

Drat It! First job remains a good lesson

Sep. 2, 2012

Through my first 19 years of life, I occasionally made noise about looking for a job, but always managed to slip out of having to do any actual work. I did some babysitting and a little tutoring for pocket money, but that was about it.

At the end of my first year of college, my grades were mediocre, my pockets were empty and I suffered from an obvious lack of motivation. My parents and others made it crystal clear I had one more chance: It was time to either get to work or give up on college.

So I washed the car, cleaned my room, put on some nice clothes and went job-hunting.

In fairly short order, I landed a job at a little pizza restaurant near the local bowling alley. I had never set foot in the place before I saw the "Help Wanted" sign on the front window.

I learned later that the owners considered it their mission to hire people who couldn't get jobs anywhere else. That attitude meant I never had a shortage of interesting co-workers.

At that pizza place, I learned how to work.

Some nights, I washed dishes for eight hours straight, including some miserably greasy pots and pans.

During other shifts, I made pizzas. A large pepperoni got one ladle of sauce, 8 ounces of shredded mozzarella-provolone blend cheese with not too much in the middle and 30 slices of pepperoni -- no more and no less. Yes, I still remember. I made a lot of pizzas.

Then the pies went in the mammoth oven, which had shelves that spun around much like some overheated Ferris wheel. Standing in front of that oven was a joy in January, but not so great in July. But I stood there a lot, because I seldom let food burn and almost never dropped anything. It was a skill my employers valued greatly.

But there was plenty of other work to get done. I made pizza dough and learned, through painful trial and error, how to get a 30-plus-pound ball of gooey dough out of the heavy metal bowl of a floor mixer. I learned how to make pasta, salads and subs.

I learned how to clean everything, including the bathrooms and that old dough mixer, which had accumulated a nasty coating of solidified oil and flour over the years. I forget what all I used in my hours-long battle to polish that thing, but my hands have never been the same since.

Other times, I scrubbed floors with a toothbrush. I hadn't realized people actually did that.

A co-worker tried cleaning the floors with a mixture of bleach and ammonia. I'd already been told doing so was a bad idea, but there's nothing like firsthand experience to make that lesson stick.

I think walking in to open the place one morning and realizing someone had left the heat on under a pot of oil all night actually scared me more at the time, though.

I was hired to work in the kitchen, not wait tables. But because the staff was so small, everyone who stuck around more than a week or two ended up doing a little bit of everything.

So sometimes, I was a waitress. It sounds like something out of a sitcom, but I really did spill a glass of ice water all over my first customer. Thankfully, she was very understanding.

By the time school started that fall, I had evolved from a clueless rookie to a valued employee. I'd originally intended to quit at the end of the summer, but I stayed on. Ultimately, it was a good job. I'd made a lot of close friends at that little restaurant, and even though the bosses kept us busy, we had a lot of fun. Besides, I needed the money for tuition.

I brought my grades up considerably during my sophomore year, and they stayed up even as I added two more part-time jobs to my schedule.

But I was still working at that pizza place when I landed my first full-time job at a newspaper.

That job was an important part of my education. I learned the value of hard work and dedication. I learned about teamwork and responsibility.

I learned all the words to Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City," because that was by far the most popular song on the dining room's jukebox. I hate that song.

I even learned how to make a pretty decent lasagna.

The most important thing I learned, though, was that I did not want to spend the rest of my life working in a pizza place.

I was a working-class girl; the first in my family to go to college. I had my chance and I almost blew it. I walked into that restaurant a stupid kid and walked out a very highly motivated student.

To this day, when I'm having a rough day and I swear I never want to proofread another health calendar or build another comics page, I think about that pizza place.

Then I get back to work.

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