My dad hated work before hating work was cool. His first job in the United States was as a clerk at the San Jose Department of Motor Vehicles on Alma Street. It was 1975 and the position paid $6 an hour. When he became a driver’s license examiner, he earned a few pennies more. Though he was hired for his Vietnamese, he couldn’t keep up with needing to speak English to the DMV’s majority white clientele. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese test takers couldn’t drive. Still, they insisted he pass them anyway, citing compatriotism over common sense and safety. When his own mother, who had only ever sat in the passenger seat of his car, asked for a license, he quit.
So, my dad went on to become a tech bro, if tech bro was a term that encompassed the thousands of Vietnamese refugees who became the backbone of Silicon Valley’s lucrative tech manufacturing industry. In 1978, he enrolled at San José City College to earn his associate degree in electronics. He bought a textbook about microwave technology and wrote an essay for his English class about the nearly wordless film, The Red Balloon. Upon graduation, he was hired as a technician by Halcyon, whose name I remember from the blue zippered tote bag they gave him one Christmas. The pay was $3.75 an hour, but manufacturing work was solitary, and he didn’t have to talk to anyone.
When my dad got laid off during the 1990-91 recession, he lazed around with me and my sisters for two tense summer months. We would have preferred to have our mom, who liked shopping and cooked well, at our beck and call, but she was not the kind of person who ever left or lost a job. It was during one of our trips to Fry’s Electronics, where we’d share a twenty-ounce Squirt while traversing thousands of square feet of air-conditioning, that my dad announced his plans to pivot to real estate. Houses were already selling themselves in the Bay Area, which made realty seem like a no-brainer. He went back to San José City College to complete the California Bureau of Real Estate pre-licensing requirements. Tuition was $5 per unit, with a fee cap of $50. When he took the licensing exam, he got a 69%, which meant he failed by just one percentage point. At his professor’s encouragement, he retested. He got a 62%.
My dad’s last hope was to become his own boss. Accordingly, he spent weeks visiting laundromats. A place where the machines did all the work seemed ideal, until he considered how many quarters he would need to cover the cost of water, electricity, and general repairs. Because everyone needs gas, he settled on the Valley Fair Gas Station, which borrowed its name from its proximity to the well-heeled Valley Fair Mall on Stevens Creek Boulevard. He had one employee, Carlos, whom he paid $5 an hour to work the overnight shift. Since the profit margins on 99-cent gallons of gas were so slim, he eventually had to let Carlos go and reduce the station’s operating hours. The only way to make money, it seemed, was to sell something besides gas, so he financed the construction of an addition where he could sell chips and candy that he bought in bulk from Kmart. Because the gas station lacked air conditioning, he would go on to spend many long, hot afternoons, with barely any customers, watching chocolate bars melt.
When he learned his sixth daughter was on the way, he knew he could no longer support our family on unsold honey buns, beef jerky, and cup noodles and sold the gas station. When the new owner failed to pay my dad $10,000 for the inventory inherited when he bought the doomed business, my parents took him to court, newborn in tow. The defendant pleaded for mercy. He couldn’t compete with the chains; he was bleeding money; he would lose his house. Might my parents find it in their hearts to show compassion toward a fellow Vietnamese immigrant? But common sense and personal safety won out again. Settlement in hand, my dad paid off our mortgage and returned to work as a technician, taking the night shift because it paid an extra $2 an hour. He was used to punishing hours now and besides, someone had to be around during the day to pick up the older kids from school. He worked twelve-hour shifts, sometimes six days a week, and took his one-and-a-half-hour lunch break at midnight in his car. To stay warm, he kept with him a heavy brown fleece blanket with a stallion emblazoned across the center. After eating his lunch, he threw the blanket across his chest and lap and reclined in the driver’s seat. When he rolled up to the high school at 3:30 in the afternoon, the entire car smelled like his sleepy skin. The unmistakable scent worked as both benediction and forewarning. Do well in school so you don’t end up like me.
We never threw my dad a retirement party because there was no official retirement. He left the workforce in 2009 at age 65, exactly six months before he became eligible to receive his full Social Security benefits. His hands had started to tremble, and the small data storage components he was manufacturing, worth over $100 a piece, would boldly shatter between his large thumb and forefinger. He was the manager of his department and oversaw a young, energetic, and loyal staff made up of mostly Filipinos who told him to watch movies on his portable DVD player while they did the work. When the next round of scheduled layoffs arrived, he asked Komag, Inc. to let him go so he could receive his twenty-six weeks of unemployment. To meet the work search requirement, he applied to six online job listings every two weeks, grateful to know that no one would be calling him back.
