I Wanna Be The Very Best, Like [Employee #1] Never Was

My brother and I have been crazy into Pokémon since it came out. We basically grew up with it. When I was fifteen and he was thirteen, [Toy Store Chain] used to host official sponsored Pokémon League events each Saturday morning from 9:00 am to noon, and we always went. My brother and I even started showing up early to help the organizer — a designated [Toy Store] employee — in setting up. It was easy: go into the back employee-only room, grab tables, chairs, pens, promo cards to pass out, badges to award, and new badge books for the newcomers.

[Employee #1] didn’t know s*** about Pokémon, but my brother and I were super used to the League from when we attended at card shops, so we let him know what was what when he didn’t know what to do. He quickly just pushed more and more of the tasks onto me, and I was happy to take on the duties. Pretty soon, my brother and I were kind of running the event, and [Employee #1] would disappear for most of the three hours. No one seemed to notice or care though, since I was doing a great job and all the kids were having a great time. Also, I was d*** near unbeatable, and in the world of card games, that makes you the boss. That’s just how it works.

At one point, my brother and I noticed that [Employee #1] hadn’t shown up in about three weeks —not that we really cared. We just went into the back room by ourselves, carried the tables and chairs out, passed out the promo cards to each attendee, stamped their badge books, presided over matches, gave awards, etc. Then, at noon, we cleaned up, took the tables and chairs back, neatly stacked everything, and hung around until our mom came to pick us up.

So, on the third week after noticing that [Employee #1] hadn’t shown up, another employee found my brother and me as we were putting stuff away.

Employee #2: “Are you the ones that have been running the Pokémon thing for the last few weeks?”

Brother & Me: “Yes.”

The employee got an, “Oh, s***,” look on his face, like he wasn’t sure what to do now. He stood there thinking for a bit.

Employee #2: “How old are you?”

Me: “Fifteen.”

Employee #2: “Okay, don’t go anywhere.”

He left and came back and got basic information from me, like my name, address, etc. Bless my naive little heart, I answered everything. Then, we left.

The next Saturday was business as usual. The following Saturday, [Employee #2] showed up after we got done putting away all the stuff and handed me an envelope. Inside was a paycheck for like $130. It was back-pay for all the hours I had “worked.” It turned out that [Employee #2] was the manager and he’d been getting so many compliments from the parents about their “employee that ran the Pokémon League” that he’d been trying to find that employee for weeks, but all his employees kept saying, “It’s not me.”

Apparently, it was a complete mystery to everyone how the tables and chairs were being put out and being put back and who was actually running the event. Remember, my brother and I were just another pair of kids in a crowd of over twenty-five people aged six to thirty. As far as the [Toy Store] staff was concerned, it was a ghost running the events.

And that’s how I accidentally got my first job. I never found out what happened to [Employee #1], but I never saw him again. To this day — I’m thirty-eight now — I still have it in my resume that my first job was as a Pokémon Master. The strange thing is that not a SINGLE employer has ever questioned it.