First Jobs

Oh teenage jobs. The first one I got was at a boardwalk fries in the Capital City Mall. Remember using the pilot light of the fryer to light cigarettes, got that job when I was 16 because I had to pay for things. He’s my first paycheck was a whopping $27 I bought a Star Trek Bridge set model kit.

Remember the page student wage which was like $2 and some change or wasn’t even minimum I had to apply at Ames and threatened to go there before the French fry place would give me a raise. I worked at Arby’s for a day. I got my dream job at Toys R Us over Easter of 1992 which was great I got to work overnight shift as well which was great. That came more out of my drawer being short all the time and not wanting to be on register because I sucked as a cashier or the service area took money from my drawer to balance their drawers one of the two I was always told that was a distinct possibility.

But yeah, enjoy night crew had a friend named Lou Strawser. After night crew I would go out to basically be let out and go to school, high school. Although sometimes we would go on trips to if I had the day off we go to King of Prussia Mall they will go to Line Oh Kitty City which was still open then in King of Prussia Valley Forge area. But yeah, working overnight was great just doing merchandising.

That was something they have worked at Spencer gifts for season Suncoast where they sold videotapes for season. This is all during school like all during high school at large jobs. I worked a lot of them concurrently to and then when I when I graduated high school I still worked a lot.

I worked at Pennsylvania higher education assistant agency. It’s a temporary job to able temps but I worked at it several years tried to go to permanent but got turned down that was hard but you know that was that was a good job. I was a skip tracer that meant I before the internet I used computers to pull information to work with pooled information that is to call relatives and references and employers looking for student borrowers that basically skipped out on their student loans or credit reports.

I would go in on the weekends work overtime filing student loan applications. It was a it was a cool job. He had to dress nice and everything and I I lived so close by could walk so I could get in when no one else could when it snowed because it snowed in Pennsylvania. So that was a thing, but those are my office jobs.

And then I left Fia, Pennsylvania higher education assistant agency worked at sheets, convenience store chain worked overnight and worked. day shift as well overnight in Harrisburg day shift on Carlisle pike route 114. I would just leave from one to the other, which was good. I remember pulling like 20 hours or so in a row at one particular stretch and that was at one location. So that was that was interesting. I was relieved generally so that wouldn’t break a record. So that was fun and exciting.

Worked was a super temperature EFC temps I really did a lot of stuff when I was told I was good enough to choose any assignment very low rejection rate of I remember there were two jobs that didn’t work out for me. The one was towards the end of my tenure there. And in my time Pennsylvania tried to work overnight. I just ended up collapsing at three in the morning. I just couldn’t do it. anymore. I’d done it a while. Like a Toys R Us and stuff at the convenience store at sheets but I just couldn’t do it anymore apparently.

The other one was more interesting. So it was inbound. inbound calls for Verizon as I remember at&t It was one of the two and it was again it was through basically temp agency contract work. And I remember making it through the the six week training like I came in second. I think a girl named Samara Gallatin beat me out, but some error Scott now. But I remember when I was put on the phones then for inbound, my anxiety just went through the roof. I couldn’t deal with it.

And what I found I had to ask to be released from an assignment. I think it was the first time I’d ever done that. Ever. And what I found was that anxiety kicked in and I think it was because they didn’t have any control. When you do outbound calls, you have control you dial or you use the dialer and pull up your records, you’re good the phone rings, and then you are talking to them and you’re making requests of the customer or the reference or whatever, right.

But inbound was harder because you had no control. And that’s something that I think that I’ve learned, whether it’s being an orphan, whether it’s being a child of divorce, or being re orphaned. I find that controls important to me. I need to be in control and I think that’s one of the things that both orphaned and divorced kids deal with is needing to be in control because your world falls apart.

And you tend to gravitate towards things that you can control, or you try to control things. So that didn’t work out. For me. That was the summer of the South Park movie. I remember seeing that. That was hilarious. Like, I still remember being in the theater and hearing all the cuss words and you know, it not being censored, like it was on Comedy Central. And that movie just really helped to get me through that anxiety period and then I got reassigned and just kind of kept going.

But that was hard because I think again, as an orphan and a child of divorce. They have a lot of things in common. It’s just you see your world destroyed right in front of you several times. And you just you are in the control. And that’s that’s the thing.