There’s a hidden pseudoscience behind every child’s dream job. Just as people scrutinize the skies under which they were born to determine their star chart — to figure out why they are a caretaker, why their last relationship didn’t work out or why they can’t eat raw carrots but only stewed — one can extract an unfathomable amount of information based solely on what they wanted to be when they were kids. Or at least I think so.
I wanted to be a hotel manager. Never a veterinarian, an artist, a police officer or even the president. For each of these suggestions fed to me by adults, I prepared logical retorts asserting my incapability for each of these careers: I could never kill a dog; I only like pencil drawings, nothing else; I’m too scared of dying; and that seems like a lot of responsibility. But a hotel manager, that was something I knew I could do.
Given nearly every adult’s reaction to this, you would have thought I told them I planned on becoming a garbage man — or worse than that, perhaps a circus worker, or a money launderer or skip the middleman and straight to being an inmate. They thought that my fidelity to these dreams of one day becoming a hotel manager was restricting me, setting my sights too low. They didn’t know I believed that hotel managers were at the top of the food chain, the apex predator or sovereign power of working America.
Really, all it was is that I liked staying in hotels: vending machines as magical as Santa’s gift sack, supersized robots whose purpose is just to dispense ice, beds that seemed to make themselves, TVs with channels tuned at frequencies that only the TVs stationed in hotels seem privy to, indoor pools only two button-presses and an elevator ride away.
In my mind then, my argument in defense of hotels — and, thereby, their managers — wasn’t just airtight, but also convincing. I executed rhetorical maneuvers that could make even the scummiest lawyer break a sweat and say, “This kid is good.” Each piece of evidence I introduced to the trial was a case closer in and of itself, my child hips heavy with the weight of five smoking guns nestled in my holster.
Talent like that can’t burn for long. Soon, I no longer wanted to be a hotel manager; I turned in the khakis, name tag and customer-service smile before I even got the chance to use them. But it wouldn’t be long until I needed all of those items again, though under a new light.
My hotel-manager daydreams were only a gateway drug, that proverbial “slippery slope.” When I came of age to get my first paycheck-earning job, which was 15 in my case, it required an earnest reflection of my values, of which there were mainly two: (One) Finding a respectable establishment I can take pride in saying I work for — not necessarily in terms of philanthropy or carbon footprint, but something with more pizzazz than saying, “I worked at McDonald’s,” or “I mowed lawns in my neighborhood.” (No disrespect meant to our community’s essential McDonald’s workers and lawnmowers.)
The other value was simple. (Two) Make money. Or, make as much money as you can at 15 working an unskilled job where the applicants are bountiful and the state’s minimum wage follows the federally imposed low bar of $7.25/hour.
Leaving after buying concert-black dress pants at a JCPenny in my local mall, I saw the banner that changed everything, hanging from the window of an Auntie Anne’s kiosk: “NOW HIRING AT $13/HOUR + TIPS!” Not yet able to drive myself anywhere at the time, my mom was next to me when I read the sign aloud; we stepped in line to buy a courteous cup of pretzel nuggets, our real intention to ask about the job.
Most places didn’t hire at 15. The luckiest we sophomores or old freshmen could get was landing a coveted position as a Hy-Vee grocery bagger, which failed to meet either of my two aforementioned values. That night in the mall, clutching my still-tagged concert-black dress pants, it seemed I was lucky. The manager — “Bridget,” her name tag read — said that they recently made the decision to lower their hiring age to 15; I could be the first 15-year-old they would hire, she said.
What I heard was this: (One) An interesting first job. (What teen wouldn’t want to twist dough into pretzels, standing at a kiosk in the mall with people flowing around you on either side like a river around a rock?) And, (two) $13/hour + tips, which was kind of sort of almost double the federal minimum wage. Not to mention that Bridget, kind of sort of almost, said I would be a trailblazer in my profession (e.g., the first 15-year-old).
I worked a glorious inglorious year at Auntie Anne’s; that is to say, I romanticized a year of work in food service, one industry notorious for being inhospitable. Some may say I gave it the same treatment I gave the idea of being a hotel manager: where most saw pissed-off customers, I saw everything but. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” and all, and I kept finding a lot of treasure, earning a lot of weird looks and remarks along the lines of, “Well, whatever makes you happy…”
Auntie Anne’s was perhaps my one true love, the one that got away. If it weren’t for an untimely changing of guards among the corporate overlords — or, the company getting bought out by newer, greedier businesspeople — then it’s possible I would still be there today. But when my manager Bridget quit due to the new company revoking certain luxuries managers before had, and when a new manager whom none of our crew came close to liking threatened to take the reins, all of us put in our two weeks. We were like captains going down with our ship.
I found another love, I remarried; that is to say, there was another undesirable-to-many job that I worked with rose-tinted glasses. Except, this time, I think she’s truly good. It’s been three years now, long past the honeymoon phase; I’m even a shift lead, earning $16/hour + tips, now no longer kind of sort of almost double minimum wage, just double minimum wage — over double, even. Long distance has been hard, but we’re making it work; I tended to her over winter break, refamiliarizing myself with the rote tasks involved in ice cream making. Oh, did I mention? Her name is Coldstone.
Riley Strait is a freshman from Olathe, KS majoring in Writing Seminars and English. His column, "In Medias Res," translates from Latin to "into the middle of things," shares narratives that bury occasional insights within fluff that often leave the reader wondering, "Did I ask?"
