Ah, that very first job one had. Most of us remember our age, how we landed the role, and the hourly rate of compensation. The feeling we experienced when handed our initial paycheck, or cash tip. The utter disbelief when reviewing the percentages withheld for federal taxes, when we phoned our parental unit, lamenting that all of our hard-earned money was stolen for something called “Medicare.”
The impetus for Kara’s first gig was classic: find a job, and fast, to pay off her first speeding ticket before her dad yanked the mustang keys away. You see, Kara had the unfortunate luck of being pulled over in the Road Warrior at age 16 for speeding (53 in a 45–c’mon officer!) approximately three minutes before our mother was driving the exact same route. Kara was caught red-handed as our mom drove past the scene with Bethany, who happened to be riding shotgun with a shit-eating grin on her face. Kara still remembers that look like it was yesterday.
Our mother spotted the blue sports car, and while driving past, saw her first born’s raised eyebrow expression of “Oh, crap.” Mom quickly declared:
“She is so busted!”
True to first born form, Kara wasted no time in implementing damage control. She pleaded with the local mall’s department store to let her wrap the holiday patrons’ presents for a measly $7 bucks per hour. They begrudgingly accepted and so happened, her first paying gig. She brought the news home immediately, laid out her compensation plan, and was met with the response that she may keep her car keys.
Wrapping holiday presents really wasn’t a terrible gig. Kara quickly earned the bucks to pay her debt and learned a life-long skill in the process: how to tie a picture-perfect bow atop a crisply-wrapped gift. She draws on that skill often and always brings the most beautifully wrapped gifts to family gatherings.
Bethany put off working for as long as humanely possible. At the age of 15 shortly after settling in Florida, her parents delivered the devastating news. If she wanted to travel back west to visit her best friend in California, she would need to pay her own airfare.
“What a crock,” she thought, “First, they drag me kicking and screaming across the country, practically dissolving my entire existence, and now I have to fund my return to the Mojave desert homeland.”
She did what the majority of second borns do: she used her big sister’s reputation to convince a restaurant owner of a busy franchise (where Kara was working by this time) to give her a job. She had no prior experience, no driver’s license, and complete ignorance re: customer service. “I’ll figure out what that is once they start paying me,” she thought, and proceeded to ask her mother how it can be legal they pay her $2.13 an hour. The minimum wage at that time was $5.15. The concept of tip-sharing was introduced, and Bethany found herself standing behind a wooden hostess stand at the local Roadhouse. There, she greeted customers, hoisted highchairs, and carried the coveted baskets of freshly baked bread to the table. Her training included making conversation with random people in the 30-45 seconds it took to walk them to their designated table number.
“Have you ever been here before?”
Silently, she would pray they said yes, so she did not have to regurgitate the following:
“I would love to tell you our story. Our bread is baked fresh daily, the peanuts are all you can eat, our sides and salad dressings are made from scratch, and our ribs are ‘fall off the bone’!”
“Mmph” they would reply, and drop themselves into the cushioned booth after they rejected the table with the hard chairs she attempted to seat them at, which inevitably drew a glare from the server for that station like she could do a damned thing about it.
“You drew the short stick on table assignments, Jessie. Deal.”
Somehow, someway, Bethany did scrape together $200 to purchase a flight back west and found her first job to be pleasant enough that she kept it upon her return. It really wasn’t a bad gig. Half of her friends worked there and there were plenty of career advancement opportunities. As her time and skill sets progressed, she found herself as head hostess (on Saturday nights, nonetheless), food-runner (carrying large trays stacked with five to six entrees each), expo finisher (BIG job — the person manning the main counter where fresh steaks and potatoes are pushed through, responsible for adding garnishes like a golf ball sized piece of kale not meant for eating, and loading the baked potatoes as high as they could go with butter, sour cream, bacon, cheese and chives), and finally, the coveted role of server.
It was a great first place to work, albeit with a few negative associated memories. Large parties were the death of servers. They take more time to serve, they sit at one’s station for much longer than an average table, their food takes longer to bring out, and they tend to tip less because of that. Whenever a server was assigned the large party table section of the restaurant, we groaned.
One particular time, Bethany was assigned the large party table section on a Sunday morning. Perhaps contributing to her skepticism and cynical resistance to organized religion today, Sunday morning large parties were the worst experience for servers at this particular restaurant. It was the church-going crowd. One may infer this to mean they were kind and considerate, patient and all-loving, generous and forgiving. No, no, no and NO. They were often times rude and dismissive, demanding and incredibly cheap. Bethany often thought to herself while serving these individuals, “Where is God here?” One Sunday morning resulted in a woman yelling at Bethany for forgetting her entree. It’s true, Bethany did forget to enter it amongst the 11 other orders in the party. Apologies were not enough. Compensation for the woman’s meal was not enough. The woman huffed and puffed at Bethany’s manager while she stood next to him, tears brimming. He finally told the “saved” woman:
“I’ll take care of it.”
and walked Bethany back to the kitchen.
“Here it is,” Bethany thought, “My first firing over a neglected 8 ounce sirloin.”
Hidden alongside the safety of the beverage station, her manager squared her shoulders, looked her directly in the eye, and said “Forget her. I know who you are.”
More tears, but this time, responsive to someone she trusted backing her up, taking her side. Believing she didn’t mean to mess everything up. Giving her some grace.
As she wrapped up the work at the table, the woman could not help herself but to quip a final thought.
“I don’t like to be ignored!”
Bethany stuttered through a response. She uttered something to the tune of not meaning to ignore the woman, that it was an honest mistake, and again, she was sorry. The rest of the table, having witnessed the entirety of the scene, diverted their eyes, refusing to look at Bethany. One man did stop on the walk out, and tipped her a little extra on the side for her troubles. Bethany learned a valuable lesson that day. Some people don’t give others grace, but the ones that do are the ones worth working for and holding onto. She stayed at that roadhouse throughout the years, returning summers and winter breaks from college to wait tables.
All four of us siblings eventually worked there at one time or another, sometimes overlapping, each relying on the older’s good reputation to get a foot in the door but quickly forging our own paths once donning the jeans and signature t-shirt.
By the time Kara went to college in Tallahassee, she figured her skill set in the restaurant industry would easily get her a foot in the door somewhere. Kara was surprised to learn how difficult it was to compete with about 20,000 other college students for a server job, but alas, she found an AppleBees just on the edge of town near the Highway that welcomed her with open arms.
That should have been the first clue.
The place was like a black hole. Mainly catering to locals who hated college students, and tourists who’d never see the stained four walls of that joint again, the tips bordered on the pathetic. Kara quickly learned that at an establishment like this, quantity wins over quality. The goal was to take as many tables as humanly possible and turn them around as quickly as humanly possible. Then, and only then, could she walk out the door at the end of the night with a respectable cash wad in her pocket. But not before having a questionable post-closing mini party of sorts at table 15 with her co-workers and twice-as-old, sort of creepy, manager.
When it came time for Bethany to join her in Tallahassee, Kara warned of the black hole that was “AppleJam” (the reference she settled upon after seeing that was the name of the franchise corporation issuing her paychecks). But, Bethany knew from prior experience that it would be ten times easier to work for that dump than try to find a dump of her own.
So, the two of them worked together at AppleJam. Then, a couple of Bethany’s friends joined the fun.
Fun, it was. Kind of. We both have horror stories of being so far in “the weeds” that we thought we’d never emerge. To this day, when Kara overhears someone order a water and a big cup of lemons, Kara feels a form of PTSD creeping in. Anyone that ordered this was looking to make their own lemonade and bypass the price, a meek outcome for the server. Kara is 92% sure that her nasty bout of mono that lasted 6 weeks stemmed from AppleJam. She also recalls finding herself in the middle of what most likely was a drug deal, after naively agreeing to take an unknown co-worker home.
Bethany squeamishly admits that after a particularly pitiful night of cheap tips and minimal patronage, she took on an unsightly bet. The bartender, also pained by the boring evening and in attempts to liven the joint up, offered her $50 to eat a scoop of discarded coleslaw from the trash (thank you, Cameron.)
Now, before you judge, realize that Bethany analyzed this carefully. It was a huge tub of ‘slaw, dumped carefully atop the other wasted edibles of the evening. One scoop off the top, and she tripled her take-home pay, which would get her through the ‘80s bar party slated for later that night. She gulped, and swallowed. No regrets.
Kara and Bethany both provided their notices to AppleJam in due time, doing their darndest to maintain some dignity in a place that offered up a “kickback of ribs” at $4.99 a pop. They moved on to other roles, Kara, as a law student, Bethany, a server at a Cuban joint closer to campus. They never forgot the lessons that AppleJam taught them:
If a table dines and ditches, the bill is on you.
Never do a kind thing like offer a coworker a ride home.
You ate more than your fair share of (free) broccoli alfredo meals, and will never want another one again.
You can get through any horror story of a situation with your sister by your side.
It’s your turn! What was your first gig? Any fond moments you wish to relive? What did you spend your initial earnings on? You know the drill, let us know in the cawwwwments!
I was 16 yrs old, went to work for a fertilizer and feed store where they delivered to farmers out in the county. There were 3 other employees plus the owner. My first day the owner gave me an order to go to the warehouse and load 4 tons of fertilizer and deliver it to a farmer way out in the country. (Ky where I lived). I asked who was going with me and he said no one. The other guys are waiting for a truck to come in to unload.i did my job, came back to the store, no truck came. He gave me another order bigger than the first, same thing, by myself. I found I was the only one who had a driver license. I told the boss, see ya! Didn’t make enough on my check to pay for my gas. Lesson learned. Make sure you have help and the other person has a drivers license.
My first gig was a babysitter. This may be why I don't have kids. But I think everyone should wait tables, at least once. It teaches you time management, people skills, problem solving, human behavior, and how not to take bullsh!t politely. Love that the two of you survived! xo