Jacksonville Reflections - teenage work (#0258)

The site (I think) of my second steady job in high school. I’m not entirely sure since the buildings have all changed and my memory isn’t perfect, but it’s about the right spot and the property looks about right – it’s now a facility for an armored car service.

Though this was my second steady job from when I was in DCT in high school, I typically count this as my first ‘real’ job. My work was at a vending machine company where I was quickly put in charge of counting all of the change that the drivers turned in, and balancing it against their inventory. The counting part involved a machine with a large rotating wheel that sorted coins by size and dropped the coins in into hoppers with markers for denominations. Of course the machine jammed fairly often, which I had to fix (it wasn’t hard to do). Wrapping coins wasn’t automated, I had to do that, and to prepare it all for going to the bank. About half way through my time there, I also started going to the bank to make the deposit (and hating pickup trucks (more on that)).

Probably one of the reasons that job agreed with me was due to the fact that all the counting happened in a closed, locked, room and so I didn’t have to interact with anyone until I was through with the counting. It helped, too, that the company was small and, besides the owner, there were only four office staff, including me – no one else did the task I did, I was treated with respect, and there was no one hovering over me. It didn’t hurt that the counting room was in the warehouse and all the drivers were pleasant young men when they dropped off their bags of money and tally sheets.

So what was that about pickup trucks? When the owner decided it was okay for me to deliver the deposits to the bank, they had me drive one of trucks sent out for vending machine repairs. They were classic panel trucks with very stiff clutches, beat up seats, and no power steering. Being short, I felt swallowed up in the truck, so here I was with hundreds of dollars in coins trying to wrangle an unyielding truck, lookout for vulnerable situations where I might be robbed, and fit into the business-only drive-up teller slot. Luckily, I never hit anything (or got robbed.)

….
I rate that job as my first ‘real’ job mainly because it was the first job where I had adult-like responsibilities and was treated with respect by the owner, other office staff, and the drivers. It was from that job that I thought I wanted to be an accountant and so decided to go to college, even though I wasn’t in a college-prep curriculum in school. The whole process of going to college is a long story that extends beyond the limits of this photo set, but parts of that journey will pop-up in later photos.

(Part of a photo-essay series on personal history and race with keyword FlaAla0518)