A sign of things to come
I was still young at the time. Attending college and working two jobs part time. Besides the hours I really enjoyed working at Tungsten Broadcasting and was looking forward to my first anniversary of employment.
According to the more seasoned members there, Anniversaries were big deals around here. Every year on the date you get a raise. This wasn’t really a practice I was familiar with. Even at the fast food joint, raises were usually based on merit rather than how long you could tolerate the job. But I wasn’t going to complain. I was only making $6.00/hr and felt I’d done enough to get a nice raise.
I was always sticking around late, looking for extra work. Dubbing songs into our sweet AXS automation system, with full MS-DOS support, recording weekend programs, transcribing commercials. Basically stuff everybody else didn’t want to do.
So when the day for the review finally came, I was anxious to see what opportunities awaited me. However rather than opportunity I was greeted by a primarily critical review of my performance, including mentioning the ONE day of a whole year I was late, which MIGHT have had something to do with boarding a Royals game until 1:00am and having to be back at work the next day at 6:00am. But apparently I had done well enough to score a 3% pay increase. Yay I had gone from $6.00 per hour to $6.18! Frivolous expenditure, here I come!
Momentarily discouraged, I shook it off. After all, it’s still a fun job, AND the PD has connections in Chicago and St. Louis. My stint at Tungsten Broadcasting could still turn out to be my springboard into a successful career in broadcasting!