04 March 2011

First Job

How well do you remember your first job? What reminds you most of it?

One of my first jobs was as a cashier at a local family-owned hardware store. It was actually a pretty decent-sized business, with (I think) five stores within a couple hours. I worked at the biggest store, which also had the office staff. The building where it used to be has been greatly modified. It used to be inside a mall in the 1980s, and has since been converted to a strip mall along with most of the rest of middle America.

What reminds me most strongly of working there is the smell of cigars. Anytime the owner came in, you knew he was there by the smell of his arturo fuente cigars. It was kind of nifty, because as soon as you smelled it, you knew to step up your game and play by the rules. He always came in on Sundays. Anyone who worked on Sunday got free lunch while we were there. The owner of the store was friends with some local restaurant owners. They made the greasiest (and of course fabulously delicious) pizza and super-garlic-y breadsticks.

When I smell a cigar now, the first person I still think of is the owner of that hardware store where I worked wayy back in high school in my hometown.

3 comments:

siteseer said...

wow!! I have to go back a lot further for a paying job besides babysitting. I think it was the US Post Office. Things would have been so different if I had stayed there til retirement.... actually I would probably BE retired. The choices we make and the consequences we live with.

Anonymous said...

My first job left me without hair on my right arm and missing part of my eyebrow. I worked at a little Greek place and burnt my hair off lighting saginaki on fire and screaming opa!! That was a smell nobody could forget....my burning hair. I'd rather have the cigar smell! :-) SHannon

Anonymous said...

My first "real" job was a waitress at a dinner in Farmington Hills - the Treasure House (lovingly nick named the T-Hole) at Grand River and Orchard Lake - I think a bank is there now - well that job which lasted just weeks taught me to never want to be a waitress again! Nancy B