My First Job

At age 17, my first summer after high school, hot angry tears brimmed in my eyes as I mopped the red tiled floors of a Pizza Hut.  I had been working at Pizza Hut for several weekends straight. Each night I mopped floors, assembled food, did inventory, scrubbed walls and doors, did dishes, and usually stayed much later than I was legally supposed to until all my duties were finished.

That wasn't what had upset me. I hadn't had a chance to see my dad in a few weeks and had just learned my boss had scheduled me to work Father's Day. My parents were separated and about to divorce finally that fall and I wasn't quite used to this whole not-seeing-my-dad thing.  This seems a bit laughable now that I work and go to school all the time and haven't seen him since 2010.

This being my very first official job, a job where I had even skipped my senior prom to work, I was afraid to ask her to change my schedule, mostly because my boss was a really scary woman.

Just two months earlier, wearing a cardigan and a pink shirt, I interviewed for the job of kitchen help, a bundle of nerves as I explained to this tough, round, Drew Carey-faced woman with a shrill, mean voice, that I intended to learn the ropes of my duties while making $5.25 an hour.

She glared at me from across the booth where we were seated, a booth where she would later that summer scream at me in front of all my coworkers to let me know I was dressed like a streetwalker, and asked suspiciously, "Why are you shaking?  What is wrong with you?"

I lit up, thrilled to actually know an answer to a question in my very first job interview. "Oh, this is my first interview.  I'm just really excited and nervous." I said, quietly with my eyes (hopefully) dancing and not looking psychotic.

"WELL KNOCK IT OFF!"

For some reason, I immediately calmed down, probably because now I was just trying not to giggle inappropriately out of relief that this was going better than I had expected. Please don't let me laugh at this woman, I begged myself in my head.  I needed this job.

"And I don't know where you get off asking me to pay you $5.25 an hour.  I can't do that.  Minimum wage is $5.15 an hour."

I had no idea what minimum wage rates were and didn't care, so I was hired.

When I quit in August to move to Baltimore to stay with my grandmother (best college roommate ever, am I right?) all the waitresses sweetly begged me not to leave.

"Why do you want to go to college?  Don't you want to stay here and see us every day?"

If you had asked me months earlier, I would have said yes.  I had no desire to go to college and no idea what I wanted to do when I grew up, and I wasn't exactly thrilled at the aspect of getting from Baltimore to Arnold each day when I didn't have a car.

After a summer of waiting for a ride home between 11pm-1am, burning my hands and arms on the pizza oven various times, having absolutely no friends whatsoever so much as contact me all summer long, I decided there were only so many sunny mornings where I could gorge on french toast while vacuuming and watching Mama's Family before I felt like a useless shlob.

I was ready for adventure.