Art
by Ashton—Age 17—Atlanta, GA
You could say that the day I learned how to do things that required any level of skill at my job was the day I started hating it with every fiber of my being. I used to work at an art gallery, and the day I learned how to wire and clip in paintings was the day that my job really began to go downhill. I began to loathe my cell phone, for every time it rang they needed me to come in, drop by, do something, anything, because there was nobody else who was as reliable and capable. It was the middle of summer, I was sixteen, and I was tired of being cooped up in an art gallery inputting receipts, taking orders and putting frames bigger than I was in the backs of SUVs. I was tired of being called in on my off days, called at the last minute, just to drive all the way out there to stick some clips and wires on a frame for some highly important customer (and they were all highly important)—a job anyone else could do if they only paid attention. So I stopped being reliable, stopped being capable, stopped caring, until I was conveniently fired the same day I put in my two week’s notice. Occasionally I experience pangs of regretful guilt, but at the time I didn’t see any other way out. As long as my boss counted on me to be reliable, she’d call me for help regardless if I was working for her or not.
In the end, I think I left because when I applied, I thought I would enjoy my job—the schedule was flexible, the business intriguing—I thought I would learn about how the art business worked. Mostly, I learned how the art business didn’t work, and how to wire paintings. By the end, when my employer began to trust me more and was gone (yes! just gone) for extended periods of time, I just cracked. I was only sixteen, this was my first ‘real’ job ever, and my boss expected me to take on the responsibility of a foundering business! I began to realize that I’d rather be enjoying what little of my already brief summer remained, and that this was worth far more to me than the extra money to buy CDs the job brought me.
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