My first experience with “failing forward” on the job took place during the summer of ’86.  A few of my high school friends had landed jobs as valets at a private beach club on the Long Island Sound.  The club’s general manager was looking for an extra valet parker so I hitched a ride with them one morning and landed the job.  The job requirements were fairly simple, even for an 11th grader:  Show up early.  Be ready for the morning rush between 7:30am and 10:30 am.  Get to know the members by their last names.  Sit around during the middle of the day while the members were swimming and playing cards.  Be ready for the afternoon rush between 4 and 7 pm.  Remember where you parked their cars.  Be friendly and don’t let them wait too long in the afternoon sun for their cars.  My pay:  $1.85 per hour plus tips.  (Valet parking is all about the tips.)

My crew consisted of about 6 guys, including a few of my high school friends.  We would wake up at the crack of dawn, cruise by a deli and grab a breakfast sandwich and a Gatorade, and show up at the club at an hour when the only ones there were the GM and the maintenance crew.  The job itself was easy for anyone with a decent personality and a driver’s license.  For me, there was one issue, though  It was the eighties and a lot of members owned cars with manual transmissions.  When he hired me, I told the GM that of course I knew how to drive a stick shift.  In reality, I had never driven stick in my life, so, I asked my friends for help.

During the middle of the day, while the club members were sunning by the pool, I’d grab a set of keys to a BMW or a Jaguar and go for a driving lesson.  My friends were also 16 or 17 years old and their driving lessons consisted of just two pointers: “see that third pedal on the left, that’s the clutch, step on it before you shift gears” and “here’s the order of the gears: up 1, down 2, up 3, down 4, up 5”.  I would start the car, shift into 1st, let go of the clutch, and the car would stall.  Third pointer:  “When you let go of the clutch, make sure you step on the gas.” So I would shift to neutral, step on the clutch, start the car, let go of the clutch, and step on the gas.  The car would lurch forward, so I’d hit the brakes and the car would stall.  Our lessons would last for two or three failed attempts followed by laughter from my friends.

We never got caught during our driving lessons.  Managing the morning rush wasn’t the issue either;  we knew which cars were stick as they pulled into the driveway, so my friends would always take them and leave the automatic transmissions for me.  The problem was the evening rush, when the members came out to get their cars.  Even worse was during holiday events, when guests whom we didn’t recognize came out to retrieve their cars and we didn’t know who owned which car.   People who wait a long time for their cars can get testy.  When the kid who took 15 minutes to get their car pulls up driving 3 miles an hour in 1st gear , and stalls as he pulls up in a $70,000 BMW, people can get really pissed off.  I lasted for about three weeks before the GM relieved me of my job.

When I got into the GM’s air-conditioned office, he told me, “I need another guy in the back, another Cabana Boy.  So grab your stuff and get back there.  The other Cabana Boys will teach you the ropes.”  That was it…  my first job promotion!  I thanked the GM and went back to the valet parking guys to share the news.  My friends there were surprised, and a couple of the other guys were pissed off.  I didn’t share the GM’s reasons with the guys.  Truth was, I didn’t know his reasons for certain.  But, I had a pretty good idea that the GM knew what was going on and so he put his worst driver (me) in a role that was a better fit (waiting on and talking with the members).  It was a lucky break for me.  Oh and my pay in the new job:  $2.05 per hour plus tips. (It’s all about the tips.)

I started working at my first job when I was 12 going on 13.  School had let out for the summer and I had just finished the 7th grade.  During the final weeks of the school year, I had enrolled in a summer program for young teens.  Doesn’t quite sound like a job, you may be thinking.  Nonetheless, there was an application, an interview (which took place in a guidance counselors office), and, once our work starts, 4 hour workdays for 5 days a week over a four-week period.  And, importantly, on the 2nd Friday of each two-week period, I got paid.  $2.00 per hour X 20 hours per week X 2 weeks = $80.00 per paycheck.  And, I got a real company check with my name on it.  (Plus, my paychecks were not subject to any income tax, since I was 12.)

Here what I did to earn my $2.00 per hour.  There were maybe 250 kids (my coworkers) split up into roughly 20 teams.  I was assigned to a group of about 12 kids with 2 older teenagers who served as team leaders.  We participated as a group in different team-building tasks and individual exercises.  One of the tasks that was assigned to every employee was to keep a DAHTED (pronounce “dotted) chart.  DAHTED stands for Do A Hard Thing Every Day.  Similar to a Cub Scout manual, we were told to keep a journal of our actions;  but, rather than counting our good deeds, we had to do at least one thing every day that took us outside of our comfort zone and which, often, forced us to confront the fear of failure.  Our journal was a calendar that was taped to the wall of the church auditorium where we worked each day.  Each morning we filled in our DAHTED chart with an entry from the day before.  Hard Things could be physical challenges like doing 50 situps, but we were encouraged to take a more balanced approach and also focus on social and emotionally challenging actions, like helping a distressed sibling or asking a parent to explain why they were yelling.

Let me also mention that most of the other kids in this program came from different neighborhoods and backgrounds.  In fact, all but one of the 250 or so participants were from other school districts, and most of the kids in my group were from tougher communities than where I had lived.  My school was predominantly white;  most of the kids in my group were black.  Many of my friends parents were doctors or bankers.  Many of my groupmates grew up in single-parent households.  The differences were stark, but at that particular age, and given the nature of the program, we seemed to make friends easily and get along well with each other.  34 years later and I can still think back and remember most of their faces and think kindly towards them as my friends.

During the final week of the program, my team leaders conducted an exercise where we sat in a team circle and every kid was asked to share with the entire group the hardest thing that they had experienced in life so far.  Suffice it to say, this was not an easy task.  When my name was  called, I described losing my grandfather during the prior summer. My Papa was a gentle giant who loved his grandkids.  At the age of 69, he suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed along one side of his body and the other side of his face.  He had also lost and could not regain his ability to speak, walk, or care for himself.  After a year of rehab, he chose to stop trying.  By refusing to eat, he hastened his physcal deterioration and soon he passed away.  On the day of my 11th birthday, for the first time in my life, I had lost someone whom I loved.  As I told the story to my group, I cried. My team gave me hugs and thanked me for having the courage to share my story.  My groupmates share their stories about losing siblings to drugs or accidents, about being yelled at by an angry parent, about physical and sexual abuse.  I’m pretty sure that each of us cried as we shared our stories.  Each of us got hugs and support from the group in return.  I learned that some of my groupmates had lived through much harder experiences than I had at that time in my life.

At the end of July, my job was over.  Thinking back, to a 12-year old, a month can be a long time.  On the final day of my first job, I felt proud of myself.  When I cashed my paychecks, I’m pretty sure that I bought candy and baseball cards.

 

 

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not ‘studying a profession,’ for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.