What Color Is Your Parachute?

I'm reading a book at the moment called "What Color Is Your Parachute?", a best-seller by a guy called Richard Bolles. 9 million copies sold! Apparently, the world's best-selling job-hunting book. I've only just started, so I'll let you know my thoughts in another post. Having had a quick flick through and read about 100 pages, it strikes me as being a serious read, with quite a lot of exercises to be done along the way.
I have been lent this book by my sister, Susan, who seems to have a vast library of similar material. It felt a bit funny when Susan mentioned the book, since someone that I used to work with at Bunnings also suggested the book to me. What a character he was. Vastly over-educated and over-qualified, this guy had the job of updating prices in the store. The Bunnings store I worked at had about 45,000 products, so I usually saw him with pages of stickers, desperately looking for the one brand of light bulb which needed an updated price sticker put on it. Not a job for the faint-hearted. I never really found out why this guy was working there at that job, but I suppose he had to, for one reason or another. Same as me, come to think of it.
We had some funny conversations during the 9 months that I worked there. He was a sarcastic bastard, so we hit it off right away. During one of these chats he mentioned this book, as one that had been a help to his daughter, when she was searching for some direction in her career. The name stayed in my mind, but of course I didn't get the book. Now I don't have an excuse not to read it.
I have a natural aversion to self-help books, and the booming self-help industry in general. The image I keep seeing is of those annoying American self-made gurus, with their perfectly capped teeth, their unrelenting optimism, and their tanned millionaire smiles. Being an "olde world" personality, I find all this brouhaha to be pretty nauseating. Perhaps this book will be different.
If this book can help me focus on a career path which I find challenging and interesting, then it will be a fabulous find. My part-time, 3 days a week job which I have now is OK, but certainly not something which I would look at doing for any great length of time.
It would seem that further staff changes have been made. The person who was the operations manager would now appear to have been demoted to the rank of relief manager, which is really pretty close to what I do. No idea why this has happened. Nothing was announced, although I'm sure the person concerned is not a happy camper right now. She has been at this company for some years, so I suspect that there was a major to-do, possibly with the son of the owner, who would now appear to hold the position of general manager/operations manager/sales and marketing manager - good luck to him. My guess is that he's in his early 30s. I'll give him 3 years before he has a breakdown of some sort.
I must also report that the rubber ducky which I mentioned in an earlier post was stolen shortly after I wrote that post! What a bummer. Football fans are suspected, since there is a footy stadium not far from where I work. My wife bought a package of 3 replacement ducks, and I'm happy to report that one of them is occupying the bucket which was home to the original one. We shall not allow footballing bastards to win over the duck!
In other news, work continues on the web site, although it's slow going. My computer guru is sorting out the shopping cart system now. I'll be using the PayPal system for online payments. Trying to work with Westpac (my present merchant bank) was turning into a nightmare. They wanted me to sign a 3 year deal with lots of fees; to have approval on what items I sold (if anything I sold might be considered naughty, then they could terminate the contract); to have a lot of conditions attached to the agreement - urgh. Forget it. I'll go with PayPal. They are a bit more expensive, but so much more straightforward!