(A bit of a preamble before the start of this post: In this blog, I will be writing about all the paying jobs that I've held. In the titles, I will refer to these as eras and list the years during which I worked there in the subject titles. Many of these jobs will result in multiple posts, but once I start writing about a job, I will tell the complete story until it comes to an end.)
In the fall of 1980, I was moving up in the world. I was able to line up my first job. Since my Mom was in charge of Distributive Education, she got a line on a position that would soon have an opening. The people who ran one of the big oil companies in Artesia decided to open a health club across the street from their office that would have racquetball courts.
The only reason no one from DECA got the job there was because they didn't open the club until October. Everyone in DECA needed to have their jobs in place before the end of September. I went in and interviewed with the woman who was put in charge of it. Mom had told me all this stuff that I was supposed to say and not say and it was all very confusing, and as it turned out, unnecessary. A couple of weeks later, she called me to come down to the club so I could see where I was working.
When I went in, it was still being constructed. They hadn't put down the carpeting or the front desk yet and still had a lot to do on the main excercise floor. My job was going to be to check members in at the front desk and sweeping the racquetball courts. I would work the early morning hours from 6am to 8am. I would get paid the minimum wage, which at the time was $2.85 an hour and went up to $3.10 an hour in 1981. There would not be another national minimum wage increase until 1990.
The best part about this job is that it got me out of the house in the mornings, when Mom was in her worst moods. If ever there were times that major punishments got handed down, it was always before school. It seemed like Mom would sleep on a problem and wake up deciding to make Loyd and me miserable. By not being at the house, I never received any punishments those last two years that I lived at home. However, I'm pretty certain Loyd got more than his usual share of manic mornings with Mom because I wasn't around.
I was surprised when I got my first paycheck. I couldn't believe they were giving me money to basically sit around. Since I didn't really have much to do, I would frequently bring my homework in during the morning. This left me free to not have to do any studying at the house at night. This means I was getting paid to do my homework.
I left the job when I went to college in 1982. My job went to the boyfriend of my boss' daughter. Two years later, he graduated from high school and I came home from college to spend what would be my final summer at home. (I went to summer school in 1983 and 1985.) Even though my old boss was no longer there, I got my old job back. I should note that this would be the only time in my life that I ever returned to a job in which I left.
However, there was an unexpected change about the time I started back. This person came in as the new general manager. After he had taken over for one week, the first thing he did was lay me off because he was trying to make the club profitable. (Actually, the reason why the club wasn't profitable was because of delinquent accounts, not because they were paying me about $30 a week.)
The only other person who had been there since the beginning got the job of coming in early in the morning. She was originally hired to run the child care center when the club first opened. After awhile, it was only my father and a friend of his showing up in the morning, so the club just gave them the keys and they let themselves in and cut more hours that way.
However, losing that job led to me being able to take a job that would turn into a full-time position before I graduated from college, so I guess it was a good thing that I was let go, but that will be the subject of a post way, way in the future.
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