First Job

The summer after I turned 16, I got my first job. I was a waitress at the Dairy Treat in the small town where I went to school.

This is not to be confused with the ‘town’ where I grew up, which was even smaller than the town my school was in.

Whatever, that’s not even the point of this post.

The point is, I started working when I was sixteen. It was…fine. It wasn’t fun by any stretch of the word but it wasn’t always awful. I worked with a good friend, Cheryl. I think she’s the one who actually got me the job in the first place. I got excellent tips from the construction dudes who were building the boardwalk along the lakeside so there’s that.

I learned that 99.9% of waitresses are working their butt off and when you’re a customer, you should be kind and understanding when they might seem like they’re ignoring you. To this day, I’m an over-tipper.

All this (five paragraphs? OMG, Tommie, get to the point or shut the hell up!) to say that on June 13th Alyssa started her first job.

My BAYBEEE is growing up…I’m so proud of her. And it’s kind of breaking my heart because that first step is one of the biggest steps away from childhood and I want her to cherish her childhood, to hold on to it for as long as possible.

But a job is a rite of passage. It’s the chance to find out what you’re made of.

Honestly, I think everyone, EVERYONE, should have to work in the service industry at least once in their life. And by ‘once’ I don’t mean one day of serving at McD’s or waitressing. No, everyone should have to hold down at least one service job for three months or more just so they can learn how to NOT be an ass to those who do those jobs for a living.

I don’t care if your name is (oh dear heaven, I almost wrote the name that is not spoken. For those not in the know, we simply call him 45 because I can’t even stand his name these days…)

Anyway!! I will try and keep the digressions to a minimum (too late!) from this point forward.

Where was I? Oh yes, I don’t care if your last name is Hilton or Zuckerberg or Jobs. I don’t care if your parents are bazillionaires. Everyone should have to spend a summer waitressing or standing behind a counter serving hamburgers or scooping ice cream, or scanning groceries at their local Wal-Mart.

Because if they do this, they might, just might, be kinder to the people who do these jobs.

Alyssa’s working in the cafeteria of a boy scout camp. She’s serving snacks and meals to campers.

It will build character and remind her that most people are working hard at whatever their job is and maybe they’re having a really crappy day and if they are, they’re probably not being rude AT you, they’re probably exhausted and other customers have probably been awful to them.

Okay, this is going nowhere. I have lost cohesion (everyone likes a vague Stephen King reference, right?)

But you get it right? Kids need to work because even when they’re good kids, they learn from being around people who aren’t their parents. They learn how to treat people and how not to treat people. They learn to get places on time and hopefully how to manage money.

They learn, which is the whole point of these big lives we’re all living.

Even when it’s hard for us parents out here to loosen the apron strings, to watch our kids drive away to their first job, their first date, their first night away from home. We want all those things because we want our kids to have the best lives they can.