A few years later I was ready for my very first paying job!!  It was exciting at the time, but I have to say that making $2.05 an hour is not all it's cracked up to be.  What job pays so horribly?  ----- A car-hop at the local A & W. 

 

My boss was the world's cheapest man.  He bought the old produce from the grocery store across the street that was being thrown out because it was too rotten to sell.  Yum!!  Just the kind of lettuce and tomato everyone wants on their burger, right?  He was a man who didn't want to waste anything.  Did you know there was such a thing as a re-cooked french fry?  If the fries got too cold he would toss them back into the fryer to cook them again.

 

Understanding the customer’s orders could be challenging at times.  “I whan a fee-wee. . . “  Huh??!!  I’m thinking, “What is a fee-wee?”  I’d ask them to repeat their order and be mentally scrolling through the entire menu trying to figure out what it could be.  Luckily, I did figure it out.  It wasn’t always a communication problem trying to understand customer’s orders.  People ask for some strange things and sometimes just for things that I just didn’t understand.  When I first starting working on the weekends car after car would order “2 medium Cokes in large cups, double-cupped.”  I had no clue what the “craze” was for this particular item.  After all, I was only 14 at the time and more than a little naive.

 

There were some really great things about working at A&W.  I got to make fresh root beer.  I don’t even want to think about how gross that wood vat that it was when it was all emptied out.  Some things you just have to learn to roll with and not think about it.  All I know is that the ONLY WAY to drink root beer is fresh off the tap.  It was sooooo good, and I don’t even like root beer!  BBQ salt and pink tarter sauce.  Of course, the only way I can make pink tarter sauce is in a 5 gallon bucket .  Another great thing was MY paychecks and the 5-cent raises!!!

 

Lessons Learned:

1) If your fries are hollow and a little extra-greasy, they are re-cooked. Yes, people still really do it!

2) A fee-wee is a fishwich which is A&W speak for a fish sandwich.

3) The double cup is so that when the drink sits in the cup it has the extra layer to keep it from leaking.  The medium drink in a large cup is to leave room for the alcohol.  Doh!!

4)  It is very rewarding to work for your own money and that a 5 cent raise just isn’t going to cut it.

After a short stint as a cashier and a meat packer for our “family” grocery store (ok, it was briefly “a family” – no reflection on my work skills) I took a summer job with Del Monte roguing corn. Now, don’t ask me to explain the definition of “roguing” as it applies to corn all I know is what I was told to do. Apparently when growing seed-corn it is not desired to have corn that grows larger or smaller than its corn neighbors. My job was to walk up and down the rows of the corn field with a machete and cut down the corn that didn’t match. I guess it was could be considered like the game of “one of these things is not like the other” with a big knife. Seemed easy enough and it was. What I didn’t know was that I was allergic to corn pollen. When you are surrounded by corn that is taller than you are there is no way to escape the pollen. It started out with just a little bit of itchy eyes. No big deal. “Don’t rub your eyes!” my mother would say. Now, that’s easy in theory not so easy in practice.  Keep in mind that I now also have corn pollen all over my hands and I’m rubbing it into my eyes which you have already guessed was a BAD IDEA. The only supplies I had with me while I’m walking through field were a machete and gloves. I certainly didn’t have eye drops or water to flush my eyes with but at the end of the rows is the irrigation system for the field – RUNNING WATER!! But wait, it’s not really the cleanest water with all the dirt and pesticides but it was all I had and my eyes were burning at this point so I attempted to rinse my eyes with the water. As you might have guessed it didn’t really help and my vision was becoming slightly impaired at this point but I had a job to finish. I worked out the rest of my shift (being the dedicated and hard-working person that I am) splashing water in my eyes at the end of each row. It wasn’t a cure-all but it did suppress the burning for a few seconds. At the end of the day my co-worked drove me back into town to see the doctor. By the time I reached his office my eyes were completely swollen and I looked like I had water blisters covering my eyeballs. One good allergy shot and I was almost as good as new and back to work the very next day.

 

Lessons Learned:

1) Benadryl is your friend if you have allergies.

2) Always carry a bottle of water with you if you are working outside.

3) There is a fine line between dedication and stupidity.