Ane’s First Job Offer

The kids wanted cupcakes yesterday.

Okay, that’s a lie.  I needed cupcakes, and I needed to be able to bribe them with cupcakes.  There.  Happy?

So, after piano and dinner at Friend’s house (thank YOU, Friend!!), I packed up the kids and drove them out to our favorite cupcake shop, Trophy Cupcakes, at University Village.  Their cupcakes are SO good.  We’ve tried other cupcake shops in the area, but none get it quite right (and one got it very wrong, but that’s another story).

Ane is a HUGE fan of cupcake bakeries, thanks to watching many an episode of Cupcake Wars on the Food Network.  So she lost no time telling the girl at the counter how much she loves the store, and wants to have her own cupcake shop someday.

I smiled and said, “I told her that she should just get a job here.”

The girl at the counter who was ringing up our order looked at Ane and asked, “Would you like a job here?  You can start tonight by mopping the floors.”

I got the feeling that she was only half-joking – especially when she said, “That’s usually my job at closing time.”

Ane thought it was pretty funny.  Tad got in his funny moment when he said goodbye to the cashier – “Bye, Girl!  Have a good luck!” – which is Tad-speak for “have a nice day” and “good luck” all rolled into one phrase.

But then Ane told me as we were driving home that “I think that I’d want to bake cupcakes, not mop floors, Mom.”

“That’s not how it works, Ane.  You would have to start at the bottom and work your way up.  You would have to apprentice yourself to the job.”

“What’s ‘apprentice’ mean?”

“Hmm.”  I thought for a moment, then hit upon the perfect analogy – one she would completely understand.  “You can’t become a Jedi without being a Padawan first.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if you got a job at Trophy Cupcakes, then you’d probably start out with mopping the floors.  Then you’d move up to washing dishes.  After you prove that you can be trusted to do those things well, then you’d start learning to bake.  It’s like becoming a Jedi.  You start off as a youngling, then you become a Padawan, and after you’ve learned enough, then you face the trials and become a Jedi Knight.”

“Ohhh, I get it.”

And she did.  She even repeated my explanation to her father over the phone before bedtime.

I love my little nerdlings.  And now Ane understands that you don’t get the top job without doing the bottom work first.

And if she’s looking for a floor to mop to practice on, the kitchen floor is waiting just for her.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 1:54 am and is filed under Children, Questions, Shopping Stories.
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