The day it all began

This is more of a sentimental anniversary than anything else, but it was 13 years ago today, at exactly 4:30 pm on Tuesday, August 2, 1994, that I began my first paying job.

At the ripe young age of 16, I officially entered the working world as a grocery store clerk at Kocher's IGA, the privately-owned local grocery store nestled in a tiny shopping plaza a mere two miles west of Elizabethville, PA.

I actually worked there for close to six years—spanning most of my high school era, as well as summers and Christmases home from college. My final stint there was a short week in March 2000, during a short Spring Break away from Penn State. After that, I never punched a timecard there again, as I began interning at Stackpole Books that following summer, and moved to DC two months later.

My time at Kocher's, while typical of the abysmal, minimum-wage, morally-downbeat, customer-service job that Kevin Smith glorified in Clerks, is still one I hold near and dear to me. I made many friends there, I have many happy memories from there . . . and my only regret is that I never had the chance to see the owner, Fred, without his toupee.