The summer after my freshman year in high school, I took my first real job. Not the first time I’d be working really hard or getting paid, but the first time I needed paperwork. I was 14, uncomfortable with every inch of my body, shy.
Minimum wage was $4.15 an hour, at least in Alaska, but without expenses like a car or kids or booze habit, the money added up nicely.
*
CheckRite is where your check ends up if you don’t have enough money in the bank to cover it. There are all kinds of words to describe this situation: bounced, kited, insufficient funds, overdraft, or simply a bad check. The bank stamps NSF on the check and sends it back to whoever deposited it. If you try to cash a check from Aunt Valerie for $40 that she sent for your birthday but she’s a little light on dough that month? Sucks for you. The bank charges you a fee, Valerie’s bank charges her a fee, and you get the check back to frame as a reminder of why getting older isn’t so great.
If you are a business, things are a little different. Or at least they were back in the early 1990s. Nowadays, things move a lot faster and electronically and basically by magic. If I had a business I wouldn’t accept paper checks as payment for anything.
If someone writes you a check for $23.67 to pay for developing film and she doesn’t really have the money, hopefully you work for a business that has retained the services of CheckRite. If so, the problem becomes ours. We’ll hunt down the evil doer who tried to get off without paying for your services.
As you can imagine, people are not thrilled to hear from you when you work at CheckRite. I was lucky enough to mostly avoid calling patrons, since everyone thought I was too young to handle such vitriol. I got to do a lot of alphabetizing instead. Check designs didn’t vary too much back in the day, but sorting through the piles of checks delivered from banks was strangely interesting when you got familiar with names.
“Oh look,” I’d think to myself as I flipped through the plastic alphabet sorter doo hickey. “Bob Banner’s at it again.” In just a few weeks I had my regulars and got a bit excited, though disappointed, when I’d see a repeater.
I hated having to take a lunch hour. I worked straight through my first day, thinking I could get off early. Then my manager kindly explained that a break wasn’t optional but was required by law. To sit alone in a dark little room and try to take my time eating was hideous. Even if I went out and walked half a mile to KFC and ate their gross fries, I still couldn’t fill sixty minutes.
While the main secretaries were at lunch, I’d man the phones and reception. I recall a guy calling back after coming in to the office; I’d talked to him and told him some misinformation, though I don’t recall if it was intentional or not. I answered the phone and recognized his voice. I knew I’d made a mistake and didn’t want to deal with it.
“I was there earlier, talked to a lady. Young looking, blonde, slim.”
Did he just call me slim? Oh wow, really? Slim. I’ve never thought of that word to describe myself before. Hmm, slim. Do people even say that?
“I’m sorry sir, she’s not in right now. You’ll have to call back later.”
I crossed my fingers and toes he wouldn’t walk through the door any time in the next thirty minutes while I was still sitting out front.
*
CheckRite was in midtown, up a hill from downtown which isn’t saying a lot in Anchorage. The office was upstairs in a two story office building, next door to the shoe guy, near a constantly empty mall anchored by Sears and dozens of other small mildly unsuccessful business ventures. In the mornings, one of my parents would drop me off. After work I was supposed to take the People Mover back to the south side of town.
I’d call my dad two three four times a week, begging him to come out of his way to pick me up on his way home from the office. It worked maybe once a fortnight. I was fourteen so none of my friends could drive. I didn’t want to seem pathetic so I never asked anyone from work for a ride, recognizing that it would cross a line from Office Associates to Real Life that would end for me when school started again.
After a long day of sorting checks, sending out second notice letters or amending files for partial payment, I’d walk a block to catch my first bus. It wasn’t a long ride so I didn’t mind it too much. Then I’d disembark and wait for my transfer. It was around fifteen minutes, but standing awkwardly on the street, alone, without a bench or any kind of prop, it felt endless.
One day in the pouring rain, a red car pulled over. The driver opened the passenger door from inside, leaned over, and offered me a ride.
“Thanks, I think I’ll just wait. Only a few more minutes,” I said since I am many things but not dumb enough to get into a stranger’s car.
The driver, a guy around 25, nodded in agreement. “I understand but I feel so bad for you. Are you sure?”
I didn’t get in the car but wished I had and that he’d murdered me and then my parents would be sorry for not giving me a ride.
Waiting for the bus over the first week I memorized my social security number. I didn’t know a person was supposed to do that, till I filled out my I-9 and had to bring my actual card into the office. Mortifying. I vowed never to be in such a situation again so I practiced it every day till it stuck in my head forever.
The transfer bus was worse than the first, with a ride close to the half hour mark. I never thought the bus driver would remember me, feeling invisible in the adult world like most teenagers, so I’d get nervous a mile before my stop. I didn’t want to wait too long to pull the cord, missing my chance, but I also didn’t want to get off to early and have to hike up a busy hill.
One day, I pulled the cord a moment too early. The driver looked in his rearview mirror right at me and said, “Don’t you want the next stop?”
Flabbergasted, I nodded and thanked him when I got off a few minutes later.
*
When I left in early August to go on a trip to visit my grandparents in Western Samoa with some of the money I saved, I gave my notice very seriously to my boss. It may have been a bit formal for a minimum wage temp to believe they’d need a full two weeks to find someone who could possibly replace me.
They cut me a check on my last day so I wouldn’t even have to wait for it to come in the mail. Or maybe not, since that seems unlikely and overly thoughtful. All I know is that I walked down the flight of stairs into the bright sun and climbed into my mom’s blue Suburban and never thought about that place again. Until a loan shark place started playing ads constantly a few years ago. “Check into cash,” said fast and cool like you are just too busy to get your money at less than a 275% interest rate. Kinda sleazy, though legal. Kind of like CheckRite.
my first proper job was at a call centre, phoning people to try and sell them double-glazing. Like Check-Rite, it was sleazy but legal. Unlike check-rite, they didn’t care if a 15 year old got customer vitriol. I had parental permission to work, I was doing the 10-hour work weeks that were all I could legally do. I hated it there, I hated every second, but oh my, having money was nice.
Yep, I couldn’t do it again but what else was I going to do for that kind of money?
I’d not work in cold-calling again by choice, but for a 15 year old on her summer holiday and in need of some spare income, it was all that was available.
I know exactly which “Checkintocash!” commercial you mean.
My first job was waitressing at a terrible diner. The food was garbage, the management was horrendous, and I got sexually harassed on the regular. At the time I was also seriously depressed and unmedicated, so I imagine I was the surliest, most apathetic waitress who’d ever worked there. But I made a good chunk of change that summer and I think the whole experience made me grow up a lot. I also know never to eat at that awful diner because it’s shockingly dirty and pest-ridden.
Let’s talk about how (1) sexual harassment is rampant in the food industry and (2) many teenaged girls work their first-ever jobs in the food industry.
My 2nd-ever job was in a kitchen when I was 16 & I put up with sexual harassment from the 30-something chef and his buddies because I just… didn’t know how to handle it. I eventually quit because of it.
Yeah, I was just completely unequipped to handle being sexually harassed like that. It’s not as though I didn’t know it existed, but when it happened to me I was like “…juh?” and sort of shut myself off and didn’t realize til later that what happened was wrong. It didn’t help that when I complained about it to a co-worker his response was “that happens to everyone, what do you expect?”
I think there was an article in a Link Roundup a week or two ago about how reporting harassment just ends up hurting waitresses – management is unresponsive, they get passed over for shifts, etc. The whole thing is so frustrating.
I definitely memorized my SS number cause of my first job as a lifeguard. I’ll never forget when I went in to do the paperwork for a job at my college and the woman was surprised that I actually knew what paperwork to bring and had it with me. At that point, I’d worked maybe 4 different jobs, but needless to say many of my fellow classmates had never worked before their on campus job.
One of my interns this summer legitimately had no idea that she’d need proof of employment eligibility or identity in order to get paperwork done. She’s 21.
I memorized my SS number the day I went to get my learner’s driving permit. My 16th birthday was on a Thursday, and I’d demanded my mom take off work to take me to the RMV. We got there, got a number, and when I was filling out the forms, I asked her what my SS number was and she was stunned I didn’t know.
Ultimately she didn’t have it memorized either, so we had to drive all the way home, find a document in the house with it on there, then go back to the registry and start all over again. My mom’s seething was enough to burn those 9 digits into my brain forever.
I don’t blame you, though! Unless she’d given you your card and said, hey, it’s a good idea to memorize this, I can see why it wouldn’t have crossed your mind at that age. When I went to get my license, my mom had to go home to get a specific proof of my driver’s ed time that we didn’t know I needed while I waited for the test. She said, “Well, at least we know for next time” and I replied, “There won’t be a next time–I’m going to pass now!” And I did, in one of the more glorious moments of my teens.
I memorized mine filling out college applications. I think my parents actually remembered to bring my SSN card for the drivers permit/ license activities…
I definitely didn’t memorize mine til I applied for college. I worked under the table all through high school, and just recently got my driver’s license at the tender young age of twenty-freakin-four.
My first job was as a seasonal employee, working the lingerie counter at a family-owned department store in a Midwestern Small Town. I was sixteen years old and helping middle-aged men buy holiday teddies for their wives. No idea who in the world thought that was a good idea, but man, for a teenage virgin in Kansas, I had the best collection of sexy underthings.
This is worse than checks. I’m getting skeezy vibes thinking about knowing everyone in town and their proclivities in the underwear department.
It really wasn’t bad. I looked older than I was, and I’d already cultivated a Do Not Fuck With Me vibe. If I did get hit on, I didn’t notice. Most of the men seemed uncomfortable. I wonder how many sales they lost because of me…Hm. Never thought of that before. At least I learned how to measure for bra fit at an early age, so that was a definite win. Bless old ladies in old-fashioned lingerie departments.
Also, I should add, we didn’t carry exactly racy underthings. A lot were actually worthy of the name “peignoirs.” Gauzy, filmy dressing gowns that belonged in a 40s film, and cute little babydoll numbers with matching robes.
Now that I’m remembering this, it all seems terribly unlikely. Both the fact that the store existed and that they hired me.
Oh, I did my time in a lingerie department at 18, although there were probably plenty of 17-year-olds doing their time in retail around me (I started with the store in the plus size department the summer before, and had already rotated through children’s).
We were a major chain department store, though, and there were always plenty of ladies on staff. Including the old ladies who were wizards at measuring and knowing their stock/salesfloor by heart. They never even bothered training us babies on how to do the measuring, although I did observe the process thoroughly enough to know it and its importance.
But yes, I did buy one pair of panties in basically every style that we stocked. I learned a lot about what I would or would not enjoy in fit/style/cut/fabric. Mostly, two-thirds of those purchases were terrible choices, so I’m glad I made them when they cost only a couple bucks per pair (from the clearance boxes in the backroom).
My first full-time job was at a gift shop attached to a fancy old-school restaurant. I spent the summer I was 15 selling LLadró porcelain and Caspari napkins to older couples who were thrilled to find a young person willing to listen to them for a few minutes.
I was the only person under 60 who worked there, which meant I was the one sent running down the service stairs to the gift-wrap room whenever a customer requested wrapping-while-you-wait. (Why didn’t they offer wrapping-on-the-hour and let me do a batch of presents at a time? Because no one thought of it, or because they didn’t care about my knees: take your pick.) My first few packages looked a little lumpy, but I quickly learned to wrap with crisp efficiency, and I still can turn out nicely-wrapped presents lickety-split.
I remember exactly one of my co-workers: Helen, a wiry, snappy broad with a raspy cigarette voice and lion doorknocker earrings. She was elegant and tough and funny and she took no guff from fools, including me.
My first job was working as a swim lesson instructor. You’d think people in charge making sure kids learned how to swim and didn’t drown would be older than 15 and paid more than minimum, but you’d be wrong. On my first day, the person I was supposed to shadow didn’t show up, so they quite literally threw me in the deep end – with laminated cards as guidelines for what each level was supposed to learn. But I got to pick my own hours, so that was good.
When I was 7 or 8 I went to a horseback riding camp where all of the counselors were 14 or 15. My mother was horrified that barely-teenagers were in charge of making sure her daughter didn’t get trampled by a large mammal. At the time, 15 seemed impossibly old and mature to me so I didn’t see the problem, but looking back, holy shit I can’t believe that was even legal.
My first job was hostessing at the family breakfast restaurant. (sidebar: Yes, I am Greek; yes, my adolescence was terrifyingly similar to My Big Fat Greek Wedding.) I started working on holidays when I was 8 and filed my first tax return the year I turned twelve. Swore I’d never get sucked into restaurant life once I’d seen what it did to my parents, so in high school I got a terrible record store job and then worked at Target until well into college. During and after college, I waited table and hated it, then got an insurance job and hated that more, and spent the following decade bartending and waitressing. It’s only at 33, two years removed from my last restaurant job, that I don’t always feel it nipping at my heels.
My first job was working at a locally owned video store. The owners were a couple, and the man was really skeezy. Nothing untoward actually happened, you just got that feeling. It is still the only video store near my parents (they don’t download movies), so I have to go in occasionally, and when I have to, I just go in and out as fast as humanly possible. Eeew.
I saw my first porn DVD covers there – I got sent to clean the shelves on the adults section once. Never mind the fact that I was 15 and it was a R18 section. Only had to do that once though.
They paid me lower than minimum wage too. Bastards.
My first job was at a beach restaurant near my house – burgers, fries, ceasar salads, that kind of thing. While there were a lot of crummy things about it, I actually am pretty appreciative of the opportunity and how they treated me. There I learned that if “I have time to lean, I have time to clean” and to appreciate hoppy pale ales.
One time someone got promoted above me and I had a little fit because I thought I deserved to be a manager. My boss sat me down and told me that they knew I was not there for the long run, that I was going to university and on to other things, which is why they weren’t offering me a real job. It was true, and nice, and kind of a weird class moment.
I had another job like that where it was obvious to everyone that this wasn’t my real life, just pretend, and that I would make it out alive.
I had a job while in uni that, when they once scheduled me on during class, phoned me up to scream that this part-time kitchen work should be more important to me than my degree.
My first job after finishing Uni (BA in Engish+German Lits and MA in Creative & Critical Writing) was as a Production Manager in an organic, ethical beauty company. It basically meant I’d spend 8 hours on my own mixing butter and oils to make the products. The company was so ethical I wasn’t even allowed to chit-chat to the only other person in the office with me. UGH.
What? Chit-chat = unethical? I’m a monster!! 🙁
My first “job” was a volunteer gig every Saturday at a nature house. It was lovely, they let 15 year old me do it by myself so I spent every weekend either touring little kids around the exhibits or wandering by myself in blessed peace when no one was around. The only CD they had to play was a Loreena McKinnett one, so now I associate any of her songs with answering repetitive “how long does it live?” questions (why is that what everyone wants to know? Without fail, that’s the question I’d get for every little squiggly worm thing.)
My first paying gig was cleaning a campground. I had to clean a lot of disgusting stuff out of fire pits, developed a life-long conviction that smokers and disgusting and the worst, and got my first taste of chronic sexual harassment from a coworker, but I also got to work with two older women who were both awesome in their own very different ways.
Re: “how long does it live”–when I meet a dog I always start to ask the owner how old the dog is, and then I remember that I don’t actually care and the answer is not going to be interesting. It’s just one of the only questions I can think of to ask about a dog off the top of my head.
My first job was manning a conveyor belt at a novelty fortune cookie factory that was run by a former professional clown. My task was to feed the cookies to the wrapper and taste every twentieth one (for quality control?). I realized even then that it was a fairly silly introduction to the “real world.” I didn’t stay long enough to get promoted to writing the fortunes, but I did get to keep the hairnet.
I have to ask – how on earth did you land a gig like that? That sounds like something out of a kids’ chapter book, how wild!
It seemed like it would be wild! One of my high school friends found a temp job there and recruited several of us (along with his mom) for the summer. It didn’t take long for the monotony to overwhelm any residual joy from the quirkiness, though.
In an awful postscript, the guy who manned the baking machine (and who was my only companion in the small, overheated production room) was later arrested for molesting his daughter. They don’t mention that in the official origin story:
https://www.fancyfortunecookies.com/Articles.asp?…
In another sad p.p.s., it looks like the owner (the clown) suffered an untimely death a couple of years back.
My first job was on a touristy fish and chips houseboat moored in what was then a slowly gentrifying fish wharf. I learned exactly how much I could drink the night before so as not to have my stomach set off by the gentle rocking, and how to eat dungeness crabs and smoke cigarettes for breakfast with the cook who lived on a beat up sailboat moored near-by.
That sounds pretty awesome actually.
sounds like you live in a jack london novel.
My first job was in a fancy gift shop attached to a 1600s-era historic house that sold only American handcraft items- pottery, glass, wood, jewelry, etc. Back then, “American-made handcrafted goods” didn’t have quite the same cache and commercial appeal that it does these days but there was a committed clientele of well-heeled ladies who enjoyed funky $400 semi-precious stone necklaces and blown glass. It was actually quite an intense job because the place was tiny and could get packed on weekends. And we were all manual- no computer POS system. I added everything up/calculated tax on a calculator and hand-wrote receipts. My only coworker was a middle-aged single lady who didn’t know how to drive, which I thought was pretty retro of her. All in all, I could have done WAY worse for a first gig.
My first job was a sports camp counselor at age 15. I broke my leg (outside of work…at a bowling alley…?) the night before my sixth day of work, and spent the summer babysitting the kids who got sent inside for misbehaving (or, more likely, not enjoying sports). They soon learned they could outrun me on my crutches, so the only way to keep them in my eyeline the entire day was to teach them to play cards.
I got to sit and eat snacks all day in the AC, being entertained by the non-sporty kids who were mostly really funny and good kids, while the other counselors ran around in the California summer sun after the athletic kids. Once a day the hot, college-aged guy who brought us ice each day would stop and talk to me. I got paid $10 an hour for some reason and worked 35 hours a week. Dream job.
I could go for this job even now at 37. Nicely played.
My first job was as a summer intern at our county’s transportation division. My dad worked at traffic safety, and it’s safe to say that nepotism ran strong in our county, but this was the first year they’d had an intern that wasn’t just “bus washer” and they had very little idea how to utilize me. I did a lot of filing, played a lot of Neopets, and sat around with my finger up my nose quite frequently because they didn’t have anything I could do. I think I am singlehandedly responsible for getting websense implemented in the county. I was not asked back to transportation the next year – I guess they decided that they could handle all the work themselves, and only bus washers would do – and moved to roads and bridges, and I loved it there (except for when I would get angry phone calls from the general public wondering why xyz deer carcass had not been removed or why they weren’t doing anything about the pothole in the street that technically wasn’t a county road, so we couldn’t do anything about it).
I worked there all through college, but the recession cut back on all intern jobs at the county and couldn’t hang onto it after that.
Yeah, this was my exact upbringing. Greek, family restaurant. I started working when I was 8–bussing tables. That movie was all too real.
PartnerChouffe had a moment of intense eye-opening the first time he met some of the cousins. He hadn’t realized it was basically a documentary. Then forty Greeks showed up at our old apartment and started yelling and lighting fires and telling him to eat the lamb.
Yeah, the same thing happened when my partner saw the entire lamb (including the head) on the spit my dad has in the back yard. When my dad first saw that movie, he turned to me and, no joke, said ‘the father was the wisest character.’
#solidarity!
My mom, being non-Greek, appreciated it in a whole separate way. My dad just kept nodding, over and over and over.
My mom’s Irish. She thought the whole movie was finally proof that Greeks are crazy and ridiculous.
Whoooooa. Are you actually me? This is uncanny. (Mack/McNamara/Murphy on my mom’s side.)
Maybe I’m the alternate-universe, Denver-based you. I have an extremely Greek name, which throws people off when they see my pasty Irish skin and dark hair.
Heh. Wow. Well, if you ever visit Northern Michigan, I’ll introduce you to my parents and see which of us they claim at the end. /also super-Greek-named with relatively pale skin, though I tan very easily and deeply in the summertime.
I’m a former Anchoragite, and girl, you had my heart breaking with the People Mover description. My first job was downtown, and I lived in south Anchorage. You can’t ask your co-workers for a ride because not only does that bring them into Real Life but also because anywhere to anywhere in Anchorage is at least a 30 min drive. My parents wanted me to work during the summers, but also made me wait until I could drive because they sure didn’t want to chauffeur me around.
Eight stars of gold on a field of blue! I live in Arizona now but Anchorage is still what I think of as the real place. Great to hear from you.
Mine was a dishwasher at the VFW. They had to let me go because they didn’t have enough money to pay me, but it was money. The memorable time was when I was sick and ended up getting really sick after having to scrape off someone’s stewed tomatoes.
They were still nice enough to give me something for Christmas: a can of mixed nuts and a Wal-Mart gift certificate.
Same–if you’re ever in Denver, you’ll have to come by for some lamb. My dad may even let you have the tongue, which is his most favorite lamb bit.
You’re on. Dads may have to have a spanokopita cook-off.
My first real job was at 15, at Radio Shack. I had a (guy) friend who already worked there; he advised me to wear something “sexy” to the interview to get hired. I did and I was, despite my clear lack of experience or knowledge about their products.
I’ll never forget the time I was watching the store by myself (WHY?) and some lady came in to make a return. No one had taught me how to do that, so I told her she had to come back another time. Next day, alone in the store again, the same lady came in. She was not happy.
When my (terrible, sleazy) boss finally got fired and they transferred a hard-ass manager to my store to clean it up, I dyed my hair pink and quit. No regrets.
Having worked at both an after-hours program at an elementary school (for kids whose parents work) and at a few camps – the non-athletic kids are the *BEST*. We used to have tic-tac-toe tournaments in the baseball field dirt, using sticks to make the boards. I spent all of my time with them.
Yes! I totally agree. I loved them. The athletes were generally nice kids but they didn’t always have the charm of my little card sharks.
My first job was at a ZOO! With all my friends! In the morning I’d come in the other side of the park and get to walk behind the cages on a path that zookeepers took. I was not a zookeeper, I sold tickets. But it was still AWESOME! They let us paint a mural in the office of animals! I don’t miss it because a lot was boring, but man. Great first job.
I’m with you, I would never accept cheques in a business. I can’t think of one person I know who uses them now – possibly now I’m living in a rural area, some farmers might still*, but I would think most of them are into internet banking. It seems like it’s so fraught with… fraud? It always blows my mind when I hear of American friends saying they still have a chequebook.
*not saying that farmers are more or less likely to take up technology now than other people, but that there is more of a tradition in country towns to have a monthly account with various local businesses rather than paying in cash everytime you go in, and then paying the account at the end of the month with a cheque.
Does this mean I don’t really have to learn to balance a checkbook? Because I’m 24, my landlord takes my rent in cash, and I have no idea what “balancing a checkbook” means and I can’t decide how serious that is.
Does this mean I don’t really have to learn to balance a checkbook?
Absolutely, you just need to move to Australia 🙂
My first real job was a fish and chip ‘restaurant’, fancified and with silly rules like you could never buy only one piece of fish. I went in after seeing an ad in the paper, had an over-the-counter interview, and got a call about a minute after walking out the door asking me to start the next day. It was a year of smelly, greasy, extremely busy and intense counter work, and I used to wake myself up with the sound of the pagers beeping in my nightmares. I also successfully survived my first cash-scam, and eventually learned to stop locking my keys in my car after Dad had to come and pick me up multiple times at 10pm. I hated it, but it paid way better than average for my age and I had nothing else to do. I’ve sworn never to work in food service again, though!
omg, work nightmares. Isn’t it funny how those noises embed themselves in your subconscious? Around March I was having pretty consistent nightmares about the Health Insurance Marketplace hotline hold music, because I’m a navigator and I got to listen to that music for about two hours a day. I still break into a sweat when I think about it.
You must eat more fish! The smells of any food job stay with you forever.
“Weird class moment” is a good phrase. I worked at a large chain electronics store during a semester off from fancy liberal arts college (and during subsequent summers). Most of my coworkers hadn’t been to college and were at the store for the long haul, and my managers were oddly lenient with me and allowed me not to take the job terribly seriously because they knew it wasn’t my “real life.” (I mean, I took it seriously enough to be good at it, but I didn’t push people to sign up for our credit cards and didn’t come into work if I was sick.) Joke’s on them, though, my fancy college education has left me with a mountain of debt and an inability to find work in my field without going to grad school, and customer service has been the most useful skill I’ve developed!
Technically, my first job was as a soda jerk at an old-fashioned ice cream shop and diner that had just opened in my town. I was 15 and they were hiring pretty much any and every teenager in town. I was fired after two months because they’d hired too many people and at the time I weighed about 90 pounds and was too scrawny and weak to scoop the ice cream. Also, though I’ve never confirmed this, I suspect they were keeping me later than you’re legally allowed to make teenagers work.
After that, I spent my high school years working at a candy store that paid me under the table in cash. The owner loves me and still (8 years later) lets me come back and work when I need cash. It was usually empty and only one person worked at a time, so i essentially got to spend my weekends reading and eating candy. Still my ideal job.
Too pitiful to scoop ice cream? I’m imaging that. Being able to go back as needed is a great perk.
Does this mean I don't really have to learn to balance a checkbook?
Absolutely, you just need to move to Australia 🙂
My first job was at a farm shop on the edge of my town. It was a converted barn which got absolutely freezing in winter (seriously, one day when I was there the cold store out the back, kept at about 5 degrees C, was noticeably warmer than the shop. Vegetables we put out at the start of the day were starting to freeze by lunchtime). I wore thermals under my clothes and went to bed when I got home to warm up. I was paid cash-in-hand (after I’d been there a while, I was told to just take it out of the till myself) with no paperwork, and we didn’t have a toilet or anywhere to sit down. I didn’t realise this was illegal.
My first job was at a shoe shop, where the staff had to climb into the window displays to clean the glass. It was impossible to clean without being burnt by the halogen lights, and everyone was allergic to the cleaner because it was so harsh, but we weren’t allowed to wear gloves because gloves weren’t uniform. All the sales staff had these horrible bubbly burns all over their forearms and hands, and red scaly palms. This doesn’t make me proud, but when the company went under in the credit crunch, I laughed like a drain.