photo credit @fkaregan
I once worked with a bookish guy named Tom. What I didn’t realize was how naïve he was. Tom came from a religious family and had led a sheltered life. When he started college, he needed to get a part time job. He was so excited when he came across an ad in the newspaper for a cashier for the graveyard shift at Bay Street Avenue Books. He called the number listed and was hired immediately. He told me later he remembers how excited he was that there was a bookstore open all night.
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And then he showed up to work.
I invite you to pause here and visualize with me Tom walking through the door of his new job at the bookstore. Suddenly he was in “an establishment having any portion of its stock and trade in books, films, video cassettes, or magazines and other periodicals which are distinguished or characterized by their emphasis on matter depicting, describing, or relating to “specified sexual activities” or “specified anatomical areas.”” That’s the legal definition of the bookstore where Tom was now employed.
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Poor Tom. He tried to explain his error to the owner who was not amused. But Tom is a man of his word. He’d accepted the job and felt he had a responsibility to keep his word. This religious and shy man then settled down to work his first and only shift in an adult bookstore. It was an accelerated education in catching up with a world he didn’t know and really hoped not to see again.
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Tom can laugh now about how naïve, horrified and red-faced he was to sell the materials and meet the people (mostly men) who bought the stuff the bookstore sold. All these years later he still seems traumatized by the experience: a bit wiser and sadder about humanity. And he was quick to tell me he didn’t buy anything before he quit. Oh Tom!
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Lots of times life teaches us lessons we rather not learn. If your lesson is being stuck in a job you hate, or you just want to get some perspective on what you’re doing with your life, you and I should talk. You can schedule a free chat with me and check out my other offerings by clicking this button. Work with me
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