First Jobs: Part 2
Last week’s blog post, First Jobs: Part 1, found us in the hinterlands of South Jersey being chased by a nasty Billy Goat. This week’s post, First Jobs: Part 2, finds us in an appliance store in Newark, DE and does not involve farm animals of any sort.
I arrived at the huge, super-center appliance store early in the morning. The quantity of inventory was so large, that the store assigned one of their salesmen to assist me. I had allotted the full day for the task.
The gentleman who was assisting me was old (well, mid-50’s likely, which to a 22 year old was old), and very round. Round head, round face, round belly. I wondered how much help he would be.
I found him nice enough, until over lunch he made some rather sexist remarks about when was I going to get married as I wasn’t getting any younger, what kind of young woman worked at a job like this, and did my father approve. So, I had to swallow that tripe along with my sandwich and return to the warehouse with the gentleman who was no longer a gentleman in my opinion.
He was, however, surprisingly quite agile and adept, despite his age and roundness, when it came to checking the inventory. We were working on air conditioners at this point (hmm, what was it with the air conditioner inventory?). They were stacked up high. Maybe 12 to 15 feet up in the air. After we had gone through all the ones we could read at eye level, we proceeded to climb up the towers of air conditioners to read the serial numbers on the rest.
The two of us working in tandem reading/checking off serial numbers, had a good rhythm going. I thought that he was standing in a particularly advantageous spot, and walked over to join him. I thought where he was standing was the tops of more air conditioners.
I stepped onto the surface. No sooner were both feet on the surface, then it gave way. Not knowing what was happening to me at that point, I closed my eyes and screamed as I fell. Just as quickly as I fell, however, I landed.
When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was a multitude of people staring at me with their mouths agape. The second thing I noticed was that I was in a crouched position squarely atop a refrigerator. The third thing was that I was gripping a piece of Styrofoam-like material.
In that moment, those elements clicked together in my still shocked brain, and I realized that I had fallen through the drop ceiling of the store. Giving a whole new meaning to the term drop ceiling.
I froze there in that crouching position for a minute or two. As I took in the situation, I realized the fortuitousness of where I landed. A few feet in either direction and I would have landed on a microwave, a 4 burner gas range stove, or a customer.
I stood up, brushed myself off and climbed back up through the newly created hole in the ceiling, back into the warehouse, leaving the shoppers behind with their jaws still agape and not really sure what they had just witnessed.
Standing back on top of the towers of air conditioners in the warehouse, misogynist round salesman was asking me if I was ok. Upon closer examination, I sustained only a minor cut on my leg. I wanted to keep on with the job, but neither he nor the store owner thought it was a good idea and suggested we reschedule.
Driving home, I came to the conclusion that I really needed to find another job. One that didn’t involve possible run-ins with farm animals or risks to life and limb and definitely didn’t involve checking serial numbers on air conditioners.
Time to put crappy first jobs behind me and move on toward hopefully, less crappy second jobs.
Making my mark in the world would have to wait. Unless you count a hole in a drop ceiling of an appliance store as one. I had a suspicion that the shoppers that day would be telling that story for a good long time to come.