Five

When I was five I had my first job. I was not a deprived or tortured child, but people automatically said my parents were taking away from my childhood. Not only was this a conflict but the fact that I was a little girl, men that were working with me also assumed I could not do the work. I was not doing the same type of work they were doing, but I was still working. Things such as "you don't belong here, go play with your dollies" were said and I usually just brushed it off my shoulder. I felt that I was being judged because of my age and my gender and not for the strong hard-working individual I was. A few years later I was working at a rod and gun club pulling trap (clay target shooting) and they were looking for two more people to pull trap. I had brought someone younger with me who I thought would be a great employee because he was younger than me the committee members of the trap squad felt that he would not be able to fill the expectations of the job. I reacted by saying you had hired me at the age of 13, just one year older than him. Why would he not be able to work here? He is more than capable of actually doing the job.
Eventually my younger friend was hired and did work for a while there until he found another job where he was not judged immediately because of his age.

samantha