Snaff

HELP WANTED

Hmmm....a new gig.

Fresh-faced and 16. A few red dots on my face now and then--zits they call 'em--and a desire to get some spending money. What's the quickest and easiest route to get some green backs for beer and gas money and a few CDs?

Fast food joints.

They're everywhere, and always putting up those "HELP WANTED" displays in large, blocky, black plastic letters on those eyesoric, but effective plastic billboard signs that have that dull, pale, neon shimmer.

Can't remember much about filling out the application. I remember reading something under "education." High school attended, the address, city, and state, and what GPA I got. In those days....seriously....I was worried about fibbing on the GPA, because I thought the manager might even check. Pretty funny now, that I think about it.

This fast food Burger King experience (that is forgotten immediately after leaving your shift temporarily, and permanently, after you get a better job in a couple months) was the first time that many people come in contact with the way "the world really works," so to speak.

Here are some of the things that I consciously, sub-consciously, and unconsciously became aware of:

1. Work - even a short-term, part-time gig at a burger joint is NOT school.

2. You will have to be with and *deal with* people who you DON'T like, and don't like to BE, around.

3. Small politeness and niceties aren't common and they're actually not useful.

4. You HAVE to LEARN how to do something 1. efficiently (read quick) and 2. correctly.

5. At a fast food restaurant, people who are working there full-time at 35 - yes thirty-five years of age - are NOT people you want to emulate.

6. You realize there is an entirely different world outside of your family, your friends, your neighborhood, and your ambitions.

I didn't come from a rich family. I didn't get a car on my sixteenth birthday. I never went without anything, and I had more than a lot of others at my school. But life at 16 (for those lucky enough) is a life free of worries. A life of living under an umbrella of mom and dad. School was for socializing and laughing. Weekends were for keg parties, and going for the girls. Having fun.