Mainstream Mindset

Oh, restaurant work, how I don’t miss you. 

I feel like my first job was awkward in ways that I didn’t comprehend until recently. First off, I didn’t start working for the first time until I was 19(!), but it wasn’t for lack of want. It just never happened. I didn’t know how to look for work in my early teens even though I wanted to by the time I was 13. It’s one of my biggest regrets; I wish someone had told me how. When I was 16 I started college, and my mother didn’t want me to work while in school. 

Around 18ish I started looking, but this was when the economy started to get shaky. I had a promising lead to a job at a bookstore before learning that I’d be out of town during the week training was supposed to happen. Bad luck.

Anyhow, I finally landed my job during the summer between semesters. I was there for only about 3 months. An Italian restaurant. I was a hostess, although really I got experience doing a few things. I don’t know if I had any idea what I was doing. I never felt fully comfortable there. In a weird way, it almost feels like that part of my life never happened; it’s like it was all so awkward and uncomfortable that I block it out of my mind. Not that it was a bad job. I liked my coworkers and my boss. 

Just…I don’t think I belonged.

The place closed after I left. I like to joke that it couldn’t survive without me.