{"id":404,"date":"2016-02-28T16:16:53","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T21:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/?p=404"},"modified":"2016-02-28T16:16:53","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T21:16:53","slug":"disco-inferno-or-my-first-job-out-of-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/?p=404","title":{"rendered":"Disco Inferno, or my first job out of college…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"disco<\/a>\"disco<\/a><\/p>\n

As we move into the early months of spring, this year\u2019s college graduates are thinking about what their next move will be. Those with great grades, important degrees, who attended ivy league schools, will have an easy time; in fact \u2013 they probably have those jobs lined up right now!<\/p>\n

Others who\u2019ve \u201cattended\u201d college, have liberal arts or majors with a general educational application, and probably won\u2019t be putting their GPA on their resumes, will likely take a bit longer to find the job of their choice if they ever do\u2026much like a guy named Wally who graduated in the late \u201870\u2019s from pretty good college, with a double major in English & French and nearly a B (well realistically C+) average.<\/p>\n

Sure, after graduation the dream was there for me. After taking those LSAT’s<\/a><\/strong>, I discovered that I really wanted to work in Advertising!<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

My father was an advertising guy at BBDO for a number of years in account management. Not the Don Draper, creative powerhouse type guy, more like the Roger Sterling, client relationship, have a couple of wives guy. Anyway, Dad passed away when I was in college, and he had retired from the agency business many years before. So, while there were one or two of his old buddies still in the biz and happy to chat with me, as various interview processes went on, it was clear that I was going to have to interview for quite a while before landing. Besides, everybody was telling me to \u201cgo back and get my MBA.\u201d Right..Not happening.<\/p>\n

Well, this was pre-internet of course, so aside from networking with your parent’s relationships, the job search strategy was simple in the late 70’s \u2013 buy the Sunday New York Times and apply to advertising jobs. You Millennials reading this might think applying online is an easy process, but you never hear anything back \u2013 imagine when you\u2019re applying via snail mail. Weeks go by with nothing, and then you get the “form decline” letter. Ugh.<\/p>\n

I graduated with no permanent job in sight. One option was pretending I was Sam Elliott and go back to my summer Lifeguard<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>job,\u00a0just like the movie.\u00a0\u00a0Luckily, our good family friend, John, who was a professional engineer (PE) in Westchester County, called and said he had an idea for me – for at least the summer. As it happened, my mother already worked for him as both a secretary and joint office manager with his wife. John to this day is still a character; he\u2019s like an Irish cop with high energy, boisterous laugh, and he gets along with everybody (keep this in mind for later). Typically, as a PE John was hired by insurance companies to check out structural damage in buildings and make assessments as to what might have caused the damage. Was it weather, poor construction or something else? He spent his days checking out building damage either on his stomach in a crawl space, or dangling on a scaffold on the side of a very tall building (heights aren’t my favorite), and John was often called to court as an expert witness to testify on the damage. His was a cool job.<\/p>\n

You see, he had great grades, and an important degree from a big name school!<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York City area at that time was really one big collection of structural damage, so as you can imagine this guy was quite busy. My mother and his wife used to book his calendar up each week with appointments and so he didn\u2019t always have down time to reflect\/make notes on what he observed. This is where his great idea came in\u2026I was going to be his driver and take notes as he assessed damage. We\u2019d get up early in the morning, and he would pick me up in his Peugeot stick-shift car and I\u2019d drive him around to his appointments in the City, Westchester and Long Island…all day long. He paid me pretty well for this and would give me time off for an interview if I needed it. This arrangement would be great for him as he could take down notes, or even sleep between appointments. Having never driven a stick shift before, the first few days of this job were memorable for both of us\u2026and I recall he didn\u2019t get too many naps in the first week!<\/p>\n

One of the days, John picked me up at my house and said we are headed into NYC today, really to one of the boroughs \u2013 Brooklyn\u2026and going to the Bedford\u2013Stuyvesant<\/a><\/strong> section. The case in Bed-Stuy for the day was to investigate suspicious fire damage at a disco which was on the 5th<\/sup> floor of a 5-story residential walk-up. John drives the car that day as he\u2019s been to Brooklyn before.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not a geography genius, and really hadn’t been to any borough before, and at that time in my life only knew New York City. I\u2019d been to see my father at work as a little kid, and we\u2019re talking mid-town Madison Avenue of course, in the 40\u2019s. Bed-Stuy as it\u2019s known as, only materialized for me on the evening news along with other less-than-safe neighborhoods in the five boroughs where some crime happened almost everyday \u2013 and in multiples.<\/p>\n

We arrive in Bed-Stuy, with me sheepishly peering out the window. We see the building we need to inspect, but are only able to park the Peugeot a block away. John and I get out of the car and it\u2019s pretty clear that we look nothing like the residents of this block. John\u2019s wearing a jacket and tie and I\u2019m in the tried and true Westchester County look<\/a><\/strong> of a button down shirt, khaki\u2019s and boat shoes. The two of us \u201csore thumbs\u201d continue to walk down the street to multiple looks, John all the time saying hello in his best Irish cop manner; making friends. We arrive to the front of the building to see a tall white guy \u2013 obviously the landlord \u2013 standing in front of the door along with a tenant who was not white. It occurred to me we had the start of a good joke \u2013 An Irish cop, a Jewish landlord, a African-American tenant, and a Wasp walk into a burned out disco\u2026oh, nevermind. Quick handshakes all around, some chatter and eyeballing of the exterior of the building, and the landlord lets us in to head upstairs.<\/p>\n

The building smells of smoke and has some other aromas that are familiar to a guy like me who lives with multiple dogs and cats. People reside in this building, but the top floor is a disco in the evenings \u2013 \u00a0one can only imagine the noise for the residents each night. We get on the roof, and yes there is damage, but only on one section, so we are able to stand on the roof to take a look. While John mumbles out loud and I\u2019m taking notes he stops and says, \u201cDarn, I left my camera in the car trunk.\u201d He hands me the car keys and asks me to go get the camera for him.<\/p>\n

This was of course pre-cell phone days<\/a><\/strong>, and he needed pictures to go with his notes, so off I go.<\/p>\n

I zip down the stairs and out the front door of the building. I make my way down the street to the car a block away, open the trunk and pull out what is about $500 worth of camera equipment, close the trunk and turn around. It\u2019s then that my suburban-lad mind realizes that I\u2019m holding expensive camera equipment in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in NYC. Gulp. As calmly as possible, I briskly walk to the door of the building trying not to make eye contact with anyone and acting like I do this everyday in Bed-Stuy.<\/p>\n

\"run<\/a><\/p>\n

Yep, the door is LOCKED.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course there are no residential buzzers, and the first mobile phones wouldn\u2019t be available for sale until 1983, about 4 years later. To quote one of my favorite Animal House lines \u2013 \u201cWe\u2026are gonna die.\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

I bang on the door several times, nothing. I step back to see if I can see these guys on the roof, nope. I step back and bang several times again\u2026this goes on for 5 minutes. Finally, a very large black woman comes to the door and opens it. I\u2019m guessing she heard me right away, but it took her a while to get down the stairs. She looks at me clearly thinking this guy is very lost, but I explain that we are checking out the roof. She looks me over and says \u201choney, I bet you were pretty scared out there when you couldn\u2019t get in\u2026\u201d When I agree, she adds \u201chave to tell you, I\u2019M pretty scared out there everyday myself.\u201d\u00a0 Great.<\/p>\n

We walk to the second floor, where I thank her and head to the roof where everybody is standing. John kind of shrugs as if to say “Ah, where were you?” – and I explain the story, including the lady\u2019s line \u2013 everybody on the roof (but me) laughs out loud.<\/p>\n

We finish the damage assessment, pack up our stuff (including the camera) say goodbye to the United Nations gathering we had, and hightail it out of there. Once my breathing was back to normal, we did laugh about the visit on the way home\u2026since that day, I’ve been back to Brooklyn, but not Bed-Stuy.<\/p>\n

The good news was I finally got my job in advertising, well advertising sales. Lots of fun in that industry and many stories to come in this blog about those days.<\/p>\n

But, they say you never forget your first…well my “chauffeur” gig is obviously a job with a day I\u2019ll never forget!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we move into the early months of spring, this year\u2019s college graduates are thinking about what their next move will be. Those with great grades, important degrees, who attended ivy league schools, will have an easy time; in fact \u2013 they probably have those jobs lined up right now! Others who\u2019ve \u201cattended\u201d college, have liberal arts or majors with… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[18,31,32],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Clfm-6w","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=404"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":414,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404\/revisions\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wallyword.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}