What Was Your First Job?

What was your first job?

Mine involved uniforms, ships, and airplanes…and it wasn’t by choice.

Let me explain.

When I was 16 and in high school in the Philippines, I wanted to have some spending money while I hung out with my friends.  We had just moved to the Philippines after my dad retired from the Navy in Japan, and I noticed during the summer between 10th and 11th grade, that there were a lot of similar-aged kids working odd jobs (like mowing grass, working at snack bars, etc.) In fact, that’s kind of how I met one of my best friends, Oliver..he did groundskeeping stuff around the Navy base (like in public areas, not in people’s yards) and would hang out in the bowling alley my mom and dad would drag me to. 

Anyway, I remember telling my mom that I wanted to get a summer job, and her response was “no.”  She told me that I wouldn’t be paid enough because, being in the Philippines, the Navy base was allowed to hire Filipino civilians to work these jobs too…and the supervisors would rather pay a civilian mere cents per hour instead of paying a teenaged punk like me a few dollars per hour. 

I didn’t care how much I got paid..I was bored and wanted some money so I persisted about getting a job.  Plus, it would get me away from having to hang out with them in the bowling alley for hours and hours on end.

I must have gotten on my dad’s nerves because after a few days of me continuing to ask, he told me that if I wanted money, then I could do some chores around the house (big whoop..I was doing that shit already anyway) and he would pay me $80 a week…but he would give me $40 in cash and deposit $40 in a savings account for me.  I said “deal” and basically continued living my life and getting money for it. 

That leads to my “first” job…being in the Navy.  Fast forward a couple years and I got accepted into the Naval Academy.  Yup, I know, it was basically college with some military crap thrown in, but I was getting paid to do it in exchange for agreeing to serve my country for a few years.  So, I count being in the Naval Academy as my first job, because it was a lot of work with all the extra shit we had to do on top of the normal classes we’d take.  And it was nice getting a paycheck every month..even though the first few months ended up being around $50 bucks in my pocket by the time they took out all the deductions we had to pay for by being in school there.  Technically, we all got paid the same amount, but each year, we would get more and more money into our pockets as we paid down items like uniforms and books and stuff.

It didn’t matter since the first year, we were only allowed to be out in town on Saturdays and Sundays.  So it wasn’t like we were spending crap tons of money.  We were being fed meals and didn’t have to pay for rent, so we were good.

At the time of me writing this, I’m working at my 2nd job, since I’ve since retired from the Navy after 20 years.  In looking back, I kind of wish I would have pushed back on my parents some more and took the manual labor jobs that I wanted to do, you know..for character building and shit.  But also looking back, I’ve had a lot of other character building experiences so I guess being in the Navy for a first job wasn’t so bad.