Welcome to my second post, prospective readers and, hopefully, enthusiastic subscribers! Let me properly introduce myself with a small piece I wrote a couple of years ago.
Don't remember what was first. Walking around town with a snow shovel after a storm looking for driveways and walks to clear, a paper route via bicycle, picking tobacco (cigar wrappers ).
Thanks for all your likes on my site. The precious yellow wall is still going around in my head. And now sclera. Keep up the good work, and nice to meet you on Substack.
My first full-time job was as a shop assistant for a clothing company called Baleno (for those of you who are not familiar with this Hong Kong brand, think of H&M, only cheaper). The year was 2002 and I was 17. The most memorable bit about this job is the disparity between the wages and the labour, in both physical and mental senses. I was paid 6 yuan, which is less than 1 euro, per hour, and unpaid overtime hours happened almost every day. For this money, the work itself was no breeze. There was a lot of heavy lifting (I dreaded it whenever the brand released a new denim series), and rude customers were a commonplace. They didn’t talk to you but talked down to you. Some would relentlessly haggle with you, and some would unstoppably smoke in the shop. One decided a fitting room should be multi-purpose and did a number two there.
Dear customers in the world, please be kind to the staff in any shop: no one should be a punch bag.
Hi Zibow, thanks for your comment. Wow, so much for a Country, ruled by a Party that should have ended the exploitation of all workers! There are still too many jobs unfairly considered low-skilled labour, and I've gone through my share of physically exhausting, very low-paid stints as a postwoman and a chambermaid. As for the number two episode, there's a similar story in Proust's "La Recherche". Plus ça change...
Don't remember what was first. Walking around town with a snow shovel after a storm looking for driveways and walks to clear, a paper route via bicycle, picking tobacco (cigar wrappers ).
Thanks for all your likes on my site. The precious yellow wall is still going around in my head. And now sclera. Keep up the good work, and nice to meet you on Substack.
How kind of you, Tod! I'm happy I found your site, you've got yourself a reader.
My first full-time job was as a shop assistant for a clothing company called Baleno (for those of you who are not familiar with this Hong Kong brand, think of H&M, only cheaper). The year was 2002 and I was 17. The most memorable bit about this job is the disparity between the wages and the labour, in both physical and mental senses. I was paid 6 yuan, which is less than 1 euro, per hour, and unpaid overtime hours happened almost every day. For this money, the work itself was no breeze. There was a lot of heavy lifting (I dreaded it whenever the brand released a new denim series), and rude customers were a commonplace. They didn’t talk to you but talked down to you. Some would relentlessly haggle with you, and some would unstoppably smoke in the shop. One decided a fitting room should be multi-purpose and did a number two there.
Dear customers in the world, please be kind to the staff in any shop: no one should be a punch bag.
Hi Zibow, thanks for your comment. Wow, so much for a Country, ruled by a Party that should have ended the exploitation of all workers! There are still too many jobs unfairly considered low-skilled labour, and I've gone through my share of physically exhausting, very low-paid stints as a postwoman and a chambermaid. As for the number two episode, there's a similar story in Proust's "La Recherche". Plus ça change...