I remember my first job. I was right out of high school, had just wrecked the car I was given, and had to pay to get it fixed. I went to work for my dad at his plastics molding factory. They started me in assembly, which was cool, but when demand for the products we were assembling slowed down (or rather, never picked up), they moved me from that to various other jobs in the plant, mostly ones for which I had not been properly trained.
One day I was operating a molding machine, and parts that were incomplete were to be tossed onto a pile to be reground and run through again. My regrind pile was getting awful high, and the last part I tossed onto it skipped across the top and struck the back of the molding machine next to mine, sparks flew everywhere, and that machine shut down. They took me off the molding machine and had me to operate a hot stamp machine, stamping lettering on some kind of water level gauge for a clothes steamer. Something went wrong and the stamper came down a little crooked, hit the gauge, and jammed. And that was the day I shut down half the factory with my dad away on a business trip.
Six weeks in, they had me doing some dangerous job with an acetylene torch, melting down rough edges on some type of part. Everything went well until I burned my hand, and they had to treat me and send me home. This is not a recommended use for an acetylene torch anyway, and I decided I had enough of these goofy games and so I stayed at home for the rest of the summer.
Came October, and the car was still wrecked. Out of nowhere we found out that since the car had been used as collateral on a loan, the bank had taken out full-coverage insurance on it just two days before the wreck. It was covered! I never had to take that stupid, dangerous job in the first place! The car got fixed, and then wrecked again less than a week later because during all this time, no one ever had time to let me get any experience driving so I really didn't know what I was doing.
DIGRESSION: It was the insurance check from that second wreck, though, that bought my first car, that I actually considered mine, a 1992 Cavalier wagon. I had that car until about four years ago, drove it from 95230 miles to over 218000 before the summer of '04 finally did it in. I owned two other Cavaliers in the meantime, an '87 convertible and a '90 Z24. Since then, I've driven Buick LeSabres because I needed something larger, with the exception of that Cadillac Cimarron I had to have for about a year in between the LeSabres.
