My First Job

After I had been in college for about a year, I needed a break from school and studying. I decided to take a year off and get a full-time job. When I was in school, I would see the rest of my family relaxing in the evening or on weekends when I still had to study.  School didn’t come easy to me; I had to work really hard just to get average grades. Even though my mom was against me quitting school, she had worked for an employment agency and helped me get a resume and cover letter set up. I got my first job.

The job was at a direct mail and printing business called ‘Buckeye Letter Service.’ It was owned by a father and two brothers.  I just Googled it and found it, only it’s under a slightly different name and in a different location. I think that is amazing that through all of the crappy economies that it survived.  It was an interesting first job, not your usual “You want fries with that?” sort of job. Interestingly enough, my mother had her first job in Ohio in the same building, but with the State of Ohio, on the second floor.

 I put stacks of envelopes and folded letters into a machine that inserted the letters into the envelopes and stacked them in a neat little stack which someone would put in a mailing tray. I ran the machine sometimes too. It was fun to run the inserter machines. These were machines that would stick the folded letters and inserts into the envelope, seal the envelope and if you want it to, it could put a stamp on the letters. The older inserter machine one ran better than the newer one for some reason.  If the envelopes weren’t right, like if the flaps stuck together, it would cause a jam in the machine and time would be lost taking the jammed paper out.  If you ever see those ‘How It’s Made’ shows, they always show when the machines are working perfectly. They never show the big mess that happens when the machines jam or malfunction. They make it look so easy and smooth, but there are always little glitches that come up that can cause chaos.

Similar to inserter machine I worked on

Similar to older inserter machine that I worked on

At this job, I would also sort mail by zip code, or run a big electric stapler, or would get folded letters off of a folding machine and stack them neatly into a box. We also had a Pitney Bowes machine that would stamp envelopes as well as a collating machine that would put booklets of paper together. It was not rocket science or brain surgery.  It could get monotonous. This was not one of those jobs you would list as one of your lifelong outstanding achievements .This was before internet, so the only way to mass advertise that wasn’t on radio or TV or newspaper was good old fashioned snail mail. There is still a lot of good old fashioned advertising snail mail today, so I’m sure they still have plenty of business.

It was a small business and the guys that ran it didn’t always get along. They would get into colorful arguments, sometimes taking the argument to different parts of the office. The fracas would start out in the main office, drift out to the front office where they would get the office manager into the argument and then the whole thing would migrate to the print shop where they would include the guy that ran the print shop. That would not have been an appropriate moment to ask for time off. When I say the arguments were colorful, I mean colorful, their faces turned bright red and their eyes would bug out.  I’ve seen the mongooses where I work now, be calmer when I’m trying to clean their cage. Actually, Mister the mongoose is easier to work with, he is usually made happy with a defrosted dead mouse. I don’t think that a defrosted dead mouse would have made the bosses there very happy.

Cusimanse Mongoose similar to 'Mister'

 Sometimes they yelled at us.  Sometimes if the machine kept jamming up, they would get frustrated and yell at us, even though it wasn’t anything that we did. They both had very short fuses.  In offices today, their displays of temper probably would not have been tolerated.  I can understand why a mongoose gets upset now and then, they are wild animals that react on instinct. It’s how they survive in the wilds of Africa. I don’t understand is why these bosses couldn’t have behaved in a more civilized manner in an office that’s not the wilds of Africa.

Interesting situations came up in that job. One time, the power went out and with paper piled everywhere they had us sort mail by candlelight.  The power was only out for maybe an hour. My mom was afraid that when I quit school to take on a job, that I would not return to college. She had nothing to worry about. That job made me want to continue with college. The only good thing is that in that office they didn’t let someone go just for turning older. There were a number of older ladies that worked there. I wish more companies let older people work for them.