It didn’t feel like Christmas, or even like a birthday, when late that afternoon I got the offer for my first job. It was 1974, I was 13, and before the year was out I was paying Social Security. I didn’t understand what FICA was until a few years and jobs later, but my first jobs taught me that Uncle Sam and others would always take a cut of what I earned. Like many of my generation, I viewed working as a teenager as a kind of rite of passage. There were the kid jobs – delivering newspapers, selling greeting cards and the Christmas paper, mowing lawns – and later, salaried jobs.
I was lucky enough to host a local teen TV talk show on WSB-TV before I went out of style at 17 with braces and pimples, but at the same time I had “real” jobs. During my years of hauling bikes, my mother would come back from a trip to the dry cleaners and tell me that the bike/lawnmower repair shop next door to the dry cleaners was expecting me on Saturday mornings to become a “mechanic’s apprentice.” “Handy” or “mechanically gifted” are two terms that were never used to describe me, but the owner was patient — I think he felt a bit of a need for company — and he paid me to tighten brake and shift cables on bikes and occasionally repair Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engines.
Over the next few years, I cleaned gutters and worked at several restaurants, both fast food and fine dining. At Winn Dixie, I worked overtime, doing every job imaginable, from stocking and cashing to cleaning bathrooms and throwing out old fruit, bread, and dairy products at the end of each workday. I also spent several summers in my family’s newspaper business, first as an errand boy, then as an archivist of back issues, and finally as a courier, sending ad copy and proofs back and forth to advertisers in a five-county area. Each of these jobs taught me something for life, although it was as a waiter that I learned the most about dealing with the world’s diverse people. And many of those summers I worked two jobs at once.
Now that I’m back on domestic travel, I see “We’re Hiring” signs and bonus offers everywhere. McDonald’s stores spent millions installing kiosks during the pandemic to reduce waitstaff needs—and labor costs. But that was nearly a year ago, and when I walk into a McDonald’s store with those kiosks installed, they often seem to be nonfunctional. Perhaps the kiosks are from the same vendor that supplied them with the McFlurry machines.
But a job and the experience that comes with it is still a gift from any employer. They don’t have to hire you or anyone else.
Now is the time to accept that gift and get a job, and there are literally millions of jobs to choose from. It’s time to get back to work, or, if you’re not familiar with that saying, just start putting in the effort again to fund a roof over your head, a car on the side of the road, and a cell phone within reach.
I’ve also worked for a fair number of idiots over the course of my career. And it’s often some of them that teach you the best lessons. One particularly smug assistant manager from the Winn-Dixie years lectured me that day for a trivial oversight. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “You can do anything you want, where you want, with whoever you want…this is America. Or you can be here, get paid, and work for me. When you’re here, you’re going to do it the way I tell you, or you’re not going to be here. Do we understand each other?”
Yes, he was a jerk, but he also reminded me that in a work-at-will state, even if I knew better, I still have to follow orders and obey directions unless I’m the boss. That’s part of real life. These lessons aren’t always learned from home and mom and dad or even school anymore, but from work and the school of life. So, get a job and educate yourself.
Bill Crane is a political analyst and commentator in the metro Atlanta area and a columnist for The Champion, DeKalb Free Press and Georgia Trend. Crane is a DeKalb native and business owner living in Scottdale. You can contact him at [email protected] or comment on a column.
