Jobs as gifts are nice. If you’ve got a good work ethic, like I think I do, then it’s like giving the gift of an endless supply of money, even if the pay rate was garbage. That is how I would like to start off this job description.

When I turned 16, like the day after, I started my job at a local sub shop. It was alright. Some good kids worked there, my boss was nice, and I got to eat subs that I loved to eat as a kid. It was a dirty job, but it was a job. So every Friday, I would go in after school and man the sub counter. To this day, I can’t understand why when you order a sub, they say it takes 30 minutes because people would call me, and I would tell them that it took as long as it took to get in. There’s nothing wrong with doing things quickly if you’re going to do them right.

They also used to have a sub prepared by the name of “garbage” which was my favorite. It was essentially, everything that would have gone on “cold” like tomatoes, lettuce, onions, cheese, etc, thrown on the grill with whatever type of sub it was and all mashed up. Everything would come out orange, hot, and delicious.

Enough garbage, let’s get to the meat.

We used to throw ice at each other when the boss wasn’t around. That was awesome. There are up-times and down-times, and when the time got down, the ice went up. I don’t know why, but it did. Things that were cool was that I was on a flat grill so anything that touched it sizzled. Awesomer?! You got it. On the other end, in the corner no less, was the fryer. Ever mix oil and water? Ever mix hot oil and water? Disaster/fun/steam/fun again/bubbles/laughter.

I used to make myself little sandwiches with just cheese and sub fixuns that sustained me until the end of a busy night. Every once in a while I would take pepperoni from the pizza counter and eat that, too. A man’s got to live. Boy. A boy’s got to live.

On to the bad…

I only worked one day a week. There were many other days that I could have worked, but I was only there one day a week, which was bogus. Nothing like taking home like $30 a week. It’s hardly worth putting me on payroll. Yeah, that’s right. Off the books. Sorry, Uncle Sam, you make enough. That was inevitably the reason why I quit. Not this one…

On to the worse…

One time, I spilled pizza sauce in the cooler. A lot. Like roughly five gallons of the stuff. That was awful. My boss made me stay in the cooler and clean up the entire mess. That’s fine and understandable, but they docked my pay which annoyed me to no end. It took me about an hour to clean everything up. While I was locked in the cooler, with nothing but a T-shirt, I ate so much celery and carrots and everything I could get my hands on. I probably ate that hours worth of pay, which means that my time was justified and everything was going to be alright.

Needless to say, this was not the best job I ever had.