My first job: The time I lost my virginity to the tax man.
By: Dražen
Tags: First Job, Employment, Humor, Work, Sarcasm

I always liked money. I was just never good at saving it. Stretching out birthday and Christmas money yearlong is hard. It was even harder when your parents gifted you ‘good wishes’ instead of cutting you a cheque. Cheapskates. My primary source of income as a young buck was to scrape money off my old man when he would fall asleep on the couch. He’d roll around like a prize hog at the county fair, which was all a part of the money-making scheme. His pockets were always filled with copious amounts of loose change, which was great for us kids in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Penny candies still a penny! Roll to one side? One pocket goes empty. The other side? Double the fun! Fast forward a decade later, how things changed. Inflation kicked in, birthday and Christmas gifts dried up, and my old man caught on to the fact we had been snatching loose change off him for years and started hiding his money. Thanks for nothing, Pops.

My Dad had darker hair, but you get the idea (Courtesy: Can Stock Photo)

Before my actual first job, I had several other jobs growing up before entering the rat race of legal employment. After my old man started dressing in pocketless shorts like a flamboyant exercise guru, I was coerced by my brother and cousin to wash cars in the neighbourhood. While they acted out their homoerotic dreams with the hose, I was forced to tackle the interiors. I’m pretty sure imprisoning a kid inside a car and forcing them to clean it is child abuse, but hey, this was the early ’90s where a right smack still set you straight without social services being called. The good old days, eh? Nonetheless, when it came to getting paid, these knobs who shoved me in the car shortchanged me. They determined that their hose-handling was the harder job, and I got what I deserved. Welcome to the art of exploitation. You should negotiate your terms. I got screwed, and so will you!

The optimism is deafening. (Courtesy: spudcomics.com)

Enter Secondary School, and the car wash game was long gone. With new economic hardships come innovations. I offer you: a mixed CD. For those that don’t know what this is, open a history book and learn something, you slackers. I had an absolute monopoly in the market. I achieved notoriety as the CD guy at school. Not to be confused with the seedy guy at school, who is probably a girlfriend to someone in prison by now. This was when music just became digital, and the mixed tape (Google it, young people) had died out. I had the tools, and I controlled the trade. I negotiated the price and controlled my destiny. Lessons learned from being screwed over by my car wash associates! It turns out, the technology quickly reached everyone else, and my entrepreneurship was obliterated to dust, much like what all those mixed CD’s are now covered in.

At least I put the CD in a case! (Courtesy: npr.org)

Now to the actual point of all this wasted time: My entrance into the world of legal employment. My father worked as a baker in a large bread factory and thought it was high time for me to get a job. The term ‘no’ was not exactly an option for me at the time, seeing as he deemed it obligatory. Isn’t forced labour virtually slave labour? That bread isn’t going to make itself, people. Let’s proceed to the gong show. At sixteen, I started working the night shift on Friday and Saturday nights (Way to kill my ability at having a social life, Daddy-o), which eventually led me to gain more work opportunities and praise from my managers. What an incredible story, right? Thanks for reading! The end.

Not exactly.

This job was the pièce de résistance of shitty work. I suppose everyone must cross that bridge at one time or another. My path to money was the cleaning shift. I had tonnes of cleaning experience in my young life. I cleaned cars with the douchebaggery that was my brother and cousin for little money. I cleaned my room and did chores inside the home for absolutely no money. How about an allowance, you ask? For our curious readers out there, an ‘allowance’ is a set amount of money that is earned tax-free, usually given to lovely children by even more beautiful parents. This ‘allowance’ was apparently a foreign concept to my folks. “Where is my allowance money, old man?”, I asked. “Go mother ask,” replied Daddy. “Where is my allowance money, Mom,” I asked. “Go asking father.” I suppose all that loose change I gathered as a kid was karma’s way of saying your luck has run out. Ain’t that some shit?

No amount of previous experience, desire or hallucinogenic drugs could prepare you for the cleaning shift. You don’t even need drugs. Head on over to the yeast silo and huff away for an hour. You’ll be flying high in no time. When we got down to business, my shift usually consisted of the following:

i) Cleaning the dough slicer: Other than it being greasier than a two-dollar lap dance, this machine had seen better days. It was outdated and dangerous. We had the responsibility of getting into the slicer and scrubbing down the walls. I forgot to tell you the best part. The ‘we’ part of this cleaning section consisted of my brother and me. I guess my old man’s pockets were empty for him, too. Would you like to wager a guess who had to get in and scrub the inside physically? I’ll give you a hint: It wasn’t him. His job was to clean the outside with a hose. Old habits die hard. Dick.

ii) Cleaning the oven: This part of the job has a happy end. Stay tuned. This task was even greasier than the previous section I mentioned. We’ll call it a one-dollar lap dance. The oven was by far the most daunting of all the assignments. This consisted of chiselling out all the grease and removing the breadcrumbs from underneath the baking sheets. The oven had been turned off hours before. Good news, right? Coupled with the radiating heat coming off this appliance while off, along with the uniform we had to wear, the sweat produced made you smell like ass for the remainder of your shift. Pretty shit, right? Don’t forget the happy end: The heat, physical work, and my general distaste for bread made me lose some weight. I wasn’t selling tickets to the gun show just yet. However, a skinnier frame arguably gives you more self-confidence when you smell like the previously mentioned ass.

There is a lot more where that came from, folks! (courtesy: quickmeme.com)

iii) Cleaning the slicers: Spread over eight separate apparatuses, this was by far the most tedious and mind-numbing of all my responsibilities. Toward the end of our shift, we were already tired and drenched in failure. The job was simple: Using an air hose to blow down excess breadcrumbs and debris (My boner brother was still examining his erotic fantasy with the hose), the rest of it was pushing everything with a broom into giant waste bins. If the blades on these slicers could talk, the stories they could tell. Allegedly, a lot of bullshit insurance claims were made by some employees trying to take advantage of their already meagre existence by staging injuries. High five for trying to get ahead and promote your presence on the job (Or high three in their case).

Conclusion 1:

What have we learned, folks? We’re all going to have a lousy job. That’s life. My shit job is now a thing of the past. Apply yourself, and chances are, you’ll get better employment elsewhere. I’m living proof of it. I survived my first actual job, which was by far the worst in my life. The grass is greener on the other side, friends.

Conclusion 2: Don’t work with family. Who was the bigger dick in the family? You be the judge.