Ask A Genius 1280: Donut Shop
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/03/01
Rick Rosner: I was trying way too hard. I’d sell a few people donuts on a Sunday morning, and I was allowed to eat as many day-old donuts as I wanted—so I limited myself to four.
So, donut shop.
Then I decided to return to high school and switch families, moving to Albuquerque. My dad—my real dad, not my stepdad—was not happy about this. Nobody really understood why I did it. He told me I could stay as long as I got a job, so he got me a job as a janitor and floor sweeper at Halbert Custom Cabinet Company in the southeast quadrant of Albuquerque.
And I did a shitty job.
One of his clients was Halbert—my dad was their CPA—and he must have told them, “I’ve got this fucked-up kid. Can you give him a shitty job?” And they did. I was the only person at the factory who didn’t speak Spanish, so I was fucking useless. Once, I rode on top of the garbage while they drove to the dump—to keep the trash from flying out of the truck. I lasted a little while there, then quit.
After that, I got a job at United Pet Center, in a shopping center in the northeast quadrant of Albuquerque. Mostly, I just cleaned up puppy shit. Not all day—I worked a few hours after school. But they had about 110 puppies in that little store. No way would that fly today. So many puppies crammed into a tiny pet shop.
And they all had fucking runny poo. I spent my time cleaning up their shit and changing the paper in the bottom of their cages. There were some kittens, too. And I was starving. I wasn’t making enough money to feed myself, so I’d sneak handfuls of dog food.
I tried puppy food once—that was a mistake. Apparently, it had ground-up bone meal in it. I got a splinter of bone caught in my throat and hated that. So, I quit sneaking puppy food and switched to cat chow.
So those were my first four jobs.
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