YOU'RE HIRED

      After reading about people who've been laid off due to the current recession, I am reminded of what a kick in the head it is to lose your job and go looking for work when few jobs are to be had. My heart goes out to them.  One thing's for sure, they are not alone.  There are thousands in the same boat.

 











     At the same time I thought of my late father-in-law Hans Nielsen who came here from Denmark to begin a new life.  In his memoirs, my husband Robert wrote:

      "After crossing the Atlantic, my parents first rented a farm in upstate New York. But before leaving Denmark Hans had promised his mother he would find his brother Niel, who had preceded him by more than a decade but hadn't told his family his whereabouts. My father somehow traced him to New Denmark, N.B., where he found Uncle Niel and Aunt Marion living in very humble conditions with the first eight or nine of their eventual 14 children. By this time my father was broke and needed a job, fast. He tried at the railway being built nearby; no luck. Then someone told him that the bridge at Plaster Rock had been swept away with the ice at the spring break-up, and a new one was being built.

      Papa walked the 16 miles to Plaster Rock, and saw that the bridge under construction was a simple structure, requiring few skills but much heavy labour. First, piers were built of peeled logs notched and spiked together, then ballasted by being filled with big rocks. Next, long beams linked the piers, a floor was put on, wooden sides were built and topped with a shingled roof. This bridge was still at the pier stage.

      My father, who had only a little English at this point, went up to the foreman and indicated he wanted a job. The foreman told him he didn't need any more help. And that was that--but it wasn't.

      Starting time each day was 7 a.m., and when the foreman reached the site next morning at 6.45 he found a man already at work, lugging rocks and dropping them in a pier crib. Next day at 6.45, the same man doing the same thing. Third day at 6.45, ditto.

      "I guess the foreman figured that any man who would do that was probably a pretty good worker, so he hired me," Papa concluded.

      This was his first job in Canada, but he was soon busy helping to clear timber off the 200 acres which were to be the site of the Fraser Company dairy farm, of which he became manager. It supplied milk to the whole village of 1,000 people."

      In 1955 in my 16th year I did two very foolish things: I quit school in Grade 11 and got married. I was bored and saw it as a chance to get away from home.

      We moved to Toronto where my husband got work right away. For the next three months I walked from one end of the city to another filling out job applications. Then one Friday around four o'clock, I finally met the personnel manager of a factory that made the Enfield rifle. They were looking for someone to work on the assembly line. I'd been walking all day, I'd had no lunch, I was hot and grubby, I was a breath away from despair. He motioned for me to sit, then he walked around his desk, sat down, adjusted his tie, and picked up my application. A few seconds later, he laid it aside, leaned back and put his feet up on the desk, so that the soles of his shoes were in my face. Then he said: "Sorry, but we're looking for someone with experience." And that's when I blew my cork.

      "How in hell is a person going to get experience if nobody will give her a job. I'm  strong. I'm smart. I can learn. I have two hands..."

      He then cut my rant short: "Lady, if you want the job that bad, it's yours."

      Thus began my 45 year working career. Alas, times were much easier then.