The Joel Train

I loved my first computer.  It might have been an HP.  I can't remember.  But I already had my own phone line in my bedroom and this thing had a dial up modem, so we were in business.  Pre-facebook internet was a wild place where pornographic images loaded very slowly.  I remember getting a hotmail account and I would make the joke, giving out my address "I know what you're thinking, but it's spelled m-a-EYE-l.  because, you know, hot MALE.  Get it?"  Emails back then were written like civil war correspondence, paragraphs and paragraphs of long and flowery language.  But that was the depth of my ability.  Outside of smut and emails, I didn't have much real use for a computer.  I just remember needing one so badly.  Then I received my first credit card bill.  There was no way I could afford this!  What did I do to myself?  I had to find a way out of this terrible terrible mistake I had made.  

I brought it to the bakery.  That was 1997 or 1998.  All scheming aside, I thought it made a certain amount of sense.  I guess I didn't want to drive a delivery van forever.  Or bake, or fold those little cake boxes, or decorate, or any of the available jobs at the bakery.  It was our family business, and I thought maybe I could use the computer as a tool to help my parents and give me something non grunty to do.  But underneath any altruism on my part was this:  I needed to trick my parents into taking this ill conceived jerk box from me and pay off my credit card bill.  

It became clear early on that my self appointed position as computer guy was annoying to the rest of the bakery crew.  I was wasting time.  I was goofing off.  But I pushed on.  With money I didn't have I bought Quickbooks and MS Publisher.  I thought I could load the inventory in and build invoices  I thought I could print signs and keep records.  I got as far as actually printing invoices for a few delivery runs, tracking the production as a reduction from inventory.

Up to that point we'd been using a pad of pre-printed invoices.  We'd hand write each one, using a piece of blue carbon paper between two sheets.  The printed invoices were designed by my Dad and used curvy scroll lettering.  My invoices were bland, generic.  It only took one comment from one of the restaurants on my route, "I like the old ones better," and my Mom went into a panic.  "Our customers hate this!  They're going to leave us!  Joel's computer is going to ruin the business!"  I had failed.

I packed up and took the computer home a few days later.  "I guess I'll just go back to masturbating" I thought.

The next day I asked for a raise.  I couldn't think of another way to pay Best Buy.  "You make too much money already" My father said angrily.  And I realized he was furious.  In my enthusiasm, and desperation I hadn't noticed that my parents hated what I'd been doing.  They were barely tolerating me, and seething that a 19 year old would make decisions for them about their business.  More than an annoyance, to them, every hour I'd been paid for sitting at the computer was a theft.  Every square inch taken up by that whirring box was an invasion.  What I was doing didn't count as work.

So I quit.