It's official. I am now in the longest stretch of unemployment since I was a teenager.
My father believed that once you were legally able, you should get a job. Never mind if it interfered with school. School was nonessential. Work was the important thing!
In Rhode Island one could get a work permit allowing part-time employment between certain hours starting at the age of 15. I was pushed constantly from the day I turned that age to find a job.
My father finally found out through Ruth, his sister, that the restaurant Bob worked at was looking for a dishwasher. (Bob was the widower of Leona (Nuena), my father's other sister who died a few years before. Bob was hated by my father for alleged acts of marital infidelity back while Nuena lay on her death bed. In many families it would have been water under the bridge (or at least the elephant in the room no one dared mention), but not for Kid Chase!)
Carefully avoiding contact with Bob, my father approached the owners of the restaurant, Bijou's, and before I knew it, I'd been drafted. Hired sight unseen by my father's "good word". I wasn't grateful.
I knew the late restaurant hours and culture would be a detriment to my education. "Book learnin'", as my father would put it.
Oh, but I learned many other, much more "practical" skills during my stint there. Like how to burn your hands with lye soap, get cut by sharp knives, get yelled at by your uncle, the head cook. How to sweat in a 100 degree kitchen. How to be covered in grease and grime from head to toe every night. But also "after hours" skills...Like how to drink hard liquor. How to smoke pot. How to puke and still keep partying. Yeah, good hearty useful skills!
Mostly, I came to learn one great truth...
I hate work.
I slaved in this job for about 5 months. As much as I could endure. I was missing school since they made me work weeknights (illegal) and 'till 3 am (also illegal), and plied me with booze. They paid me less than minimum wage (yet again illegal) and if I broke any dishes or glasses they docked my pay. At least it was under the table so no taxes were deducted, but my parents took the bulk of my income in the form of room and board.
That's right, they charged me room and board at the age of 15. "After all," my father bemoaned, "didn't I want to help out the family?"
I quit in early October 1979 and got a replacement parttime job in January 1980 after months of pressure from my parents to do so. Roughly 4 months.
Currently, I've been out of work since November 15, 2009. Just over 4 months.
And still I feel pressured to work. To do my part for society. To toil and slave for meager wages and just grin and bear it. "Suck it up and be a man!" says the world!
But I say I'm still age-inappropriate for this!
Only now I'm too old.
My father believed that once you were legally able, you should get a job. Never mind if it interfered with school. School was nonessential. Work was the important thing!
In Rhode Island one could get a work permit allowing part-time employment between certain hours starting at the age of 15. I was pushed constantly from the day I turned that age to find a job.
My father finally found out through Ruth, his sister, that the restaurant Bob worked at was looking for a dishwasher. (Bob was the widower of Leona (Nuena), my father's other sister who died a few years before. Bob was hated by my father for alleged acts of marital infidelity back while Nuena lay on her death bed. In many families it would have been water under the bridge (or at least the elephant in the room no one dared mention), but not for Kid Chase!)
Carefully avoiding contact with Bob, my father approached the owners of the restaurant, Bijou's, and before I knew it, I'd been drafted. Hired sight unseen by my father's "good word". I wasn't grateful.
I knew the late restaurant hours and culture would be a detriment to my education. "Book learnin'", as my father would put it.
Oh, but I learned many other, much more "practical" skills during my stint there. Like how to burn your hands with lye soap, get cut by sharp knives, get yelled at by your uncle, the head cook. How to sweat in a 100 degree kitchen. How to be covered in grease and grime from head to toe every night. But also "after hours" skills...Like how to drink hard liquor. How to smoke pot. How to puke and still keep partying. Yeah, good hearty useful skills!
Mostly, I came to learn one great truth...
I hate work.
I slaved in this job for about 5 months. As much as I could endure. I was missing school since they made me work weeknights (illegal) and 'till 3 am (also illegal), and plied me with booze. They paid me less than minimum wage (yet again illegal) and if I broke any dishes or glasses they docked my pay. At least it was under the table so no taxes were deducted, but my parents took the bulk of my income in the form of room and board.
That's right, they charged me room and board at the age of 15. "After all," my father bemoaned, "didn't I want to help out the family?"
I quit in early October 1979 and got a replacement parttime job in January 1980 after months of pressure from my parents to do so. Roughly 4 months.
Currently, I've been out of work since November 15, 2009. Just over 4 months.
And still I feel pressured to work. To do my part for society. To toil and slave for meager wages and just grin and bear it. "Suck it up and be a man!" says the world!
But I say I'm still age-inappropriate for this!
Only now I'm too old.