I was 17 years old the first time I applied for jobs. There wasn't any great need for me to get a job--I had already gotten
into college, and my parents had no financial difficulty taking care of
me--but my father told me that I should find work for the summer. It's
hard now to reconstruct how much agency I had in the
decision, but I think I agreed to look. And so for the next couple of
weeks,
my father drove me around to shopping centers, and then ran errands or
just waited around while I dropped off applications. I focused first at stores that I went to anyway, out of the misapprehension that working at them would be more fun than working anywhere else. Blockbuster Video. Borders
Books and Music. The movie theater.
I hadn't graduated from High School quite yet, but it was well into the second semester of my senior year, the point at which most teachers have to fight against the prevailing feeling that class is pretty much over. It was that awkward period of life when people start to claim the status of Adult, even though actual adults can tell just how ridiculous that makes them look. I wasn't doing too much of that myself; at most, I was starting to read a bit more expansively, and I went to my first parties with alcohol (which I was still turning down). I was as unsure of who I was as anybody, though
Probably, that's one of the reasons my father wanted me to get a job, why middle-class parents in general encourage their children to get a job before college: because it is one of our society's rites of passage. It certainly felt that way at the time, like a crucial, frightening transformation of my identity and my social role. A lot of people I knew already had jobs, and I don't think it set them
apart in my mind as weird or anything, but I had a lot of difficulty
accepting that I, too, could be employed. Not as a factual matter, understand--I didn't think I was unemployable. I just couldn't quite imagine myself on the other side of the counter without experiencing an identity crisis.
After one of my applications was accepted, I said I needed to think about it: could I really be a "Team Member" at KFC, working the cash register, filling orders? The thought was quite dissonant, for a number of reasons. I was an aid for my favorite teacher that semester, Ms. Sugg--I took three classes with her, including AP U.S. Government and Politics as a sophomore--and I remember sitting at a desk in the corner finishing a homework assignment, and staging a conversation in my mind in which I told her, "I'm employed! I'm a productive member of society now!"
I imagined her approval; weirdly, I think I even imagined her esteem. But then she would say, "That's great! Where do you work?"
And then I imagined how hard it would be to bring myself to tell her that I worked at KFC. Is that really productive work? Was that the kind of work I should be doing as an intelligent college-bound kid? It's just above minimum-wage, and it's smelly, and it's hot in that kitchen, and the people I would be working with would probably think I was weird for liking books, and the food is gross anyway, and besides, you have to wear a hat! A floppy hat with a logo on it!
I turned the job down. That may have been stupid, but as it happened, it was also lucky. I got accepted at the next place that I applied, Safeway, which has a union workforce, meaning that they have a higher starting salary, get raises every quarter, and are ensured regular breaks. I had learned about unions from Ms. Sugg--I remembered a picture from the text book that showed strikers being attacked by the National Guard, and another that showed a poster with a hugely muscled man in front of a slogan for the IWW. Okay, this seemed legit, even if I had to wear an apron with a name tag and shave my scraggly beard.
The first week was easy. In fact, it was a lot like high school. All the new employees in the region had to attend a class held in an arcane wing of an office complex, learning company policy and tips for how to memorize the PLU codes. (I still remember the teacher telling us how she remembered that the code for eggplants was 4081: "I hate eggplants. I tried one once, and I'm never eating another again. So you can just remember: Katie ate one, never ate another one.")1 Once the job itself started, I made friends with some of the other baggers and checkers who were around my age, and even went out with them after work once or twice to play pool. As I had expected, most of them were different from the people I associated with in high school in ways associated with class, but I certainly wasn't ostracized.
Perhaps the biggest change in identity came from interacting with The Public in my new role as service employee. The Public, especially The Suburban Public, will talk to service employees who they have never seen before, even though they would never talk to the same random teenagers in the same way if they were around them somewhere else. Not having gone to religious services, I never talked to the adults of my town aside from my family and my teachers (and, now that I think about it, service employees). Service employee are treated by The Public in an oddly familiar manner, although not quite as a member of the group.
I remember one incident in particular where I helped a woman move about twenty bags from her shopping cart into the trunk of her SUV while she asked me about my plans and told me about her sons. When I was done, she offered me a tip, I think it was a dollar in quarters, and I told her that we weren't allowed to accept tips. "Why not? You said you're trying to save up money before you go to college, right?" When I still refused, she simply smiled in mild amusement at my youthful conscientiousness and reached over to put it in the pocket of my apron. I felt pleased to get the tip, but also slightly violated. I also had a very minor ethical quandary on my hands now, because we were told that if a customer insisted on giving us a tip, we had to tell our supervisor. The reason was probably so they could add it to our reported income on our W2, except I hadn't understood what that meant, and I thought I would have to give the tip up.2 Beyond that, it's the first time I remember having a charged interaction with someone I would never see again. That may in fact be one of the most characteristic elements of adulthood in modern society.
1 It's weird how much I remember from this class. She was a very good teacher. I also recall her asking why we thought people came to Safeway instead of other stores. "It's not because of our products or our prices. If they want a can of Del Monte Green Beans, it's going to be the same can of Del Monte Green Beans anywhere they go, for about the same price. Why do you think they come here?" When no one could come up with anything, she finally answered her own question: "It's because of our service. It's because of you."↩
2 I kept the dollar, and lost my immortal soul.↩
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