Member-only story
Working for a Wage
Because you can’t be Your Own Boss!
Most of us who have ever lived have experienced some kind of ‘employment’ or other. Whether that was so-called ‘self-employment’ or was working for a traditional employer (or even a non-traditional one) is rather beside the point. Whatever we do to create income, it is in some sense a ‘wage.’
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I got my first real job at age sixteen. Let me correct that. My first real job was gotten for me at age sixteen.
I was home for the summer between my junior and senior years at the boarding high school I was attending, and my dad didn’t want me sitting around the house, or looking for a girl friend, or getting in trouble in the back alleys of our town. So he got me a job.
I didn’t apply for one, or even know anything about it. He came home one day from his own job and simply informed me: “You have a job. It starts tomorrow.”
The pay was forty cents an hour, which wasn’t great but which also wasn’t terrible for a sixteen-year-old kid in 1956. My duties were to operate a gasoline station combined with what we would now call a convenience store, though that term hadn’t been invented yet. Self-service gasoline pumps weren’t a ‘thing’ yet, so if anyone pulled into the…
