Kudzu Queen
My daughter and her friends have begun venturing out beyond babysitting, odd jobs, and yard work into the “Real World” of work. If their world were perfect, they would all work at FooSackly’s. The Foo is the holy grail of teen employment. But since the Foo can only absorb so many flaky adolescents with miniscule work ethics at one time, other businesses have been forced to hire some of these young people.
My daughter is a good kid. Make no mistake, I am blessed and I know it. However, adolescence spares no one from its malevolent shadow.
I was stressing, whoa, correction, I was FREAKING OUT over the car insurance bill when Veronica tripped blithely through the room and announced that she needed 20 dollars for her evening entertainment. Also, where is the gas credit card, because she needs to fill up her tank so she can give Anna, Jamarcus, Hunter, Celeste, and, for all I know, Scooby Doo and Dora The Explorer rides to and from the game.
I did a pretty good imitation of a Tasmanian devil on crystal meth before I managed to calm myself down. Then I found myself parroting my parents’ old speeches: “That’s a pear tree outside the back window, not a damn money tree,” and “I didn’t take your friends to raise,” and “Do I look green to you? No? That’s because I’m not made of money.” To my credit, I did manage to stop short of regaling my child with how I walked 50 miles through blizzards and icebergs to school each day. Got to keep a prudent reserve of speeches, after all.
I told Veronica that her free pass on the gravy train had expired (another one of my parents’ irritating phrases), and that if she wished to continue driving and/or having a cell phone, she would have to get a job. She would have to start looking tomorrow.
“OK,” she said cheerily.
Wow, that was easy, I thought.
It was easy for her, too, because she sought a job about as diligently as most people seek dysentery. I decided I would take charge of the project, so I would not grind my teeth down to bloody nubs out of frustration.
“I got you a job,” I told her. “You start tomorrow.”
Veronica was to be a title clerk and personal assistant to Ms. Suzanne, a brusque old woman who ran a car dealership. I sat back and cackled, waiting for Ms. Suzanne, the consummate, no-nonsense businesswoman, to cash V.’s reality check. Now that she was working, V. would see the world is a cold, callous, cutthroat place. That man is measured by his work. That, unless one works at Hooter’s, being cute and blonde and perky doesn’t pay the cell phone bill. That life, in general, really sucks.
I didn’t count on Ms. Suzanne’s stunning metamorphosis. Under my daughter’s influence, Ms. Suzanne began to resemble less an employer than a fairy godmother.
“Who was on the phone?” I asked V.
“Oh, that was Ms. Sue. She wanted to know what all I had planned to do with my friends this week, so she could arrange my work schedule around that. And she asked me if I needed any extra money for Homecoming.”
“Who was that on the phone?” I asked V., a few days later.
“Oh, that was Ms. Sue. She’s going shopping for her fall wardrobe at some mall in Pensacola and she called to see what my sizes and color preferences were.”
“Who was on the phone?” I asked V., the following week.
“That was Ms. Sue,” said Veronica. “She wanted to know if I would go with her to her family reunion this weekend. It’s in Destin.”
“Isn’t she taking her grandkids?” I asked.
“No. She doesn’t like them very much,” V. said. “I’m not supposed to breathe a word about the family reunion to them.”
The topper was the week V. was on a break from school and Ms. Sue insisted she not work, but still receive full pay. Because God forbid V. should miss out on a social gathering because of having to work and/or not having funds.
This work thing was not turning out the way it was supposed to. Having a job was actually making my daughter MORE spoiled.
I was mainly upset because Ms. Suzanne had offered ME the title clerk/personal assistant position first and I had declined, citing my advanced age and general sorriness as my reasons for not wanting a second job. So for several reasons, chiefly jealousy, I made V. get a different job. Now she works at a corporate chain bookstore.
My neighbors see V. dragging herself into the house in the evenings, obviously exhausted and virtually depleted of her life force. They probably assume I am forcing my child to work 16-hour shifts in the coal mines. Her first weekend working two full shifts, V. begged off of school the following Monday.
“I am just too exhausted,” she pleaded, tearfully. “Please don’t make me go to school today. Please, please let me just sleep.”
This was more like it. We were edging a tad bit closer to the Real World. But I worried that perhaps my daughter was being driven unduly hard by the store managers. I made it a point to slip into the bookstore and observe, numerous times, whilst V. was “working.”
Let me tell you right here and now that I never, ever once saw the girl holding ANYTHING in her hands. Not once. So, how hard could it possibly be?
I did see her smiling and giggling and being cute.
“What exactly IS your job?” I asked her, trying to reconcile the cushy experience I’d seen with V.’s coal-mine-child-laborer demeanor.
“I do lots of things, Mom. People ask me where books are all the time.”
“And?” I say. “What? You giggle and tell them you don’t have any idea?”
“Yeah, most of the time. But sometimes I have to shelve books, Mom.”
“And I bet some of them are big, heavy books, too, aren’t they?” I said, trying to be sympathetic. It wasn’t exactly like trying to walk a mile in somebody’s moccasins. It was more like trying to ride a mile on Cleopatra’s litter. Goddamn those clumsy serfs for stumbling, and putting the litter at a tilt.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, after she’d been there a month or so. “They pay you to wear the apron, smile, and be friendly, cute, and perky. Right?”
“Pretty much,” she said, flashing her dimples.
God. I should have put her to work at Hooter’s. At least then she’d get tips.
Contact Tamara Ducote at TDDucote6@aol.com.
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