How my first job after having my baby only lasted for one day
The gray minivan sped into the @krogerco parking lot just after 5 am. A woman, who could have easily been Dolly Parton’s older sister, waved her hand and said “get in”.
The three of us piled into her backseat and buckled our seatbelts. I did not know the other young women in the van with me, but we must have all seen the same ad in the classified section: “help wanted. $20 per hour. Get paid the same day”.
We drove for about a half an hour before pulling into the parking lot of a small motel in Gatlinburg, TN.
“Here is the deal: you have one hour to clean each room. I will be checking behind you to make sure it is done correctly. Once that room is done, go to the next. You will have eight rooms each, we are here for 10 hours. So you are guaranteed to make $200 if you move fast.”
She handed each one of us a bucket of cleaning supplies and then ordered me to follow behind the other older woman. As I worked alongside her, she motioned for me to pick up the pace. “We are never going to get done if you keep moving, like a snail,” she said. But I was already moving as fast as I could!
It took us almost 2 hours to do the first room which threw us behind with the rest of the rooms. By the end of the day we had only completed six.
I was shocked when the woman chanded us $120, $20 for each room we were able to complete. I did not have the courage to speak up for the rest of my money, instead, I tucked it into my jean pocket and followed her back to her minivan.
As we rode back over the Tennessee mountains, we slurped slushies, ate @7eleven hot dogs as we chatted about our plans for the summer. “You gals are lucky” she said, taking a puff of her Salem Lights cigarette. “Y’all ain’t got no kids, no responsibility. You can just use the money you make this summer to have fun!” One of the girls said she was saving up to go to Myrtle Beach. Another one would be entering college in the fall.
But I was the outlier in that van:
Instead of saving up for a weekend of the beach, even though I was only 19, I was making money so that I could care for my new baby.
Just one day on that job let me know I had to find a Plan B. And that is just what I did.
