My Dear Cousin - My First Job

                                                9^th May 2021

My Dear Cousin,

In the world of life events that run together I have to discuss my first job. In my last letter I told you about my (Pony Girl)’s college years and two of those I spend in high school and two I spent working as a security officer.

I had a friend who graduated high school a year before I did and I had paid to have him certified as a guard by a company that no longer exists. He then gave me the recommendation that got me my first job two weeks before I got my diploma, and the day I got my last check from the government.

Now, security is a hard field. No matter who you work for they all have some kind of chip on their shoulder. Many of them don’t like you because you work for them, have different color skin, or just plain get your hands dirty. The pay is low, the hours are long, and the work can be very hard. 

When my (Pony Girl) graduated from college it was finally her turn to pay some of the bills so I took a post with less hours hoping to spend more time with my own education. This proved to be a bad idea, because I just didn’t make enough to go to school. I had thought that as my two siblings had gotten money for school I would get the same, but poor fiscal planning on the old man’s part left me high and dry.

To be honest I don’t think I’d have needed his money if he had just taken me to a psychologist in high school.  In two thousand and one I finally went to a psychologist on my own and got to see a psychiatrist. A psychologist talks to you and works through your problems with you, but is not a medical doctor. A psychiatrist is a medical doctor who gives you pills to make things better.

That experience changed my life, at least in the short run, I finally felt alive and had energy. It turned out that I couldn’t sleep without the medication the doctors gave me. I had spent the last ten years as an insomniac with hardly the strength to do much of anything. 

Also, in two thousand and one I got the pinch from part time work. My medication made me feel better and my work gave me as much overtime as I wanted. I worked every day for months on end, sometimes for more than twenty four hours, and I went to school.

I was on a post with no restroom and no bush to get things done in. My weight started dropping like a stone, and I overloaded my kidneys. I fell asleep on duty and was terminated. Well, no, I was terminated because the boss had a philosophy that he was doing you a favor because he was giving you a job and that you should bend over backwards for him.

It was a big fight at work to get a job that paid more and would give me enough overtime to pay my bills. Part of the problem is that I’m really good at security work and some of the hardest accounts, where the pay is lowest, were where I was most liked by the customer.

I was out for maybe a few minutes. Other guards slept half their shift and no one cared. It didn’t matter. In two thousand and two when I should have graduated from college I was out of work. I had money in the bank, but I was two hurt from my overloaded kidneys to go back to seek further employment.

I thought my family would help me. I was wrong.

Best,

 

Richard Leland Neal