My First Job: A Symbolic Message from the Universe!
I was still just a teenager when I ‘saw’ what the business world was really about. I was only eleven when the universe symbolically showed me what kind of world commerce is. What a world indeed; I should have read between the lines right then and there!
I had just finished fifth grade. Summer break had started, and a mountain of game CDs on Saadi Street was waiting for me to buy them and play on my beloved PlayStation. Since I thought I’d be a ‘big shot’ if I earned the money for the CDs myself, I decided to become an apprentice at the dry cleaner’s on the corner—who was always looking for help—and proudly declare my independence. And what a ‘medal’ I received for it.
My parents gave me the ‘Bravo, our son has grown up’ talk and showered me with affection. They even reassured me: ‘You don’t need to work; we’ll buy you whatever you want, whenever you want.’ How foolish I was not to accept it right then. I was naive. I should have been a parasite while I had the chance. A happy little parasite!
The owner of the dry cleaner said: ‘You come in from 7 AM until lunch, you mop the floors, clean the windows, and do whatever else we tell you. Two thousand Tomans a week. Paid every Friday.’
My eyes lit up! I quickly did the math: ‘A game CD is 350 Tomans. That means… several games a week! If I work for a month, I’m set for the rest of the summer.’ I told him: ‘Thank you. I’ll start tomorrow.’ Oh, Grandpa, how right you were!
My grandfather, whenever he wanted to motivate us grandkids to work, would say: ‘Eat leek bread for a year, eat buttered bread for a lifetime.’ And what ‘butter’ they had prepared for me! I hadn’t even been in the workforce for a week when they tried to assault me. The other apprentice, a man older than my father, suddenly pulled down his pants in the middle of a conversation about a PlayStation football game and asked what I thought. What a brilliant start. I rushed out of the shop on the pretext of buying cigarettes for my father and never looked back. My father didn’t even smoke! In that moment, I had instinctively said something to make the guy think, ‘My dad is a tough criminal, you know!’
The universe speaks to us in symbols!