I did office and IT work for a company in Richmond that handles the travel plans of high school jazz bands, when they're good enough to travel the world. I got paid $8 an hour, which was crazy money for 1992.

The experience was mundane enough, but the thing that has always stuck was my boss, who was 450 pounds. That is not an exaggeration. 5'9" or 5'10", 450 pounds. He was nice enough; spoke fluent Japanese, obviously intelligent. But when you are sixteen years old and you work for a 450 pound man it's bound to make a permanent impression. The only time he yelled at me was when I had to go into a Taco Bell to get food for the both of us and I got a jumbo Coke instead of a diet Coke. (He'd need an awful lot of diet cokes, in hindsight.)

The last day of work, I left him stranded on the road when his car broke down and I elected to walk the rest of the way home, leaving him stranded out of his act of goodwill.

Wow, I'm kind of an asshole, now that I think about it.