A Day in the Life

I’m glad it’s stopped raining. It’s not so much that I mind working in the rain. I don’t care what your job is — if you’re a farmer or a fisherman — if you work outdoors you learn to deal with it; you make sure you wear the right gear. But when it’s three months solid, you just get tired of it. People who don’t work outside usually assume that the worst weather for installing a sign is when it’s raining and cold…but really, it’s the heat that gets me the most.

I love days like this, in October — especially before the winds kick in and you can just put on a jacket and know that you won’t get too sweaty or too cold. The road is dry, the sun is out, the coffee I grabbed before the job meeting is still hot, and I’m here in my “office” — otherwise known as a boom truck. It’s pretty much where we live in this job. Home is where the hardware is.

We’re on the road to Redmond, to put up another Red Robin sign. We’ll be in Renton after that, and probably in Bellingham by the end of the week. It should be pretty straightforward, but there really isn’t any such thing as “routine” in this job. You never know what you’re really getting into until you really get into it. It’s kind of like life, I guess.

We put a lot of miles on our fleet, although most of our jobs don’t require an overnight stay. Of course, I remember the jobs we did for Chevron, traveling from Centralia to the Canadian border. And then there were the Walmart jobs. We put in some overnighters on those. Somebody asked me the other day how long an install job usually takes, and I told them, “Until we get it done.” I wasn’t trying to be a wise guy…that’s just the truth. It’s funny, though, how so many of the jobs we do have us home in time for dinner — and when you look back on your day, it ended up being about eight hours. There’s just a way that you do things if you’re going to be efficient and get the job done right. Around here, we call it “the Meyer way.” Some people get it, some people don’t — and they’re usually the ones who move on after a little while. I’ve been here since ’87, and it’s like family by now.

When people ask me about what I do for a living, I don’t know what to say beyond, “I install signs.” I mean, there’s a lot to it, and every job is unique. Occasionally somebody will ask me if we’re hiring, and that’s a hard question to answer as well. Yeah…we’re always on the look out for talent, but it’s not like you can hire somebody just out of trade school. Last time I checked, there weren’t any college courses in sign installation; and if there were, you’d have a lot of classes you’d have to take. But the real education is in the field. Book smarts won’t get you very far.

I was always a tinkerer. I liked working on motorcycles as a kid, and I was handy. I picked up some skills along the way, like welding and sheet metal. When Ken and Martin hired me back in ’87, I didn’t really know how much I didn’t know, but I paid attention and learned quickly. Even at that, it took years.

These days, it’s not just that you have to have skills. You always had to have skills. You have to be licensed. You have to have your CDL, you have to have a Class A endorsement, you have to pass a physical to get your health card and be CPR trained. You have to be a licensed boom operator, and I’m also licensed to do electrical work and welding. And then, of course, you have to do continuing education to keep your certifications current, same as a doctor or a teacher. That’s why you just can’t hire some guy off the street, although we do have a young man working now who Ken hired because he believed he has what it takes…but it will be a few years before we can really turn him loose.

Some marketing guy who works for us recently asked me what I liked about my job. I don’t know why, but that stumped me. I guess I’ve been doing it for so long that I can’t imagine what else I would be doing — unless somebody wanted to pay me to hunt and fish all day. For the most part, the people we do work for are pleasant, and I enjoy the people I work with. I like the fact that every day is different, and that I don’t have a job that I have to take home with me every night. Of course, I do have a gift of forgetting what I did the day before, which definitely helps keep things new and interesting.

Sometimes, though, when I’m driving somewhere with my family, we’ll go past a sign that I installed years ago. My wife or kids will say, “Hey, didn’t you put up that sign?” And I realize that not many people can point to something and say, “I did that!” In the case of what I do for a living, there just aren’t very many people that can do what I do — and I think again about the marketing guy’s question, and how I could have answered it without sounding like I was bragging. Truth is, I’m proud to be a professional in a trade that gets noticed. That’s the whole point to a sign, right? To get noticed. I can tell someone who asks me what I do for a living, “I’m the guy that gets businesses noticed.” That’s pretty cool.