Hello my Neighbours, Steven Ra Ga here..

May 6th 2022 – Today I have been applying to jobs on indeed, and it’s been daunting. I am presently unemployed and I am hoping one of the 7 interviews this week goes through. It’s been troubling times my Step Father is ill with Terminal Cancer and we aren’t sure how long he has.

Applying to jobs is going to help take my mind off it but also give me an out, you see currently I am being supported financially by my Mom via my Step Dad, not an ideal situation but this all started back in 2017 when I had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. Shocking and it’s a long story I will get into on another day…

Applying for Jobs is a challenge on its own, you have have an attractive resume, and know you can do the job if they call you back. The interview is the hard bit.

Most of my wild jobs I have gotten by entering random words into job searches everything from “wild, creative, bizarre, fun, entertainment and more” to see what pops up. I recall years ago I was in a similar situation I was out of work and I had one month to find a job. Every day I would open my laptop and send 30 resumes on workopolis and older job website before indeed got to town. Then I came across an icon of a Dinosaur and thought how hilarious it would be if I got that job. 2weeks go by and I got that very job.

It’s a bit of a blur, I don’t recall my interview and I wasn’t sure what I really signed up for. I just needed work. My first day on the job they told me I was headed to Atlanta in America, so I packed a bag and headed off to the airport. Upon arrival I discovered I needed to pay for my luggage with a credit card, my car was maxed out at its limit of $2,000 so I had to increase my limit to $5,000 just so I could buy my luggage for the trip. That’s one of my biggest regrets because it started me down a path of credit card abuse that landed me with $8,000 of debt on several occasions.

At the time I thought jobs were supposed to help you pay off debt and not get yourself in debt. Vancouver is an expensive place.

You know that old saying get friends that make more money than you so it will encourage you to make more… I call bull shit… I followed that and all it did was make me want to compete with debt. If I could do it over I would have gotten friends who made the same tax bracket as me. I did get friends who made less than me and I turned into a cash cow for them… get friends who make the same as you.

My first day was in Atlanta we were there for a week, technically as a supervisor I wasn’t supposed to be touching anything but because I am that gung-ho all in guy I got ahead of myself and I got hurt. Long story long, I jumped into a trailer where we had a skid of rocks, like real rocks, they were dubbed “dumb dum rocks” this was because if you had a dumb guy on the crew that day they were tasked with shovelling rocks. we had a lot of ex-cons labourers that worked for our crews. Anyway it’s cold, ice had formed in the truck and the truck was on a slant, I went to move the skid and boom I got pinned against the wall, the 3,000lbs skid ran over the top of my foot.

The crew was able to free me as I hobbled inside, no major damage but I was certain I broke a bone. I had broken bones in that foot before working warehouse jobs in the past but this hurt.

The job was fun, working with Dinosaurs and traveling around North America was great, but it wouldn’t be long before I screwed it all up for myself.

MENTAL HEALTH CHECK

You see part of my problem was a lack of confidence, poor diet, bad brain health, and not enough clue as to how to conduct myself in the field. Some time later I was in Halifax dismantling a project, all was great until the Museum had asked if they could return the skid loader, I was confused and said okay even though I needed it to complete the job. They took the loader away then we had to figure out how to get 1,000lbs of stuff into some trucks when they didn’t have a dock. I was mad so mad at the company, at the museum but ultimately I should have been mad at myself for not holding my ground and explaining to the Museum the idiocy of their request… I shot myself in the foot that day and put myself on the chopping block.

Before they let me go on an account of a merger. There were some notable highlights.

DISPOSABLE UNDERWEAR

Our president of the company was so wealthy that he used to have disposable underwear. I think that was just a term he used but on every trip we took that he came to he would just toss his underwear in the garbage at the end of each day.

ATLANTA

In Atlanta we were staying in a motel hotel holiday inn lol. And the room next to me I guess was the party room. There must have been 50ppl all packed into this room blaring music and partying on-a Tuesday evening. The hotel tried to break it up but these folks were packing heat, so the cops came and broke up the event…

TORONTO

In Toronto during the winter we were tasked with fixing some the Dino’s that were broken at Canada’s Wonderland, on our crew we travel with 5 Chinese technicians that spoke very little English. They would sew the Dino’s up after animals would try to burrow inside them during the winter months. One time our tech yelled “ahh” we all came running he had shown us that a raccoon had been sleeping inside and when he used his flashlight two eyes were staring at him.

THE ZOO

Another time we were at the Calgary Zoo catching with the grounds keepers. This one guy would tell me tall tales of life at the Zoo during the flood. (Calgary had a 100yr flood some years back and the zoo got hit hard) He told me this epic tale that went a bit like…

The Guy “So, the flood hit and we were tasked with saving the animals, Jerry and I had to get into different enclosures to rescue the possums, I remember I took this giant foam log and stuffed all the possums in it then floated them out of there to safely. Then after that Jerry said we had to check on the monkeys, I grabbed my shotgun..” Wait a minute I said “why do you need a shotgun?” The Guy “Some of the animals are dangerous bro, like if you are here at the zoo and you hear Code 9 get your ass up a tree cause the Tiger is loose. One year a drunk guy jumped the fence and tried to pet the Tiger, bad move bro, the Tiger tore his arm off, so gross!” Ewww I thought to myself. I guess tiger king was accurate. The Guy “so yah, we go into the monkey change and start freeing the monkeys but the water levels are rising I got my shot gun over my head, Jerry’s got 3 monkeys on his shoulders and then we just see a hippopotamus head break the top of the water and look at us… we freeze glance at another and then the hippo sinks in the water, then moments later the hippo comes up again but way further away then we were.” Woah… that would have terrifying Hippos are super dangerous creatures. The Guy “Bro I wasn’t scared at all until that moment.”

After his story he asked if we wanted to watch the Tiger feed. There is this special cage inside the tiger area where you can stand in but you have stand in the middle and not near the fence. The lady showed us this horse leg and how heavy it was like a 50lbs dumbbell, the Tiger picked up in its mouth like it was a dogs chew toy.

FLORIDA

Another time we were in Jacksonville Florida home of the Florida man… and the locals were scrambling. Seems bad weather was rolling in, I call back to Vancouver and ask what I should do, my coworker said “do what the locals do”. I can do that I said to myself. (Most of my life I just wanted someone to teach and guide me, show me the way, my parents often tired to but I guess maybe I was just a bad listener.) I hang up the phone and look out at the horizon, I kid you not, 360 degrees of lightening start to strike, the locals running out of the science centre gather up materials and running inside. Our Chinese technician is busy working on one of the Dinos, I yell to him “leave it just get inside.” Being from China he was built like a New Yorker, not afraid and just trying to get the job done. I eventually got him inside.

A little later like 5mins, the clients take me to this large window looking out at the water, the sky turns as black as night then “BOOM!!” The glass shakes as thunder rolls. I look shocked over at them and ask “does this happen often?” They looked back at me “every day at the same time.” I thought to myself how does one live like this. Then one of the clients spoke up “when I was younger we were on the beach like a regular day, then suddenly a storm develops and boom, boom, boom lightening strikes the beach in random areas.” When it was over his friend was laying the ground dead. He then went on to say you were more likely to die from lightening then being eaten by a gator.

Later on that trip my coworker and I took a trip to a pawn shop, I was really looking for a thrift store but couldn’t find one. All I could find was this pawn shop. We walked in, had a look around and then it happened. A guy walks in, he looked like Si Robertson from Duck Dynasty, except he had one of those hillbilly style accents it was thick, his hands were black from dirt, maybe he was in labour trade, or a mechanic. Anyway he walked in and went straight up the counter. A store clerk stood their eyeing up the man. When he spoke “is that an Ak [AK-47 and assault rifle] ?” The store Clerk responds “No” the Si Robertson look a like says “Sure looks like an AK” the store clerk “It’s not.” The Si Robertson doppelgänger then proceeds to ask “Do you got ammo for it?” The Clerk rolls his eyes “No, we don’t sell ammo.” At this point my coworker is headed for the door and I was right behind him.

Richmond Home Base

Back at the shop we were cleaning up and putting things away. I had hopped on to the forklift and buzzed outside to gather some items, at first I had noticed the bay door wasn’t all the way up, the guy that had opened it stopped the lift half way, why? we will never know. On my return in I had the forks lifting some material make sure I didn’t hit anything then “CLANG!!” The forklift slams into the bay door. Crunch, the door was wrecked. Immediately the guys banded together to fix it, no one yelled at me, they just put at poster over it and went on. They told me that it would be okay, I thought for sure I was gonna get fired. They assured me that wouldn’t happen over that because this one time the President of the company called the service manager late one night told him, he needed to come to the shop as there was a problem. When Kenny the Service manager showed up, the forklift was fully extended and tipped over in an unsafe and awkward position. Allegedly the president was trying to get something from the top shelf and near flipped the forklift.

Spoiler alert: In most Dino exhibits the only real fossil is a turd. Everything else is fibreglass.

I travelled a lot with that company, then work started drying up, they were going to be bought out by another traveling exhibits company and I was ultimately let go. Guess it was time to go job hunting again.