Work Ethics and Street Hustlers
Last night, as we ate left over turkey tacos and fresh margaritas (rocks - no salt), we were simultaneously watching a documentary on actor/hustler Rockets Redglare and making arrangements for my wife to attend the funeral of her Uncle who just passed in Louisville. Again, pronounced Lou-uh-vill. The documentary, available at Netflix, did an excellent job of demonstrating how so many events will impact someone’s life and truly make up who they are. Rockets certainly had an interesting life, from day one when he was born and had to be weaned off the heroine habit that his 15-year old mother had already developed for him. He witnessed and participated in prostitution and, before the age of 14, had already seen two killings by family members close up. The movie includes testimonials from big time Hollywood types include Matt Dillon, Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch, Willem Dafoe and more, all covering the same point; Rockets was hustler. When you thought he was down he came back, because even while down he still had the street smarts to survive. The power of this documentary wasn’t based upon a “watch the dying fat man” angle that it could have taken, but instead look at the amazing life this guy lived, the things he’s done on stage and on screen, the people that he knew and the life experience he had.
A few weeks back, there was a segment on CBS Sunday Morning about a “coach” making a living by training people on how to LOOK busy while they were at work. While mostly a humorous piece by their most comedic reporter, Bill Geist, this person really was teaching people how to do less while fooling their managers into believing they were working. Yes, this is what our country needs right now. More people doing less, while being better actors. Isn’t it bad enough that our nation is already so massively distracted with American Idol, America Can’t Dance, America’s Fat Losers, American Mom of 14 makes a porno and gets pregnant yet again! Why is it that so many of us do not know how to get a job done, from start to finish? While our home values drop by 20% and our 401k’s become 201k’s and while the pink slip is a known reality for probably 10% of us this year, why are we so fixated on someone else’s reality? Is our life so uninteresting that we really need to sit idle in front of a TV for 2 hours a day, three days a week to see someone else’s Idol dreams come true?
Back in 2005, when I was really pushing to get a job outside the Midwest, I was doing phone interviews during my lunch hour and on my way to work and on my way home from work. I was talking with recruiters, checking references and speaking with CEO’s and senior level people about what I can do and what I can provide to their companies. I remember making some significant progress with one NY based firm, and according to the recruiter, I was one of the final three being seriously considered. Then I got the call that they were going with someone else. The recruiter owned up and admitted, “they wanted to go with someone else – someone from the east coast.” I tried hard to defend my pure and true Midwestern work ethic, the hours I put in, the projects I was most proud of, my development of international websites, but ultimately, they knew there was difference between people who will work hard and people who can truly work smart. There is a difference between people who know HOW to get something done and can do it, versus those who will work hard at what you tell them to do. Within my first six months of living in the tri-state area I understood this “resourcefulness” quotient much better. During that time I had access to a team of about eight foreign programmers who would all work hard at the drop of a hat, and do explicitly what I told them to do, but not necessarily in the smartest or most effective ways. Now, after almost three years as a resident here, I understand why an east coast person would get the nod over my formerly more sedate, yet eager, Midwestern psyche.
What’s strange is that my true passion for computers and technology likely came from an attempt to avoid manual labor - not work, but physical, manual labor. During my first “working” summer, at the tender age of 13 (1980), my step-father locked my entire summer up as employee of Heider’s Berry Farm in Woodstock IL. While most teen kids had the summer off or maybe spent a few weeks detasselling all those acres of corn, I spent my full three months working a fruit and vegetable farm with illegals, a few ex-cons and some college kids who all needed the cash with few questions asked. I remember my very first day, walking across the dirt floor of the barn and up to a group of about eight men, all listening intently to the boss, John Heider, while I obnoxiously announced “I’m here”. Heider looked at me with his one good eye and paused, and then just kept talking about whatever it was he was talking about. I was nothing but a farm hand now and I had better be a good one if I expected to stay throughout the summer, regardless of my age or job experience. I learned a LOT that summer. Since it was an open to the public, self-pick farm and I was one of the few people who could speak English but wasn’t legally suppose to drive, I became a “field manager”. Explaining to Chicagoans who had come out to the “country”, in Woodstock, to pick their own strawberries. I would talk to each bus load about how to properly pick a row of strawberries – what to look for and what to leave behind. Learning about public speaking and managing people older than you certainly was a benefit to me. Lots of other stories from that summer, but I am digressing…
The summary is that working hard in Heider’s farm fields and doing manual labor at the Intermatic factory for my next high school summer, basically taught me that I didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of my mother and step-father. I wanted to use my head to make a living so I focused very intently on computers and bought my first computer, a Commodore Vic-20 in late 1980 or early ’81 with the money I had saved from Heider’s. Along with my best friend, who owned an Atari 400, we taught ourselves BASIC and Assembly Language. We would use our lunch hours to visit Beyer’s Newsstand in downtown Woodstock at least once a week to see whether the new COMPUTE! Magazine was in stock or what other computer magazines we should buy; Creative Computing or Byte, there was so much to learn. And if we didn’t find a way to broaden our minds, we could preoccupy ourselves while inconspicuously glancing over the healthy selection of skin mags or finally resigning ourselves to a bad burger and a cherry coke at the counter. At the age of 15 we launched our own software company, Supreme Software, just for Atari and Commodore computers. We created one program, a video check-out system, for the very first video store in Woodstock – Accent Video. Unfortunately, we did the work in trade for a 300bps Modem for my Vic, which got me in a lot of trouble, but I am digressing again…
Continuing my passion for technology and design, and attempts to avoid manual labor and shop class, I would return frequently to Tom Juran’s Graphic Arts class at Woodstock High School. We learned about printing and design, and heard stories about something magical called a Macintosh that would really revolutionize “desktop publishing and design.” Graphic Arts class is where I first heard Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I was astounded. These amazing stories from the Message and the celebrations within Parties. There was this whole other way of life that was being revealed to me through music that I had not heard before. From there my “street” education had begun; Grandmaster Flash introduced me to Run DMC, which in turn took me to Ice-T and Public Enemy and eventually NWA. Those early influences, I’m certain, pushed me to be a Club DJ, which in turn got me into radio in Chicago which allowed me the knowledge and confidence to launch 80s Airwaves back on May 1, 2004. Without which, you would not be reading this, nor I would not be writing this.
For those of you seeking a more obvious moral, working hard is not sufficient. Pretending to work is a serious mistake that is truly a waste of your life and other people’s precious time. The idea of retirement will soon be quaint memory like family dinners, station wagons and 300 baud modems. To survive this new world we need to be street smart, well connected, working smart and always be aware of what’s happening at every level - and that takes a lot of work.
-pjc