My first job

Thulaganyo Jankey | Tuesday June 7, 2022 06:00

It was also an attempt to prove that local companies can actually help government’s effort to keep kids off the streets and I was the guinea pig. My dad was pro-establishment and he would have heard and heeded the call more than most citizens. One evening after a tough game of soccer in the neighbourhood that included a boxing match, a wrestling bout and an angry maid who came to break up a fight, I was summoned by the head of the family. When the head of family calls you and sits on a special chair a bit far from the rest of the family, you know something is about to go down.

With my mind whirring like a faulty laundry machine and wondering whether I was implicated in the earlier street brawl at a soccer match, I was literally sitting on pins. When you are on a long school vacation trouble is never far away and misdemeanour always hugs you close. Clashes with house helps, chasing mongrels and harassing stray cats is the constitutional vocations for most out-of-JC youths. My sins had finally caught up with me. But this time though dad was suspiciously and uncharacteristically nice, like a Nazi in Brazil. I was offered a job in his establishment! Now for one to get a job, there has to be an advertisement in the papers. You then write an application letter with very stiff words like ‘hereby’, ‘favorable consideration’ and ‘abovementioned’ - words that you will never use anywhere else.

These words will then take a rest until the next application letter. Your letters will then be thrown into a bag and if you are lucky you will be called for an interview. This is a forum where you will meet a small group of people who will decide whether they like your face and can stand your face in their premises for the rest of their lives. If they don’t, when you leave they will say something like ‘don’t call us, we will call you’. That means one thing - your face looks like a burnt thong and they don’t ever want to see it again. But with dad, I didn’t have to go through all that rubbish. I took the job offer seriously and started the preparations in earnest by going to the barber.

My barber wasn’t an extremely skilled barber (in my eyes at least) and I had chosen him by taking him through a very tough screening process, which involved answering one very tough question, ‘Will you charge less than P10 for a haircut’? The answer was yes and so that meant on a monthly basis you would see me perched on a 20L paint can under a tree to jazz up my looks. I thought he did a good job but as it was, in photographs taken back then, I look like some kind of radiation victim.

The business had two sides. There was the shop side where you interacted with customers to sell them spares and there was the workshop side where you interacted with engines and vehicles. My haircut was specifically done to work on the shop side but dad had other ideas. Dad was like a Hitler gone worse. He had decided that my energy could be useful on the more physical side of the business. I was banished to the less glamorous side of the business where they needed industrial energy to move things about as the mechanics went about their daily work. I tried to politely enquire about whether he had heard anything about child labour issues and the consequences.

He curtly dismissed my mini-protest with a frown. There was a silver lining though. At the end of the month we lined by the office and we were given envelopes with money commensurate to your efforts. However, they would deduct your sins during the month like advances, loans and you ended up with less than the original amount. My employer had not agreed a salary with me and conditions of service. Exploitation of labour is as old as the hills, clearly. There was a lady colleague (I was now calling them colleagues and not aunts since we were now all employees) who started hounding me about the merits (I heard evils) of making a budget and sticking to it.

My salary (okay let’s say wages) was made of Teflon and it would be difficult to get anything to stick to it. In exactly two days I had gobbled up the monthly earnings - a miracle! (For comments, feedback and insults email inkspills1969@gmail.com)