I came across my first job by chance. It happened through my best friend’s sister, who worked at a bagel shop that — in her words — desperately needed help.

A senior in high school, I desperately needed a job, so I figured we were the perfect match.

When I showed up for the interview, there was no-one in the small chain restaurant except for two old men sitting in the corner of the store with newspapers up to their noses. A sad country song that hadn’t been popular for years was humming from the ceiling, and behind the counter, a woman with bright red hair was hunched over the line, wiping it clean with an old dishrag. My friend sat me down at a table while she went to the back to get the manager.

As I sat and waited, I noticed that the table I was sitting at was rickety. I pushed it back and forth with my toes as I looked around the restaurant. Discarded newspapers and napkins were strewn randomly across the seating area. Above the coffee bar, an overly-eager sign encouraged customers to indulge in a half-priced coffee anywhere from one to four o’clock in the afternoon. The booth that lined the wall looked comfortable, but there were places here and there where the fabric had been stained or torn. The shades in all of the windows were drawn and the place smelt strongly of vanilla-hazelnut coffee blend.

Behind the counter, my friend appeared with a tall man in tow. He had a pack of cigarettes in his front pocket and looked about my Dad’s age. Immediately, he saw that the shades were drawn and, mumbling something that sounded like, “Goddammit, Stu,” he went about pulling them all open again. I watched in fascination as the restaurant became bathed in light from the sunny Friday afternoon. After fixing the aura of the place, the man came over to me and introduced himself as Mark, the GM. I stood up from my seat and shook his hand. As we went to sit down, the table wobbled, and Mark gave it a glare that said he was just tired of dealing with all of this shit.

“Seriously?” He muttered. He looked at the table with discontent and rubbed his face with his hands. He looked at me with a sigh and motioned with his hand to the table that was next to ours. “I’ll fix this one later,” he said.

We settled ourselves at the slightly-less wobbly table and I gave Mark my sad resume. He hardly glanced over it before he looked at me and grumbled, “We really need a team player. Someone who’s gonna stick around for a while. Do you think you could do that?”

I nodded- I wasn’t really sure how true that was- but for now I was just concerned with getting paid before homecoming.

He gave me a look. I’m sure now that he was thinking to himself that I didn’t know what I was in for. After a moment of consideration he nodded, “All right, you start tomorrow, 7 a.m.

Now, I don’t know how well-versed you are in bagel culture, but apparently, Saturday is the day when the world decides unanimously that they have a hankering for bagels. At nine o’clock the next morning, there was already a line out the door, and everyone in it was grumbling.

Half of the customers were still in their pajamas, rubbing their eyes groggily as they waited to get their coffee. Children shrieked as they pulled on their parent’s hands, and the parents looked at us pleadingly while they waited in line, as if to say See what I have to put up with? Can’t you let me skip the line, just this once? The majority of customers were older people who had just gotten back from church. To attest to this, the button I hit second-most-often on my register was Senior Discount.

One woman, who I came to know as one of the regulars, approached me with large earrings dangling from her ears and a golden brooch reflecting light into my eyes. “Hi honey, you must be new,” she said, opening her little purse, “Now, my name’s Miss Gerri. And when you see Miss Gerri always make sure to give her the OBD. Do you know what the OBD stands for?”

I shook my head.

“It means the Old Bat Discount!” She said, and she let out a loud, tittering laugh. Her friends, all shorter than her with white hair, laughed along.

Other customers weren’t quite so forgiving. A man with sweat-stains under his armpits and an unshaven face berated me for forgetting to give him his discount. Another woman was nearly brought to tears when, during her transaction, a coffee pot overflowed and began to spill out across the floor. I rushed out to clean it up with napkins (I had not yet been shown where the mop was) and by the time I got back to the register, one of my coworkers was digging through the trash because I'd accidentally thrown the woman's receipt away.

At the end of the day, the woman with the red hair pushed a broom into my hand with instructions to sweep the lobby. I did it once- my feet and back aching- and when I returned the broom to her and told her I’d finished- she surveyed the lobby and told me to do it again. We finished closing the store that day an hour and a half after we were supposed to. I was emotionally and physically drained. I had never thought working at a register would be so exhausting. I was sure that after a few weeks I would quit. There was no way I could continue dealing with this for the entire school year.

As the months passed I became familiar with the regulars at the bagel restaurant. Gerri and her crew came every weekend without fail, giggling in their carefully-pressed church sweaters. Stu came every day and bought his senior-coffee for 45 cents, then preceded to draw all of the blinds in the dining room (none of us will ever understand why he does this). And the two old men that I saw at my interview, Dave and Jim, became two of my favorite customers. They always cheered me up with conversation after a long day.

Honestly, after a few months of working there, I felt kind of powerful. Even though it was ‘just’ a customer service job, I was proud of myself for having learned so much since my first day. I liked that I knew how to handle customers’ requests, and sweep the lobby properly, and keep the coffee pot from overflowing. My life developed into a sort of rhythm that was dependent on working on the weekends. I even felt guilty when I couldn’t work, because I knew that I was leaving my coworkers in the dust. I’d developed a sort of camaraderie with them after spending so much time with them. The job was overwhelming and exhausting at times, but I grew to have a sort of affection for it. It was much more than just a way to earn money, it was a way of meeting new people, and learning how to be reliable and responsible and patient.

When I left the Bagel Shop to go to New York for school, I felt sad. I wanted to give Mark, my boss, a hug before I left. I didn't think he could understand how much the job had changed how I went about my life. I felt like I had learned so much about people in that span of time. But I didn't hug him goodbye, I told him I'd see him around, and he promised me that I still had a job there if I ever wanted it.