My First Job

Or, The First Job That Mattered

I’ve always told the story about my first job at my hometown library, Cheektowaga Public Library. That fits in nicely with the fact that I hope my last job will be my current one, as director of Griffin Free Public Library. That’s a nice life arc, don’t you think?

But in chatting with Little Bean the other day about how she wants her first job to be at the Auburn Audubon Center (an excellent choice, by the way) it occurred to me that I actually, technically, had two jobs prior to my first library gig.

One of them, perhaps, doesn’t exactly count, which was as a paperboy delivering the weekly Cheektowaga Times to my neighborhood. I should hardly count that as a real job as I recall my poor overworked mother did most of the work. She’s the one who helped me sort and drove me around the route. It was a lot of work for only a few bucks and it didn’t last.

But my real first job, which I actually picked up only a few months before the library job was directly across the street from the library at a well known meat market and butcher shop. I won’t mention the name of the place because the family is still active, even though the meat market itself is no longer in business.

I can say with no uncertainty that it was the most dreadful job I ever had. My job, as a teenager remember, was basically as a butcher’s cleaner. I’d come in on weekends or after school and all the real butchers would just hoist all the day’s worth of absolutely spoiled, bloody, meat covered, knives, blades and dishware at me. They had this enormous washing tub in the back and I’d stand on the concrete floor with the big drain in the center and wash and dry all the equipment.

I also had to disassemble and wash the slicers and the giant ban saw in the back warehouse. The ban saw had this thick, long saw blade that popped off the mechanism and I’d string it down into the wash tub and use this wire brush to get deep into every tooth on the saw.

Miss one piece of spoiled meat and a customer could get sick the next day. This was serious stuff to hand over to a 16 year old.

I distinctly remember two things about the job. First, the butchers loved country music and piped it loudly into the back warehouse where I worked. Imagine cleaning bloody saw blades while Kenny Rodgers shouted at you about Islands in the Stream.

Second, during one cleaning of the slicer, I took off the very tip of my left hand ring finger. I bandaged myself up, and finished cleaning the thing, now having to clean up my own blood as well.

I’m still missing that spot on my finger by the way. Anyway, that was it for me. I had already started the library job and I wasn’t about to let any more appendages get cut off.

I think that’s why I see that library job as my first. Because it was the first job I liked, the first one where I felt my work mattered - where I felt work in general COULD matter and my work was appreciated. All things critical to my work today all these years later.

Plus, it’s super unlikely that I’ll ever have to deal with blood on the job. Though those paper cuts sure can be nasty!

How about you? What was your first job? And what was your first job that you loved?