2024, Uncategorized, work

Other Duties As Necessary

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The title of this post is a statement that is in the job description of all State employees just in case something comes up that needs to be done that isn’t in our formal job descriptions.

In January, the clinical director asked me if I would smudge our building. I somehow let her know I had done it at our old building, and she thought it would be a good idea to do it again. So did our regional director, so at noon on a Friday in January, the clinical director gave me the go ahead. None of the three of us imagined just how much smoke I was going to produce from my smudging shell, and a couple of employees had to go home as their asthma and allergies acted up. Clients were really confused. None of the smoke detectors went off, thank goodness.

I didn’t think there would be a repeat performance, but last week the clinical director asked me to smudge again, with the regional director insisting that I wait until 4:55pm on Friday to avoid making people ill. It went just fine, and I smoked the whole place up. It had been a particularly stressful week and I loaded the shell up with sage, bear root, tobacco, and sweet grass. Husband followed me and silently recited the Prayer of St. Francis, just to keep all our bases covered. It never occurred to me that “clearing the building of bad juju” would ever be a part of my job description, but there it is.

What is the strangest thing you ever had to do in a job? What would you have liked to see added to your job description? Do you ever smudge?

24 thoughts on “Other Duties As Necessary”

  1. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Renee, I just love this. Every pretentious psychologist there ever was (and there were many) is probably having a snit-fit about this particular task.  I knew psychologists who would diagnose a psychotic or schizoaffective disorder for anyone willing to engage in such a ritual and the belief system there-in. Especially if the person was female. 

    When I worked at a local facility for Chemically Dependent Youth, I ended up administering many TOVAs. I did not ever think this would be part of my job, but it was an interesting process. TOVA was an old, old Continuous Performance TEst that was part of a ADHD diagnosis. We used these for a research study about the co-occurance of ADHD and Chemical Dependency.  The psychologists on staff refused to administer these tests for some reason ( it was a highly researched test that was valid, and invented by our consulting psychiatrist during his stint at the NIH). So it was assigned to me to do as a Clinical Social Worker. The inventor trained me to do this. Later the psycologists complained to the head of the department that I was doing this tasks as a Clinical Social Worker, even though they refused to do it, or be trained in it. Big egos.

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  2. Once when I was working in my dad‘s law office during school break, my dad left his briefcase at the courthouse in Jefferson City, which is about a 2-hour drive from St. Louis. He made me drive to Jefferson City and pick up the briefcase in the afternoon and I was really pissed off about it. Looking back on it I’m pretty sure if there had been anybody lower on the totem pole in the office they would have been sent, but that I was the lowest and also the daughter of the attorney rubbed up against my sense of self-importance.

    At my last job I took on the role of birthday fairy. (I’m not sure where the name came from but that’s what it was called.) I was in charge of all the birthdays in my department, assigning someone to each birthday and then reminding them a couple of weeks out that they were responsible for the birthday treat and circulating the birthday card. I worked fairly hard at this to make sure that it was equitable and that any changes in the department didn’t end up being a burden to anybody in particular. I did this for 25 years. Now that I’m gone, no one is doing it. Once a month, during a department meeting, my boss recognizes everyone with a birthday during that month and brings in some kind of bagel or treat. I don’t know if she’s circulating cards anymore.

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  3. My jobs/careers have been pretty mundane for the most part. Does leading a Dixieland band of a few of my high school band student on the back of a hay wagon in the Carlton Days parade qualify?

    We may have been too good though, because the next year, the superintendent insisted that I organize the senior band to march in the parade. Must have spent six weeks practicing simultaneous marching and playing just to play three songs in a ten-minute parade. ;-( (I HATED marching band. never wanted to be in it in school and more or less succeeded other than a few “near misses.” Sort-of marching but not in a traditional parade performance.

    Chris in Owatonna

    PS- Connie Evingson rocked our conversation at Axel’s last night. She sang short a capella versions of “Anthropology,” (the song I included in Straight River and mentioned her by name), “April in Paris,” and “Nature Boy.” Whew! Her voice is still as great as ever.

    Brought back memories of the final TLGMS show at the Fitzgerald when Connie sang “Nature Boy” for Dale and Jim Ed at about 6 a.m. What a trouper!

    C

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  4. OT – Børsen, Denmark’s iconic old stock exchange building from 1625, is in flames. Its beautiful spiral tower, three dragons with their tails twisted together, has fallen. The building, which currently housed the Danish Chamber of Commerce, was under renovation, and surrounded by scaffolding shrouded in plastic, making fighting the fire very difficult.

    Many items, of high cultural significance and value, were rescued from the building, but the damage to the building itself is severe.

    I’m heartsick at this news.

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  5. Oh, it seems like I’ve done all kinds of odd things – heck, my book business was located on a wall of a hair salon, so instead of rent, I got to play receptionist 3 times a week. As a kindergarten teacher, I crawled around on the floor looking for legos with the kids. Will try to remember others…

    Smudging – I was working at the Wedge Co-op as a produce coordinator when we moved from its start-up spot (what is now the Theater Garage on Franklin & Lyndale) to what had been a 7-11 store. We smudged the whole store before moving in, and the parking lot – not me personally, but I was there. And at Birchbark Books there was occasional smudging for various reasons.

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  7. Theater encompasses so many random jobs. I filled the pop machine way back when it still had glass bottles. But then I was also in charge of the selection and I made sure there was a row of grape pop!

    Our house needs to be smudges. I enjoy the process and I love watching the smoke curl up and around. Haven’t done it in several months, which may explain a lot.

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  9. A woman I worked with was once a production assistant for A Prairie Home Companion. Production assistant means you’re the person who is assigned the miscellaneous stuff that isn’t in anyone’s job description. I remember her talking about being sent out to buy shaving cream for a sound effect in a skit. Then she was told the dhaving cream she bought didn’t sound enough like shaving cream, so she had to go on a quest for the shaving cream brand with the most authentic sound.

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  10. I didn’t do a lot of really odd things in my job descriptions, but there were a couple of occasions where I got a phone call out of the blue and was told to be in a far away place once it was Jakarta once it was Hong Kong once it was the town in Italy, where the Carrera marble comes from

    each one required putting a toothbrush and a couple of shirts in a suitcase and getting on a plane the next day to complete the task and turn around and come back in fairly short order. I know I’ve written about the trip to Jakarta before it was while the country was being overthrown by the military, but it had been done two years before the king was kind of tired and ready to give up so the tanks on the street or something that weren’t as scary as they might otherwise have

    I have never smudged

    How was once asked what I wanted my title to be at a company and I told him I’d like to be the vice president of new stuff

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  11. My four years at SIU I worked as a part-time secretary to Dr. Gass who ran the Endocrinology Pharmacology Research Lab. At the time he was supervising the research of several Ph.D. students who were doing cancer research. This involved thousands of white mice. Occasionally I’d be asked to help with the task of weighing the testes of the mice on a small, very accurate scale. Smelly, painstaking, and tedious work I can assure you.

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      1. Like the editor of the Bulletin Board in the Pioneer Press often reminded us, this is not a competitive sport. I’ll admit that weighing mouse testes is a pretty weird thing to do, but somebody had to do it, and I happened to be handy several times when it needed doing.

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  12. I have been present during smudging several times when I worked at the alternative school. I’m terribly sensitive to smoke, and for me it was a painful and unpleasant experience. I’d never do it privately, mostly because I don’t believe in it.

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  13. Where does the magic reside, I wonder…

    in the burning vegetation, in the smudger, or in the cultural appropriation?

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    1. There used to be a lot of buzz about the Findhorn method of talking to plants to help them grow. I was never convinced that it actually worked, but I often talk to them anyway, figuring it might help, can’t possibly hurt, and doesn’t cost anything.

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