Leaving school at fifteen was a mistake that I couldn’t undo. The teachers had predicted I’d fail every subject I was set to take and my theory was it was better to drop-out early than waste the next few months of my life working towards failure.
I spent the following few months in bed watching bad TV shows and lounging around in my pajamas well into the afternoon. It was a perfect time and knowing that I’d somehow managed to dodge hour after hour of miserably dull school classes in exchange for these heavenly duvet days felt like I’d easily made the best decision of my life.
It came to a tragic end in July. Around two days after my sixteenth birthday when my Mum came home after work and told me to sit down, she said, ‘You can go back to school or you can get a job,’ I slumped there in dull despair while she continued, ‘what you can’t do is lay around here playing on the computer all day.’
When she finished her speech, I knew I was done for. My days of blissful idling by the computer or in front of the TV were over.
I knew the day was coming, but I’d done such a good job of putting it out of mind that the whole thing left me feeling like I’d just been sent to the trenches and there was nothing I could do to avoid the horrible fate set before me.
The following day I found myself at the job center and they soon let me know how useless I would be in the job market. ‘For your skills,’ the employment officer told me, ‘it will be factories, cleaning, fast-food, or retail.’
I used the scattergun approach to apply for jobs. I applied for everything and anything: hotels, factories, warehouses, restaurants, clothes shops, bakeries, and after weeks of sending off about one hundred CV’s and application forms, the only one to call back and ask me for an interview was the local fast-food restaurant.
One week later and after a group interview with the local misfits – a rotund teen with skin issues who couldn’t make eye contact with anyone; a man in his forties with a loud verbal tic and a habit of running his hands over his head every time he was asked to speak; and lastly, a man of about twenty-five with lank brown hair dangling over his face who had donned a lovely Matrix t-shirt – I found myself against all intentions and expectations with my first job.
Next week and after one induction I was in a grey uniform and behind the grill listening to a nineteen year old explain to me the art of frying hamburger patties.
In the space of a few weeks, I’d lost it all.
I’d gone from sleep-ins where I could hide under the duvet for as long as I wanted to this hellish fast tempo kitchen with overly amped up teenagers barking orders at me on how to make a hamburger properly.
I thought to myself as the sweat dripped beneath my cap that someone ought to warn a guy not to quit school at fifteen in order to avoid school, otherwise they’re going to end up like me—the hamburger guy.
So that’s how it went frying hamburgers for a year in some sweat soaked kitchen. Day after day with little hope before me. I spent a long time dreaming of a better life and cursing my own life until I finally did something about it.
It didn’t happen in a glamorous way. I really just snapped one day when I was cleaning out the grease riddled cooking utensils. I ran out when nobody was paying attention, threw away my cap, charged through the fire escape, and cycled off into the distance without a single look back.
I was seventeen and with a few thousand in savings, I finally had some hope in me.
Leigh Doughty is a writer and a language tutor from Lincoln, UK. His previous work can be found in the VNexpress, Subliminal Surgery, and the Meridian. X: @gaspsinflaubert