I had the coolest job on the planet ... at Tower Records

I was just 16 when I walked into Tower Records in San Diego in 1986 and showed them I could count.

I was a musician in those days, training on clarinet and sax to possibly go professional (newspapers later intervened.)

I was making all the mixtapes that tortured teenagers made in the 1980s before CDs and the Internet, and Tower Records was the coolest place to work on the planet. Who cared if their pay was dismal?

I had no resume besides babysitting the neighborhood kids, but Tower's manager invited anyone who wanted a job to come into the store on inventory days and count. Apparently, I did well.

What I didn't know is that my lunch break from counting records that day would turn into a job interview. Over lunch with inventory workers like me at the bar next door, the store's classical music buyer chatted me up and learned I knew the difference between Bach and Beethoven.

"She's smart," he told the store manager, who turned out to be hiring. "OK," she said. 

 

 

Source: Edition.Cnn