This paper was written September 23, 1988 for my first ever college English
class.  Though not all is explained it gives an idea of what it was like.
Grade for this winner was a C+.

The JByrons Experience  (Garfield with sunglasses (printshop) was on the
coverpage)
By:  Dan Wright

Early in the summer before I entered the twelfth grade, I applied for a stock
job at a department store called JByrons.  I did not hear from them until late
in the summer.  I applied because a good friend of mine, Naveen, had worked
there and encouraged me to do so.  Thanks to Naveen's good word about me to
the managers and the fact that they needed another stock guy, I was called in
to fill out some forms.

The next day I got dressed in a colorful, freshly ironed, button down shirt, a
new pair of pants, and a pair of year old boat shoes.  I jumped on my reliable
ten speed (because I did not have a drivers license at the time) and pedaled
my way to JByrons.  JByrons was only a mile away through swarming traffic so
riding a bike was a bit of a problem when it came to crossing the streets.
Once I arrived at JByrons I locked up my bike and went inside.  As I walked
toward the service desk I saw men's clothing, women's clothing, domestics,
appliances, children's clothing, lingerie, and shoes.  There were two old
ladies helping the customers at the service desk.  I nervously went up to one
of the ladies, told her who I was,  and that I have come to fill out some
employment forms.  The lady disappeared into a room behind the service desk
and brought out the forms I needed to fill out.  I took the forms and filled
them out at a little table in front of the service desk.  Once finished I gave
them back to the old lady and she called the manager over the intercom.  The
manager arrived about a minute after the call was made.  He took the forms and
asked me to follow him.  We then proceeded down a dimly lit hallway, up a
staircase and into his office.  At that time I got a closer look at the
manager.  He was a middle aged man with a chubby face, a hair line that had
receded like a low tide, and a mustache that looked like one a kid would wear
with his costume on halloween.  As he asked me questions, which I have now
forgotten, I looked directly into his dirt dark eyes.  I do remember keeping
the answer to the questions as concise as I possibly could.   After the
interview the manager told me he would check things out and get back to me.

The manager set my starting hourly wage at four dollars and thirty cents and
told me that I would be considered for a raise after ninety days.

My first day on the job began three weeks before high school started.  I
arrived fifteen minutes early for the first day on the job.  Once let inside
by the manager with the receding hair line, I met up with the head stock man
Abdoul.  Abdoul told me I was responsible for doing the following jobs:
sweeping, vacuuming, cleaning the windows and mirrors, hanging clothes,
picking up the trash and hangers, unloading items off a truck, stocking the
shelves and cleaning the toilets.  I thought to myself "Holy crap-- I am gonna
have to clean the toilets?".  At that moment I knew why Naveen wanted to
transfer to sales.  While working that day the idea of quitting had come into
mind numerous times.

During the next twelve months, stock at JByrons consumed anywhere from five to
thirty-five hours of my time a week.  Stock guys were required to sweep the
floor every morning.  When I swept the floor, I used a three foot red dust
broom.  It took me an average of forty-five minutes to sweep the whole dust
ridden store.  I hated sweeping because my legs always ached after finishing.
The next item on the agenda was vacuuming.  Vacuuming was also devastating.
If all of JByrons carpets were laid out side-by-side they would fill up half
of a football field.  I was miraculously able to vacuum this monstrosity in
two hours.  A never ending part of the job was to collect trash and hangers.
In order to get the trash or hangers I would have to push a huge, gray, forty
gallon barrel on mice squeaking wheels around with me.  The bad thing about
getting the hangers was the noise it made.  Dumping the hangers into the
barrel sounded like a 3S drumstick hitting a eighteen inch crash cymbal with
full force-- it was loud.  When I worked in the morning I would always do the
windows and mirrors.  The only thing I dreaded about doing the windows or
mirrors was if someone I knew saw me.  Every weekday a JByrons truck came to
drop off supplies.  The stock guy had to unload anywhere from three to ten
pallets full of stock and put it away.  Each pallet was five feet long by five
feet wide and contained stock ranging from three to seven feet in height.  The
pallets consisted of clothes (for all clothing departments), domestics, and
appliances, but most of the items on the pallets were clothes which needed to
be hung.  Hanging clothes was one of the most monotonous things anyone could
ever have to do.  When I hung clothes I had a radio near by that kept me sane.
To hang a piece of clothing one would have to take the protective plastic
covering off the clothes, get a specific hanger to hang the clothing on, and
finally put a shoplifting device on the item.  Hanging clothes, although time
consuming, was the easiest part of my job because I could work at my own pace
and did not have to worry about any of the other stock chores that needed to
be done.

Since I mostly worked stock at night, I did not have to worry about doing any
of the day stock jobs like cleaning windows, sweeping, hanging, vacuuming, or
unloading the truck.  At night my job consisted of getting the trash and
hangers, finishing the task of unloading the truck, and cleaning the toilets.
Cleaning the toilets could be considered the worst part of the job.  There
were three sets of bathrooms that needed to be cleaned every night; two were
public and one was private.  When I cleaned the bathrooms, I would use a
sponge to wash the sinks and counter tops off, refill the paper towels and
toilet tissues, scrub the toilets with a toilet brush, empty the trash, and
mop the floors.  Doing all three bathrooms took me anywhere from thirty to
sixty minutes.  Suprisingly, the womens' bathroom was always the dirtiest.  I
was always afraid to enter the toilet stalls for fear of what might be hiding
in or near the toilet.  Once I had to get a hose to spray down the toilet
because it had a chocolate milkshake-like consistency of diarrhea all over it.
The bathroom reeked of the diarrhea smell for the next three days.  Other than
doing the toilets, stock at night was rather easy.

During the course of the year I started to notice that employees came and went
as they pleased.  In fact I had seen over fifteen stock guys come and go
during my stay at JByrons.  After six months of working at JByrons I had
learned everything there was to know about stock.  Because I had known what to
do, the next six months were simply a monotonous routine.  Two weeks before
College was due to start I quit my job at JByrons.  I had grossed over four-
thousand dollars for college by working.  The experiences I had gained as a
stock boy had broadened my character, social spectrum, and job knowledge.