My First “Real” Job

40 years ago, on April 27 th, I started my first “real” job. I had planned on working in the pulp and paper mill in Powell River that summer, but a long strike appeared to be imminent. With some help through my dad’s connections, I ended up getting a summer job at MacMillan Bloedel’s head office in Vancouver.

My starting salary was $1,306 per month. It wasn’t quite as much money as I would have made if the mill was operating, but it sure beat shift work cleaning boilers or working on block loaders. (Take my word for it, these were not fun jobs.). My thinking at that time was that if I could just get to $20,000 per year, I would be set for life. I was just a little off.

I purchased a couple of pairs of pants, sports-coats, and ties, and a few shirts. I wasn’t exactly GQ material, but it would get me through the summer. I rode the bus into work smiling as I thought back to just a few years earlier when my grandparents would “allow” me to pull the cord when their bus stop was coming up. As a kid growing up in Powell River, pulling the cord was right up there with riding the escalators at Woodward’s Department Store. The latter providing my brothers and I with hours of entertainment on trips to the city.

Walking from my bus stop on Granville to the MacMillan Bloedel Building on Georgia and Thurlow, the sidewalks were jammed with people going in every direction. Being younger than everyone else, I would make way for my elders the way I was taught. I dodged from side to side. Eventually I learned how to stand tall and look confident, so people might also move out of my way, but it took a while.

I was nervous being introduced to everyone in the accounting department that I was to work in. They all seemed so much older than me, but I actually have no idea how old they were.

I was assigned the job of preparing bank reconciliations that were months behind schedule. I was told to do what I could with them, and that they should keep me busy all summer.

It was spreadsheet work, but this is before Excel or Lotus 123. These spreadsheets were columnar paper that had to be footed and cross footed (if you don’t know what that means, its ok, you don’t have to know.). I used two pieces of technology. An ancient adding machine and a highlighter pen. Not multiple highlighter pens. They only came in one colour back then

As the ‘kid’ in the department, I was given the oldest adding machine. By then, everyone else had quiet modern machines, but I was given an old Olivetti that you punched numbers into, and then rolled your hand to the right to hit “add”. It required some force. It would make a horrible clunk. I felt like everyone was staring at me.

Others operated their adding machines like extensions of their hand. I had learned how to touch type, but not operate a ten-key keyboard. The only calculator skill I had picked up in school was typing 5318008 and giggling when I turned the calculator upside down. I thought the bump on the 5 key of my adding machine was a manufacturing flaw rather than a guide for your finger. I was so young.

Preparing the bank reconciliations was a matter of going through and comparing thousands of cheques in our internal ledgers to what the bank had processed. I just saw them as big puzzles, and with so many columns of number to add, I quickly became adept using the adding machine. It was incredibly satisfying to complete a reconciliation. I churned through them in just a few weeks. They then found more puzzles for me to work on. It ended up being 9 years before I left that summer job.

I learned a lot in those years. Some lessons learned that I would repeat, and others that I would not. Those reconciliations got me started on the path of always wanting to find a better more efficient way to do things which carried me through much of my career.

That version of me had no idea who he would become in 40 years. Of course, he couldn’t even begin to imagine being 60.

Originally published at https://shakeitupdotonline.wpcomstaging.com on April 27, 2021.