I got my first paycheck job at a fast-food burger place in March of the year I graduated high school. As is typical, I started at minimum wage, which was $3.35/hour.

After a year at minimum, I asked one of my managers for a raise. I was closing several nights a week and was being trained for morning shift duties on the weekend. She apologized, but the two local stores had recently been purchased by a new owner. By their rules, we had to work at least three months for them before being considered for a raise.

In July, they had an evaluation of all employees. A manager would observe us on duty and evaluate us on five different topics, with scores of zero, one, or two. Adding up the scores gave us a total of up to ten. 

We talked one-on-one with the managers, who revealed our new hourly rate. One of my more experienced coworkers stormed out of their meeting.

Me: “What’s wrong?”

Coworker: “I got a ten out of ten, and got a whole dime per hour raise!”

I wasn’t too optimistic about my meeting. [Coworker] was an excellent worker and only got $0.10/hour. I went back shortly after and was told, with my score of seven out of ten, that I’d get a $0.05/hour raise, up to a whopping $3.40/hour.

To add insult to injury, when the next week’s schedule was posted, I only had two hours. Just an evening dinner rush. I’d gone from working twenty-five to thirty hours a week to two.

I quit the next week. I got a work-study job at the college for $3.85.

I worked at a fast-food burger place named for the founder’s daughter. At that time, we didn’t have trash cans for the customers. Instead, we bused the tables and wiped them down after the customer left.

Every Wednesday night, one particular church group came by late in the evening and usually stayed about half an hour after our closing at 11:00 PM. The first time I worked, when they came in, I was assigned dining room duty. When 11:00 PM hit, they were still in the dining room, chatting. I went back to get a vacuum, but my manager stopped me and said I had to wait until they were done. I couldn’t even put away the salad bar because some of the church group ordered all-you-can-eat salads. But I did have to keep it stocked as they kept going back for seconds (and thirds, and fourths…). I also had the task of refilling the salt and pepper shakers, but of course, not the ones on their tables.

This night, they were exceptionally chatty and were still at it at midnight. We were usually all finished with closing by midnight; however, I was still way behind because of the group.

My manager came out to scold me for not being cleaned up, but I pointed out that she told me not to do most of my closing duties until they left. So, she and the other closers came out to the dining room and just watched them. They didn’t get the hint and stayed until 12:20 AM.

When they finally left, my manager told the other closers to help me finish. I went right to their table to bus it and saw a $20 bill folded sticking out from under a tray. “Yay!” I thought, at least this’ll make it somewhat worthwhile. However, when I picked it up, I felt it wasn’t a real bill. Instead, when unfolded, it reveals some proselytizing literature. I showed it to my manager, who just sighed, grabbed it, and threw it in the trash.

We didn’t get out of there until 2:00 AM. And management couldn’t do a darn thing to keep the church group from doing this on subsequent visits.

When I was in college, I initially had a job at a fast-food restaurant. I usually worked close, so I drove home after midnight. Being a little zoned, I edged over the speed limit a bit. I got pulled over twice, only going twelve and thirteen miles per hour over. But at eighteen years old with a provisional license, this was enough to lose all my points and get suspended.

By the time my suspension hearing came up, I had a new office job at the college, and a new quarter had started. We needed four PE classes to graduate, and my college offered Skiing, so I’d taken that. I’d gone to one class (held at a local ski area about an hour out of town). But at my hearing the next day, the hearing officer had no mercy and gave me a three-month suspension.

I initially thought that I’d just keep driving, making sure not to get any unwanted attention. But my brother cautioned me that getting caught driving on a suspended license would be expensive. I then had a thought about appealing to the hearing officer. 

I went back to his office and asked to speak to him. I told him I had a class off-campus and really needed to be able to drive to it. He then asked the fateful question:

Hearing Officer: “What class do you have off-campus?”

Me: “Um… skiing.”

Hearing Officer: *Laughing.* “You’re kidding!? I’d be laughed out of a job if I let you have a license to go skiing!”

I slunk out of his office. So, I couldn’t continue to drive to class, and I didn’t have any friends who were in the class. So, I dropped the skiing class.

My brother happened to be friends with the instructor of the skiing class. He asked me months later if I didn’t like my instructor. I reminded him that my license had been suspended and I couldn’t drive to class. He then said I should’ve hitchhiked. I told him I’d rather miss skiing instead of being murdered by someone who picks up hitchhikers.

I have a legal issue in Colorado to deal with just before I plan to move to Northern Virginia. I have to fill out a form detailing where exactly I am moving to. For information, Virginia cities are independent of any counties, even if they’re surrounded by a county.

Me: “City? Alexandria. County? N/A. State? Virginia. ZIP code? 22312. There.”

I hand the form to the clerk.

Clerk: “Hmmm… What do you mean by ‘N/A’ in the ‘County’ blank? Is that an abbreviation?”

Me: “I guess. It means ‘not applicable’. Alexandria is an independent city.”

Clerk: “What does that mean?”

Me: “It’s not in any county. It’s independent of them.”

Clerk: “That’s not possible. It has to be in a county.”

This is before smartphones, so I can’t pull up a map. Instead, I sketch the geography as I explain.

Me: “Look. This blob is the City of Alexandria. This area to the north is Arlington County. To the south and west is Fairfax County. And to the east, across the Potomac River, is the District of Columbia.”

Clerk: “The district of what?”

Me: “District of Columbia. DC. Washington, DC. The capital of the United States.”

Clerk: “Washington, DC, is not in Virginia.”

Me: “Yes, I know. It’s just across the river from Alexandria and Arlington.”

Clerk: “No, it’s an island in the ‘Lantic Ocean.”

Me: *Giving up* “Whatever. In any case, you can see that Alexandria is not a part of either Arlington or Fairfax County. It’s independent.”

The clerk starts putting my information into the computer.

Clerk: “No, you see, when I leave ‘County’ blank, I get an error.”

Me: “Fine. Just put ‘Alexandria’ in for the county, too.”

The workaround worked, inaccurate as it might be. I was just glad I didn’t have to explain other areas on my sketch that were Maryland.

In one of my higher-level computer classes, our professor assigned three problems out of our textbook. They were at the end of chapter 11: problems 21, 22, and 23. The format the book’s author chose to label their problems was chapter number, dash, and then problem number.

So, when my professor wrote the assignment on the board, he simply wrote, “Do the following problems: 11-21, 11-22, and 11-23.”

At the end of class, I came up to his desk with a notebook sheet with my name, date, and the answers to the problems. I had simply written: “-10, -11, -12”

He laughed. I still had to do the real problems.