Alyssa Ladd - Minimum Wage Millennial

 

So, I'm a millennial. So, after I graduated college, naturally, I moved back in with mom and dad. [audience laughter] I had just been fired from my job as a special ed teacher, so things weren't going so great for me. And about that time, I started working at Michaels, the craft store, in the neighborhood where I had grown up, which was Sugar Land. 

 

[holler] 

 

Thanks. It was only about, like, two months, but it was from before Thanksgiving until after New Year's, arguably the worst two months to work at a craft store where they sell Christmas decorations. So, I scored really well on my aptitude test. Michaels makes you take a math and reading aptitude test, which I don't understand. [audience laughter] So, the manager was like, “I have a special position for you in the custom framing department.” The main perk was that it paid 25 cents more per hour than the other jobs, but the secondary perk was that I didn't have to restock beads and yarn, so I was very much on board with this. 

 

As a job itself, I really didn't mind it. I liked it. The only downside was that it was in the neighborhood where I grew up. I liked helping people design their frame and hearing their stories about their art. My favorite was this woman. She called a week before Christmas. She's all in a tizzy and she's like, "I have guests coming over, and there's this big spot over my fireplace, and my frames aren't ready and you have to help me." And I said, "Okay, fine, I'll do it." So, I go to the shelf and I pull out her art, open it up. Two giant pictures of her naked, covered in rose petals. [audience chuckle] It's going to go over her fireplace for the Christmas guests. [audience laughter] So, the job was pretty entertaining, but I still-- It felt like a loser. I felt like a loser.

 

I mean, I lived at home with my parents. I worked for 25 cents above minimum wage with a college degree. Those two things are bad enough. Sugar Land is pretty big, but you wouldn't know it from Michaels. Everyone I knew came in there. Every single day, someone I knew came in and saw me in my little apron, my little white gloves. And of course, they couldn't help but come up and say hi and tell me what their kids were doing. It was always something more successful and better than what I was doing. 

 

So, one day, my former softball coach comes in. His daughter and I played softball together when we were 12. He recognized me, which was, first of all, the shocking thing. I thought, maybe we’re going to reminisce about the team and how fun it was, or he’s going to ask how my parents were. But instead, he goes, “Didn’t you go to that fancy, expensive college? [audience chuckle] Look where that got you.” [audience laughter] So, I’d been wondering if that was what everyone was thinking. And he confirmed that it was. That’s pretty much the inner monologue I had with myself 10 times a day, but I never expected to hear someone else say it. I got to say, it didn’t feel great. 

 

But he didn’t stop there. He kept talking. [audience laughter] And he goes, “You know, my daughter is really making it big as an actress in LA. She was just in a Lifetime movie. Maybe you saw it.” “Yeah, I saw it.” First of all, it was a supporting role. [audience laughter] But unlike him, I have some tact, so I didn’t say that. I now had to open up his picture, which was the Lifetime movie poster, and get his signature of approval, very ironic. So, he left, and he’s probably never thought about that moment ever again. But I thought about it a lot. I never want to make someone feel the way that I felt that day. 

 

So, later that same day, the mom of another girl I played softball with comes into Michaels. We’d been on the same team for one year, and then a year after that, her daughter transferred to my middle school where she didn’t know anyone but me. And so, she was brand new, she was very shy, very quiet. She’d been made fun of at other schools because she was pretty overweight. I used to write her encouraging notes and leave them in her locker. I didn’t even remember that when I saw her mom at Michaels that day, but her mom remembered.

 

So, I’m carrying something out to her car for her, and she turns to me and she’s all choked up and she says, “You’ll never know what that meant to me and to my daughter that you were so nice to her.” So, she’s choked up and she’s saying all these nice things. I’ve had an emotional day. So, I start crying and I tell her what happened. And then, pretty soon, we’re both bawling and hugging in the Michaels parking lot. [audience laughter] She’s just hugging me and she’s telling me what a good person I am. Not because of what job I did or didn’t have, but because I’d been kind to her daughter when she needed a friend. And that day, I really needed a friend and it was good to see a familiar face. And for the first time, I was glad to be working in the town where I’d grown up.