First jobs teach ways of the world

What was your first job? Was it so wonderful that you wish you could have kept it for life, or so awful that you've tried to shove it out of your brain?

Last week, I wrote about my first real job: working as a supermarket bag boy, shelf stocker and cashier. It was, I said, a great job because it taught me everything I needed to know about working, dealing with money and coping with people.

Although the normal first-job route these days seems to include a fast-food joint ("Would you like fries with that?"), I would urge anyone wanting to learn the rudimentary ways of the world to knock on a few supermarket doors.

Shortly after last week's column appeared, I received a call from Andy, who said he cut his working teeth at a supermarket in Augusta. That was a year or two before I had my job, he said, because he remembers the minimum wage being $1.05 an hour, even less than I received from my high school job.

His working hours were a lot rougher than mine, too. I labored after school and Saturdays until closing time, but Andy stayed on until 3 or 4 the next morning, stocking shelves, washing windows and scrubbing the floor on his knees. And he didn't get paid overtime.

"We never, ever got a break," he said. "And I'd have to sneak to the bathroom to have a Coke or a pack of crackers."

Still, he wouldn't trade those days for anything, he said, and today he owns a successful shop in town.

"A lot of what I do at my own business is a result of what I learned from that job," Andy said.

For that reason, he has no sympathy for young people who make little effort when looking for work.

Other people I heard from also extolled the virtues of a paycheck well earned.

Gene, who lives in Thomson, sent an e-mail about a job he held years before Andy and me.

"I really liked your article about working in a grocery store," he wrote. "I did the same in 1953 as a 13-year-old bagboy in Huntsville, Ohio. It was a mom-and-pop operation."

Gene said that market consisted of the manager, a butcher, a cashier - "and I was bag boy, produce guy, carry-out, all-around Johnny-on-the-spot."

"It really is a shame kids don't learn to work anymore," he continued. "I had three sons, none of whom I bought a car for. I helped them, but they paid for (their cars) themselves. They all have good work ethics today because of the things my wife and I taught them."

Steve also sent an e-mail.

"Before I graduated high school, I worked a summer at a small-town ice cream parlor (in Pennsylvania)," he wrote. "Another summer, at a shoe factory. Another summer, as a bagger at a supermarket, where everything you described except the cashier part was exactly the same."

Steve said he never worked as a cashier, though he considered it one of the hardest jobs at the supermarket.

"And you know what?" he wrote. "My wife, a farm girl, makes us both look like hippies." (I believe that; I also grew up on a farm.)

Steve, who said he is serving in the Army, knows about one line of work that is not easy for young people.

"It's interesting how we take in 18-year-olds ... and quickly make them grow up," he wrote. "Have to. Some of them are in Iraq six months after basic training."

Well, you've heard our work stories. What about you? Did you ever have it so bad? Or so good?

Reach Glynn Moore at (706) 823-3419 or glynn.moore@augustachronicle.com.