By complete accident (although some would insist that it was Divine Intervention,) I have a part time job.
On July 1st, I tried to ride my motorcycle to another state to visit my family. The bike just would not start. I tried until the battery ran down trying to crank it. Okay, plan B… it was already almost 11am, if I ran I could make the 11:30am bus to White River Junction and get a transfer from there. I got into the bus station and the guy at the coffee machine said he’d be right with me – the man sitting at the desk didn’t work there, he “just comes in for the coffee.” I said I got that a lot – someone would start asking me questions and I would have to tell them that I don’t work there, I was just fixing the computer. The owner (from the coffee machine) said “Ooooh, you fix computers? You’re not leaving!” After a bit of back and forth, I agreed to come in the following Wednesday and clean out his computer. Turned out the bus was an hour late, giving us extra time to chat about what problems he was having. When in doubt, assume spyware…
Wednesday after class I went in and proceeded to clean off the crap, which turned out to be rather minor. The real problem was with the web-based ticketing system; for some reason it didn’t always like to print tickets. I was able to figure out how the ticketing system worked within about 5 minutes, which surprised him – while he was taking the name of the passenger, I was typing it into the system, and had the ticket sold before he even got there. This impressed him enough to ask me if I wanted a job – he usually closed up at 3:30pm, but he wanted someone there for some night and late weekend hours. He left me there to bang on the system for another hour or so (Java based crap… had to reinstall JRE so it would re-certify Greyhound’s web page as “permitted to run.”)
I gave it some thought, and today while delivering the bill for fixing the computer I told him sure, I’ll take some part time hours. Heck, I’m a starving college student, and how much work is it really? I sit there at the desk and do my homework in between ticket sales. “And the monkey pulls the switch…” So he showed me how to reconcile the previous day’s sales, figure out commissions, deposits, that stuff, and Friday I’ll go in after class and start officially. Pay is about $8 an hour and it’s probably going to be under the table.
All because my motorcycle wouldn’t start, and magically worked fine when I returned after 3 days. Good to know that my tuition money is working for me.