws of physics are evidence of a creator (which even if true, hardly proves it's your version of a creator) is an opinion about the facts, not a fact in and of itself. You deciding that certain "evidence" is sufficient to convince you, is not in itself proof. An objective experience is one in which anyone could observe. If two people are having a conversation and I overhear it, even if none of the words were directed at me, that conversation has an objective reality. Religious experiences, almost by definition, occur outside of objective reality, in the hazy world of the spiritual realm.  Or they exist as interpretations of mundane events as supernatural, when an ordinary explanation is not only possible, but likely. 

Some religions have attempted to address the lack of objectivity in various ways. In some religions it's the existence of scripture, a "holy" book which they promote as "The Word of God", the standard against which all opinions and subjective experience is supposedly measured. Others invest a "prophet", or other "holy" or "enlightened" individual with the responsibility for determining what Truth is. I'm sure that it's obvious that this isn't a solution at all. The faithful are expected to...well...have faith that the prophets, despite a lack of any objective corroborating evidence, really are getting the straight scoop from the top of the celestial food chain, and not just making it all up. Religions that rely on some version of scripture just shove it all back a few hundred or a few thousand years. They have faith that their books were written by prophets "back in the old days" who, despite a lack of any objective corroborating evidence, got the straight scoop from the top of the celestial food chain, and wrote it all down. And now, since it is written, that makes it Truth. 

What I find interesting is that the two largest religions based on books, Christianity and Islam, took a while to get their books together. (Of course the Jewish scriptures predated them both, with the Christians claiming them as their own) Neither faith had a book in their early years. Muhammed, the founder of Islam, never wrote down any of his "revelations". After his death his successors supposedly gathered the sayings that his followers had written down or remembered, and collected them into what became known as The Quran. Even then there were multiple versions in circulation. One of the early Caliphs solved that problem by rounding up and burning all the unofficial versions. The reason that this was relatively successful was that in the early Muslim decades there was a united political and religious establishment that could make decisions affecting all Islam, and enforce them, unlike the fragmented political and religious situation of early Christianity. (Yes, Christianity was the dominant and later official religion of the Roman Empire, but not all Christians were within the empire, and there was a lot of disagreement between the eastern and western halves) Today, religious Muslims assume, even though there's no evidence to support it, that Muhammed received his revelations from God (or through an angel), and further that everyone who provided their memory of what he said did so accurately. Even though there's a supposedly infallible written record, there's no shortage of disagreement among Muslims about the Quran's application.

Christianity also didn't have anything written down for almost a generation after Jesus lived and preached. His teachings and the stories about his life were passed down by word of mouth in the various Christian communities until they started to be written down 20-60 years later. The gospels that we have today were all written anonymously, but claim to have been put together from eyewitnesses. The man we know as The Apostle Paul wrote his letters from a different point of view - he very specifically didn't seek out those from Jesus' inner circle, even though they were presumably still alive, but claimed to get his information straight from God himself. Unlike the Muslims centuries later, the early Christians did not at first have a centralized source of authority. Competing views of what Jesus taught and what he did in his brief career circulated widely. Even when one group came out on top and many gospels and epistles were eliminated from the list of acceptable scriptures, they apparently didn't prune far enough, leaving many contradictions and inconsistencies.  

It's unclear whether Paul or the authors of the Gospels thought that what they were writing was inspired by God, but whoever wrote II Timothy (most biblical scholars agree that it wasn't Paul) apparently thought so, writing in II Timothy 3:16 that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God". The founders of the Protestant Reformation thought so as well, as do their modern day spiritual heirs. In theory they rejected the Catholic apostolic succession doctrine that claimed that there was an unbroken chain of bishops from original apostles to the present day who are uniquely qualified to interpret scripture. In theory they believe that the meaning of the Bible is self evident and doesn't require interpretation, yet there is no shortage of competing interpretations. What many "scripture alone" Christians don't realize is that in the early days of Christianity there was no scripture, and when various competing gospels and epistles began to proliferate, often pseudonymously claiming apostolic authorship, somebody had to decide what was "scripture" and what wasn't. The Bible we have today is a result of somebody making that decision 2,000 years ago. 

People who look to a book as their standard often look askance at those who don't, believing that those outside their circle have no standard for morality or Truth. They accuse disbelievers in their book or "making up their own morality". An honest conversation with just about any believer will reveal that, even though they have a written template for living, they have their own view of how their god operates and how that god expects people to conduct themselves that often is at odds with what's in their holy book. What the afterlife looks like is particularly subject to personal opinion. The Bible, as well as mainstream Christian doctrine, indicates that a believer is either ushered into God's presence upon death or "sleeps" until the end time resurrection. There is no "official" description of what that actually looks like, although just about everyone has mental images about heaven, including loved ones "looking down on them", not to mention the popular imagery of harps and angelic wings. Many believers also have ideas about God doing things for them that aren't guaranteed in any book of the Bible, and "know" that God, angels, saints, or departed family have miraculously intervened in some way. 

It's all subjective. 

Everyone seems to have an idea of what the supernatural realm is like and how it functions, an idea that cannot be demonstrated objectively. Even those who have a book are ultimately relying on someone else's subjective experience. 

The supernatural world cannot be objectively confirmed to exist. If believing in it helps you sleep at night, please continue to do so. 

The Alleged Afterlife

 I don't know the nature of the afterlife, or even if there is an afterlife.

And neither do you.

Yes, yes, maybe you say that you "know", based on your holy book, or you had a "seeing the light" near-death experience, or heard from a dead loved one in a seance, or in your dreams. What you're really saying is that you have settled upon a version of the afterlife that fits into your worldview, gives you comfort, and allows you to make sense of an extremely unfair world. You perhaps have chosen to view certain experiences as evidence to back up what you believe will be your fate after you draw your final breath. 

But no one knows. 

What people thought happened to the dead changed and evolved through the centuries. The Jewish Bible is pretty quiet about any sort of afterlife, other than a couple of places. Two people, Enoch and Elijah are described as having been received bodily into heaven, while the prophet Samuel, or his ghost, is temporarily brought back to the land of the living to give some advice to the soon-to-be deposed-and-killed King Saul. Jewish thought around the time the New Testament was written tended toward a belief in a bodily resurrection at "the end of time" when God would overthrow the existing order and institute a "Kingdom of Heaven". Jesus seems to be an adherent of this view - his moral teachings very clearly intended to get people "right" so they would be able to enter the soon-to-be-established Kingdom. (Which he thought would come pretty darn soon)

After Jesus' alleged resurrection and ascension, and the failure of the end of the world to happen, the Apostle Paul put forth his theories. In some places in the Epistles he seems to go along with apocalyptic theology, describing a bodily resurrection at some future time. At other places he is apparently teaching that a Christian goes right to Heaven upon death. He never mentions Hell, but does write about wrath and judgement in many places. This lack of specificity left it to subsequent generations of Christian theologians to devise descriptions of Heaven and Hell, although the way they imagined Hell was a lot more graphic than that of Heaven. 

Despite a paucity of official descriptions of what awaits us in Heaven, most people have at least a sketch of an opinion about what it entails. Usually a reunion of one's loved ones, living joyfully for all eternity. In my own experience, people envision their deceased family "looking down on them" and providing some kind of help, comfort or intercession while "up there". Like most religious beliefs, beliefs about the afterlife owe less to sanctioned dogma than to personal imaginings. 

Beliefs outside of Christianity aren't any more concrete than the dominant Christian beliefs: feasting in the Halls of Odin in Valhalla, the Summerlands, reincarnation, Nirvana, getting your heart weighed against a feather, they're all based on some ideas that someone who wasn't dead thought about what happened to the dead. It's interesting to me to note that the Greco-Roman conception of the afterlife before Christianity was pretty dreary. You just shuffled around as a shadow (literally) of your former self in some dank underworld. 

The truth is that if there is an afterlife, we don't know anything about it because it's not something we can investigate. 

Belief in an afterlife is usually pretty harmless. If thinking that your loved one who died is "in a better place", or happily playing in an amateur harp combo, free of pain, etc, gives you comfort, then I have no problem with it. Historically, people have been conned into accepting pain and suffering during their lifetime because it would all be better "later". Personally I take the "I don't know and it doesn't matter" position. I'm going to live my life the best I can while I have a life. If it happens that there is an afterlife that I can consciously enjoy, cool, if not, I'll never know, will I?

Weather Magic

I'm defining "weather magic" as any method by supernatural (aka magical) means of changing or affecting the weather. If you don't believe in magic, or even the possibility of affecting nature through prayer or appeal to deities, this isn't a discussion for you. 

I'm going to look at weather magic from two perspectives, the practical and the ethical, and finally, discuss alternatives. I will be assuming, for the sake of this discussion, that nature can, in theory, be manipulated, either by the magical ability of an individual, or by intervention by supernatural beings. 

Weather in general, and storms in particular, are complex things that do not exist or function in a vacuum, nor is weather in one region isolated from that of other regions. Everything affects everything else. We've all heard of the Butterfly Effect, which postulates that the flapping of one butterfly's wings  has cumulative effects that can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. A bit overly simplistic, but true in principle. Therefore any weather manipulation is going to affect more than just the immediate vicinity. If you magically stop the rain that's ruining your picnic, where is that storm going to go? Will the intensity of the storm increase and cause unforeseen damage if it's moved? 

A typical storm has a lot of kinetic energy. See this encyclopedia article about the energy inherent in a storm. If you think that you have enough power to shift the incredible momentum inherent in a thunderstorm, why not try to nudge something smaller, like the path of your lawn sprinkler or the gentle breeze that's blowing a leaf across your driveway first? If you can't do that, you are out of your league when it comes to guaranteeing a sunny day for your softball game. 

The alternative to envisioning yourself as a powerful weather mage is to posit a god or goddess who has the power to do the weather shifting for you. Any deity so proposed can be as powerful as you want to imagine. There is no arbitrary upper limit to god power. An omnipotent pantheon dweller should be able to clear the skies, or water your crops, or melt the snow or whatever you else you might need. The energy of the storm is negligible for such an entity. But in this scenario we still run up against the reality that weather systems are global, not local and the storm has to go somewhere. 

Let's look at the ethics of magical (or divine) weather manipulation. Being that weather is global, stopping a tornado in your vicinity might mean that someone else gets it, or getting rain to water your crops if you're a farmer could result in someone else experiencing drought. What about if you really need the rain and you trust the deity of your choice to work it all out so that no one else gets hurt? I've addressed on a several occasions the ineffectiveness of prayer here, here, and here. You can follow those links, but they can be summarized as "prayer, i.e. the asking a deity to do or provide something, does not yield discernable results". So I guess we can theorize above the ethics of omnipotent being fixing the weather to your liking, but their track record is poor. 

I'm very much a disbeliever in the belief that things were "meant to be". That it's raining today because of some divine game plan that stopping the rain would interfere in. So my objection to weather manipulation magic, even if an individual or group would have the ability to work it, is that it's almost always self-centered and ignorant. Self-centered because it takes into account only one's own interests and ignorant due to a lack of knowledge of the wider effects of the changes wrought. If you're a magical practitioner, my current opinion is that the magic should be worked on oneself.

Look, I don't care if you're Aleister Crowley or Jesus in a boat on the Sea of Galilee you don't have the metaphysical watts to change climate, i.e. the changes that need to be made to reverse drought conditions or seasonal flooding. For most people it's the immediate weather circumstances, affecting them personally that offers a target for change. What if, instead of attempting to stop the rain from ruining your outdoor event after it's already on its way, you work on being aware (magically or otherwise) of what the weather will be like and plan based on what the weather will be rather than expecting the weather to change for you? Hone your thinking skills (magically or otherwise) to know what to do when dangerous weather comes to you. Magically increase your reaction time and eliminate distractions so that you can safely navigate that slick road during a storm. 

What more realistic? Magicking yourself  or the entire weather system of our planet?

Workin' Man - Part VI - More Newspapers and Stocking Shelves

 Well, I get up at seven, yeah

And I go to work at nine

I got no time for livin'

Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson

Bruce, my father-in-law, worked at an auto parts store on O Street. One of his regular customers was Jeff Schrier, whose family owned some grocery stores in Lincoln. Bruce introduced me to Jeff, who hired me on the spot at Food 4 Less. My first job at Food 4 Less was as a stocker on the night crew. My shift started at 9:00pm and would last until we were done, which varied depending on how big the truck was. Since it was only a part time job I needed to find something else in order to make ends meet. The Omaha World-Herald Lincoln office had a position called a "bundle hauler". Lincoln was divided up into five or six zones with a driver responsible for delivering papers to the carriers and stores in their assigned area, as well as filling the vending machines. My area was downtown Lincoln, which included the State Office Building and State Capitol, West O Street, and a slice of Lincoln bordered by A and O Streets and 27th Street. I initially started at 2:30am and finished up around 7:00am. Between the two jobs I was working around fifty hours a week. 

At Food 4 Less I started out being assigned to the aisle that held peanut butter and jelly, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise and salad dressings. The first thing that we would do after clocking in was "run back stock". Back stock was product that had arrived on a previous day, but could not fit on the shelf. Some of this was items that the manager ordered too much of. These cases were placed on the warehouse shelving immediately above the shelf location. There was also items that we had in large quantity, usually items that had been ordered in bulk or were in the ad. These could be found in pallets in the back room, which we called "the warehouse". When the truck arrived the pallets were unloaded in the warehouse, which unusually for a grocery store, was huge, almost as many square feet as the sales floor itself. Every stocker then went into the back and pulled items from the pallets that corresponded to their assigned aisle. We then "strung them", i.e. set them on the floor in front of the proper section of the aisle. Once this was accomplished it was time to start stocking the items on the shelves. 

Food 4 Less was a "box store", which meant that you cut the top and front off the case and put the box on the shelf, making stocking marginally faster than if individual units were removed from the cases first. Once all the newly arrived stock was placed on the shelf, it was time for "facing". This involved removing excess cardboard and pulling all the product forward. (I always pulled all the cans or bottles or boxes forward, later in my grocery career the standard of just pulling forward a couple of rows predominated. This made the aisles look full, but on a busy day the shelves quickly became raggedy, with all the remaining stock pushed to the rear of the shelf. On top and bottom shelves there could be plenty of stock, but since only a few items were pulled forward, they looked empty). I usually faced each section as I stocked it, although some stockers started facing after all the stocking was done. (In stores where stockers were timed on how long it took them to stock an aisle, it made sense to face separately, even though the combination of the two tasks took long being done separately) While this was going on the more senior stockers filled displays or built new ones. Once all of this was done the stock crew clocked out and the manager and assistant manager swept the floor and ran a floor scrubbing machine around the store before heading out themselves. 

Unloading trucks at this store could be a dangerous proposition. A ramp connected the floor of the warehouse to a docking station at the level of the floor of a standard trailer just outside the delivery door. We'd remove pallets from the truck with a pallet jack and descended down the ramp, which was at a very steep angle. Gravity quickly took over and often two guys guiding the pallets down to the floor level had to do all they could do to keep the pallet from getting out of control, sliding downhill at high speed. At the bottom of the ramp you had to quickly turn either left or right or crash into a wall. More than once we'd take that turn so fast the whole load would tip over. Since we didn't have any forklifts or powered jacks and sometimes the level of the trailer was slightly lower than the dock, getting a pallet out of the truck required utilized all available muscle. One night we got a pallet of canned goods over the hump and I ended up running over my foot, cracking a couple of my toes. 

After a few months my assignment was changed to dairy stocker. I liked this a lot better since all of my stock was in one place, rather than spread out among multiple pallets. I could organize the cooler the way I saw fit and eventually they let me do my own ordering. Typically in grocery stores the dairy products arrive from two different sources. One was a dedicated dairy supplier, like Meadow Gold or Roberts, which primarily provided milk, but also sour cream, cottage cheese and dips. The grocery warehouse was the source for everything else: eggs, cheese, margarine, yogurt etc. The night crew stocked what came in on the truck from the warehouse, day crew stocked the milk. 

For around the first two years I also worked a part time job at the Omaha-World-Herald, which meant I had to leave by 2:00pm. I started picking up some extra hours coming in early to run back stock as early as 6:00pm, which meant I was working close to 40 hours a week just at Food 4 Less. 

As I stated earlier, shortly after starting at Food 4 Less I picked up a second job as a bundle hauler for the Omaha World-Herald newspaper. That job started at 2:30am and generally went to around 7:00am. I was assigned Bundle Haul 4 which stretched from N 27th Street all the way out to NW 48th Street on West O Street. Our office was in the basement of a strip mall at around 40th & O Streets, but we picked up our papers at a gas station on 9th Street across from the downtown Denny's. One Bundle Hauler was assigned to hand out our assignment sheets, which indicated where we were delivering and how many papers each stop received. After we unloaded all the papers from the truck we took what we needed for our route and headed out. My first few stops were at the State Office Building and the State Capitol. I especially liked the Capitol, where I delivered to the snack bar on the second floor. It was fun walking through the abandoned hallways and listening to the echoes of my footsteps. My third stop was to a guy named Bob. I viewed him as an "old guy", but in retrospect he was probably younger than I am now. He lived in a ramshackle downtown apartment building - every morning I was supposed to enter his actual apartment and wake him up. I was in mortal fear every night that I'd go in there and Bob would be dead. Looking back, I can hardly believe I agreed to do it! 

Things usually went pretty smoothly. But not always. One morning, after loading all my papers into the car and going through my daily route changes, someone banged aggressively on my window and told me to move my car. Apparently I was in someone's preferred spot. When I told him that I would be a minute he started kicking my car door. When I jumped out to confront him I found myself staring at a handgun pointed at my chest. Despite growing up in New York, this was a new experience for me. Despite being terrified, I put on a show of bravado and asked him what he planned to do with that gun. He lowered the gun and started laughing. We were already almost nose to nose, so it was pretty easy to punch him in the face without having to move any closer. He went down like a felled tree - I didn't wait around to find out if he was conscious before jumping in my car and starting my route. When I got back to the office when I was done, Vic the supervisor was waiting for me, having heard what happened from the rest of the team. I told my story and Quick Draw McGraw was fired. 

Most of the other haulers drove pickup trucks or vans. I drove a Chevette. If you are unfamiliar with Chevettes, they are small cars. There were days, especially Sundays, where I had to pile papers on the hood of the car to get even the downtown stops done. 

Like the grocery store job I started picking up extra hours. To ensure that would be on the clock until 7:00am I would take on "down routes". These were routes that didn't have a carrier and were assigned to Bundle Haulers. There was also a position called "Miss Runner". Customers would call in if, for one reason or another they didn't receive their paper. The Miss Runner would call in periodically to get a list of call-ins, usually working until around noon. Some days I would start at 6pm and work until noon the next day between both jobs. I wasn't getting much sleep but I was paying my bills. This went on until I was promoted to Night Manager at Food 4 Less and was able to quit my job as a bundle hauler. 

Start with Part I

Working Man - Part V - More Dishwashing, Some Pizza and Vacuum Sales

Well, I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

'Cause I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out an ice cold beer
Always seem to be wondering'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

I guess that's why they call me
They call me the workin' man

"Workin' Man" - Words & Music by Lee & Lifeson

 I was still part of a Way "program" and had made plans to enter their leadership training. Since I expected to leave the state for that training in a year, I was not looking for anything long-term. Nonetheless I started out my time in a new city with a job already lined up. The Country Kitchens in Kearney and Lincoln were owned by the same company, so I started my life in Lincoln ready to start work. As I stated in Part IV, my job was a dishwasher, but they referred to me as a DMO - Dish Machine Operator. I worked Monday - Friday, 7am - 4pm. I have no idea how I managed to avoid evenings and weekends, but wasn't about to complain. Tim, one of my roommates, worked a similar schedule, so I always had a ride to work. I'd start my day cleaning up the horrendous mess that the closing shift left for me. The sink would be full of pots and pans, silverware and dishes, and, an accident waiting to happen: knives. I don't recall ever cutting myself, but I ranted about it just about every day. If I had stuck around I might have worked my way into a waiter or cook position, but as I was still heavily involved in The Way, and had planned on entering their leadership training program in a year, long term career goals were not a priority. 

Around this time I met Pat, the woman who I would eventually marry, which influenced what my next job would be. In February '82 I had been reassigned to a different part of the city by Way leadership, which made it difficult to get to my job at Country Kitchen. Pat's ex-husband Dave was a manager at the Domino's Pizza Commissary, the location where the pizza dough and toppings were prepped for all the Lincoln and Omaha Dominoes. It was located within walking distance of my new home, so she asked him to hire me on. It was another Monday - Friday job, starting at 7am with varying end times. We’d start the day making giant piles of dough that we would cut up and weigh. These would become pizza crusts and put in trays to be delivered to the different stores. Next we’d cut up various toppings - onions, peppers, mushrooms etc., and bag them up. This was all according to orders called in from the various stores in Lincoln and Omaha. 

Back in those days I wasn’t very safety conscious. On two different occasions I tried to unclog the vegetable slicer and sliced the end of a finger. The first time I put a Band-Aid on it and it healed just fine. The second time one of the owners was present and insisted that I go the urgent care and get stitches. I can still see the scar from that one. (Years later as a certified Level 4 Food Manager & store safely coordinator, I understood the owner's point of view!)

After a few months I was entrusted with driving the delivery truck, first to the Lincoln stores, and then to Omaha, driving the big 10 speed manual transmission rig. This was a part of the job that I really enjoyed. It was a few hours every afternoon, just me and one other person, driving and unloading at each of the stores. On one of my trips I got stuck in a narrow alley and tried to back out, the bumper got caught on something and was bent back. I “fixed” it by pushing the bent bumper against a telephone pole to get it back in position. I thought that no one would notice! 

That summer I found out that I would not be entering leadership training, and Pat and I got married. I was far from employee-of-the-year, but I’m pretty sure marrying the boss's ex-wife was what got me fired. (Although Dave was not happy that I called the owner after Dave regularly showed up late for work, leaving the whole crew standing outside, unable to clock in.) This was the beginning of a long stretch being unemployed, other than a brief stint selling vacuum cleaners. 

Vacuum cleaner salesman was the shortest and probably the most ridiculous job I ever had. I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but I think I answered an ad that was fairly vague, but promised big paychecks. After sitting through a training class I found out that I’d be selling Rainbow vacuum cleaners for commission. I was very bad at it. We were supposed to generate leads by giving potential buyers a case of soup to get in the door. (Yes, a case of soup) After going through our spiel and attempting to close, we were supposed to call our district manager and have him talk to our lead. This didn't work very often, it usually just annoyed people. These vacuums were ridiculously expensive, but a ridiculously high percentage of the cost was the commission, so you could make a pretty good living selling one or two a week. I only sold two or three in the month that I did this, but I made enough to keep our heads above water for a while. 

I ended up being out of work for about four months, I didn’t pay rent that whole time. Our landlord was a Way person who lived in Minneapolis. She was pretty angry about us not paying the rent, but I managed to avoid getting evicted until I found another job. I got really good at figuring out how long I could avoid paying a utility bill before getting cut off; we signed up for food stamps and WIC. There was always food on the table though. I managed to hang on until I was able to get two part time jobs - stocking shelves at a Food 4 Less from 9pm - 2am, then delivering Omaha World-Herald newspapers from 2:30am - 7am. 

Start with Part I

Continue to Part VI

Managers Part V - Expert Power

We have looked at several sources of influence that a manager has over subordinates: 

Legitimate Power - the power that comes from a title or job description; 

Reward Power - that which comes from bestowing promotions, raises, coveted schedules etc; and 

Coercive Power - the ability to influence by inflicting or withholding punishment. 

Next we will be looking at Expert Power - the ability to influence others through special knowledge or skills.

Management is a skill in and off itself that does not necessarily derive from the ability to do the job that your subordinates are doing. For example, a manager in a manufacturing plant may have assembly line workers, janitorial staff, accountants, and salesmen on the payroll. It isn't reasonable to expect that the plant manager knows how to do all  of those jobs. However, most people tend to listen to managers who have demonstrated a proficiency in a particular area and trust their judgment in that area. For example, in my last job my immediate supervisor had almost 40 years of experience and has expertise in multiple areas of the department. She knew the rules, regulations and laws that apply to all aspects of the job, and as such, commands a lot of respect due to her extensive knowledge. The influence that can be wielded by being an "expert" manager is going to vary from industry to industry and from position to position within an industry, but being an expert will only be an effective source of management power if coupled with other skills (to be discussed later).

One's status as an expert however, doesn't necessarily mean that person is management material. As I stated earlier, management is a skill in and of itself, somewhat separate from any industry in which it functions. Oftentimes, an expert's skills in their area of expertise leads to a promotion to the ranks of management where they find that they are completely unprepared, never having earned the craft of managing, having concentrated on the skills that were being managed. This problem is exacerbated by how in many businesses the only path to promotion is into the supervisory or management ranks. In these fields someone who is looking to earn a greater rate of pay starts applying for positions that they are unsuited for, and end up being promoted because they were good at their previous job, even though they had exhibited no leadership qualities. Most non-managers have no understanding of what a manager's responsibilities are, thinking it's nothing more than either telling people what to do (what they think is a bad manager) or simply doing the same job for more money (what they think is a good manager). The truth is often quite sobering.

Start with Part I