Published in the Rains County Leader on October 20, 2022:
Last week I went into Subway to pick up lunch for myself and the young lady I visit at the school each week. The only person I saw was the woman at the counter, and I asked if she was working alone.
“Yes,” she replied. “We’ve had a bit of a turnover issue recently.”
“Everybody seems to be having that problem.”
“I know,” she continued. “No one wants to take a job, and if they do, they don’t want to do anything when they get here.”
The same story is heard from many employers that are short-handed. Another story that I’ve often heard among those who are looking for work is I’m not working for $7 an hour. That wouldn’t pay half my car insurance. Both stories were enough to send me on a trip down memory lane.
I received a small allowance when I was a child – I think it was around a dollar a week. That amount wasn’t contingent on any specific jobs, but I was expected to help with general household chores. When I grew tall enough to reach the ironing board, Mom taught me to iron and I earned ten cents per piece for that chore.
My first job outside the home was babysitting. The only client I remember was a young family with three boys. I tried to negotiate and extra ten cents an hour for the extra two, but she said fifty cents an hour was as high as she’d go. While I was there, I was expected to do some chores including giving the boys their dinner, putting them to bed, and cleaning the kitchen. It never occurred to me to complain about either the work load or the pay. After all, I didn’t have car insurance or any other bills to pay, and it was better than nothing.
The day I turned sixteen, Dad took me to get my driver’s license. I didn’t have a car, so I rode to the Big Town Mall with my cousins and applied for a job at Woolworth’s where they worked. My starting pay was ninety cents an hour. My brother was away at college by then, and my parents and I shared one car. Through a complicated system of car switching, car pooling, and bus rides we made do. I spent most of my money on clothes, and I’m sure Dad was relieved to have that expense off his plate.
I continued to work there through two summers and my junior year. By the time I decided to retire for my senior year I had received a couple of raises and was making a little over a dollar an hour. During my time there I had worked behind the candy counter, the soda fountain, the small snack bar that sold hoagie sandwiches, snow cones, and popcorn, and the cash register. It never occurred to me to complain about the pay or the work load. Keeping busy made the time go faster, and the pay was better than nothing.
I didn’t work during my freshman year in college either. My plan was to attend school year round and finish in three years, but I had to drop out of the first summer session when I became ill. When I recovered, I decided it was time I had wheels of my own, so I went to work to earn enough money to buy a car. I got a job as a page in the Credit Department at the First National Bank in Dallas. My starting pay was $220 a month which worked out to be around $1.27 an hour. It wasn’t a lot, but it was enough to pay the $5 a week I paid the woman who drove our car pool, to buy lunches for the week, and have a little left over for clothes. And it was better than nothing.
I didn’t make it back to college for thirty years, and I didn’t earn enough money to buy a car, but within a year I had met and married a young man whose desk I passed several times a day on my rounds to deliver mail and files to various other departments in the bank. I stayed at the bank for about four years. I worked my way from page to a clerk’s position in the File Department. From there I moved to the steno pool and finally to the loan floor as an executive secretary. I don’t remember what my salary was at that point – probably a good bit better than nothing, but not up to $7 an hour yet.
When I was around 23 I retired to start a family, and within the year Christian was on the way. I finally bought my own car because I needed transportation to doctor’s appointments while his dad was using the other car to sell insurance. My car was an old VW Beetle with no bells and whistles that was barely better than nothing, but it got me where I needed to go.
I returned to the work force when Christian was four years old and spent the next 40+ years working mostly in sales and administrative positions, sometimes in an office and sometimes from home. I left my last paid position as secretary at Believers’ Baptist a couple of years ago, but I continue to write and to work at various volunteer positions. The Bible tells us that God created Adam and put him in the Garden to work it and keep it, and Ephesians 2:10 says we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Regardless of the pay involved, I believe that working is better than doing nothing.
Blessings,
Linda
Linda Brendle's Life After Caregiving 
Comments on: "Better than nothing! by Linda Brendle" (1)
The first car I drove was the VW Beetle but my husband traded it in rather quickly for a Chrysler fury. My favorite car to drive was my Plymouth Volare with a slant six engine. I love that car.