I should clarify, it’s not because I’m lazy, or at least it’s not just because I’m lazy. I hate working because I’m actively bad at it.

My first job was at a bank in the suburbs of Chicago, which you might think is an odd place for a sixteen-year-old to work, and I would agree, but my mother’s best friend worked there and I’ve never been above blatant nepotism. Working at a bank when you’re sixteen is just like in the movies where the boy next door works at some cute place like a Dairy Queen and gets cute dollops of ice cream on his nose while he’s dipping cones in melted chocolate, except instead of a Dairy Queen, it was the accounting department that my mom’s friend worked at, and instead of ice cream, it was blotches of charcoal toner from the malfunctioning office printer. Basically the same thing.

It was an old bank, the same one that my mom worked at when she was my age but had to quit because she got knocked up with my brother and chose a life of motherhood instead of a fulfilling career in suburban banking. One of her best friends still oversaw the accounting department, and I politely hinted at a family party that I was finally old enough to legally wear a necktie in public and that perhaps I could use a job that might help pay for my budding necktie collection and that my passion, obviously, was to work in the accounting department of the local branch of my friendly neighborhood bank. Besides, when I was a kid, I used to go to my dad’s office and sit in the corner with one of those receipt machines and type numbers into it wildly as it spit out an ever-winding snake of paper containing my meaningless calculations. It made me feel important, because people with receipt machines are important, and it was possibly the only qualification I had to work at an actual financial institution. My mother’s friend said she would see what she could do, perhaps there were some menial tasks I could help with during the summer. The next day, I was officially an accounting associate.

I wore a button-down dress shirt tucked into khakis and a necktie that my dad tied around my neck for my first day. My mom took a picture of me in the kitchen before I left that morning, and it looks like one of those pictures that terrorists take of people they’ve kidnapped, except sadder.

When I walked into the bank, I was directed to the accounting department: down two flights of stairs, along a long, dark hallway, past the mail room, and beyond the flickering light.