First Real World Job

The prompt for the Chatham Writers Group last Monday was to write about a summer job. My story follows.

My First Real World Job

I started working my first job the summer after I turned nine, delivering the Bergen Record.  For the next five years, neither rain, nor snow, nor sun prevented me from completing my rounds, six days a week.  A stint at McDonald’s followed and that proved to be a fun job because just about all of the people working there were friends of mine from high school.  The only thing I didn’t like about working there were the days the Sergeant of the Lower Swatara Police Department would show up for his free dinner.  When I was first introduced to him, he shook my hand, looked me straight in the eye and said, “Boy, when you see my cruiser pull into the parking lot, there better be a Filet O’ Fish, an order of fries and a chocolate shake sittin’ on this desk (the restaurant manager’s) when I walk in.  Yeah, you do that and me ‘n you will get along just fine.” He was a real piece of shit.  Ironically, he would dress up as Santa Clause each year and greet kids at the Christmas Tree Farm, the farm that I frequented in the dead of night seeking trees for special clients, but I’ve already told that story.  My next job, and one that I would work at for the next three years, was staffing the booth of the Harrisburg International Airport Parking Lot.  I sat in air-conditioned luxury collecting parking fees, all cash, no charge cards yet.  On occasion I would have to let an inebriated businessperson know their briefcase was still on the roof of their car and sometimes I would have to call the airport PD when some scofflaw would race past the booth without paying.

My first real world job was the one that I worked the summer between my senior year of high school and freshman year of college, assembling 40-foot truck trailers for the Fruehauf Trailer Corporation.  I had been somewhat insulated from the harsh realities of the working world in my previous jobs, but the dog-eat-dog environment at Fruehauf made me feel like the proverbial deer in the headlights.  My job interview went well, the people who talked to me seemed pretty nice.  I was hired on the spot, most likely because I was breathing, and I had assured everyone that I was not going to quit in August to go to college. I was instructed to buy a pair of steel toe work boots and a hammer.   Reporting to work the following Monday, I shuffled into a small auditorium-like room with about 50 other people and took a seat in a folding chair.  The moment everyone was settled, a bowling ball with arms, legs, and a crew cut head barreled into the room.  After introducing himself as Mr. Geib (I went to school with his brother) he began to berate the new hires.  Anyone with hair longer than his was addressed as “Hippie”, recent high school grads were called “fresh meat”.  He especially doled out his malevolence on those he perceived as Hippies, accusing them of having their brains turned to mush by constant marijuana consumption and they better pin up their ponytails or suffer the consequences of them getting scalped by some piece of moving machinery.  He predicted by the end of the first week, of the 50 people in the room, only 15 would remain.  He was right.  I need to mention Mr. Geib was the HR manager.  Curiously there were no employee grievances. Everyone was so pleasant at Fruehauf.  A co-worker had strongly urged me to take my hammer home at the end of my shift.  I didn’t have a toolbox, if I left it laying out in the open, “Someone will rip it off, there’s a lot of assholes working here.”  As I approached the gates that exited to the parking lot, one of those “assholes” I was warned about told the security guard I was trying to leave the premises with “company property”.  I was supposed to have a note from my supervisor stating the hammer was indeed mine, a policy I was unaware of, and one I was now violating, as was stated on the deviant behavior form the security guard issued to me, “With a copy going to your shift foreman. You will be dealt with tomorrow.”  My hammer was clearly not one supplied to me by the company, I believe Fruehauf issued Stanley hammers to employees once they were past their 90 day probation period.  My hammer was an inexpensive TruTemper acquired from the Middletown Merchandise Mart, referred to as “The Big M” by us locals.  I was not dealt with severely, my supervisor apologized for not making me aware of the policy and gave me a tool pass the next day.

I was assigned to the refrigerator trailer assembly department as part of a two-person team fastening panels in the nose of the trailer.  There was almost no air movement in the nose and by the end of the second week I had sweated away 15 pounds.  I was supposed to report to my college football team in mid-August weighing between 220 – 225 pounds, but I weighed in at 198 on the first day of training camp.  198 pounds, I need to go back and work in the nose of a trailer for a few months.  But back to the work environment.  It was hot and loud, profane, medium profane and super profane.  Some people were very eloquent in their profanity.  In the employee caste system, the color of one’s hard hat revealed where they fell in the hierarchy.  White hard hats were the managers, from department level to executive level, shift supervisors wore brown hard hats, welders wore green, painters wore blue, maintenance staff orange, and the worker bees yellow.  All supervisors and managers had to wear white shirts and a dark necktie.  The manager of my department fell into the eloquently profane conversation group and would walk along the production line swearing at the teams toiling inside the trailers.  “Lazy bastards, lazy hippie bastards (it was 1972), lazy F’ing hippie bastards, dope fiends, and stupid asses” we’re his trademark berate lines.  His florid complexion and gin blossom nose stood out in contrast to his brilliantly white shirt.  When he finished verbally kicking all the yellow hats and went back to his office, our shift supervisor would come by and apologize for his boss’s behavior and tell us to pay him no mind, he was either drunk or “bad hungover”.  

I got pretty good at my job and earned the respect of my co-workers.  After missing one day of work because of the major flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes, they were glad to see me return and hoped my family didn’t experience any storm damage.  One hot, humid day in mid-July, my boss called me over and asked, “What the ‘f’ are you doing here?”  I thought I had done something wrong.  He clarified by telling me I didn’t belong there and that I better make enough money so I could go to college and not work in such a “shit-hole”.  My co-workers had begun to echo his comments.  Two weeks after my boss had queried me, I gave him my notice.  I would be leaving for college in mid-August to report for football training camp.

He smiled a wry grin and said, “You bastard.” High praise from my supervisor.

Hammer Post Script

My hammer drew a lot of attention on my first day at Fruehauf Trailer. In addition to being accused of stealing it, my team leader heaped a load of scorn on it. Just before we walked into the trailer to start attaching wall panels, he said, “Let me see your hammer.” I handed it over to him. He examined it like a jewelry appraiser and began to laugh, “Hah! What a piece of shit hammer! This won’t last two hours in here, and I ain’t gonna loan you one neither!” He proceeded to wave it at the other members in the work crew, who took turns expressing their opinions on the apparent low quality of the work tool. Well, they were right in a manner of speaking. The Big M, TruTemper hammer didn’t last 2 hours, it would survive many projects for the next 51 years and is still in use as of this writing, as evidenced below.

Ernie Stricsek

The Chatham Writers Group

May 22, 2023