AMY KIRK: Demanding ranch tasks lead to ‘job security’

Talk about it

It’s highly unlikely that I will ever find myself out of work. My chances of getting fired or let go are slim.

Trust me, I’ve tried.

My position would be hard to terminate or outsource because I’ve made the mistake of creating a job for myself that nobody else would want. Since my position is customized it’s basically useless anywhere else. What I do is desperately needed here.

I have more than enough to keep me busy managing our mischievous animals. Then there are all the problems that frequently arise with a cow herd.

Working here may provide plenty of variety but not the kind most people would appreciate. Some days I deal in manure, cookie dough, or bread dough — but not simultaneously, mind you.

Other times I work around snow, afterbirth, milk replacer, and calving time laundry stains. In the summertime I deal with the windrower plugging up occasionally, getting grease on my clothes, or hay in my bra and underwear. It all depends on the season.

My career, if you can call it that, is greatly influenced by my husband so there’s not much of a demand for what I do except to him, our kids, and cows. He prefers lining someone out who knows what he wants done and understands his expectations.

I usually don’t but I’m good at faking it and my family knows that there’s no one else who would tolerate them as much as I do.

My husband also expects a lot of man-work out of me because during our courtship I made a special effort to prove that I could do anything a man can do, so he proposed, we got married, and now part of my occupation involves doing hard labor that some young men can’t even do.

Another reason the type of work I do is at low risk for being replaced, downsized, or phased-out is because most people are looking for something with a benefit package, like wages.

My position is what you’d call “in-sourced.” I do whatever other people would normally get paid for doing.

My husband knows it wouldn’t be cost-effective to eliminate my job. There’s not enough time to train someone else to do everything I handle and go over all the mistakes I’ve made to get to where I am today: a master of disaster. I can do both the creating and managing of them.

My spouse wouldn’t know how to train a new person for my position because he doesn’t know half of what it is that I do. Some days I don’t either, but I choose not tell him if I do certain tasks differently than the way he expected or wanted them to be done.

It’s safe to say that my career isn’t in jeopardy of being downsized as part of any budget cuts. For 17 years the pay has always remained downsized since there’s never been a budget for what I do to begin with.

Besides a minor thing like money, my career as a go-to gal for home, family, and cattle provides me with all the things I need: room and board, family, and a sense of humor.

One of my job perks is that I get a pair of new work boots or blue jeans every now and then.

Amy and her husband raise their two kids on a fourthgeneration cow/calf operation near Pringle. Her blog can be found at ranch-wifeslant. areavoices.com.

Tags: life, columns