My First Job

My parents brought us up knowing the value of money. We weren’t deprived of anything we wanted, we just had to save up for it.

When I was fourteen, I was sick of saving up my pocket money little by little to buy the latest book I had my eye on. One of my friends who I palled around with at the time had a part time job and had just bought a phone with her wages. The green-eyed monster appeared and I decided then and there that I was getting a summer job.

My mom, who was a retired from teaching, loved kids and saw an ad in the local supermarket looking for a childminder. She immediately rang the mom and took her four kids on after school every day for years. When they were a part of the routine for two years, I had a light bulb moment. Their mom owned the local bookshop, the place where everyone in the town ordered their kids schoolbooks from.

In May, I was feeling pretty miserable as there was a new book out by J.K. Rowling, and I was the only one in my social circle who didn’t have it. I decided to ask Caroline, the kids mom, if I could come and work in her shop for the summer. She thought about it for a second before a cheeky grin crossed her face and she said yes. I was delighted. We didn’t talk about wages or anything like that, she just told me I could start on the 1^st of July.

The end of year at school was a terrible one as it brought with it…exams. I was lucky that I didn’t have my state exams for another year but I felt very bad because every time my parents thought I was upstairs ‘studying’, I was actually laying on my bed listening to music and reading a book. My father had high hopes and with that brought pressure. Two weeks before the exams, I decided I needed to play my role in participating in them and opened a book.

It dawned on me when I opened the book, that by the fresh smell of it, I probably hadn’t opened it all year…. that’s when the fear set in. I pulled out books with diagrams that I didn’t recognise and information that was all new to me, but would be on the tests. I realised then and there that I was never going to be cut out for medical school, which wasn’t the direction I was going in regardless, but it would have been nice to have the option. I just wasn’t the studious type.

They were the longest two weeks of my life. There were some questions on most of the tests that I was convinced were in Klingon or something…anyway they were over and that was all that mattered.

I had three weeks to horse around with my friends before work started. I was excited to earn my own money but was curious also as to what my role would be.

July 1^st arrived, and I was outside the bookshop at 9:50…ten minutes early. I sat on the step outside and waited for someone, anyone, to show up. I had been up since five trying to decide what to wear. In the end I went with jeans, my Dr. Martins and a bejewelled black top, my hair tied back. I looked at my watch, it was 10:03, then 10:07. When the watch ticked to 10:09, Caroline showed up apologising for her lateness. I smiled at her as she opened the door to the narrow, long, dark bookshop. The waft of books hit me and a kaleidoscope of butterflies soared through my being…I was in heaven!

Not two minutes was I inside the shop when Angela arrived. Caroline instructed her to break me in…something she cocked her nose up at as she was as surprised as I was by being there.

She pointed to the front of the shop…’normal books!’ she said with a drone in her tone. Then we walked past the till…’you aren’t allowed near that!’ she pointed out. Then we were in the back of the long building…’children’s books!’ she said and almost knocked me down to get to the stairs. Once we got up there, she said, ‘this is where you will spend your time. An order comes in, you have a number attached to the order, you fill it as quickly as possible. Then you bring the order into this room’, she said almost knocking me down again. ‘This room is where the fulfilled orders go awaiting collection. I smiled nervously and nodded that I understood her. I couldn’t, however, understand the Gaul of her thinking she was better than me. She was only one year older than me and she was bossing me around like a dogs body…and I had only been there ten minutes.

‘But who takes the orders?’ I asked tentatively. ‘You do!’ she barked. ‘How?’ I asked timidly, brushing a stray hair behind my ear. She audibly rolled her eyes and brought me back downstairs, ‘man,’ I said to myself as she tried to walk through me, ‘what a bitch!’ She brought me to the table next to the cash register which had already ringed in the first sale of the day and showed me, roughly, how to take in the orders. ‘They will be done numerically!’ she stated snarkily. ‘Here’s someone coming in,’ she stated as there was indeed a mother holding three booklists in her hand looking perplexed. ‘Hi,’ I said to her, ‘how may I help you?’ My parents always told me ‘Being nice costs nothing!’ a trait that followed me wherever I went.

I tried to put the booklists in the organisational system that Angela told me was in place, but I wasn’t doing it quick enough for her so she moved me with her hip almost making me bump into Caroline who was making the second transaction of the day. As rude as Angela was, I was there to learn, so I composed myself and watched closely at what she was doing.

Over the following few days, Angela berated me and made me look like a fool in front of customers. She chastised me about the fact that she was the only one who was allowed fax in orders and basically used me as her errand girl. The only time I actually got peace was when I was gathering the books on a certain order, placing them carefully in the ‘fulfilled order’ room. She had me running up and down the stairs so much that my thighs began to cramp up.

The end of the week came, as did our little pouches of money. I was excited at this bit because I had worked my ass off getting little or no gratitude from either Caroline or Angela. I took out the three notes in my packet and counted them carefully. Then I looked over at Angela and watched as she did the same. She took out the wad of cash and counted it in front of me…I couldn’t help but count it at the same time as her. She had received five times as much as what was in my envelope. She tapped me on the shoulder and told me to have a nice weekend.

There I was, left on the front step of the bookshop, holding a measly €50 in my hand. I had put blood, sweat and tears into that week. I had worked ten times harder than the snide Angela. The till pinged again, that indicated another sale. The shop seemed to be doing well so I wondered how Caroline had the Gaul to pay me the bare minimum. Was that even legal? I put my money in my pocket and started to walk home, disappointment soaring throughout my body.

I stayed low that weekend and kept to myself. On Monday morning I got up unenthusiastically and headed for the bookshop. The same thing that happened the previous week happened again. I looked at my measly €50 and decided, as the till was ringing almost every minute, to confront Caroline.

‘Why did I only get €50 when Angela got five times that?’ I asked her outright.

‘Wages are given at my discretion!’ she answered.

‘Am I not doing a good enough job? Do I not work hard enough?’ I asked, a tear escaping from my eye which I quickly wiped away with the back of my hand.

‘You are doing a good job!’

‘Then why don’t my wages reflect that?’

‘I only gave you the job as a favour to your mother!’

I walked around grabbing my short blood red hair with my hands in chunks.

‘Is that all I am?’ I asked, ‘a dogsbody?’

‘Well…’ Caroline thought for a minute, ‘…yea!’

I felt rage consume me. It was like there was hot lava in my blood. If I was a character in a cartoon, steam would have been coming out of my ears.

I took a deep breath to calm down before I told Caroline ‘Look, stuff you and your job. If you’re not going to pay me what I’m worth, then I’m going to find somewhere that does. I know I’m worth more than €10 a day, and damn you for taking advantage of me!’ I stormed off and took the shortcut through the church to get home, my blood still boiling.

When I told my mother I had quit, she was disappointed…until I told her that Caroline was a money driven whore! My father on the other hand happened to be in solidarity with me. He backed me up on my decision and I went upstairs and cried my eyes out….my first job? That was a joke. My first time getting walked all over was more fitting.