Great photo and sweet looking guy!

I started off at 16 working in the construction industry. For the first two years my job consisted of smashing holes in double brick walls with a hammer and chisel, digging trenches by hand and moving tons of dirt and rock using a shovel and wheelbarrow. All for around a dollar an hour.

Being an apprentice is not much fun.....but starting at the bottom will give you a better appreciation of what people do all throughout the business, because you have been there, done that and ticked it off

It is all part of growing up.....unfortunately

fork lifts are sexy

If it appears they're going to get rid of you, try to learn everything you can and use those skills at a competitor of theirs. I've seen it happen before where they cut back people's hours to nothing whether they're competent or not.

Thanks for asking about first "work" experience. Prior to my first paying work I helped out on a family farm during summers, until the farm was sold, and was always generally looking for someplace to learn about a business or a method of working. I can't recall a time that I wasn't making something, usually out of wood, or fixing something that was considered unrepairable. Lots of failures and a few heartening successes. I was a volunteer at an automobile and carriage museum, helping to maintain and rebuild some of the exhibited things. Great fun.

At fifteen I worked for the summer as a tour guide on the Beaver, the centerpiece of the Boston Tea Party Ship Museum. From that time onward I always had at least one part time job, even when going to school. I even ran dope for a big time dealer, mostly for kicks but it paid great, too, and short hours. I dropped out of High School at 17 and started working full time as a carpenter. I was "given" a contractor's license shortly after that and at times ran my own remodeling jobs. Blah blah blah. The tour guide job is the one that I always look back on as my first real job, where I was (kindly) taught the importance of punctuality and reliability, as well as the importance of every aspect of the customer experience and how important it was for all of us to do everything within reason to provide a satisfactory time for our visitors. I was given an opportunity to understand the big picture as regards revenue and expenses and of course learned the best way to tidy up the decks of an 18th century sailing ship and what all of the lines did and why.

There is lots wrong with the way business ends up (or sometimes starts out) taking advantage of workers but it sounds to me as though you really are being paid to learn all aspects of a going concern, which is, to me, a fantastic chance. You may not stick with this company but I will be surprised if you cannot find a good deal of use for having spent some time learning the importance of various aspects of what makes a business run. It could be a great opportunity to get a glimpse at a facet of work that afterward you can manage and make sensible, effective changes to that will improve overall performance. As always I wish you the best of luck, and I truly hope that you can find common ground for the part of you that is idealistic and a bit dreamy with your practical self (minus math, and clothes).

You and your Fella look great together.

Perth is a beautiful place, if I could get a decent job over there I would move in a heartbeat!

There are a lot of Italian migrants in Australia,
it's one of the reasons we have such great diversity in food, restaurant and cafe culture. Not forgetting coffee!!
Good luck with your job, it will all be worth it in the end

my first job.... *thinks*..

i was the cameraman for a music festival organized by Bacardi Rum and subcontracted by a tiny video production company, i got to travel to the major cities in MX and had all expenses paid. after that i went to work for that same company as an office assistant for a couple of months. answering the phones and moping the floors...

nothing wrong with being a dreamer...this is only the beginning, your path will be long and full of alternate roads, shortcuts and bumps.

Quello che posso dirti è che spaventarsi perchè si ha a che fare con i soldi della gente è normale, specialmente se è il tuo primo lavoro di quel genere. Ma è così con tutti gli altri lavori: nel momento in cui ne intraprendi uno nuovo subentra sempre il fattore "novità" e avrai paura di sbagliare, specialmente se la formazione che ti è stata data per quella mansione lascia il tempo che trova e se hai a che fare con il pubblico (o con i loro soldi, appunto). Io ho sempre fatto lavori più o meno da ufficio, ma erano sempre lavori diversi. In alcuni c'era di mezzo la contabilità, quindi fatture, calcoli, cose importanti che non potevi sbagliare. In altri c'erano ricevute di pagamenti e tanto cash, due cose che dovevano sempre corrispondere alla perfezione a fine giornata. Per non parlare della prima volta che ho usato un POS! Il panico! Ancora peggio quando hai nelle tue mani la salute della gente e il dover pianificare le loro terapie e visite mediche, con relativi scazzi di ticket/non ticket, esenzioni e terapie private costose.
Basandomi sulla mia esperienza ma anche su un'osservazione oggettiva delle cose, posso dirti che la paura che hai provato all'inizio svanisce dopo un mesetto circa. E' dopo un mese, infatti, che inizi ad essere autonoma, inizi ad ingranare bene e a conoscere le mille cose che devi fare a lavoro. Diciamo che è una sorta di "training cerebrale", dopo un mese - salvo intoppi di altro genere - dovrebbe essere tutta discesa e la sensazione di terrore se ne va.