When you’re a kid you imagine you’ll have a firefighter’s or a doctor’s job. But you never expect to find a job working in the office of a portable toilet company in Pittsburgh. I got lucky, and this is my first “real” job. I say real in quotations not because this isn’t a serious job. Every job is a serious job.
Just that lemonade stands and craft shows don’t show up on your taxes. At the age of seventeen most people are spending their summers volunteering at summer camps for five year olds, making pizza for $7.50 an hour on the weekends, or in most cases than less, sleeping until noon trying to wait out the running clock of summer until the approaching school year begins.
Since I’ve began working at Mr. John I’ve done a number of tasks, all fairly simple. On the surface my job sums up to be scanning documents, typing route numbers and dates, organizing spread sheets, putting invoices in envelopes, and way more scanning. I recognize that when my job is explained to people they think that it doesn’t mean much. But let’s face it, whenever the chance to do something beneficial or meaningful comes up it can be exciting no matter the difficulty. So even though my job is just that, it never really is JUST THAT. At the end of the day I have a high appreciation for the job I have, not because I have a passion for scanning, or because of the paychecks. It’s a high appreciation for having something to value. I value having a job with so much potential of helping me in what is now my near future.
This “near future” I’m talking about includes college, and the career I hope to one day have, and whatever other jobs I have along the way. There was and still is a lot to learn here. This being my first job, the obvious is that I learned what it’s like to have one and to have to go to work. Once working, it becomes a priority just like going to school, or being on a sports team. Getting a feel for what it’s like to work with individuals as well as a team of your coworkers in a real life sense is what it generalizes as. For me, I have to follow a lot of instructions in order to do my job correctly. This is really important to the flow of a company. If no one is communicating, then nothing will work. Having a job is a good way to break the monotony of school routines and or lounging around the house to take up free time. There’s more to learn than just this; there’s something to learn also about patience. Spending six hours+ a day loading paper into a scanner and pressing a button seems really repetitive. Which it is, but repetition plays a big role in teaching patience. Even with the repetitiveness, its good having a lot to do over and over again because being busy makes a work day go by faster. In school and in work and in life, I hope to use the things I’m learning working here. Jobs are always more than just a title, there are skills and lessons beneath the surface.
