The past two years have been statistically disastrous for student employment. I have heard stories of job loss and rejection more painful than the thought of a prostate exam. My peers fight neck-in-neck for internships that might look good on grad school applications.
However, I can assure the many affected by economic downturn that student employment is not all it is cracked up to be. It was at my very first job — at a not-that-super market — where I suffered my first financial wrist-slap at the hands of working America. It was a learning experience. There is no moral to this story, but I certainly hope that my tale of suffering brings you a good chuckle.
Names have been changed.
Mike couldn’t believe that Manager Steph was making him stay longer. “I want to punch her in the face,” he muttered to me as he passed by my register. I agreed and had to top his remark.
“I want to punch her in the O-va-ry.” Saying it was almost orgasmic, because I wanted little more than to stage a coup against our boss and run off into the sunset, never to face Store 666 again.
I never expected much from my first job, but $7.50 per hour didn’t seem too shabby a starting wage and the khaki-trouser and polo shirt uniform wasn’t terribly unflattering.
It wasn’t glamorous—I mean, I wasn’t spending my breaks kissing the dairy boys behind the yogurt aisle—but there wasn’t much to complain about. That is… until I met Steph.
Steph Crowe was to the wee mortals of Store 666 what Miss Trunchbull was to the kids in Roald Dahl’s “Matilda.” She was to Store 666 what Mussolini was to the Italians (only her upper lip was hairier). She was to us the most malevolent, demanding and pregnant front end supervisor.
Steph had been pregnant for about five years and used her developing fetus as a battering ram against any innocents that happened to get in her way at the wrong time. This fetus was the excuse for some of the most egotistical and outlandish behavior coming from an “authority figure.”
I wished I could just curse her out. But she would kill me. And then resurrect me so she could do it again. She may have been pregnant, but aside from her attitude, no one could tell. Steph could be best described perhaps as having a football player’s build (read: imposing and mannish). Her flaxen hair was always in a sleek bun and her beady eyes were always spot-on at finding slacking employees. Steph’s mannish hands were always stifling her repressed anger as she delighted in forcing her subordinates to perform cruel and unusual tasks.
I will never forget The Day of The Motherboard. Arriving for day three of my employment, I reported to Steph, so she could tell me what to work on. “Umm,” she said in a voice as thick as her ankles, thinking rather harder than I thought her capable of. Within seconds however, she hatched a plan faster than she could hatch her evil spawn due in mid-May.
My task? Using a tissue and Windex, I had to climb under every single register and scrub the motherboards. Solemnly I set about doing it, dreading the moment I would have to approach a cute boy cashier and ask, “Um, excuse me, could I just get underfoot here and scrub away at your motherboard?”
I started on the far end, where there were a few empty registers. Twenty degrading minutes of dust mites later, I had scrubbed three motherboards grime-free. I was about to give up when I heard a familiar voice. “I KNEW THEY DID NOT TRUST YOU WITH THEIR MONEY!”
It was my high school Spanish teacher, a maestro with whom my conversations frequently consisted of few words, but much fist shaking. A man who loved to inform me that the Polish — namely, me — could not be trusted. I didn’t know then whether to laugh, cry or hang myself as my teacher turned and left, chuckling derisively.
I could only watch him walk away into the horizon, probably muttering something evil, while I prayed that someone would save me. I was only one motherboard away from having to crawl between the legs of a boy whose name I didn’t know, and sterilize his equipment.
Since then I have been able to find better jobs, and I’ve earned a small badge of gratitude for moving up in the world of student jobs. If there’s a moral or point, it’s that we’ve all gone through the same bullplop. We’re young, and we’re collectively eager to work, which makes our age group dispensable to employers. But it’s a passing thing, and the bright side is that — employed or not — at our age, things can only go up.
All worked up
Published: Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Updated: Tuesday, November 17, 2009
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