Hi! My name is Christie. I started working
when I was just 9 years old. You might think that's weird, but you don't know
the weirdest part- my job was selling things that belonged to dead people.
Creepy but true! Here's my story. My mom and dad owned a company that does estate
sales. If you don't know what that is, it's kind of like an auction,
except we saw the dead person stuff right out of their old house. It makes
sense when you think about it. The dead people's kids can make money from all
the left-over stuff they didn't want for themselves and empty out the house at the
same time. So anyway, that explains how our family even got a hold of dead
people's junk in the first place... and it's more common than you think.
I started helping my mom right after I turned nine. Our first job was to look
through these houses for good stuff to sell.
We called it "raiding" which totally made it feel like a game to me.
I felt like such an adventurous pirate! We'd map out the whole house and all the
treasures we found - china and artwork, old records and books- you name it! I was
really good at wiggling into tiny nooks and finding hidden treasures. Once I even
found an old diamond ring behind a chest of drawers -it was a real diamond too.
I wanted to keep it but Mom said we had to sell it because it wasn't ours to
keep. Dad's job was to print out little price tags, so I helped him do that too. I
loved playing dress-up. Sometimes I'd put on the pretty jewelry and dresses and
pretend to be a Russian princess, or a man's old coat and shoes and pretend to
be a dad who went into an office, and never felt like I was doing work! Every house was a new adventure with a different story. I did get creeped out,
though, when I'd be walking around upstairs all alone, especially if it was
a big old creaky house. But I guess maybe if I was the ghost I'd get mad if some
strange kid was walking all over my house trying to sell my stuff, too! I
would talked out loud to the ghosts about what I was finding, and what I was doing,
and trying to make them feel better. Although, between you and me, the talking
made me feel better too. When I turned 13 I graduated to working the cash register.
It was usually propped up on an old table by the door,
so that the people who came in to wander around the house could buy what they
wanted on their way out. I trained my little sister Cara to take over my old
job of house raiding. I taught her what to look for and she took her job very
seriously. I love the feeling of responsibility of teaching her ,helping
customers, taking care of the money. I felt like such a real adult tapping on
the keys of the register with my chips nail polish. There were a couple of
downsides though, mostly people who tried to shoplift. Actually I'm not sure if
it's called shoplifting if you're doing it from a dead person's house, but either
way, they were stealing. It was always people you didn't expect also. Nice,
frail-looking old ladies sliding little items into
their purses when they thought no one was looking. Once, a lady asked to use the
bathroom, and when my sister wants to check on her ,she was going through the
kitchen cupboards. This was my introduction to the fact that people
aren't always what they seem. Usually, if one of us pointed it out,
they'd pretend that they had just picked it up and forgotten they were holding it.
We'd let them get away with that one- it was too much trouble to report them to
the police anyway. If Dad was around, he'd give him a stern look and get whatever
they were stealing back. I can only remember him having to call the police
once, and that was when this crazy guy tried to run off with an entire TV in
his arms! Not cool... Other people would show up crazy early. When we had a sale
starting at 9:00 a.m. there would always be at least five people knocking on the
door between 6:00 and 9:00, wanting to know if they could have an early sneak
peek, before everyone else - and that was all we were super busy preparing
everything. They also wanted to know whether we had a special deal for early-
birds. Dad's answer was always the same: "Sure, we
do early birds paid double for everything!" Yeah, I don't remember any of
them wanting to take a look after hearing that. Then during the sale, people
would make absolutely ridiculous offers for things we had for sale. For example
one time we had a box of about a hundred CDs that we were selling for two bucks
each. One guy said that we would never sell them and offered us only $5 for the whole box.
My dad said it was up to me. I declined the offer and the guy was FURIOUS.
he called me a "clueless child" and said, those CDs were worthless. Guess what?
By the end of the day we sold about 40 of them making 80 bucks instead of the
five he offered. Not too bad, right? I was so proud of myself. It was probably right
around the same time that I started to realize that other people's parents had
very different jobs. In mind my friend's parents mostly went to work in offices.
Some kids were mean to me about our family's job being "creepy", sure. But honestly ?Most of them thought it was cool that I even had a job at 13
and the creepy factor added an element of mystery. I liked how interested they
were in my creepy job. As soon as someone found out what I did, they'd ask
what the weirdest thing I'd seen in a dead person's house was. I made up
stories about seeing ghosts just to shock them, but in reality the weirdest
thing was probably just a bunch of gross stuffed animals up on a wall. If you even
asked if they could come to work with my family one day, yeah, no way that's
happening. Although my best friend, Melissa was allowed to come with me
sometimes. Never on the first day when we raided the whole house though. But she
could sit with me at the cash register, and help out whenever she felt like it. I
liked feeling I was an expert at something, teaching her how to run the
register or how much different things are usually sold for. Just like a lot of
jobs, Mom and Dad's income varied. Sometimes there would be a house with
tons of interesting hidden treasure- like the engagement ring I found- and
then we would buy new clothes and nice dinners for a month or two. And, sometimes
it was harder -we wouldn't have house for a couple weeks or the houses just had a
bunch of fake costume jewelry, old clothes, and broken furniture that were
basically worthless. Those times we'd eat a lot of instant
ramens. But Mom and Dad smiled and said this was just part of the business. They
always knew things would pick back up if we just kept working hard and they were
usually right. Things always picked back up. Things might change when I graduate
and go to college, but for now, I still help out on the cash register. Although
my little sister is quickly learning that too. I don't think though that estate
sales is the career I want to go into and I'm older.
I've always wants to be a vet because I love dogs and I want to help them. But I
will never regret spending my childhood helping my parents sell dead people's
junk. I learned a lot about people and how to manage a small business, and most
importantly, I got to bond with my family every day in a way that most kids never
get to. I would never trade this for having lawyers or doctors as parents.
Professions that sound cool but often means seeing your Mom and Dad weigh less...
Did you have a weird job when you were a teenager? Or do your parents have jobs
that are different from your friends parents? Let us know in the comments
below. If you enjoyed my story, please like and subscribe, so we can bring more
stories to you! Thanks for watching!
