The Lessons You Learn From The Worst Job You've Ever Had
Turns out the summer of 1997 was about more than a paycheck
The same summer Princess Diana died and Mike Tyson went cannibalistic on Evander Holyfield, I was making six bucks an hour working 50-hour weeks at a steel factory.
Well, it wasn't exactly making steel, but making racks out of steel. The type of shelving you find at big box stores like Lowe's and Home Depot. We'd run long beams through a punch press, weld them, and paint them before they'd get delivered to a business hours away.
It was the worst job I’ve ever had.
We all have one. We've all tucked its memories away in a dark corner of our mind, revisiting only when things get hard. At least we're not there anymore. It might be more recent than we'd like. And sure, there have been other bad ones. But we all have one that we'll remember as the worst job we've ever had.
It was my first job. My first real job. Dad paid me an allowance to do things around the house, but this would be the first job where I'd punch in and punch out with a physical time card, get handed a real paycheck, and learn the cruel reality of income tax.
The shop was in the rougher part of town. I'd wake up early each weekday to make sure I had my 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity in the parking lot well before 8:00 when the work day began. That's when the rest of the crew rolled in. If my fading memory serves me correctly, there were 5 others.
There was Jabbo, who looked much like Morgan Freeman, just a few shades darker. He didn't say much, but he could operate the spray paint gun like no one else.
There was Randy. I worked with him first, loading eight-foot beams on a punch press. He'd guide the steel through and punch a button every few seconds to get the holes spaced correctly. He always wore a bandana and looked just as miserable with a cigarette in his mouth as he did without one.
There was Mike. Always had a hat on over his bushy salt and pepper hair. He drove the forklift bringing in pallets of steel to be punched and welded and painted.
Then there was Rex. He wore a long brown ponytail and survived the days of welding in 90-degree weather by sipping from a bottle of Wild Turkey tucked behind a shelf in the shop. His nephew Kevin welded too, a man not too many years older than I was.
And here I was, a clueless soon-to-be high school junior just trying to earn a buck. Scrawny, wet behind the ear, and oblivious to blue-collar life.
Our first jobs aren't always the worst ones. I don't know many women who'd point to their days of babysitting as a teen as terrible. Those who spend summers working as lifeguards probably don't complain about it years later.
For me, the job at a steel factory was a class. It was an education. It barely paid above minimum wage, but the lessons I learned were priceless. I think they'd apply to a lot of people's idea of the worst jobs they've ever had. You learn a lot about the world and a lot about yourself.
You learn who you don't want to be.
I spent most of my days working the press machine with Randy or stacking still wet with paint frames with Jabbo. The lunch breaks were short. 20 minutes, then back to work. There were breaks where I'd drink Mountain Dews while the other men stood outside smoking. They were never unkind to me. It was just painfully obvious how different we were. I had goals of making money to blow on silly purchases before heading off to college in a few years. None of these men held much ambition beyond surviving the day, the week, and then soaking up the weekend. There was a sense of hopelessness in their eyes. College degrees don't necessarily make a difference in who can and who can't do something. But that summer I knew that I didn't want to be one of these men, miserable Monday through Friday, hoping to be a little less so on Saturday.
You learn where you don't want to be.
A few weeks into the summer, on one of the early mornings I was the first to show up to work, a woman approached my car. She wandered from the street into the parking lot and looked in my window.
"You got any money?"
"Nah. Sorry."
"You ain't got nothin'?"
I opened the ashtray compartment where I kept spare change. "I've got a few quarters here. That's it." She looked at me. "I can do a few things for you."
It didn't sink in until a few hours after she walked away that she was offering sexual favors for money. I was young. Naive. I don't recall now if I just handed her the coins I had or not. I do remember telling the guys that morning what happened.
"Lot lizards."
"Huh?"
"That's what they are. Damn lot lizards." Rex laughed. That was the name they used for these women. The ones trading their bodies for whatever loose change or, on a lucky day, dollar bills you held in your wallet.
I learned that summer about a world of desperation I couldn't conceive. Later in the summer, I walked in through the large warehouse door and saw Rex sprawled out on the floor. At some point, he had passed out. We called 911 and an ambulance took him away. He was back at work the next week. I'm not sure if he had a mild heart attack or suffered from heat stroke. But whatever it was, he laughed it off. Looking around to make sure the boss man wasn't looking, he took another swig of Wild Turkey.
You learn how you don't want to be.
I got the job that summer because of a connection at church. The owner of the business said he could use me for a few months. Of course, I rarely saw him because he owned several other businesses. But his wife and another woman from our church worked at the office just across from the shop. And it never failed that whenever those women would come to the shop to give out paychecks or for some other administrative manner, the men acted like kids set loose in a candy store. The gawking, the comments after the women left, it all made my skin crawl. It wasn't that noticing females was a foreign concept to me. I was 16, after all, and there were plenty of girls at school I'd take second and third glances at in the hallway. But there was something about these men and how they'd stare. How they'd say things about these women out loud that just felt gross.
Bad jobs teach us a lot. We don't really know the lessons until after we've left, but the sentiment resonates. We know more about what we want and what we don't want.
The steel warehouse that summer in 1997 wasn't all bad. The radio was always tuned to 93.3, the local rock station. Hearing Foo Fighters, Metallica, Fuel, and Led Zeppelin all day helped soothe the sore muscles and excessive heat. I got paid 85 cents more per hour than what South Carolina's minimum wage laws called for. Sure, I didn't get overtime for the hours over 40 I worked each week, but I didn't know any better. I cashed those weekly paychecks, saving a little, but spending most on video games or CDs or fast food.
Sometime back, I tried to find the old steel warehouse where I worked that summer. Either it's not around anymore, or I just can't recall the exact directions. I wonder if it went out of business long ago. And if it did, whatever happened to Jabbo and Rex and Randy?
I've worked my fair share of jobs over the years. Each one has come and gone, leaving no lack of lessons in its wake. Many of them I have fond memories of. But the summer of '97 is the only one that leaves its stench in my nostrils. The dust from the warehouse that made my clothes black. The strain of muscles that still feel sore. The longing for fall, for school to get back in session so my days weren't filled with misery. At least, not that kind of misery. Even as a 16-year-old, I knew there had to be something more to hope for. I'm thankful for terrible jobs that teach hard lessons worth learning.