More confessions from a Pillsbury doughboy

This flourmill started out as Alberta Flour Mills in 1915, George Lane owner of the Calgary Breweries serving as a stockholder and member of the board of directors. Despite a vigorous financial and public campaign and the injection of large loans from the stockholders Lane and William Pierce, the company sold its assets to Spillers Ltd. of England in 1925. During the 1930s, Spillers mothballed the mill, and during World War II it was used by the military as a storage warehouse. In 1947, the mill was bought and reopened as Renown Mills, they installed "B" Mill for domestic flour that had an output of 3000 hundredweight's per 24 hours. This along with the original "A" Mill that was used for export flour with its 7000 hundredweights output, gave a total of 10,000 hundredweight a day when both mills were running. In 1952 Pillsbury Mills of Minneapolis, Minnesota purchased the mill, and it became Pillsbury Canada Ltd.

There were about 15 warehousemen working day shift when I started, there was also 4 packers they ran the machines that packed flour into jute bags for export, and paper bags for domestic orders. The warehouse to me looked like it hadn't changed much since 1930, the first two floors of the brick part of the mill was warehouse space, and flour was stacked on the rough concrete floor, it originally had hardwood floors, but they were torn up due to flour beetle infestation. The bags were stacked 10 layers high everywhere you looked, the domestic flour was packed in 100-pound paper bags, and the Packer ran his machine from the third floor. It would come down a chute and go through a bag flattener to a table elbows height, where we would load up on our two wheel cart with seven bags of flour, and wheel it over to where the flour was being stacked. There would be a warehousemen there whose job was to help you unload your wheeler. The bags were stacked in threes starting on the floor we would place to bags, side-by-side, and one bag at the end of the other two on the next level we would do the opposite so the bags would be interlocked. Depending on the distance from the table to where we were stacking bags in the warehouse there would be three or four of us in constant motion to keep up with the Packer. We would do this, from 8 o'clock till 10 o'clock in the morning and have a 15 minute coffee break then worked till 12 noon and take a half an hour lunch break worked till 2 p.m. then a 15 minute break, and worked till 4 p.m. when the next shift started.

If we were finished on the second floor the table would be folded down and a chute put in connecting to the first floor to a conveyor belt that would send the bags down to a shoulder height table where we would load up our wheelers, or if close enough 2 of us would carry the bags on our shoulder and pile up the flour. The advantage of the shoulder height table was that you learned how to carry 100-pound bag upright and using the muscles in your shoulder you could propel the bag 2 feet over your head, which was the height of 10 layers of bags. The flour could also be routed out to the front-loading dock, where you see the boxcars in my picture. They would come off on other conveyor belt into the box car were two men would load it 6 rows in each end and 3 rows across the doorway, at 60 bags to a row 900 hundredweights would be loaded in each car. You have to understand that, while some crews would be stacking the new flour on the warehouse floor, other crews would be loading and unloading trucks and box cars at the back loading dock of the mill. Every bag in the warehouse was handled at least two times before it reached its destination. The work was very physical, and I understood what Pete said about me not being able to handle the work, this made me all the more determined to carry on. The first month was the worst, but after that I started getting into good shape. More to come later.

Confessions of a Pillsbury Doughboy

I remember quite well, a beautiful July summer day, me and my best friend, Jimmy had gone down to the Calgary Brewry and picked up a couple of cases of cold beer. We were on our way back to Ogden to enjoy these refreshments down at the beaver dam. Anyways, Jimmy asked me how I was making out, finding a new job I told him about my getting rejected at the CPR Alyth Shops. We were driving down Portland Street, and Jimmy suggested that I try the flour mill on Bonniebrook Road that we were approaching and I said I wasn't in the mood to look for work now. He said of I didn't try I would get no beer so reluctantly I went in to the building's office and asked if they were hiring. They told me to go to the shippers office and ask for Pete Luft I went there into the first floor of the warehouse. It was a big warehouse with bags of flour, stored all over the place. I talked to Pete and he looked at me and said, I have a job, but I don't think you can handle it. To this I replied that I would like to give it a try, he said okay you can start right now, I was thinking about the cold beer, and told him I have a doctors appointment, but could start tomorrow. He said fine we'll see you at eight o'clock in the morning. Well Jimmy and I went and drank all the beer with a few other friends, and I went home to rest up for my new job. I woke up in the morning with a hangover, and caught the Ogden bus that would take me to Bonniebrook to start my new career with Pillsbury Canada at 4002 Bonniebrook Road. The mill was one of two that Pillsbury owned in Canada, there was a smaller one in the Midland Ontario and this monster that could pump out 10,000 hundredweights in 24 hours. The mill was nonunion not like the ones in the United States, and I was to be paid $1.80 an hour as a warehouseman, or what I was to learn being a human fork lift.

CPR's Alyth Shops

In late June 1968, I decided to try to get a job as a laborer at the CPR's Alyth Shops. They were located on the Eastside of the Alyth Overpass across from the stockyards. I went to the office of the Laborers Foreman Max Tims, I told him that I had worked at Ogden and gave him my employee number; he said he would hire me, but he needed a birth certificate. I didn't have one to show, so I went downtown to the Bowlin Building where the Provincial Government had their offices, I applied for a new birth certificate, which would have to be sent down from Vital Statistics in Edmonton. The clerk said he could expedite my order and have it down in Calgary the next day, so the next day I picked up my new birth certificate. I went down to Alyth to see Max, I showed him my new birth certificate, but he said he could not hire me and could give me no explanation why. I figured it must have had something to do with the time I was off sick and paid by Sun Life in 1966. Anyways, that was it for the CPR, I would have to find employment elsewhere.

Alyth Shops are quite different from Ogden, that was a major repair shop. Alyth is a running repair shop that is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week It is designed to service and do light repairs to locomotives in active service. When trains arrive from Red Deer, Field, Lethbridge, Fort Macleod, and Medicine Hat the locomotives are taken from the train to the east and of the shops, where they are filled with fuel, water, and sand. The incoming locomotive engineer will book any repairs required on his report. If no repairs are required the locomotive consist world be ready to send out on another train. If repairs are required the locomotive will be moved inside one of the shops bays the repairs will be done. In the photos I have attached shows the West End of the diesel shop, where engines come out after being repaired.

Sprinkler Fitting at the Firestone Warehouse

When I was finished, the Crossfield job I was sent to another workplace to help a journeyman test a sprinkler system that had been installed in a cinderblock warehouse that had been built in the Mayland Industrial Park above Barlow Trail which was service by the CPR. It was a new warehouse with a recycled roof, which was taken off of a Scott National produce warehouse that had been located downtown. And the whole sprinkler system from that building was being recycled too. Originally the plan was to leave the sprinkler system branches with the roof sections, but when they lifted the first action off of the roof of the old warehouse it fell breaking all the sprinkler pipes. So all the branch lines were taken out of the roof sections and stored at Trotter and Morton's yard for a couple years till the new warehouse was finished and the roof reinstalled. When we arrived at the new warehouse in the roof was in place, and all the branch lines were tied in to the sprinkler main, and our job was to do a hydrostatic test and fix any leaks, it sounded simple enough and we figured we would be done in a week. To do the test we had to pressurize the system to 225 pounds, city water pressure was about 60 pounds, well; we turned on the water from the city line. And I tell you, it looked like we had rainstorm inside the building there was 628 sprinkler heads and every one was leaking, plus many other fittings. Storing these branch lines in the yard for two years didn't help the situation, sprinkler fittings are made cast-iron, and crack easily under the punishment they received left in the outdoors for that period of time. The warehouse was empty, and it had a 1-ton truck with scaffolding mounted on its flatbed, so it was quite easy to drive around and change all a sprinkler heads, we did this and tried our test again. We got up to 80 pounds, and the leaks started showing at the fittings. So we drove the truck around and started changing out all of the fittings that were leaking, this took more time than the sprinkler heads, which you could do with a crescent wrench and Teflon tape to seal them. The branch lines, started out with 2 inch pipe, and went down to 1/2-inch if my memory serves me correct. So we would start from the smallest diameter and worked back to where the branch tied into the sprinkler main dozens of fittings we would change out and try our test again. 95 pounds pressure, and more leaks we had been on this job over 3 weeks now and had a long, long way to go. On some of the bigger pipe that was 5 inches in diameter we had to use a compound leverage wrench that was called the “Super Six” it was a 48 inch pipe wrench that had two hinges with holes near its head, and a chain vice that was wrapped around the fitting and had a pivot that the hole in the wrench head was attached to, this gave you a lot of extra leverage to tighten pipe in to these big fittings. The warehouse was being built for the Firestone Tire Company plant to store tires in, and that's what they started to do. Our truck was taken away and tires were stored on the floor 10 feet high. This made the job, a real challenge we had to use a stepladder to get on top of the stacks of tires, and lay planks across them and use extension ladders to climb up to the leaks with our pipe wrenches and replace fittings. We persevered and got the pressure up to 180 pounds, then I was taken off the job and sent back to A.R. Wrights this was in June 1968. I was sent to work on a small steel business that was being built in Manchester District when this was done I was laid-off. That was always the problem in the construction trades its either feast or famine, I had learned a lot of useful skills that would help me out later in life, and had saved enough to tide me over for a while.

Bank of Commerce, Crossfield, Alberta

When our work at Palliser Square was finished, I went to work with a journeyman and one other apprentice. We were to install a new heating system in the Bank of Commerce at Crossfield, Alberta, a small rural community 25 miles north of Calgary. We drove out every day in a pickup truck from the shop. The Bank building is a two story red brick structure on the corner of Railway Street. The bank already had a hot water heating system, with old cast-iron radiators, and an old low-pressure gas-fired boiler in the basement. We were to install a new boiler and baseboard radiant heaters on the first two floors, but before we did this the old system had to be disconnected and removed. The cast-iron radiators were heavy, but we managed to drag them down the back stairs from the second floor, and out the back door from the main level. The old boiler in the basement was another challenge, as it had been assembled in sections many years ago, and weighed about 800 pounds. The solution to this was to use sledgehammers and break the boiler up into small manageable pieces, seeing that it was all going to the scrap yard. After we had finished stripping out the old system, we started installing the new boiler and copper piping up to the two floors, where radiant baseboard heaters were installed. They were links of copper pipe about 1 inch in diameter, with aluminum fins, 5 inch square, spaced out about 1/4" along the length of pipe, and were covered with a metal shrouding with louvers to let out heat. We also installed zone valves and several thermostats around the building, so heat could be regulated to the users preference in the different offices. I remember we used to go for our coffee breaks up the street at a small Chinese restaurant called the PDQ we didn't know what that stood for, but figured it must be the service that was Pretty Damn Quick. Ha Ha Ha. Well, this job was a nice change of scenery, it was springtime, and the weather was nice that spring of 1968.

From A.R. Wright to Trotter and Morton

When we finished the job at the pipe plant I went and work on a couple of small jobs on new buildings that were being constructed near our shop on MacLeod Trail. One was across the trail, and was called the Oriental Gardens a fancy new restaurant that had a little wooden bridge that crossed over water in a pond full of fish at its entrance. We were working outside and had a ditch, excavated around the building, where we installed weeping tile. Now weeping tile is made from clay and comes in 18-inch lengths with a bore diameter of 6 inches. The tiles were butted up against each other on a slight incline in the ditch towards the storm sewer. Their purpose was to drain water away from a building that would otherwise be susceptible to flooding without it. The next job I remembered working on was a Volkswagen dealership called Pados a block north of our shop. This involved installing soil pipe, and copper piping for the washrooms, and drains for the shop floor. After this I went and worked with one of the rural plumbers who looked after farmers wells and plumbing. Work was getting a little slow at Wright's so I ended up working in the shop here, I restocked bins with pipe fittings that were returned from jobsites, when the work was finished. One other job I had was whenever a plumber changed a hot water heater. I would go there with a pickup truck, and the two of us would haul out the old hot water heater, and when I had a truckload, I would take them to the city dump. I remember one apartment building where the hot water heater was installed in a pit, it was a big hot water heater, and we had to put ropes underneath it and hoist it straight up out of the pit it took four of us to do this job. I was sent over to a restaurant called the Gasthaus, It had a grease trap in its kitchen, and this was a cubic steel box a yard in dimension. All the drains from the kitchens sinks went through this box, and any grease from the dishwashing one end up in it. My job was to unfasten the top of this box and clean out all the accumulated grease that had filled it. This was a pretty gross job, I had to break up this block of fat with a steel pole and shovel out all this rancid grease, that didn't smell very good. It was jobs like this that made me think that pipefitting would be a better trade than plumbing. At this time, a company called Trotter and Morton was doing most of the work projects in the city of Calgary. So most of the apprentices, including me, who worked in shops that had no work were sent over to work for them.

Trotter and Morton had their shop on Forge Road, and they had just finished pouring the Husky Tower in downtown Calgary on 9th Ave and Center St. where the old CPR station used to be. An office building complex with a four-story Parkade called Palliser Square was to be built behind the structure, and I was sent to this work site on the corner of 10th Ave and 1st St West. The first job we had to do was reroute the steam and water lines from the boiler room on 10th Ave to a tunnel that connected to the CPR's Palliser Hotel on 9th Ave. The boilers in the powerhouse on 10th Ave were very old, the oldest I had ever seen, they were to be taken out of service and a modern Cleaver Brooks packaged boiler was to be installed on the second floor of the Parkade to replace them. The old powerhouse supplied steam heat for the hotel and a laundry that was on 10th Ave. The steam line was 8-inch pipe that was welded together and ran through a ditch dug on 10th Ave, and the 5-inch waterline was to follow the same route to tie them into the tunnel that ran into the Palliser Hotel. The laundry was obsolete and was being torn down. The first job I had was to take lengths of old 5 inch water pipe and cut them off clean with a set of pipe cutters, and ream out any burrs on the inside diameter. We then had to cut a groove into the pipe about 1 inch from the end to be used with a Victaulic Coupling to join the lengths of pipe together. The Victaulic Coupling was a two piece casting that would fit into the grooves on each end of the pipes when two nuts and bolts were tightened to join the two castings together. In the middle of this was a rubber gasket that would seal the two ends of pipe to prevent it from leaking. To cut these grooves, we had a large mechanical groover that was run with a power motor and a drive shaft. The teeth on the groover were about half an inch wide, and we cut the groove about 1/8 of an inch deep. The Parkade itself was being built over the CPR's four Depot tracks. It was winter, and in order to pour cement the forms were all shrouded in plastic sheeting, and gas heaters were installed to keep the forms heated. My job was to run gas line to the heaters and light them, there was a three-inch gas line set up temporarily on cross bars made of two by sixes that ran the length of the Parkade. There were gas cock's at 30 foot intervals where I would run the gas from, I would run a 1 inch gas line straight up 40 feet to the shrouding where the cement was to be poured next. I would climb up a ladder to the forms made of 2 by 10's with the plastic shrouding stapled on underneath here I would put a reducing tee fitting on the 1 inch gas line, reducing it to 3/4", and run 3/4" gas pipe along the 2 x 10's to where the gas heaters were in position. I would then run the 3/4" gas pipe up to the heater and would then use a reducing elbow to run 1/2" gas pipe and shut off cock into the heater, which I would then light and test my work for leaks. This would be done with a sense of smell and matches, if there was a bad leak you would smell it otherwise I would light a match and run it around each joint I had made, if there was a leak a small blue flame would appear I would then have to shut off the gas and change fittings or pipe, where necessary. To join these fittings, together I would apply pipe dope (a mixture of powdered lead in linseed oil) to the threads with a brush, and the fittings and pipe were joined together and tightened using to pipe wrenches one to hold the fitting, and the other to tighten the pipe into the fitting. Yes, it was quite an experience to crawl around on this 2 x 10's looking down to the ground through the plastic, and suddenly a train would run underneath heading west to the mountains, or going east to the yard at Alyth. Another ritual, we observed daily was the arrival and departure of passenger trains that still carried mail, the city of Calgary's post office was located on the corner of 9th West of the CPR's Palliser Hotel at the back of the post office was a spur for spotting cars of mail, and daily a postman would drive his tractor and a baggage cart with mail from a ramp on the platform behind the post office down the platform in the Depot to where the passenger trains would arrive. Here he would wait till the incoming train had stopped and he would be in position besides the baggage car, that also carried the mail, here he would exchange his out going mail with the incoming mail for Calgary and would proceed back to the post office with the new mail for sorting.

The photographs I have attached above show the shaft of the Husky Tower after the cement had been poured, a rotating restaurant was placed on top of this pylon and at 635 feet. It became the tallest structure in the city of Calgary on until the mid-1980s when the Petro Canada towers were built. The second picture I took looking west at the Palliser Square Parkade and the train tracks running underneath it.

Humble abode

When I left the CPR, I had to move from where I had room and board. I moved into an apartment and boarded with a woman and her three children. The place was pretty oLd and was in the back of the building on the left-hand side shown in the picture. Featherstone's General store was on the coroner, and Ogden's first post office was located in the middle building. The building we lived in was originally a movie theater from what I have read. The photo was from the book "The Ogden Whistle" a History of the districts of Ogden, Lynnwood, and Millican Estates. Cable's General store was located across the street on the right-hand side of the picture, and had already been torn down when this picture was taken in 1976. I lived here during the winter of 1967 and 1968, and boy was it cold sleeping in the back bedroom, which was poorly insulated, and in the mornings there would be frost on the walls. In the spring I moved a block north of here to a house owned by Wes and Mary Davis, who own the riding Academy located behind the Ogden shops. It was a good place for room and board, and I stayed with them for a year and a half. I remember in the winter of 1968-1969, I was home during the day and Mary was notified that their horses had escaped and were running around in the Ogden Shops property. So off we went down into the Ogden Shops yard to round up these horses, it was a very cold day, and the snow was quite deep. We eventually got all the horses back into their acreage. And were happy to take a rest, one of the Ogden Shops employees invited us into his little greenhouse over by the No.2. Coach shop. He had the kettle on, and made us a nice pot of tea.

The Big Inch Pipe Plant

In the last posting I talked about the cast-iron soil pipe plant located north of Ogden Shops, here I've attached a picture of a pipe plant located south of Ogden Shops. When I first came to Ogden. It was called The Big Inch pipe plant, and sat idle for a lack of business; I think the largest pipe they made was around 12 inch. The long steel roof building you see on the left was the entire plant. Its name was changed to Alberta, Phoenix, pipe and tube and in 1968. The steel roof building on the right was added, along with equipment to do sub arc welding with this equipment in the mill could now manufacture 36-inch pipe. Wright’s sent me to this jobsite in the winter, and it was a great place to work being all enclosed from the elements outside. There was lots of work, running airlines for the carriages that would move the rolled pipe to the welding machines that were located on the north end of this new structure. There is a washroom for the employees that was built inside this large structure, and I remember running copper pipe to a hot water heater that was located on the roof of the structure. On the left-hand side of this aerial view you can see some houses in Ogden, and in between the houses and the plant is the CPR's mainline to Medicine Hat. This picture was taken in the 1980s, when the plant was bought out by Prudential Pipe & Steel so all you can see in the yard to the left and to the right of the plant is small diameter pipe and steel that they now manufacture. To the north of this picture out of view is a rendering plant that used really stink in the summer when I worked at Ogden Shops, and there was a liquid air plant that manufactured nitrogen, oxygen, helium, and other rare gases. The only other business located in the huge acreage behind Ogden Shops was a Riding Academy.

Working with cast-iron soil pipe

The first job I worked on for A.R. Wright Plumbing and Heating was a two-story 16 suite apartment building that was to be built at 19th St and 35 Ave. SW. The location was an empty lot, and we had to rough in the cast iron soil pipe for the toilets and sink drains. It was really cold that November and the ground was so frozen that we had difficulty digging trenches for the soil pipe, so we brought in a jackhammer to break up the frozen earth. We followed the guidelines from the blueprints provided us by Wright's mechanical draftsman, and laid out and measured the 4 inch hubed cast-iron soil pipe for each of the eight apartment suites on the ground floor. The cast-iron soil pipe came in eighth foot lengths, and to cut it into smaller lengths we had a special tool called a soil pipe cutter made by Rigid Tools, who supplies many of the tools used in plumbing, pipefitting, and gas fitting trades. The soil pipe cutter had a 3-foot handle and a chain with circular cutting wheels, it was looped around the soil pipe and pulled tight, then the chain end was fastened to the handle by two pins then engaged in a slot in the handle. By pumping the handle, up-and-down the chain would tighten and the cutting wheels would dig into the surface of the soil pipe until enough pressure was exerted to cause the soil pipe to break off evenly where the cutting wheels scored the pipe. There was a main trunk line running down the middle where the apartments hallway would be to the outside, where it tied in to the city's sewer main. There was eight inlets four on each side of the main trunk that went in to the individual suites, at the end of these branches would be elbows and Y fittings to service the toilets and sink drains from the bathroom and kitchen. There would be cast-iron elbows that were joined together to form a 90° turn upwards for the toilet, and another one that ran up to the second floor, and to the roof for the purpose of venting the system. To fasten two lengths of soil pipe together the 4 inch end of the pipe or elbow was pushed into the base of the hub, then oakum a fibrous material made of hemp was packed in all-around the hub with a yarning iron, a tool that looks like a spatula with an offset handle that could pack the oakum tightly into the hub with the help of a ball pein hammer. Enough oakum was packed in the joint till there was about one half an inch room left at the top of the hub. We used a propane fueled stove to melt lead in a cast-iron pail, the lead came in 25 pound ingots that were poured in four 5 pound circular portions that were joined together, and a 5 pound oval handle to carry the lead with. With a hammer and a cold chisel the 5-pound pieces were cut into segments that were placed in the pail to melt. A cast-iron ladle was then used to pour the molten lead into the hub of the joints to make them rigid. Horizontal joints were easy to pour, but any joint vertical or at an angle required a running rope to do the job. A running rope was a length of rope made with asbestos above 20 inches long with a metal cap on each end to keep it from fraying, it also had a spring-loaded clamp on a short length of chain attached to one end of the rope. The rope was wrapped around the top of the hub, and the two ends were clamped together, this left a small triangular shaped opening to pour the molten lead into. The rope was taken off and then the joint was caulked with two special irons for this purpose, the inside caulking was like at an offset chisel with a curved blunt end that was pushed against the soil pipe on the inside of the joint, and a hammer was used to pack the lead down into the joint, another caulking iron in the outside one was used to caulk the joint at the inside of the hub. The lead did not seal the joint; it was the oakum that expanded when it was a contract with water from the sewage.

We spent a good three weeks finishing the ground-floor rough in of the plumbing. It had to be inspected by the City of Calgary's plumbing inspector, and approved before they could pour the concrete floor over it. The plumbing inspector lived in the Altadore district is name was Harry Ager; I had worked with his brother Vic Ager, who was the senior tinsmith at Ogden shops. Harry was a very conscientious inspector, and nothing got by him, he took a look at the plumbing rough in we had finished and laughed, he said it would all have to be redone, because there were no backwater valves. A backwater valve prevents flooding of the apartments on the ground floor if the city sewer backs up, and there was a good chance of this happening as 35th Ave was a low point in the geography of the district. If you think yarning, pouring and caulking oakum and lead soil pipe joints is a lot of work, try disassembling one. To do this you have a small narrow chisel you use to pick the lead out of the joint. This was an expensive mistake made by the mechanical draftsman at Wright's and delayed the job at least two weeks.

There was one other job I worked on involving soil pipe, it was on the old Massey Ferguson building located at 11 Ave. and 3rd St Southeast. I have attached a picture showing the building after it had been bought by Ribtor in the 1970s. The job we had to do was to install a new washroom in the basement of the building. We laid out an outline with chaulk on the basement floor, where the soil pipe would run. We then used a jackhammer to break up the concrete floor, down to the earth, where the soil pipe would run. The biggest job was to drill a hole through the 18 inch wall of the building to tie into the city sewer system we started by jackhammering from the inside, and then worked from the outside of the building. This building was built in 1915, and I was told that old concrete was really hard to drill through, they were sure right about that. From the outside. we worked in a ditch eight feet below the sidewalk, we put a barricade across the ditch and tried a rope to it on the other end we tied up the jackhammer at the correct height for where we were drilling. It was tough sledding, drill bits would get stuck in the concrete, and we would have to drill around until we had drilled out enough material to free the bit. We hammered away till finally, we broke through to the other side. Once we have a small hole in the wall everything went easy after that.

Talking about soil pipe, there is a plant in Calgary that manufactures it. It was called Anthes Imperial pipe plant, and was located north of the Ogden Shops yard. Its name now is Canron. In this picture, you can see on the left side supports for the crane they have there. The CPR has a spur that runs up between the crane supports, and gondolas full of scrap cast iron were spotted there. The crane has a magnet that would pick up the scrap iron and stockpile it till needed. The scrap iron was then fed into a furnace and melted; it would then be poured into molds for cast-iron soil pipe and fittings. At the time I started at the Ogden Shops. They were paying $5 an hour to work here, but it was a dead end job with no future.