LIVING THE DREAM: COUNTING INVENTORY AT A PIPE-RACK CLOTHING STORE

[Let us know what’s the worst job you have ever had. Something you suffered through while young? Or an adult drudgery? Or something good that turned bad? Write to us at writingaboutourgeneration@gmail.com.]

By Frank Van Riper

      I am maybe mid-way through high school in the Bronx in the early ‘60s and looking for summer work.

      Some kids might have signed on to their parent’s shops or businesses. (There were more mom and pop operations back then, or so it seemed.) But no such luck for me. Pop was a note teller at a bank; my mother a bookkeeper. So it’s not as if I could have signed on as an apprentice.

      Somebody told me about New York State Youth Employment services. I contacted them and wound up at the worst job of my life: counting inventory at a low-end  pipe-rack clothing store in Manhattan (or was it Brooklyn?).

      Christ, what drudgery. Some other poor soul and I stood amid a sea of discount suits, pants and dresses and had to painstakingly record the ID numbers of each hanging item. We were on the clock, meaning that, if we ever wanted to take a break from this stultifying work, we had to tell the boss, who would make sure we were not paid for our leisure. (I didn't take any breaks; my partner had to quit every so often for a smoke.) 

      The healing passage of time has helped me forget how long I did this—a day, a weekend—who knows? But I do remember as a high school kid figuring all the money I would make for doing this lousy job.

      Which meant I was to have my dreams dashed a second time.

      When I showed up at the store some days later to be paid, I eagerly ripped open my pay envelope, only to find that the total in my head was nothing like the number on the check.

      And that’s how I first learned about payroll deductions.