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Teenage Life in a Furniture Store
posted by Mary Liz on 04/22/2009by Kegan Scannel
My name is Kegan. I am 16 and I work at my parent’s furniture store, Leon & Lulu. My job at the store could most closely be compared to the opposite of a job at Burger King: No steady schedule, I can’t afford the product, and I actually become healthier from my job.
A SIMPLE JOB
The job is fairly simple. I lift and carry. When a container or truck arrives, I’m the first to be called. When a sofa needs to be delivered, I’m the boy for the job. I am pretty young, so I don’t really have much to bring to the table in terms of creativity and design, but my parents have no problem exploiting my school vacations and postpubescent muscles.
The day we closed on the building for our new store, a former roller rink, I was called in to package the hundreds of roller skates, and tear up the rotten nacho-smelling carpet. My entire 8th grade summer was spent boxing, scraping, painting, and moving. I must have moved the 10 x 6 x 4 square-foot stack of boxed roller skates 15 times to various corners of the 15,000 square foot building. They weighed roughly one point six million pounds.
SOCIAL REPERCUSSIONS
Once the store opened, my social life was deeply affected. My Saturdays were now spent pushing sofas up spiral staircases and beds into windows instead of on my bike out with friends. Most kids look forward to their Saturdays, sleep in until 2, then lounge around till 4. I wake up at 9:50 and ride my bike to the shop to load the van, then we leave for the delivery.
It isn’t all bad, however. I soon found myself making much more than I could spend, especially in the summer, where I had the joy of reorganizing the store every time my mother got bored. This composed of carrying leather sofas, precarious glass coffee tables, and hardwood dining tables back and forth down the 300 foot stretch of protruding pillows, candles, and other fun things to knock over and go back to pick up. Nothing is ever moved once, often I find myself carrying the same sofa back to the original position the next day.
MORE THAN JUST A PAIR OF BICEPS
Now don’t get me wrong, my parents don’t just use me for my muscles, they also call in their “trophy son” whenever they need an extra hand during a party, running the cash register, serving Coke and hot dogs, etc. They call me in, dress me up in a shirt and tie, and put me to work in the front of the store.
UNPOPULAR AND POPULAR
Before Leon & Lulu was Leon & Lulu, it was The Ambassador Roller Rink, and had been for 60-plus years. It was a very popular teen hang out, especially among my friends. Just think of my overwhelming joy when I realized that my parents where responsible for robbing my friends of the one place they could go hang out on Friday and Saturday nights. My reputation still haunts me as the child of those who stole Ambassador, and it has been 3 years.
I also have the title of potential job-giver as I get phone calls rather regularly from friends and acquaintances looking for a quick buck. It’s a pretty simple process. We get a delivery with a lot of heavy stuff and it’s my job to call a friend and get an extra hand. After the past few years we have smoothed the process out quite well. I have two strong friends who are very reliable, and another two or three I can always call in case of emergency. We are never without an extra hand or four.
FATHER (DOESN’T ALWAYS) KNOW BEST
Working with your father trapped in a basement stairway in the 90 degree July weather holding a sofa over your head can at times become somewhat heated, in more ways that one. We frequently get into very quiet fights about how a sofa should be twisted, turned, flipped and otherwise disassembled to fit it through a tight spot. My father has somewhat of a hard head. It’s his way or the highway, and his way is usually ever so slightly incorrect. Normally I would have no problem letting him try it his way, then kindly suggest my way after his utter failure, but his way generally causes at least an extra half an hour of work, and/or damage to the piece or house, so its’ in everyone’s best interest that I open my big mouth before we start his way.
THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DELIVERY
Since I spend almost every weekend going into a few different people’s houses, I have seen some pretty strange things in my travels. Even the kindest looking old lady can be a hellsent demon of work to a young man as myself. For instance, once we were delivering a love seat to a kind old lady a few miles away. It was a simple enough delivery; drive out to her house, walk the love seat around back and carry it into her bedroom through the double doors, no problem. Once we walked into the dimly lit room of agony and pain, I immediately smelled trouble. I saw a jumbled heap of furniture in the center of the room and attempted to go into denial. After we carried the love seat in and set it down in its proper position, the kind old lady, innocently enough, warmly asked if we would mind moving a couple pieces for her. I screamed NOOO in my mind while saying, “Of course, ma’am!” out loud. So we started to pick up a few fairly light chairs and carry them into the next room. We started to pick up our drop cloths and clean up after ourselves, when the old lady asked for one last thing, and what I had been dreading since I walked into the room came out “Could you move this old dresser for me?” Now this old dresser was not just some old dresser, it was an 8-foot-high solid wood cabinet, full to bursting with knickknacks and other old people articles. I took a deep sigh and said “Of course” and started to take clothes, toys, and all sorts of other strange things out of the cabinet. After that we started to take the drawers out of the bottom. To my complete surprise I pulled out a drawer that was completely, as in every square inch, full of candy. It was a good 3 square feet of pure sugar, all sorts of Butterfingers, Nerds, Snickers, Milk Duds. Anything my tongue could imagine was in that drawer. I couldn’t help but look at the lady with a raised eyebrow. She looked back, blushed, and whispered “I’m diabetic” with a kooky smile. After moving that heaping pile of hardwood, which was a mere two inches off the ceiling, I eyed the pile of candy while finishing cleaning up, and all she could say after moving half her house was “Thank you.” I felt that the least she could do was throw me a Milk Dud or two. This is a sharp contrast to other people. I have gotten $40 dollar tips on top of the $75 they paid for delivery for simply doing my job, and I have gotten a “Thanks, have a good day” after moving a sofa bed out of someone’s basement on top of my job.
I GUESS I’LL KEEP THE JOB
All in all, my job has its downsides, but I still love it. It has given me a behind-the-scenes look at a furniture store and small business. It has provided me with spending money for 3-plus years, and it has created a hunger for a boss that I don’t have to live with.
Kegan Scannell is the older (and stronger) of Mary Liz Curtin’s two children. While his take on retail is a little more dramatic than his mother’s, social services have yet to intervene. See their store at http://www.leonandlulu.com