Lower Expectations

Participating in the Economy

(6 Min Read)

My second ever job is in an office. It is a not-for-profit employment agency and almost everyone I work with is considerably older than me. Before long, I realise I am gathering life advice from those who have been on Earth longer. Perhaps this is subconscious, trying to find a way to make sure I don’t have any regrets, trying to cram as much of ‘life’ into my life as I can, jump-starting the feelings of happiness and fulfilment I’m supposed to have but do not. The two things that come up most often are to move overseas while I can and buy a house young. So I buy a house. It seems responsible and I want to be responsible and grown up and have my own space where I am able to eat all the chocolate biscuits I want, even on the day I buy them, instead of having Mum give us only one each and only after the packet has been in the cupboard, untouched, for months and only after they have blown past their expiry date to make her feel like she’d gotten her money’s worth out of them. In my own house, I can have dessert every night. I can eat chips every night. She cannot moderate the number and amount of toppings I put on my ice cream, though I do feel the need to lock the front door when I eat them, in case her Mum-sense are set off and she races over to sigh at me and say my name in a tone of overwhelming disappointment as I feel she would do, knowing she can’t stop me but can still judge me. She lives in the same suburb. It is a possibility.

Buying a house, I believe, will ensure I would live without regret and I want to be able to do what everyone else wished they’d done. I will compile others’ regrets into a list and tick off each one in turn; a recipe for long-lasting happiness. At 18, while I have no understanding of the world or finances, I am convinced I understand them both perfectly. I work at a job that pays me more than any other 18-year-old I’d ever met and I live at home with no expenses. Surely, I think, that is how life is and will always be. At home with my parents, I may not get dessert every night and when I do, I may not get adequate servings of dessert, but I have more money than I know what to do with, I don’t have to cook or clean and when I am at work, I barely do anything. I was a receptionist, so I occasionally ‘reception’ between writing silly stories about one colleague in particular. At the time, I justified that it was because when I first started, after leaving McDonald’s, he spat at me over the reception counter ‘Don’t forget where you came from, coffee bitch!’ but in time, I feel my stories about him severely tipped the scales unfairly.

Not that the job is entirely downtime. I am often threatened with violence by someone who’s had their unemployment benefits cut off for not adhering to their job search agreement and whatnot. So at 18, I work as a receptionist, write stories about someone who said one mean thing to me once and sometimes fear for my life.

There is also a time where a man performs a striptease for me in the reception area. He asks me if I find him attractive and I give a non-committal answer because I am at work and despite the fact I do not do much work, I still have some semblance of professionalism and don’t want to tell him that ‘no, not really’ He’s kind of rugged, dirty and gross and while some people are into that, I am not. So he decides to dance and take his clothes off in to prove that I am, in fact, attracted to him. It does not work.

I land this job when one of the regulars at the McDonald’s Café offers it to me. I am glad for the escape. Yes, I know he wants to sleep with me, but McDonald’s is terrible, so I accept the job. I wonder if I am abandoning my morals in doing so, but at 18, I don’t know if I even have any morals yet. Also, in the back of my mind, is that one Australia Day I was working where a series of drunk people came in throughout the evening, filling up the dining area and then, at some point, the mood shifted and they began throwing bottles at us as we ducked behind the counter. We called the police, who were just over the road and who would come in every day and get 50% off whatever they bought. They did not come to help us. We eventually got everyone out of the dining area and locked up early. Then someone outside pulled up a large metal bin that was bolted to the ground and began throwing it at the glass doors, over and over until it broke and the whole bottle-throwing thing began over again. So working for someone who wanted to sleep with me didn’t seem so bad at all.

I never sleep with him. He never tries, though he tells people we did. I feel like it is the price to pay for the job. If people ask me directly, I correct them but I am so worried about getting fired and having to go back to McDonald’s, that I never take the initiative to tell anybody we have not slept together. Ironically, a constant critique of me in that reception job was I don’t have any initiative.

Ultimately, I’d do the same thing again, even if he wanted to tell people we’d slept together. I know you’re not supposed to say that. You’re supposed to have morals and be a good role model for the kids and shit, but I would. I would do it again.

This manager who hires me out of McDonald’s, let’s call him Bob, has his fortieth birthday in the Gold Coast and half the office, the half he liked, all fly there for the weekend. I assume this is because he either doesn’t have any friends or he has made sure to hire all his friends. Bob pays for my flights and hotel. I can afford it, but he insists, so I let him do something nice for me. After we land, my coworkers and I all pile into a minibus taxi together. It stops in front of some rented apartments and everyone climbs out and collects their luggage. As we pull away in the minibus to go to our hotel, Bob and I, I wonder why my co-workers have chosen such a strange, shabby-looking place to stay when Bob is paying for their accommodation. The apartments aren’t as close to the city as where we are going and the hotel we are staying in, I am assured, is very fancy. But if they’ve chosen these apartments, it must be what they want.

I don’t realise until later, that Bob has only paid for my flights and hotel, no one else’s. Where I stay, the same hotel as him though in a different room, is far nicer than what any other employee could afford on their own. It is bright and modern and my room has three bedrooms and two bathrooms and overlooks the pool and the beach.

I share with one woman I have never met, or even heard of, who is apparently Bob’s super best ever friend. Nothing about her is real, physically speaking. Not her hair, her nails, her lips, her eyelashes, her tan or her breasts. I love her. She takes the East wing while I take the West, which may as well be down the street. And there is one guy who only shows up for a single night to take the third bedroom. Besides that, I have the place to myself. Apparently, the hotel has won awards or something. I’ve never flown anywhere before or stayed in a hotel, so I have no idea how good this actually is.

Looking back, perhaps I’d have requested we weren’t quite so open about the boss paying for my holiday if I was the only one, but I can only hope that my co-workers knew that while I was a sugar baby, I was a completely oblivious one.