Six months ago, I got and left my first ever-proper job--well, what everyone (including myself) would call my first proper job after what everyone would think was a rather appalling time of exactly six hours on the job. 

At the time I tried to justify my walk out with the fact that the hours and the working conditions were truly appalling. But maybe, just maybe, with a little hindsight that job could have been the best job of my young life. The job that would sustain me into life’s little journeys and, as my father would say, "make you into a man my son."

My father and my elder brother for that matter are the kind of people who have always worked. They are the kind of people who hate signing on the dole and would much rather skin baked beans at a penny a day for a living than to compromise their principles. They were the people that they wanted me to be and, to be honest, they were everything I did not want to become. 

I had always had those grand dreams and ambitions as a child, I was forever getting into trouble in school for day-dreaming and not paying enough attention. It’s not that I wasn’t bright (I am a ferocious learner and am proud to say that intellectually I can stand up to the best of them) but, to be honest, when they were asking kids what they wanted to be I wasn’t thinking about being a chef a soldier or a ballerina--I was thinking about climbing Everest or becoming a spaceman. But on realizing I was too petrified of heights to climb Everest and living in a tiny town in Wales, I had no chance of becoming a spaceman, I started searching round for something that I wanted to do. Something that would define my life and give it a sense of meaning and purpose. 

I knocked around between work experience and college for many years, resisting the pressure from my peers to find a girl, settle down and raise a family. I had to admit that I did not want to get bogged down by something I could not walk away from later. I wanted no emotional ties, nothing to get in my way if the call should come--but what that call may be I do not know yet. After resisting pressure for so long, I finally gave in and began to look properly for a job, a job that someone with very little work experience could do. It wasn’t long before I thought I found the perfect job, Sorting Operative in a recycling plant. Forty hours a week sounded great--an early start but that was o.k. 

I was going to be working in one of those clean, safe environments that recycling plants looked like on the T.V, right? I went for the interview, turned on the charm and was given the job straight away. Yes, I had done it, all on my own in one of the worst places for unemployment in the UK, I had gotten a job. The man interviewing me told me a little about what I would be doing, and that I would be starting the following Monday. I was totally stoked, and I could barely hold my excitement. I could not wait to rush home and tell my family and friends. All of my family was finally pleased that I was going to start to act in what was considered a normal way. But then they started to tell me: "That’s great that you have the job, after a little while you will be able to get a mortgage, you can even go out and find yourself a proper girlfriend."

I couldn’t believe what they were telling me, I had not even started the job yet, and they were planning my future for me. I started to doubt whether this job was going to be a good idea. I didn’t want to be the norm, I wanted to blaze my own path. I wanted to see the world and sleep with a beautiful woman in every country; I had visions of myself seeing the world like some explorer in years gone by. Or maybe I was just fighting the inevitable: everyone settles down sooner or later! So why fight what’s going to happen any way, right?

My first day's work was starting on Monday. I woke up at 5 AM , nervous and a bit apprehensive of what the job was going to entail. I had gotten my first two shocks the day before when I was told I would have to supply my own safety gear. Fine, I thought, I had protective boots, and the rest I could wing. And then they had told me the other news: I would be working a 55-hour-week, that was a shock right there. I was supposed to go from not working at all to busting my arse for fifty-five hours a week. This was going to be one hell of a shock to the system, but I would have to go through with it. I couldn’t back out now. I would look foolish to every one.

I caught the bus and was at work for a 7 AM start when I saw the plant for the first time and couldn’t believe my eyes. The place was a dump, literally a dump, with skips placed everywhere and huge mounds of rubbish stacked up--it stank to high heaven. Garbage bags piled right to the ceiling of the warehouse and with rubbish blocking fire exits the place was a death trap. I laughed as I saw a brightly coloured sign telling me to beware of rats-- yeah, right, even rats would not grace this hole. I was introduced along with some other new guys to the people that worked there. It was like the village of the damned, they were all, in the words of one of them, mentally unstable. I was even told to stay away from three of them because they were extremely dangerous.

Oh, great first day, I would have to spend it working in a place where the dangerous heavy machinery was operated by men without two brain cells to rub together. Brilliant. I was then forced to climb over 20 feet high stacks of rubbish bags to get to my workstation. It was while having huge bags of garbage pushed in on me from a little guy riding a bobcat and then falling twice and hurting my shoulder that I decided this was not for me. I walked out. All in all, I had lasted on the job six hours of my ten-hour shift. I had to admit that I felt terrible walking out but I wasn’t the first to do so--two new people had already quit that morning before me.  

So at least I had the comfort of knowing that I wasn’t the first one to go. That afternoon when I got home and told my family, they were understanding if not a little disappointed. I had to admit I was a little disappointed in myself. Maybe I should have stuck to the job a little longer, and maybe it would have been o.k. I am sad to say that I am back unemployed again, with my family on my back but I can honestly say that I think now that I am destined for bigger and better things in life, maybe I will discover a cure for cancer, or maybe I will wipe out world poverty, or maybe I will end up a broke and twisted old man with nothing to show for his life. Oh, well, never mind. At least I am going to have fun finding out.

Author's Biography

Owen Hollifield is a 22-year-old from Wales.

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