How Do Some People Get Their Jobs

Aside from your co-workers, but including your boss, do you ever wonder how some people get their jobs? I was being stuffed into a van at Midway Airport in Chicago this week for a thankfully short trip to McCormick Convention Center. While they were jamming one more body into the vehicle, our driver was giving us a preview of what was to come, based on telemetry she had gathered over years on the job. She told us to the tenth of a mile how far it was, how many minutes it would take at this hour and how many hours those same nine-point-whatever miles would take on Friday.
She recommended that if we were going to try to get out of town after 2:30PM on Friday that we pack a lunch. We would be stuck in traffic so bad it will bring tears to your eyes, she said. At least she had a sense of humor.
We zipped onto the highway and she bobbed and weaved between cars, doing things with a van that I wouldn’t attempt in a VW bug. One of the sales-types up front decided to do the employment interview thing with her. He asked, “So, do they give you drivers a lot of training for this job?”
“Not me,” said the driver. “I ran the bumper-car concession at Six Flags for about three years and I watch a lot of NASCAR on TV, so I guess they figured I knew what I was doing.”