What I Learned From My First Job

Lately, on LinkedIn, a bunch of rich, famous CEOs of major corporations have been writing posts titled "What I Learned from my First Job." Today I read the post from the guy who runs eBay. He delivered beer and got to drink at 7am. The perfect summer job for an 18 year old! But he claims he took away leadership qualities and trust from that job. So, what did I learn from my first job? At first, when I started thinking about it, I was pretty sure the answer was 'absolutely nothing'. I was a 16-year old waitress at a Perkins Pancake House. I ran track in high school, and they worked my hours around my track schedule until school let out for the summer. I worked a few days a week, in the evenings--when no one goes into a pancake place. Minimum wage for servers was $1.85 and I'd usually come home with less than $5 in tips because the place was empty. Every once in a while I'd get to fill in for one of the 'regular' girls--the 20-somethings who got to work the breakfast shift--and I'd make $30 in tips. It was an interesting clientele at Perkins in those days. We had two groups of regulars who came in every night: the Arabs and the Mafia. The Arabs were nice and were probably just escaping from their wives for the evening. The Mafia tipped slightly better so we all wanted to wait on them. The Godfather, Tony, Shadow, Big Ed, and few others whose names have faded from my memory. They'd sit around, talk, and study the racing sheets from Waterford and Thistledown Race Tracks. They were all up in arms one night after a horse, in a 'fixed' race, came in 4th. They'd been double-crossed and were not happy. Someone would have to pay for that. The only other major issue was when Tony's son was murdered. Junior ran a strip club. The place had been bombed in the past, but he met his demise when someone gunned him down outside his apartment. Tony never came back to the restaurant after that. And the other guys had zero sympathy. Junior had either threatened or tried to kill every single one of them and they were glad he was dead. Nice things to tell a 16-year old, but I guess I could say I learned loyalty. They were united in their dislike of Junior, and in the dog-eat-dog world of organized crime, they had each other's backs. Surround yourself with people who share your values, and together you'll go far. Maybe it's not the ideal way to present a lesson in loyalty to a teenager, but hey, it was Youngstown. And, then again, maybe I really didn't learn anything--I'd much rather have drank beer at 7am and ended up as the multi-millionaire CEO of eBay.