Pharmacy Film School

How my first "real job" reinforced my love of cinema and my confidence

Glenn Close and John Malkovich in Dangerous Liaisons (1988)

Within days of getting my driver’s license upon turning sixteen, I was hired at my first in a series of low-level, but supposedly character building grunt work and retail bullshit jobs that were supposed to make a man out of me. Or was that how I got hair on my chest? 

These tedious career opportunities paid some insultingly low amount of money per hour, but I didn’t know any better at the time, and I could have done little to change it. Like every teenager I was dumb and happy. My ability to earn more money than I had any genuine need for in the end obscured what a steal I was even in my lazy, untrained form. 

Oh, wait, my research assistant and head of ADHD Management & Director of International studies informs me that the minimum wage in the state of Michigan between 1981 and 1997 was $3.35 an hour.