Michael Sean Quinn, Ph.D, J.D., Etc., Quasi-Author

Quinn & Quinn
2630 Exposition Blvd  #115
Austin, Texas 78703
(o) 512-296-2594
(c) 512-656-0503
            In the “On Work” column of the NYT for Sunday, September 28, 2014, Michael Cascio wrote and essay entitled Pearls of Career Wisdom, Found in the Trash.” Cascio is a heavy-hitter executive from the world of media production.
In his essay he argues that his summer job during college cleaning up Wolf Trap late at night after the big time entertainment gigs (“classical, rock, folk, jazz, opera, ballet, musical theater”) were over.
He learned all sorts of things:
·        Hierarchies of employment are uneliminable and usually need to be observed.
·        Youthful bosses near the bottom rung can show both fairness wisdom. (His janitorial supervisor said this: “Never turn down a chance to take on more responsibility.” “It may be surprising but it’s true,” says Cascio. So, “[t]he best career guidance I ever got was from my janitorial supervisor[,] a kid not much older than he was.)
·        There are real class distinctions. Those at the bottom rung know this clearly; those up the ladder don’t always, or ignore it.
·        Many are condescending when addressing those from lower down, and should not be, from their own career standpoint.
·        Appreciate all levels of workers.  Make and keep permanent bonds.
·        Prepare for potentially very unpleasant work. (Example: How to tie trash bags to make sure they don’t break.)
·        How to handle the messes other people leave behind them.
·        Cleaning up toilets—now there’s are messes–makes one less squeamish about human messiness later on.
·        That high prestige performers (ballerinas) can be real pigs—way more so than more “ordinary” performers (folk singers). And so. . . .

“As a boss, I realize that summer jobs don’t have to be gritty or humbling to make an impact.* But for those summers, my janitorial job taught me the basics of all employment: You have to show up every day and on time. You have to appreciate everyone who works around you. You should acknowledge–and learn to work with—the pecking order in the working world. You have to exert yourself in ways you may [MSQ: did] not have learned [MSQ: learn] in school. And you often have to do things that have nothing—and everything–to do with your career and your life ahead.”*
            *  Quinn’s+  Hypotheses: The further up the ladder one was born and raised, the grittier the job needs to be, and the higher up “the ladder” the career is going to start and may likely go, the grittier the job needs to be.  The legal profession is often  high on that ladder.
            +Quinn’s Confession: I wish I had learned all that stuff.  Me? It took me forever to learn that fancied intellectuals of the late ‘60s had to give a lot of that up in the work-a-day world—at least in nearly all  of it, most of the time, no matter how high the prestige is, whether finance or law –and that being at a Wolf Trap on summer evenings, whether smoking or stone-cold-clean,  does not cancel that “rule” out to the slightest extent.