It's where I learned to like salad -- it was a good place for me.

[flexagon]

Out at lunch with the new intern, a few of us ended up trading stories of first jobs. I said I worked at Burger King, and this elicited "REALLY?" and quite a lot of laughter from one of my newer co-workers. Sure, when I was a teenager I did, and it was a good first job in a lot of ways. People nodded, and this coworker was shocked to find that most of us around the table had had some kind of food-service or blue-collar job when we were teenagers. "So you guys... you weren't working these jobs because you needed the money, did you, it's more like a cultural thing?"

Well, we got some allowance, but for real spending money to buy our own stuff we needed the jobs, sure. Why, what was your first job, we asked?

It's a totally different culture, he said. Yeah, I didn't say, it's called being rich.

Someone said something about feeling sorry for kids who have too much handed to them. I might have nodded, but I didn't mean it. I know a few people who have grown up with money, and it really hasn't messed them up. Hello, bitter jealousy... ugh... it's the offhanded assumption that everyone has money that tends to get to me.

Comments

[a-kosmos.livejournal.com]

I waited tables on and off for most of the time that I was an undergrad, and I learned a lot about life while doing it. My first job was babysitting, and I was v. popular because I played games with the kids, but mostly that taught me that I didn't want to have children.

[webrat.livejournal.com]

My very first job was a gopher at my family's bar & grill, "Go fer this, go fer that."

[bluechromis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there are a lot of protected people out there...they genuinely don't know how different things can be. I do NOT feel sorry for them. Sure, a lot of them don't have the same survival skills other people do, but they don't really need them either. I was the only one at my school in OR that had a "real" job during the school year, ie. wasn't just occasionally helping at my parent's office or something. And yeah, I was bitterly jealous, rightfully so, imo.

[figmint.livejournal.com]

At 14 I started working in a restaurant making salads and washing dishes. Used to work until the wee hours on weekends. I needed the money to buy things like clothes, coats, eyeglasses. Yes, except for housing, I've been on my own since 14. Sucked.

I don't think getting things handed to you necessarily spoils someone. They might just be less bitter. AND they were able to take interesting, educational summer internships while I was working in restaurants all through undergrad, learning nothing.

It didn't develop my character. I'm still bad with money. And I'm bitter, too.

I had a discussion once with someone, and we agreed that some of the nicest people we knew were wealthy. The lack of financial worries had made them happy.

People are wrong--money does buy happiness.