Tiny Tim

I was numb. I didn’t expect anything from them anymore, but he still managed to surprise me. Did he honestly believe that I lost those phones? He knew full well they were stolen! And how the fuck was I supposed to stand up for myself when they never came at me alone. And with the full support of my siblings, no less!

“This can’t go on like this.” He continued, “Maybe it’s time to start taking responsibility and find yourself a job. Then you can take care of those things either by learning to defend yourself, or by paying the price for chickening out.”

I snatched the price list out of his hand and walked back to my room. I had finished several programming jobs by now and could indeed pay for the textbooks myself. Though if this kept up, I still needed a regular job with a more regular income. Then again, I was still only fifteen and didn’t think a paper route would pay enough to replace my phone every month. Though, thinking about it, why did I even bother replacing them? Because of the bullying in school, I barely had any friends left. And I refused to invite any of them into this house to witness what was happening here.

So, the next day, I went to a Diner on my way home from school that had a “Help Wanted” sign at the counter, and got myself a job waiting tables. Minimum wage ($7.25/hour) for fifteen hours per week would not make me rich. I calculated that, if I kept it up without spending any of it, I could buy myself a cheap used car in about 64 weeks. Isn’t that a motivating thought? Well, it didn’t come to that. I was fired after a single week because of me “causing disturbances”.

Since the Diner was so close to school, quite a few of my fellow pupils stopped by regularly. I couldn’t work a single shift without someone recognizing me and shouting “Tiny Tim”. Not even just other kids, there were even a few vaguely familiar adults among them I thought were friends with the parents. People throwing dick-jokes at me, much to the other guests’ displeasure, or intentionally tripping me while I was carrying someone’s order, much to the Diner’s owner’s displeasure. He recognized that I didn’t actively cause any of it, but I was still the cause of it. Simply letting me go was the easiest way to deal with the disturbances in his Diner, so that’s what he did.

I knew what happened would surely repeat itself with any student job I could get. Even if I got something further away, it would happen less frequently, but it would still happen. I needed an actual job, but for those I needed a reference since I was still fifteen. Asking my direct family was useless. So, I decided to give Uncle John a call. He was a corporate consultant, so he had a shit-ton of contacts. I figured he might know someone.

“Well, what are you good at?” he asked, after I explained my dilemma to him.

“I already made some money programming and designing stuff over Craigslist. I’m pretty good at that.”

“Really? That’s new. Anything you’d care to share?”

I sent him the links to the sites I created, as well as the names of my Apps that were already available in Google Play and the App Store. He called me back the next day, with the offer that would finally start the new chapter in my life. An old friend of his ran a security firm and needed, at the very least, a completely overhauled website. He’d vouch for me to overcome the problem my age presented, but I’d have to convince them of my capabilities myself. The appointment was made for the following Friday, and I had compiled a portfolio outlining all the noteworthy characteristics of my previous projects, as well as my skill set.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to put in so much effort. John’s friend, Bill Carter, was indeed skeptical at first because of my age. That was, however, already solved by Uncle John simply asking him to try me out as a favor. And since he, as he phrased it, “doesn’t know shit about this computer stuff”, I agreed to simply start working on it. When I had something presentable, he would send it around for people to try.

I worked on it the entire following week, and was able to create a nice and expandable CMS that would allow them to edit the pages themselves, and included all the needed APIs for their accounting and staff-Apps to exchange data over it. I sent him the login data on a Sunday evening, and he called me to discuss salary two days later.

I offered him thirty dollars per hour with flexible hours. He offered me to go fuck myself, but he was laughing while saying it. In return, I asked him to check with his accounting for the rate he paid the agency that made his previous system, and how long it took them to deliver a finished product.