Humans of Northport: Mrs. Cavaliere
I’ll tell you about my very first job. So it was my very first day of my Senior Year, actually, and I’m not even sure how I got the job – I think it was a friend of a friend of a friend [who] got me this job. So, I go and I get on this random bus to go to this random industrial park in the middle of Medford. And so I go, and I was going to be stuffing envelopes for this company. So I go, and I’m stuffing these envelopes full of really cheesy looking necklaces for, I don’t know, a couple of weeks. That’s all I did for hours. I was in a windowless room, it was weird. And then I started stuffing CD boxes, which, back in the day, they used to put CD’s in this humongous cardboard box. Very weird. So that was in a windowless room with glue. And so I go to get paid one day, because they hadn’t paid me yet. So I go in, and I find this man – last name Capone – no joke- and I ask for my paycheck, and he whips this huge wad of money out of his pocket and licks his thumb and starts counting out bills for me and just hands me a wad of cash and sends me out the door. So I’m like, “Uh, am I like working for the mob?” So anyway I go home, and my mother is like “Oh, did you get paid?” I said, “Oh yeah, he paid me in cash.” She’s like, “Oh, you need pay stub.” I was like “Oh. Okay.” I didn’t know. I was 17. So I work again, and I ask for a pay stub and he looks at me. He just again, wads the cash out of his pocket and hands it to me. There were other rooms with like all closed doors. I don’t know what was going on. So finally I ask again if I can have a pay stub, and again, he looks at me and he pays me out of his pocket and sends me. I call three days later to get my new schedule and I was laid off. They were like, “We just don’t need you anymore, so you know…” I think I might have asked too many questions because they didn’t want me back. I hope I actually don’t get “wacked” for telling this story because my very first job was stuffing envelopes for the mob. But, thankfully, I got a job at Dunkin’ Donuts, and everything was great in the world because they gave me a pay stub.
Griffin Crafa is a member of the Class 2021 and Editor-in-Chief for The Port Press. Griffin is an officer in the Northport High School Tiger Marching Band,...