st Job
(other than kids)
Rebecca Smith
Copyright 2014 Rebecca Smith
I have been thinking of how to start this little EBook since I am a beginner in this sort of thing. Well Let me tell you about me for one...I am a woman who has seen a lot and who has had writing in many forms to help me through my hard and weird thought patterns I get at times. I mostly try to keep to a good side for Facebook with my friends. it had been a hard few years and I needed to get a good thing going with it. I am a wife with a child who was before the wife part. The other things about me can be found in this EBook I want to write. I am hoping to just tell my side of things in this vast empire of EBooks we have in here and hope for the best for the first one. It will be free to be a tester for how I want to charge the next one. It will not be too much because I am not looking for profits, but you know I gotta eat along with my family and if I get something from it will be to just live a little better. So please think on that when I get my next book out.
I have lived for long enough to see many different types of people and many kinds of places. After I graduated high school it was not a picnic for me, but I surely did get a little higher up in the food chain of being a working girl by 20. I remember going to the job interview and being scared out my little, but tall mind. Why? First full time job in my life that was not with children. That is story for later on. It has some conotations that will make people think. I want to try to get that out in another book by itself. Who knows this might get me a few dollars in my little kitty. I digress from the story. Back to it. In the beginning there were dry cleaners and then there was D. O. Summers. As much as I knew I had to quit later on I really did like the job for some reason.
I started in the franchaise where I was living at the time and met Sam. I was not sure what to think of him at first or his wife either. They were as different as night and day, but they sure kept the place going. he had a good following of customers and when I started I was taught the little things first. How to tag in the clothes and where to put them. I was taght how to tag the shirts for laundry and where to put those. I did that for a few days and then the counter was the next thing. I may be a little shady on how fast it went. I will say this though I learned quick. I got along with most everyone even the president and the son at the time I started (they owned the whole thing). I remember a woman who worked upstairs in the main office who I had talked to a lot as well. I loved her to death and she ran that place well.
Onto the beginning few month...from what I remember about this is that I earned my money and did a good job because i think I got raise within that few months. I was getting minimum wage, which if I remember correctly was under 4 bucks at the time. I was 20 you see and now I am 44 at this time in writing this so it was still a lot of money at that time for a young little girl who was trying out her big girl panties then. I sure did as i went on worknig for them too. I got my wings and flew. So when I got my paycheck I paid the rent to the lady who so graciously helped me when I needed it the most. I was kinda a little kooky with her sometimes and she was a good lady too with a kid. Then I saved what I could I wanted my own place. Thanks to D. O. Summers being pretty busy there I had been able to increase my hours and oh did I learn. I am going to digress just a bit to show you why the reason may have been for me doing so well there.
My grandpa plain and simple was a good man and had done some stuff in his life that we all took from in my family and the grandkids all loved his desserts so we tried to copy that. Well I was not so good at that part. I am not a baker and will never be a good one even though my bros are better at it. I did pick up one thing he passed on to me was his love for having laundry mats and he also had dry cleaning as well. I picked that up and did not even know it til my mom told me the story after I worked for them. She may have said it before, but it did not click at the time. I guess I had the knack for it and should have stuck with it for a little longer. That is something I will get into before I end this book. Thanks grandpa, still miss the both of you grandma was a good lady too.
Well as I was learning my thirst for the want to press got into my brain. Pressing clothes on a steam press looks easy. I had to be taught and I understood why after I tried. Creases in the pants are a big deal in the business world. This is not a joke either. I have heard some really irate customers talking about it. They were ranting about more than one crease in the pants. I learned how to do this two ways. One was the faster easy way, but could cause the irate talking about double creases coming from the customers who need to look their best. I sometimes did laugh if they got too irate and went overboard, but in the back where they could not see me giggle to the full out laugh if it was good enough. I am not saying they are wrong, but funny still. The harder but better way I was taught made me do worse than the easy way. For some odd reasoning in my mind I thought it was odd too, I did it better the easy way and I was fast after a while. So fast I was the darling in the eyes of pressing because I would do it in a pinch and help whoever needed help. (the son took over by then and knew what I did but only caught me a few times. he did not like, but knew I did not get complaints).
Onto what we in dry cleaning call junk (everything not pants). I took to this like a fly to the paper we put up to catch them. I loved it to the point I wanted to just do that and not take care of customers, but my brain still liked the customers just enough. I tried to perfect my way of pressing everything I could. I was not the best, but I was up there and I worked a little less fast then the good ones in our place where I ended up after leaving the beginning of my life in the job. I did move around. Going back to the first store I had found out the hard way I was allergic to fur and still did the job. Yup that was me a glutton for punishment with that one. That really started me on my journey to know all of dry cleaning. I had learned how to press wedding dresses and to box them for the customers who wanted to not lose it to moths. I learned to press starched pants too, really starched pants that stood on their own. We had one or two of those people. I wanted so bad to ask why and when I got the chance I did just that with the one customer I had a good standing with. If I remember correct he said it felt good and kept the pants looking better. I laughed and said okay to him, but really? I even pressed a little christening outfit...it was so small, but I was up for it and did the same thing for it I did for he wedding dresses.
I may tell you I learned everything I needed to so I would have a job, but I genuinely curious about the whole thing of dry cleaning. I learned how to clean and i did have my mess ups with that too. I one time forgot to check the seal on the cleaning machine and was wondering why the nasty cleaning solution was smelling up teh place. So I went back and looked and saw the seal was off. I tell you Perc is not ssomething to smell in a big gulp. I cried and laughed anad had sit outside for aa good hour after trying to stop the mess. I was silly for that. I should have had a mask on, but no time for that stuff. I did not get yelled at either, but I did get laughed at about it. My first rookie mistake with that. Did not do it again believe me you would not either. I have done stuff like forget to put tickets on the clothes. rarely, but going fast you forget one or two and that is a big mess at times. I even left the job, but went back when the other place I went to was a hell hole compared to D. O. Summers. I am not saying this job was the best at times it really sucked, but I did what everyone does, bitched, bitched and bitched. We all did when it was busy. I think all jobs got that too. Some worse than others.
The customers were pretty good people wherever I went. I tried not to get mad at them and rarely did, but there was the one time at the last store I worked in where I called a customere a bitch and forgot to wait for her to leave. OOPS. I had to apologize for a few for that one. She finally warmed u
p to me and me to her. There were some customers I just loved. And then there were the customeres that you looked at and said woo hoo too. I had a few of the cute guys i liked to look at, but never thought other than that. Well I say that now, but then I did one or two. They were just wow. I had a flirting going on with a guy on the outside. I had this guy who drove this car I had this guy who drove a car I wanted. One of my coworkers had a bro who had a car I wanted. He was a cool kid too. She was a good person, but well I lost touch with all of them. I sometimes would like to know how a few of them are because they were my family in some ways. Back to the basics here with the story.
The sad thing was things changed and some people left and others took over and they used our store to the max when it came to overworking us. I remember not being a manager, but they treated me like a manager and I did not get paid enough for it. I wanted help when my manager was gone for vacation and t hey acted like I was talking gibberish. The supervisors did. This is not a lie and supervisors have a lot on their plate, but they overworked me there and did not care at times. I got tired of it and quit, just quit. I had gone to another kind of company to press shirts and was there for a few years, but they closed. that was no picnic, but I had some good times there too. I will say though all in all when it came to this job, I stuck out some pretty bad things and some really good things with them. Jobs are not all easy and some are a little of easy at times and horrendously busy at others. It is the nature of the beast in my eyes. I met some really good people working for them and I met some pretty obnxious little pissers too. that was just the workers. Hardy har har, they all were in my heart a little even when I did not like them. A sad thing I had to do was to tell on a coworker for something I knew I should have, just know I did the right thing even though I was told I did the wrong thing. I also had cared about some of them more than I should have, but lessons learned.
To end this I really want to dedicate this to my grandpa for giving me the gene to last in this job for over 6 years and that I had the umph to keep up with the big boys when it came to the job. I was taught well in how to work a job. I did the best I could and messed up like everyone does with some things or not with others. My grandpa believed in me when I did not even believe in me. My grandma did as well, but he sticks in my head. I loved the man, he gave me hope in some areas no one else could. To D. O. Summers I was so angry at my final treatment, but I tell you what I would love to press again for this place. I would love to be able to just do this job in a small way again for me. It was fun even if others think it wasn't. It was not that bad to me. I learned a hell of a lot and met a lot of people from being up front on the counters. Those people made the world go better mostly.