Grandpa, I Found You a Job!

My four-year-old granddaughter has recently taken charge of my career.

This happened during one of my visits to Washington, DC. She had already understood the broad pattern of these visits. Grandpa comes, stays for some days, plays with her, reads stories, goes for walks, occasionally buys things that her parents may not have approved, and then one morning appears with a suitcase.

The suitcase, in her mind, is the villain.

“Why are you going?” she asked me one morning.

“I have to go back to Mumbai.”

“Why?”

“I have work.”

That was clearly the wrong answer. She looked at me for a few seconds, processing the information with the seriousness normally reserved for missing crayons.

“Then you should get a job here.”

There it was. Decades of complicated decisions involving career, family, geography, responsibilities and the logistics of travelling across the continents had just been solved by a four-year-old.

Grandpa needed a job. Preferably in Washington DC. Preferably within walking distance.

She began looking immediately.

Our first opportunity appeared during a visit to the nearby Trader Joe’s. She likes Trader Joe’s because four-year-olds have a natural affinity for places where adults push large carts around while children negotiate for things that were never on the shopping list.

At the checkout she watched the cashier carefully. He was cheerful, scanned things, put them into bags and talked to everybody. After a while she turned to me.

“Grandpa, you can work here.”

“Doing what?”

“This.”

She pointed at the cashier.

I examined the job. It did not look unreasonable. I could certainly pass things over a scanner. I can count. I can say hello. I have even been known to put things into bags.

So, in the version of events that subsequently developed between us, I joined Trader Joe’s.

The first half hour went well. I said good morning, scanned groceries and wished people a nice day. Then a customer asked for another bag.

I hesitated.

“Do you really need two?”

She looked at me. “I think so.”

I looked at her purchases. Bread, eggs, vegetables and something frozen. It seemed to me that one bag might have done the job quite adequately, but I had already learned enough about American customer service to realise that this was probably not the moment for a detailed discussion.

I gave her two bags. A little later someone bought ten 50 ml bottles of water. I looked at them and could not resist asking whether one five-litre bottle might have done the same job with rather less plastic. Another customer picked up something individually wrapped inside another package and I made another small comment. By lunchtime these small comments had accumulated into what the manager described as “advice the customers had not requested.”

I explained that I had spent much of my life encouraging people to reduce waste. He explained that at Trader Joe’s my principal responsibility was to scan groceries.

We both had a point. Only one of us, however, was the manager.

My granddaughter’s first attempt to settle me permanently in Washington had failed.

She was disappointed, but not discouraged. Four-year-olds recover from professional setbacks considerably faster than we consultants.

A few days later we went to the local library. My granddaughter likes the children’s section, where books are brightly coloured and chairs are too small for me.

There was a notice about storytelling sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She understood enough of it to become excited.

“Grandpa! You tell stories.”

“I do.”

“You can work here.”

This was, I had to admit, a much better fit. Storytelling. No proposals, no budgets, no airport lounges. Just stories, twice a week.

Soon I was appointed.

On my first day, the librarian handed me The Three Little Pigs. Safe territory, I thought.

I began confidently. The first pig built a house of straw. I paused for perhaps half a second. Straw, after all, was an interesting construction material. The second pig used sticks. The third used bricks.

I controlled myself remarkably well until the brick house appeared.

“Now children,” I said, “bricks are very strong, although making them does require quite a lot of energy.”

The librarian looked up.

I moved quickly to the wolf.

He blew down the straw house and then the wooden one. I resisted discussing structural resilience and building standards. But when he failed to blow down the brick house, I weakened again and asked the children which house they thought was the most environmentally sensible.

One child said, “The pink one.”

There was no pink house.

Another suggested that the wolf should simply move in with the pigs. I thought this was a surprisingly advanced proposal for shared housing, but the librarian clearly felt that the narrative had already strayed far enough.

After the session my granddaughter was puzzled.

“You just have to read the story.”

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to say other things.”

“No.”

“Then why did you?”

I had no satisfactory answer.

So my career as a municipal library storyteller was brief.

Her third idea arrived at Wine and Butter, a neighbourhood café we sometimes passed. People sat outside drinking coffee, dogs slept under tables and nobody appeared to be in much of a hurry.

She pointed towards the counter.

“You can work there.”

“What will I do?”

“Give coffee.”

Again, excellent logic.

Coffee goes from machine to cup. Cup goes to customer. Grandpa stays in Washington. It was difficult to see how even I could complicate this.

For a while, I did not.

“Cappuccino?”

“Here you are.”

“Americano?”

“Certainly.”

Then somebody sitting at a table asked for a disposable cup instead of a ceramic one. I almost asked why, but stopped myself. A few minutes later someone took three napkins. I gave him three without comment.

This was extraordinary progress.

Unfortunately, such silence made me restless. I began by rearranging the waste bins. Then I asked where the coffee grounds went. Then I wondered aloud whether they could be composted. Soon I was discussing reusable cups with the owner.

He was polite. Very polite. The kind of politeness that generally appears shortly before employment ends.

By lunchtime my granddaughter was looking for another job for me.

After three failed careers, my granddaughter finally confronted the central problem.

“Why do they keep firing you?”

This is not a question one expects to face at seventy.

I considered giving her a sophisticated answer involving institutional fit and late-career adjustment, but instead said, “I think Grandpa talks too much.”

She nodded immediately. There was apparently strong evidence supporting this diagnosis.

“About your environment things?”

“Yes.”

She thought for a moment and said, “Then don’t talk about them.”

There are management consultants who charge very large fees for advice less useful than this.

I laughed, but she did not. For her, this was serious. Every few months Grandpa appeared, and then Grandpa disappeared. If work was the reason, work could surely be relocated. If the job was the problem, another one could be found. And if Grandpa kept getting fired because he talked too much, then Grandpa could simply talk less.

The world, when you are four, has not yet acquired all the complications adults carefully manufacture for it.

A few days later we were walking near Lincoln Park. My departure was getting closer and she knew it because the suitcase had reappeared.

She had not surrendered.

Suddenly she pointed towards a bench.

“Grandpa, I found you another job.”

“Again?”

“Yes.”

“What job?”

“You can sit there.”

I looked at the bench. “What do I do?”

“You sit.”

“That’s all?”

She nodded.

“For how long?”

She thought for a moment.

“Till I come.”

Something in me became very quiet.

I had spent much of my life in engineering, teaching, consulting, writing, travelling, organisations, clients, reports and advisory roles. There had always been a title, a responsibility, a deadline and an expectation.

And now a four-year-old had produced the simplest job description of my life.

Sit there till I come.

She had never really been looking for a cashier, a storyteller, or someone who served coffee. She had been looking for a way to make Grandpa stay.

Children have an extraordinary ability to strip away the explanations with which adults decorate their lives. I was thinking about Mumbai and Washington; she was thinking about tomorrow morning. I was thinking about responsibilities and flights; she was wondering whether I would still be there when she returned.

Perhaps that is why her final job suited me better than all the others.

No qualifications were required. No experience was necessary. There would be no interview, no performance appraisal and no retirement age.

At seventy, after holding many complicated positions, I had finally been offered one whose responsibilities I understood completely.

Location: Washington, DC.
Position: Grandpa.
Job description: Stay nearby.

I looked at my granddaughter. Savanna, her dog, was sitting quietly beside her. For a moment, both seemed to be waiting for my answer.

Savanna looked up at me.

“Go for it, Dude,” she seemed to say.

At least, that is what I think I heard.

Perhaps, after all these years, I had finally been offered a job worth staying for.

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