What I gained from my first job

By: Wise Mind Money When I turned 16, I got two things that changed my life. A car. And a job. The car, a 1996 Chevy Monte Carlo, had a huge front end and 16-year-old Emilie struggled to maneuver it without running into things. Three cars later, all before I became a high school graduate, maybe it wasn’t just the front end of the car that was the problem. (My dad loves to tell the stories of my driving antics to every one of my friends he meets. That and the time I ran over a tree with the lawnmower. And drove our four wheeler – bought that very day – straight into the pond. I was destined for the wreck-life from a young age.) And at the rate I was going through cars, I needed a job to fund my terrible driving. Seriously. My car insurance was over $300 a month at one point. My parents were not about to pay for that. So aside from babysitting and getting paid under the table to wash dishes at a restaurant close to home, my first legitimate job was at a popular fast food chain. I was actually driving home one night from that job when I totaled my first car. RIP Monte Carlo (1996-2007). I had the job longer than I had the car, and that job had a significant impact on my life at the time and remains one of my fondest memories to this day. I never dreamed I would work in fast food when I was in high school. In my mind, it was way beneath me. What a brat I was, right? But the job pool for teenagers is pretty limited in my small town, and I applied multiple times to the local retail stores (all three of them), and didn’t hear back, so I had to widen my search. I applied for serving jobs, but no one wants to hire a kid who isn’t old enough to serve alcohol, so I moved on to fast food. Cue the “wah wah wahhhh” sound effect. I only applied at the “classy” fast food places though 🙃 and landed an interview. Got the job, and the rest is history. I learned so much about life there. WORKING IN FAST FOOD IS NOT BENEATH YOU What a wakeup call. My first position was washing dishes and collecting payments at the first drive-thru window. A pretty simple task, but incredibly physically demanding work. We had a table where the dirty dishes would go, and I would wash them in between taking payments. When my drive-thru speaker headset would ding, I would dry my hands and head to the window. Then I would go back to washing dishes in the huge industrial sinks. And those dishes could be nasty. I learned how to use some major elbow grease to get hardened cheese sauce out of a container and wash the grease out of three huge fryers every night. I learned how to work hard, efficiently, and with a smile. Once I mastered dishes, I moved on to learning how to operate the front cash registers. Part of this job was cleaning the dining area, washing the glass doors, vacuuming the floors, cleaning the bathrooms, and mopping. Talk about more physically taxing work. I also learned the value of great customer service, and adaptability. I once had a deaf customer sign to me asking for paper and pencil to write down his order. It was my first experience with someone who was deaf, and I loved being able to serve him without blinking an eye, just like I would any other customer. I learned how to make sandwiches (mayo, ketchup, mustard, onions, pickles in that order, and that order only) and even learned a bit about working the grills, but my favorite position was drive-thru speaker. I could be halfway across the restaurant when someone began their order, and I would get to my computer and punch in their order perfectly from memory as they were still ordering. I was efficient and made it a game to gather all their drinks, fries, and sandwiches together before they finished paying and got to my window. Closing this position meant restocking everything and cleaning the drink and… uh… “frozen treat” machines (since we’re not naming restaurant names here 😉). There were times when I had it down to such a science that I could get out of there five minutes after closing time. This was all HARD work. I got to experience a lot of pride in a job well done. And, while the work was hard, I also learned that… WORK CAN BE A LOT OF FUN My coworkers were a diverse bunch, in age and cultural background and life situation. I was immediately humbled. These were some of the most hardworking people I’ve ever met to this day. While I was working there to pay for shopping trips, football games, and trips to the movies (and to buy my next cheap car), many of them were working to pay their bills and feeSet featured imaged themselves and their families. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few people around my age working because their parents were tired of funding their social lives too, but the majority of my coworkers needed their jobs. And it was hard not to like these people. My coworkers quickly became my best friends.  While we were very different, we became close like family. We needed each other to do our jobs well, and we took pride in our jobs (usually). I actually looked forward to work and would show up early just to spend a few extra minutes hanging out before our shifts. We all stayed late together often, just sitting outside talking after closing (there were a few nights I got in trouble with my parents for being out so late…). We became more than just work-friends though, and hung out frequently outside of work. We piled into our cars to head to midnight movie premiers (I always had several changes of clothes in my car for impromptu post-work activities), we went to school dances together, we would party at each others’ houses, and we went to the lake together. We had each others’ backs. We would talk on the phone until we fell asleep, right after working a six-hour shift together. Once, they thought my boyfriend at the time had done something to hurt me and they were so pissed about it. Our group really cared about each other. That was the best thing I gained from my job. We got along well together because we had fun at work together. One time I laughed so hard I cried because I spilled a whole bucket of “frozen treat” mix on the floors that had already been mopped. We had a code word – “red panda” – for any, uh… attractive person who came through the drive-thru. We got really creative with the food (because when your menu choices are limited and you eat the same things every day for dinner for a year, you come up with some off-menu delicacies sometimes). When business was slow, we found ways to entertain each other, making up games or playing the question game. Even long after I had left that job behind, my old coworkers remained some of my closest friends. They were the kind of friends who still invited me over, and the kind of friends who all came to my 21st birthday party, even though I was 17 when I left that job. I love all those guys. My first job was a paycheck, but it was so much more than that. It was the kind of job that influenced me to write a paper in my English class about how every high-schooler should get a job. My parents would joke and say I should be a spokesperson for the restaurant because I was always talking about how it was so much better and fresher than the competitors, haha. A lot of stuff happened at that job that I would definitely never talk about on the internet, and not all of it was good. But I learned so much about life that year, and I wouldn’t change a thing. What was your first job? Have you ever had a similar experience, or was yours completely different? I’d love to hear about it Republished with the permission of Wise Mind Money.