Tag Archives: take this job and shove it

What was your worst job?  I have a couple that come to mind immediately.  When I was thirteen years old, I got my first job (hear that, kids???) as a hat check girl in a neighborhood restaurant/banquet hall on the South Side of Chicago.  I lied about my age, saying I was fifteen.  I was just a dumb kid who didn’t know anything, which made it far too easy to be completely taken advantage of.  My hourly pay was a whopping $1.25, but the icing on the cake was that I was allowed to keep ten percent of my tips.  That’s right – ten percent of MY TIPS.  And on occasion, two of us girls would be working which meant those tips were shared between us. This was back in the seventies when the average tip was twenty-five cents, so we’re not talking retirement money, but that’s not the point.  My dad was furious when he found out that, at the end of each night, I was expected to bring my little tip bowl into the office for the manager to divvy up (1 for me, 9 for them).  Since this restaurant was in my neighborhood, the guests were often friends of my parents, and they would often slip a dollar into the bowl for me.  My father told me that when they did that, it was because they thought that money was going to me, not management.  I learned at a very early age the art of pocketing my tips.