the early employment years

From an early age I should have known that this whole 'job' thing was going to be a problem later on in life. Things started out well enough, however. At 12 I ended up getting a job as the local paper boy, and it was a pretty cushy gig as far as jobs go. No boss staring over my shoulder offering unwanted criticism and, except for the occasional rainy day, it offered little stress and discomfort.

It took an ugly turn the summer I learned how to drive. At 16 I figured that it was now time to go off and get a 'real' job and leave the paper route behind. This desire, unfortunately, led me right to the local Arby's restaurant. I lasted for two months.

I quickly realized that fast food restaurants were much more fun to eat in than to work in. For $3.35 an hour I would come home every night smelling like a deep fryer with a gleaming coat of grease covering every square inch of skin that I had. Except for my right arm. This is the arm that I tended to use to clean the milkshake machine, so typically this arm was covered with dried up, powered milkshake mix which, for some odd reason, grease didn't attach itself to.

Still though, I was 16 and proud that I was a member of the workforce and making some money. All this despite the fact that the managers would yell that I took too long to mop the floor, the shift supervisor would complain that I 'walked' too slow (yes, this was an actual complaint), and that the customers would yell at me because we ran out of cherry turnovers.

The final straw came the day that the assistant manager approached me and told me that I had to plunge the toilet in the men's bathroom. I took the plunger and headed in, glad that I was out of the main restaurant part and figuring that I just might be able to stretch this plunging assignment over the next 20 minutes. This thought changed when I actually saw the toilet.

Quite literally, I think someone's intestine exploded leaving unidentifiable chunky streaks all over the stall.

I turned around, walked out of the bathroom, handed her the plunger and simply said, 'no'. She plunged it herself. But I suspect that I was pegged as a 'problem' employee from that point on. I didn't last too much longer after that.

So here's the valuable lesson which I learned Arby's, which still proves true even today. Bosses suck.