Paul R. Nelson for Congress, Woodville, WI

This is part 5 of my summer job series. Click the following links for part 1, 2, 3, or 4.

By the time I got my 5th summer job I'd spent 7 summers between 4 jobs and was a college graduate. Aren't summer jobs over by then?

Well, technically, yes. But I was offered a job as a campaign manager for a U.S. congressional campaign and being that it was a temporary job, I consider it sort of a summer job. Besides, I'm getting a lot of really positive feedback on this series so why not extend it to one more post?

This job is in some ways the most exasperating and embarrassing job I've ever had and also the most life-changing. I was in my last semester of college in the fall of 2005. I was the president of the College Republicans on campus and was doing what I could to engage students politically in a civil manner. I'd been frustrated with the rather partisan tone I'd seen previous College Republican leaders take things on campus and was trying to help change that.

In our congressional district we were represented by Ron Kind, a moderate Blue Dog Democrat. The district was comprised of 19 counties in Western Wisconsin stretching from the Illinois border to Eau Claire. It was a 5-hour drive from north to south. The only candidate running for the Republican nomination was a guy named Paul Nelson who lived in Woodville, just 20 minutes from our school. I was able to get some of the college students involved in showing up to hear him speak and help him out a few times. By November he approached me about managing his campaign. He'd been impressed with my coordination of the students on campus and wanted me to apply that to his campaign full time.

I was planning to go to law school when I was done with college so this would be a diversion. However, law school wouldn't start until the next fall at the earliest and I still wasn't sure how I was going to pay for it anyway. I was seriously considering the National Guard to help pay for it if possible. I also knew that if I wanted a career in politics a job as a campaign manager for such a high-profile race was a great place to start.

Our first step was to negotiate salary. He asked me to draw up the contract. That really should have been my first warning flag. Typically an employer offers a salary and the employee then accepts, rejects, or counter-offers. When he asked for me to draw it up, I turned to my aunt for advice. She suggested I aim high because nobody ever offers more than you ask for! I asked for $45,000.

I wasn't stupid. I knew $45,000 was too much for a temporary job straight out of college managing a campaign with no experience doing that and a liberal arts degree in history backing me up. The reaction from the candidate was predictable. He countered with something along the lines of $33,000 with a $12,000 bonus if he won the election. I thought it was a fair compromise. Built into the $33,000 salary were my living expenses, with something like $500 a month being deducted from my paycheck in exchange for living in a studio apartment on the second floor of the candidate's house. The place really wasn't worth $500 a month but I wasn't going to complain.

Let me tell you a little bit about the candidate. My initial impression was of a Christian guy who home schooled his kids, was part of a very conservative home church, had a successful realty business, was a Marine veteran, and was politically passionate to say the least. While I wasn't exactly head-over-heels fawning over him, he seemed like a genuine guy who was a viable candidate.

My first memorable red flag came on a trip to Washington, D.C. We went to a conservative organization called the Leadership Institute for training in political campaigning. It was the type of seminar and workshop series that leaves you feeling like if you dot your i's and cross your t's following their methods, you will win your election! (NOTE: If you ever leave a seminar feeling like you suddenly have all of the answers, A.) they were successful and B.) there's a reasonable chance you're delusional.) While we were at this event the candidate, who was a spotless family guy back home, suddenly took up swearing on occasion. It wasn't a big deal to me but was odd given what I'd seen of him to this point. One evening we went to a bar and restaurant and he took up drinking. Let me rephrase that: he took up a LOT of drinking! He was so hungover the next day he couldn't sit through the workshops and had to leave a few times to throw up.

So 2 months into the campaign I knew that the guy had a bit of a double life, acting one way at home around family and church people and another when with a different crowd. That was a bad sign.

I also should have raised a red flag before I even started with the campaign when an expensive fundraiser on a river boat brought in a very meager crowd, half of whom was there for free for the purpose of adding bodies and making the event look halfway respectable (which it still wasn't).

But hey, I was running a campaign! We were traveling to all 19 of those counties, he was speaking at events, I was on a first-name basis with the attorney general and governor candidates (the attorney general actually won and is still in office and one of the two governor candidates just won election in 2010 and is Wisconsin's new governor). For a political junkie it was as exciting as it gets!

I spent a lot of time doing opposition research, finding parades to fit into our schedule, writing and sending press releases, traveling to events, trying to find volunteers, and trying to maintain my sanity in the midst of the 24/7 campaign schedule. The candidate took some time to let me know that he thought I should be working harder at one point that summer. Never mind that I often stayed at the office until midnight and was in by around 8:00 AM every morning or that my only day off was Sunday and even then, I was still on standby and often barely had time to make it to church before I had to be at another event. He documented the times I was posting updates on my blog and demanded no blogging while I was in the office. Never mind that many of those posts came out of the issue and opposition research I was doing. He also wanted more recruiting and management and less opposition research, campaign strategy, and other things that he considered menial. And at first I really tried to buy it. I told myself that he had some fair points. After all, he continually talked up his business résumé so I had to trust his wisdom and experience. Maybe I did just need to work harder than I was. Maybe I did need to quit those blog posts that took a whole 5 minutes of my 16-hour days. And so I tried to comply as best I could with what he wanted me to be doing.

As the summer dragged on and fundraising was almost nonexistent, he started to get increasingly desperate. He frequently came back to me with edits to my weekly press releases that inserted more forceful language. It started to get to the point where I was simply uncomfortable sending them. They were too harsh, too mean-spirited, too far-fetched. I remember one press release that had to do with a "wall of terror." He had photos printed of every Muslim terrorist who had been a part of 9/11 or any other terror act. He put them up on a wall and used them to show that if someone was Middle Eastern and was wearing a turban, we should profile them. That's right, he was advocating racial profiling. He went on the evening news in Eau Claire with that wall of terror behind him hammering his point home in defense of racial profiling. Nobody really cared about the issue but he was going to make it an issue!

I was really starting to hit my breaking point. But I was committed. I had signed that contract committing to the campaign through the end and I didn't want to back out on a commitment. So I plugged ahead, hoping something of the campaign could be salvaged.

Mercifully, it all came to an end in September when the candidate called me up to his office and asked for my letter of resignation. I couldn't have been more relieved. I asked him why and he simply responded that his expectations weren't being met. That was fair enough. Mine weren't either.

After I left the campaign it went from bad to worse. I started receiving calls from volunteers and staffers for other campaigns throughout the district asking what happened. I'll never forget a response I got from one of the staffers for gubernatorial candidate Mark Green: "WHAT?!? What are they going to do now? You're the only hope that campaign had!" That helped put to rest any insecurity I may have had. A colleague in the campaign office cried and gave me a hug as I packed my things. It was strange to be walking out, but it was so freeing!

The campaign continued to grow increasingly vicious. They ran through 3 or 4 campaign managers in the 2 months after I left. They aired a couple of TV ads that were literally the most controversial ads in the nation. The ads warranted the candidate time on the radio with shock jocks Opie and Anthony, but not on CNN. To this day I see clips from his ads aired on shows discussing how low political campaigning can get.

I'll never forget something the candidate told me the first time he took me aside for a walk around town to discuss his problems with my performance. He said, "If you want to just sit in a corner researching, that's fine, but anybody can do that, Joey. You'll never make more than about $50,000 doing it. You'll never make six digits as a data geek." He added something about needing to know how to manage and motivate people. (Never mind that we were competing with a number of highly competitive statewide races for volunteers and he wasn't open to collaborating with those campaigns for shared resources.) He also said he was running for Congress instead of state assembly because a Wisconsin assemblyman made $50,000 and a congressman made $160,000. "Joey, I've been a successful businessman and frankly, that would be a step backwards for me."

I say all of this because it makes the end results so sad. After the campaign ended the candidate filed for bankruptcy. His reputation in the area was in ruins and he moved to Wyoming, where last I heard he does flooring. As easy as it is to vilify him, I feel bad for him. He sold his dream home to run for congress. He believed passionately about what he was doing. And it all fell apart.

I could write a week's worth of posts on memories and lessons learned from this campaign. I learned that there are no more passionate people than political grassroots activists. They are the reason politics in America is so polarized, yet they are the lifeblood that keeps political campaigns going. It's a strange balance every candidate has to play between keeping the activists working on the ground happy while also appealing to the middle-of-the-road bums sitting on their duffs watching a political ad pop up between reruns of The Simpsons. It's the bums (okay, and a number of intellectual moderates) who decide these elections but they're rarely the ones putting in the manual labor for the candidates.

I fielded one complaint from someone who was offended by the behavior of a volunteer who was being very obnoxious at a 4th of July fireworks display. It wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been sitting next to the candidate wearing a campaign t-shirt and talking loudly about how stupid the opposition was. I tried in vain to keep him off the campaign but it was another area where the candidate and I just didn't see eye to eye.

After I left the campaign I was pretty anxious. I'd never just been jobless and I began a frantic job search. I had no income source and a new girlfriend who would be needing a new ring a few months later. I had no idea where to turn but I was confident politics wasn't it. I knew I wanted to stay in the Twin Cities because of that girl. My dad offered me a job with him but it would have meant moving away from that girl and besides, as previously stated I was pretty convinced the manufacturing world wasn't for me.

One of the volunteers on the campaign was a senior software engineer for a software company in Minneapolis. I knew nothing about software companies but I knew I needed a job and with my history degree and political experience, just about anyone who was willing to hire me and pay a moderately decent wage was fair game. That engineer sent me an email and referred me to his HR department. I had a job less than 2 weeks after leaving the campaign, working as a Customer Operations Analyst in client support.

I was promoted 6 months into working at that job, largely because of the management experience I had on the campaign. Oh, and that girl I married? I met her at a church I was going to because of where I was living while working for the campaign.

I've tried to disassociate myself from that campaign as much as possible. My résumé lists the vague "Nelson for Congress." With enough Google searches someone could still track me down to the campaign but I don't want to make it easy for them. I'd hate for someone to think I was associated with that train wreck without knowing the full story.

There's a bright side to every experience, no matter how frustrating. This was one of the more exasperating experiences of my life but was also what led me to my wife and my career. I'm thankful for the experience. I'm equally thankful I never have to repeat it.

Delaware North Companies, Yosemite National Park, CA

This is part 4 of my summer job series. Click the following links for part 1, 2, 3, or 5.

Also, if you stumbled here while searching for information on jobs in Yosemite and want to know more about what it's like to work in the park, send me an email! You can also find currently available positions at Delaware North's Yosemite jobs page.

The best summer job I ever had is one I've talked about a number of times on this blog. In 2005, my last summer in college, I worked in Yosemite National Park in California for Delaware North Companies, the concessionaire who provides almost all services inside the park.

I first visited Yosemite on a road trip with a friend in 2004. I was hooked. When trying to figure out what to do for a job the next summer my attention turned to national parks. I researched a few and Yosemite seemed like a great fit, so I sent in an application.

My great-grandfather worked for the National Park Service in Yosemite in the 1930s. My grandma was literally born inside the park's hospital, which is now a clinic, and the houses she lived in are still used as homes for park rangers today. But it was more than that pulling me back to Yosemite. The 2 days I'd spent there were enough for me to know I wanted to spend a whole summer there.

I drove across the country, leaving my friend's graduation party in Maplewood, MN, and driving 26 hours before stopping in Austin, NV. Austin is literally in the middle of Nevada - their slogan is "Welcome to the middle of Nevada" - and boasts 340 people. It's referred to as a "living ghost town." I didn't care. I was stopped. I had used a few too many methods to stay awake on the drive out. I talked to a friend visiting Hawaii, which was 5 hours behind me. I took in a crazy display of Northern Lights in Nebraska (they saw them as far south as San Diego that night). During the day I read and re-read the only reading material I had, a welcome pamphlet telling me what to expect as a Delaware North employee in Yosemite. The reading offered enough stimulation to keep me awake. I only stopped for gas, otherwise I just kept driving.

I was scheduled to be in the park the next day and only had a few hours to go past Austin, or so I thought. When I got to Carson City I found out the mountain pass into Yosemite from the east was still closed due to the long winter. (It was the end of May.) So, I started through the Sierra Nevada Mountains just south of Lake Tahoe, made my way through a small snowstorm, and got to the west entrance to Yosemite, only to find that entrance closed as well due to flooding in Yosemite Valley, which is where everyone lives, works, and where most visitors spend their time. In fact, it was some of the worst flooding they'd ever had. So I had to double back to the city of Merced and find a hotel for the night.

When I showed up at human resources the next day I was an "unassigned hire," as most summer employees are were (I've been told by DNC they no longer hire this way; all new hires are hired into specific positions ahead of time). That means you don't know what you're doing until you get there and they fill positions as needed. You could be working as a housekeeper, scrubbing toilets, busing tables, serving fast food, etc. I was given my pick of jobs and decided to be a hotel porter. I headed back to get my ID badge and the woman behind the counter started making small talk. Something came up about me being from Wisconsin and being a cheesehead. A woman nearby overheard the conversation and mentioned that she went to school in Ashland, just 2 hours from where I grew up. As we talked she asked what I was doing for the summer and then if I really wanted to do that. Of course, I was open to other options. She asked if I had a background with teaching and with kids. I told her I'd been an education major until the previous semester and was the oldest of 11 kids. She asked if I'd be interested in giving tours instead, coming on board with the Interpretive Services department as a seasonal naturalist. She didn't have to ask twice!

And so began the best summer of my life. I was interviewed by Emily the next day, who worked for Julie, the woman I'd originally spoken with. Emily's first words were something to the effect of, "So I looked over your résumé and there's just one problem: I see you're a College Republican..." She had a smirk on her face and it was all good from there. Emily had also gone to school in Wisconsin at both UW-Green Bay and UW-Stevens Point, both within a few hours of where I grew up. She's originally from the Twin Cities and remains a good friend to this day. Her interview was mostly along the lines of, "Here's what the job entails, but don't feel like you have to take it if you don't want it." The job was highly competitive with students in that field and it was only open because an employee lined up to take it backed out at the last minute and they were scrambling for someone to fill the position. It really is amazing that we were able to connect the way we were.

I gave tours of the historic Ahwahnee Hotel, led amphitheater programs, took kids on nature hikes, ran an hour-long astronomy program, led campfires (guitar and hip cowboy hat in hand), and really just had a blast. In my free time I hiked as much as I could, over 200 miles by the end of the summer.

It's tough to convey how much that summer meant - and still means - to me. The skills I learned in public speaking and leading large groups are still with me today. I learned to value nature more than I ever had before. And to this day I often wish I could be back there working in Yosemite. It's not uncommon for people to go there for a short-term job and never leave. I've been back twice since, both times with my wife. When we went this summer, it was at her request. She's hooked too. I occasionally check Delaware North Companies' job listings to see if there's anything out there that matches my fields of interest.

Being a history major and a bit of a research nut, I quickly became the resident expert on the Ahwahnee Hotel, doing what I could to clean up any bad history in existing materials and adding any new material I could find. I'd run over to Emily's office and ask, "Have you ever heard this before?" I hope to stay in that hotel some night. It costs around $400 a night and they have 96% occupancy year-round, but I'm determined to make it happen, even if it's just for a night! I spent too much time studying and being in that hotel to not sleep in it just once.

I was not a fan of the astronomy program. In fact, I protested having to do it quite a bit. Emily really pushed for me to do it though, regardless of the fact that the stars held no interest for me. So I researched and worked to hone a program that I thought I could deliver. I went into that first program with a piece of paper with all of my notes and a little flashlight in case I needed to refer to it. I presented my program and at the end, I had told the group of people present every single fact I knew about the sky. That was it. There were no more things that I knew about the sky. Nobody could ask me a question because I wouldn't have known the answer. A woman came up to me when it was over and asked, "Are you an astronomy major?" And so did another. I couldn't believe it! As flattered as I was, I felt like I'd fooled them!

Of course, you can't always fool everyone. One night I had a man who worked for NASA on my astronomy program. His wife made sure to keep him relatively quiet, but he wasn't without his interjections. I think I sweat bullets through that entire program after finding that out, sure I was getting each fact wrong.

Of course, working in a place full of tourists we had to deal with normal tourist stupidity. But honestly, when you're working in a place that beautiful, it makes it a lot easier to deal with. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's totally true.

I had a number of crazy weekends. The craziest was probably the weekend I went to visit my friend in Sacramento. I left as soon as I got off work and arrived late. We stayed up all night and went to church together the next day. I left that evening and decided at the last minute to head to Los Angeles to see my uncle and aunt. It was about a 5-hour drive but I figured I could make it. I stopped to sleep a couple of times and pulled in the next morning. I visited with them for an hour or so and then left, driving through LA and then to Pasadena to see the Rose Bowl. I went on to Joshua Tree National Park, where I did a few short hikes, and then headed back towards Yosemite. By this time it was the evening before I needed to be back. I had to work at noon the next day. I pulled over to sleep along the highway and woke up much later than I'd wanted. In spite of the fact that I was cutting it close, I still decided to make a couple of detours to see some things I'd been meaning to see, including the Devil's Postpile. Visitors to the Devil's Postpile are required to park and take a shuttle in to see it. I knew I had no chance of making it back in time and was able to convince the rangers at the gate to let me in since "I work in Yosemite." I made one more detour that would almost be my downfall. To make a long story short, I got stuck in sand on a trail meant for dune buggies and spent a half-hour or so jacking up my 4-cylinder 1994 Mazda Protege and propping it up on sticks and rocks to get it out of the sand hole I'd dug myself into. I made it to work about a half hour late and I don't think anyone believed me at first when I told them all of the places I'd been that weekend.

I miss my time out there. That's a time in life you only have once, where you're single and have this whole park to just explore. It's something I wish everyone could have the chance to do once.

There are other stories I could tell, of a Harley ride to King's Canyon and Sequoia National Parks with my uncle, of a couple of crazy hikes up to Half Dome, of a 35-mile solo day hike that was nothing short of insanity, and of the friends I made while I was there. But I'll save those for another day.

I have nothing but fond memories of this job. I've often recommended it to others and have yet to see someone take me up on it. I suppose the pay could be better. The hotel porter gig would have been $7.50. As it was I was paid $10 an hour. Of course, this was a few years ago and I'm sure pay has gone up since then. Employees do have to pay union dues, which is especially frustrating for a summer employee. I thought it was good pay for summer jobs out there, though I know there are better-paying jobs elsewhere, especially when considering the cost of getting out there in the first place. But you won't find another job that provides that kind of a wild, adventurous, inspiring experience.

AirPro Fan & Blower Company, Rhinelander, WI

This is part 3 of my summer job series. Click the following links for part 1, 2, 4, or 5.

For my first two summers in college I worked for my dad's company, AirPro. He was starting the business manufacturing industrial fans and I was what I would label a "shop rat."

I made trips to pick up materials. I painted fans. I assembled fans. I did some light welding and metal cutting. I operated a forklift.

Of all of the jobs I've had, I think I have more memorable stories from this one. Part of it was the fact that it was a startup business. Things are always more interesting with startups. Part of it was it was a machine shop, which was really outside of my element.

I had a few incidents with the van and trailer I used to haul materials. On a return with a load of steel I realized the tailgate on the trailer had fallen off. It was big, probably 8x4 feet, and I knew it was lying in the middle of the road a few miles back, just waiting to take out someone's tires. I had to turn around ASAP. I was on a 55 MPH highway and pulled off into a driveway, deciding to attempt a 3-point turn. Halfway into maneuvering what I'm sure became at least a 5-point turn, I saw a car coming and knew I had to hurry. I made my final turn and decided I had enough clearance to keep going. The sound of metal on metal told me that I didn't have as much clearance as I thought as the trailer punctured a hole in the corner of the van.

In another incident with the van I realized I had gone past the road I needed and had to turn around. (Are you seeing a theme with turning around?) This time I was free of the trailer but no better a driver. I pulled off on the shoulder and was again going to make a 3-point turn. The tall grass on the side of the road hid the fact that after the one foot of gravel shoulder there was a 2-foot drop straight down into a marshy area. The front right side of the van plummeted and the van was left teetering. A passerby offered to call a tow truck once they got service since I was in the middle of nowhere. After about an hour, a visit from an obviously disgusted deputy to help with traffic diversion on the small county road, and a $75 tow truck fee later, I was free again.

My uncle, an engineer at the company, still talks about an incident where I got stuck with the forklift. I was taking a load outside the building and got stuck in some soft sand in front of the building where the street was being repaved. The guys working on the street came to my aid with a big front end loader. They attached a chain to the front end loader and hooked it onto the forklift. My uncle said he looked out the window and the appearance was that my rinky-dink forklift was hauling this huge front end loader.

I did a lot of painting. As a small company trying to meet shipping deadlines, we had a number of cases where I was there until 2 AM trying to finish a paint job for a fan that had to be assembled, tested, and shipped out the next day. In some cases the paint was still wet as it went on the truck, normally spots that I was touching up at the last minute. After those summers I have a huge appreciation for painters!

I have a few scars from my time there. In one case I got careless with a grinder and put a big slice into my knuckle. In another case my brother and I were trying to flip a huge sheet of metal. It was 6-8 feet long and between 1/2 and 3/4 inches thick. We were dumb enough to try to flip it on a table, which didn't work. The sheet came sliding down and did some fairly significant damage to the skin on my hands.

After two summers, I felt I had received pretty solid confirmation that I had not found my calling in life. I made $10 an hour my first summer and $7.50 an hour my second summer. (I could explain that reverse in fortunes, but I don't recall all of the details of my conversations with my dad over that agreement, just that that's what it was.)

I go back to visit the shop at least every few years. After my first summer they moved locations and have since expanded on that location a few times. The place is a professional outfit that's impressive to see.

But on the wall in the break room is a picture of me after a long day of painting, covered head to toe. It's a reminder of where the place has been - and really, of where I've been.

Shopko, Rhinelander, WI

This is part 2 of my summer job series. Click the following links for part 1, 3, 4, or 5.

My 2nd job was at a Wisconsin-based retail store called Shopko. The starting salary of $6.25 an hour was a $0.50 raise from my previous job.

I started out as a cashier since that's what I'd done at the grocery store. I was training another new employee a week after I started. Within 2-3 months my boss recognized that I was bored and moved me to stocking shelves. I spent most of my time stocking new shipments, unloading trucks, backstocking merchandise that didn't fit on the floor, and restocking the floor.

I remember them training me for a few months to take on a role of a full-time employee who would be going on vacation. Right when her vacation came up my little brother's Little League baseball team made the state tournament and my dad was pretty insistent that I go with the family. I was sure I'd lose my job for it, but as mad as my boss was, I lived to see another day at the store...

A year or so in I got a new boss, Tom. We never got along very well. I didn't like him and he didn't like me. He gave me a written warning once because he claimed that I put the price stickers in the wrong spot in the lamp aisle. He tried to deflect responsibility and say the store manager was really particular about the lamp aisle and it was him who really had the beef with me, but the store manager never said a thing about it. I argued my point with Tom since I thought he was crazy and only signed his written warning when he assured me it only meant I'd read it, not that I agreed with it.

Our security guy would occasionally ask us for backup. One time, 5 or 6 of us were called off from unloading a truck to come up to the security room and help with a bust. We watched the security cameras as a group of 3 people in their 20s with a baby in a car seat stuffed CDs into a diaper bag and the car seat. We were then stationed near the entrance of the store to help in case they tried to run for it when they left. Thankfully they didn't.

That same security guy was later fired when he used a key to get into an employee's locker, take her car keys, and prank her. I think he pulled her car up to the emergency parking area and left it there.

The music selection in Shopko was awful. To this day I refer to songs on their playlist as the "Shopko Classics." It wasn't uncommon to hear the same song twice in a shift, which got pretty old after a few years of working 5 days a week.

By the time I left I'd worked in every department except Optical. I helped out in the pharmacy a few times, lawn & garden in the spring and summer, and pulled the night shift during a couple of winter breaks in college. When I left I was making something like $7.15 an hour, not much, but enough to pay for my first year and a half of college.

I think everyone should work retail at some point in their life. It gives you a whole new appreciation for people, both customers and employees...

Cirilli's County Market, Rhinelander, WI

This week I'm going to take a look at the summer jobs I had in high school and college. Click the following links for part 2, 3, 4, or 5.

I got my first job at age 14. I had looked into getting a paper route for a while but that never went anywhere. I started looking around at places that would actually hire a 14-year-old kid and decided to go for a grocery store. I figured anyone could bag groceries.

I dropped off an application at Trig's, a local grocery store with a few locations in Northern Wisconsin. I didn't hear anything back so I turned to the only other store in town, Cirilli's County Market. The Cirilli family had owned a grocery store in Rhinelander for as long as anyone who had ever lived there could remember.

I walked into the store and asked for an application at the front desk. I left the store, spent an hour or so filling it out, and returned with my mom to hand it in. When I did, Jeff Schultz walked up to the front desk. He was the co-owner along with Tony Cirilli. My recollection is bad, but I think he was somewhere around 50, a little tall and big. Mary Raabe was working behind the counter and he asked her (and me?) who I was. She told him I was applying and handed him my application. He took a quick look at it and said, "Hire him!"

I spent the next year bagging groceries and the year after that as a cashier. Being home schooled, I often worked during school hours, which always threw people off. I wonder how many people shook their heads at the screw-up high school dropout who bagged their groceries.

I started making $4.75 an hour, which was minimum wage for the initial 90-day probationary period for a minor. When I left I was making $5.75. I remember when an older kid who'd been working there for a few years longer than me happened to see the hourly wage on my paycheck when we picked them up at the same time one day. I was making only $0.10 less than him. Let's just say I didn't know many people working there for the pay.

There are a lot of memories from that job. I remember Tuesdays, with a BOGO deal on all bakery bread and a 5% senior citizen (55+) discount that made me sweat every customer who appeared to be between the age of 50 and 60. I remember making the 3-mile bike ride in 10 minutes because I only had 10 minutes to get to work. I remember working on Christmas morning - yes, they were open Christmas Day - and thinking how horrible every person was who was shopping instead of at home. I remember Mary yelling at me for stopping for a few minutes to talk to a coworker and get a drink and then writing her an apology letter that made her feel terrible about it. I remember Tony's kid working at the store and clipping inappropriate articles from magazines and posting them in the break room. I remember Anne Marie wearing Bears shirts anytime they played the Packers. I remember taking loads of bread, cakes, cookies, donuts, etc. home from the bakery the day after it would expire.

I remember a whole lot of other things that probably don't mean much to most of you, but I learned a lot at that job.

Cirilli's County Market closed not long after I left, shutting down not long after the Walmart Supercenter opened across the street. I had a few more siblings after me who worked at either County Market or the subsequent, short-lived store they opened, Save-a-Lot. It's always sad to see a small town icon like that disappear. I'm just glad I was able to be a small part of it towards the end.