Strange Things You May Not Know About Me

Second in a series ...

During the summer before my senior year, I was 16. In New York, on Long Island this was a pretty big deal, because it meant that I qualified for a work permit, and could get a summer job. I applied for jobs in different local stores, businesses, etc. I finally got a call back from Pathmark, the local supermarket. I landed a job as a cashier in the middle of the summer and started making minimum wage, $3.15 an hour if I remember correctly. Now none of this is unusual, as I'm sure every teenager goes out and gets a summer job.

What was unusual about this job, was 3 months after I started, right around my 17th birthday, one of the three floor managers left Pathmark, and they needed a replacement. As is the course for most union jobs, they offered the position to 3 of the more senior cashiers, all of whom turned down the position (same pay, but more work - who'd be crazy enough to want that).

In the end they offered the position to me (out of roughly 25-30 cashiers who worked for the company). Being the naive 17 year old that I was, I certainly wasn't going to turn down the opportunity to be a floor manager even at my minimum wage base salary. So I took the job, and worked part time as a floor manager during my senior year in high school. I learned later on that they offered me the job, because they thought I was in college, and not high school. My typical shift was 4pm to midnight shift. This meant my typical day was waking up at 6am to catch the bus to high school, taking the bus to the mall at 2pm, doing my homework at the local pizza parlor until 4pm when my shift started, and then going home at midnight, to start the cycle again.

On busy Sundays I ran a full complement of 16 cashiers, scheduling breaks, doing collections, and keeping the floor clean. Not bad for a 17 year old high school kid. I kept the job through the following summer (before college), and even worked the following summer (after freshman year). That was sort of an accident, since I had only gone back as a last resort as none of my other summer job opportunities panned out. But last minute, I got a real summer job offer, took it, and my conscience wouldn't let me quit my job at Pathmark, having committed to work for them for the summer. So that summer, summer after freshman year, I worked two jobs, a full-time job, and a part-time night job. What was I thinking?