A couple of days ago I unexpectedly lost my job. Well, it wasn’t anything too important: I was just a carrier for the Scarborough Mirror. My job was to deliver the newspaper every Wednesday and Friday. It wasn’t anything great, but it brought in a good amount of pocket money for a student like me.


I wasn’t terribly disappointed when I lost my job though, because I was planning to quit. I had already submitted my resignation, but the job was gone quicker than I expected, and in some ways, it felt like I got fired. Let me explain. I planned to stop my job during the first week of September, as school is starting and I want to focus on my academics. I found a family on my street that was willing to take over and so I took their name and number and submitted them to my district representative along with my resignation.


That was last week. This Tuesday came and I was supposed to get the flyers to deliver on Wednesday. They didn’t come. I just assumed, oh, there probably wasn’t much to deliver so they’ll just give me everything tomorrow. It has happened before so I wasn’t too worried. There was a seed of doubt, however, in the back of my mind, that maybe the transfer of this job was misunderstood. But I pushed that thought aside and just went on as usual.


Wednesday morning came and the papers weren’t lying on my driveway like they’ve done for the past 9 months, something wasn’t right. My mom prompted me to call my district rep, and she told me the route has indeed been transferred to the other family. She must not have understood my message when I said I would work until September. So much for 2 more weeks of work!


In a way, I’m glad because I don’t have to worry about stacking flyers and delivering the newspaper in the burning sun. On the other hand, I wasn’t ready to give up my job for another 2 weeks, so the unexpected loss was tiny blow in the stomach to me.
I’m sure that’s not how you feel when you lose a job, I at least had some kind of warning ahead of time and it was more of my own decision. It was the misunderstanding in the end that had the job taken away from me early.


It didn’t matter too much, it was just 2 weeks of work, and it was going to be gone eventually anyway. But the feelings of disappointment and regret were definitely there, 2 weeks could have gotten me at least 40 more dollars and I wanted to prepare myself a little better mentally, sort of like saying goodbye, I suppose.


Despite those negative feelings about losing my job early, they disappear just as quickly as they appear. I’m looking forward to next summer when you can say I’m getting promoted. I want to work as a leader in a summer camp and my wage would certainly rise from what I had with the carrier job. So, I’m glad I had the carrier job because it gave me some good experience about hard work and a chance to meet my neighbors. Now, I’m looking ahead to the future where I will be doing something different and learning something new.


Plus, I have to face the facts. This is probably one of many rejections to come in the future. It’s better to be prepared than sorry!