My First Job

At the end of my sophomore year of high school, I started my first job at a Dunkin’ Donuts near Southern and Dobson in Mesa, Az. My job was to clean the bathrooms and floors. It didn’t take me a long time. I lived about two miles away and would walk to work. Usually it would take me longer to walk to and from work than it did to actually be at work. After a while, the owner asked if I’d like to make the donuts. So, I got to try my hand at making donuts one or two nights a week. 

A good and bad thing about this job is that we were allowed to eat the donuts for free. I guess the owner figured that eventually we’d get tired of them. Normally, that’s probably true but I didn’t and in the nine to twelve months that I worked there I put on about 20 pounds. Fortunately, I was a teenager and still growing and so it was not as bad as it could have been.

I remember one day when I was making donuts that I had the radio station on K-Lite, basically elevator music. I didn’t realize these were soft rock songs. Growing up in an IFB church we were taught about “wrong” music and so I didn’t listen to anything with a beat. I remember my co-worker coming back and asking me to change it and I said, “but this is what I listen to at home.” She went back out front annoyed. I didn’t realize it until years later how annoying listening to mellow versions of your favorite rock songs is annoying, unless you like that kind of music.

I remember coming back from camp and being “convicted” of not witnessing to my co-workers. A strategy that was mentioned was to apologize to the person you know and tell them you’re sorry for not telling them about Jesus. I’ve never been a very vocal witness at work and so I was really nervous but I was determined to do it. I worked up the nerve and I apologized to my co-worker about not telling her about Jesus and she looked at me and said, “I believe in Jesus.” It totally floored me and I didn’t know what else to say. I’ve never done that again.

I worked there about a year until I got a job at Picadilly Restaurant at the corner of Price and Southern in Tempe, right across the street from where I went to church and school.