In 1998 I was living on my own but I wasn’t working. I was attending a day program 4 days a week. After I had been going there for about 7 months a counselor showed me an ad she had clipped from a local newspaper. It said this place was looking for Park Ranger. I had no experience being a Park Ranger and I had my doubts but I went and applied and I got hired. The pay was $9.00 an hour.
After a few days at my new job I discoved that my prior ideas of what a Park Ranger does were very far from the realities of this job. I don’t know exactly what I expected but at this job a large part of my daily shift was spent emptying garbage cans and cleaning restrooms and picking up trash. Not very glamorous. There was also a LOT of just sitting around.
But on the positive side of things, I got to wear a cool uniform and I got to drive around by myself in the company pick-up truck. I also got to carry a Walki-Talki. I had the keys to every gate in every park in a ten mile radius. I thought that was cool too. At one park it was my duty to patrol the park on foot once an hour. I didn’t always like that because the park was often crowded. Part of my responsibility was to make sure that no one brought in any alcohol into the park. So that meant confronting people who were drinking a beer or something. In fact I had to enforce several rules and that meant going up to someones picnic or party or barbeque if I suspected they were breaking any rule. So I was kind of the authority figure.
Anyway, at another park I had to take a gasoline-powered weed-whacker and trim a hundred feet of overgrown brush. I didn’t like that much but I did as I was told. Well, anyway, I’m rambling. The job could be fun but I had to do a lot of stuff I didn’t enjoy. I also got away with a lot too. I was supposed to make a foot patrol once an hour but I often waited for two hours to walk around. And at one park instead of doing extra work I would just sleep in my truck! Or at a different park I used to hang out for two hours by myself in a trailer/office when I should have been working. Maybe it’s not something to be proud of but I’m not perfect and the pay was low.
The only reason I confess to this is not to encourage people to goof off but I wanted to show that you can be a bad worker and still survive on a job. And to show that you don’t have to be perfect to hold down a job. Anyway, I’m glad I tried that job, I worked there for almost two years. i got to fish a dog out of the San Francisco bay, saving it’s life. I once put out a fire. Just reminiscing I guess