"Workin' Man"

When I was nineteen years old, in a controversial move, I got a job while on vacation. My entire family was enjoying a little R & R in Avalon, New Jersey for two weeks and I was so bored—it’s nice but the only things to really do there are to go to the beach (which I don’t like), ride bikes?!?, and play miniature golf. (By the way, why do people get so excited about playing miniature golf while on vacation? I mean, no one seems to give a crap about this activity in any other circumstance.)

Anyway, it was a bold and controversial move, made even bolder and more controversial by the fact that I was not exactly prone to working while not on vacation.

And this brings us to my first day of work.

The aforementioned job was at a gas station and I was not particularly excited, or particularly motivated, by the job or the work involved—to tell you the truth, I really just wanted the shirt all the employees got (the gas station attendant shirt was quite chic at the time and I wanted one enough to take a job at a gas station just to get one).

My first day of work started off innocently enough with me being taught the ropes and getting right into the task of filling up gas tanks, squeegeeing windshields, and hoping no one asked me to check their oil, because even though someone had shown me how to do it, I still wasn’t anywhere near confident in my abilities in that department, which is a nice way of saying I had absolutely no idea (even to this day) how to do it.

So there we were, a team of gas station employees, a bonded unit, a finely-oiled machine, working hard, like dogs, toiling under the strain of the oppressive and unrelenting heat of the summer sun at this honest—but let’s be truthful—fairly crappy, job, scampering about and giving it all we had, as we pushed ourselves to the max, leaving it all on the mat—all except for me. Sure, I was doing my “job,” and doing it well enough, but something was amiss to me. I saw something the others did, nay, perhaps could not see: this gas station, our gas station, was the only one on the whole fucking island! (By the way, Avalon’s an island, which I feel is a fact I should of introduced earlier, but whatever, the thing’s an island; one small step away from an archipelago—surrounded by water on three sides, not four). Now this may seem like a totally innocuous fact to you because—like the people I was working with—you’re not as smart as me, but what they (and you) did/do not understand is that we had a monopoly going. So why in Sam Hill were we working so fast and so hard? Where were these people gonna go? I’ll tell ya, sister: NOwhere. And being the nice guy that I am, I graciously shared this information with my fellow employees, who responded in turn by telling me that I’d better shut up and not let the manager hear what I was saying because he already thought I was a slacker. I retorted by saying not to worry, dear friends, that the guy was a pussycat, and that my revolutionary idea (that is, to work slower and with less effort) was in their best interest (which it actually was—I was trying to make their jobs easier.) But some people just have to look a gift horse in the mouth; some people just have to have it the hard way. So I cooled it out for the rest of my shift, and when it was over, discussed with the manager when I would work next, and then started home.

But something happened along the way: I put my hands in my pockets, as I sometimes do when strolling to and fro places, and felt something: a wad of cash. I pulled it out of my pocket and stared at it. Okay, freeze frame on that image. Now let’s zip back through time, super-fast, like in a movie, to the beginning of my shift, and let’s angle on the part where I’m given a wad of cash with which I am to make change with while I work. Okay, now let’s zip back, again, super-fast, to me standing there with the wad of cash in my hand. Unfreeze me and I’m standing there, the realization of the situation having sunken in, and I’m trying to decide what to do: I could take the money, skip town, buy an inexpensive, prob’ly used mountain bike, or do the right thing and take the money back.

So what did I do: I decided to be honest Abe and I took the money back and got totally fired.
BAM! after only one shift, too. The manager basically said he thought I sucked and that I was a slacker, and I also think he had heard about my idea to work slower and with less gumption, and forgetting to hand back the money was the straw that got my ass fired. He stood there, thinking he had delivered the death blow, that he had absolutely crushed my soul—but he couldn’t have been wronger (not a word); I couldn’t have cared less (I mean, I already got the shirt, folks). Honestly, what the hell was this guy thinking? That this job was in any way long term? That I was gonna try and work my way up, climb the ladder of success at this joint until I was assistant manager, possibly even manager, dethroning him? I was on vacation, for Pete’s sake! I was gonna leave the job in two weeks max, no matter what.

But still I was a tad stung by his and the gas station’s rejection of me and my ways, and so I vowed to get another crappy job the very next day. I landed a position at Dairy Queen, where I washed dishes for twenty minutes and then felt really anxious and like I had to get back home (where I’m from) right away, so I told the manager and she somehow totally understood. ?!?.

I went back to the house, told the family I was out, packed up my stuff, and hit the road.