Career counseling

I've reached an awkward stage in my life and career: Too young to count the days 'til retirement (though I did: about 5,774) but too old to properly reinvent myself. I'm watching the work I enjoy and at which I am reasonably competent – organizing words and punctuation marks into some semblance of coherence -- become less and less marketable (oh, how I loathe that word), and hoping it remains viable long enough to get me to retirement.

It's not that I require a particularly affluent retirement. All I ask is a tidy little house, with a porch in front from which to yell at the neighborhood children and a small subsistence garden out back, including a row of medicinal marijuana to treat my Alzheimer's. I'm willing to don the blue vest of the Walmart greeter or the hairnet and plastic gloves of the hamburger slinger, if need be. I'm salting away cost-cutting tips, like a recipe for a Ramen noodle-cat food casserole. I hope not to be reduced to licking pizza boxes found in dumpsters and living in a van down by the river, though I'm hanging on to my old van just in case.

Meantime, I have two sons who will be entering the workforce -- please, Lord, let it be so -- in the next couple of years and they are looking to their old man for some wise career counsel. OK, that's a lie; they've asked me squat. But I have learned a few things in 28 years of hard work, grit and determination – actually 26; I coasted through 1986 and ’91 – and I’m going to share a few tips for my sons and all young men and women about to begin their careers, even those who seek to hasten my demise by working more cheaply, more cheerfully, more quickly and with fewer bathroom breaks than I:

• Pay about twice as much, maybe triple, for work shoes than you feel comfortable paying. You won’t regret it. Success begins with comfortable feet.

• Never attribute to conspiracy and venality that which can be explained by sheer human folly and stupidity.

• Network, network, network or, at a minimum, identify the movers and shakers in your profession and affix your lips securely to their behinds.

• Understand that starting at the bottom and working your way up is all well and good, but sometimes you only get to the middle and spend the rest of your career working your way sideways, and that's not all bad. There’s usually more fun to be had there than at the top, albeit less money.

• Success is partly about being in the right place at the right time but, even moreso, about NOT being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

• Men, strive for a job that doesn’t require the wearing of a suit, but in which you can get away with wearing one if you want to without having people coming up to you all day and asking, “who died?” It’s even better if men the next level up in your organization also don't have to wear a suit. That way, you won't need to invest in a new wardrobe if you somehow ascend another step up the organizational chain, either via the Peter Principle or because some schmuck in middle management, on one of the rare days he does wear a suit, gets a little too close to the paper shredder and gets sucked through it when his tie gets caught.
• I have no corresponding career fashion advice for women. I could venture some guesses, but I suspect that would end badly for me. Sorry.
  
• You've heard it's not what you know but who you know that determines success. Maybe. But if you really want to get ahead, it's about who you know, what you have photos or video of them doing and with whom they are doing it.

• And, finally, steal one Post-it note, one paper clip and one pen each week so you'll have a head start on going into business for yourself if the bottom falls out of your job.

Oh, and one more: Be nice to the old guy greeting you at Walmart. It might be me … and, one day, you.