My first job(s)

Single Ma seems to be getting a bit freaked out over at Fabulous Financials about her 15 year old daughter getting her first job. It got me thinking.

I, and my sisters, were in the exact opposite situation. My parents went and gone done had four kids. My mom had to work 2 full time jobs for quite a few years to keep a roof over our heads, and we only really saw her for a short while after we got home from school. If we wanted a car when we turned 16, we had to have a job. That’s right, no parent-bought flashy brand new cars for us (which is why it always pisses me off when I see all these rotten kids with cars their parents bought for them – not the fact that they got that and I didn’t, but the fact that they should have had to work for it, like me).

My first job when I was 14 was as a bus boy at Schwalm’s Cleona Restaraunt. It was nice and close, an easy, minimum wage job, rode my bike there every day after school, and got to wear whatever I wanted. I quit after about 2 months due to personal differences with the scraggly old hag of an owner.

I then started my career at McD’s, like my sisters did. I was there for a year and a half and did nothing but order taking on the drivethru, because for a year and a half they absolutely refused to train me on anything else. That place is freaking corrupt, anyway, and they constantly have a help wanted sign up.

I went for a few months, if not more, jobless after that, just because it felt so good to not have to work anymore, until my mom started getting on my case about it. I guess I’m 17 by now (however that happened), as this was the summer of `04. She kept pointing out jobs in the paper I didn’t care for until she saw the ad for GTP. Summer fun, make lots of friends, whatever else the ad said… I just wanted her to shut up (which is usually how things got done), so I filled out the app on their website, sat through the insanely boring interview that wasn’t really an interview but more like the Asst. General Manager sitting there explaining the job and all the rules to me while I sat there nodding my head til my neck hurt. Gosh Seth, I hope you’re not reading this! But, I suppose, if you are, now you know. Actually, there’s a good reason I don’t mention the full company name – somebody else in management has a habit of Googling it to see what his employees are saying about the company online. How do I know? He edited my Wikipedia user page once to make me suddenly go from despising my job to loving it. Actually, he still might find this, but that’s just the risk I’m going to have to take, now isn’t it? Aaaaaaanyway… I found it was an extremely easy job (while hard on the feet), as well as easy to get promoted. I don’t know if it’s because I’m just that good or because of all the bodies in the stands they hire that make you look damn good when compared to just by doing the job and doing it right, but they kept promoting me… and promoting me… with pay raises to go along with them. Finally, this past summer, I was called to the office – something that very rarely happens, especially when it means the area manager needs to work your stand because we’re so understaffed. I was freaking out, trying to think of all the things I could have done wrong in the past week or two and explanations to go along with them (which, of course, I couldn’t think of anything because I’m perfect, right?) as I was walking the half mile or so through throngs of tourists to the office. I was seriously considering just walking right past it, going out to my truck, and going home. Apparently one of the guys upstairs thought I was going to do just that and was watching for me out the window. Turns out, after all that freaking out, I climb up the steps to the office and they offer me a promotion to Temporary Manager on Duty (as in, play manager for the shift while an area manager has the day off). I accepted it, of course, and I’m still mad at them for it. Their reasons? Over the 3 years beforehand I learned everything I could about everything, cared that the job was done right, and pretended that I like the job (Hersheypark is the most miserable place on earth when you’re not just visiting). Actually, those are just reasons I came up with. Their real reason was the fact that one of the area managers was still in school in North Carolina and the other was still in school around here but only able to work weekends, whereas I had all the time in the world on my hands and was pulling 80 and 90 hour weeks due to being a college dropout.

I’ll be going in to my fifth year there this summer. I’ll probably be working a pretty limited schedule, you know, because I’m a janitor now (yipee). Last season, my area manager called me a “lifer” about 100 times, which I denied every time, but who knows, he may be right. That company has done a lot for me, and also tends to always be there as a sort of fallback job, if I happen to be out of work somewhere else at some point during the season. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind, I just wish they’d create some random enjoyable year round position for me. It boggles my mind every once in a while that they haven’t fired me yet, but every year they manage to find a way to set me straight and get me to come to work on time. It’s just a shame they have to do it every year.

Wow, that only took a full hour to write. But anyway, Single Ma, since I know you already know how to school your daughter on managing her money, make sure you school her on getting promotions, too! Take it from my experience. And you fine folks from GTP, regardless of whether or not you read this, I can’t thank you enough for the million or so chances you’ve given me. But, if you are reading this, I don’t want to hear a word spoken of it, unless it’s in the context of giving me a new, full time, year round job that doesn’t suck so much. And preferably involves air conditioning (though it’s not required).

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