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hotel job at 18

when i left my home and went to Delhi, i had 5,000 INR (~52 USD) in my pocket (given by my father) and this was my exact plan:

• i'll first stay at my mama's room (he also works in delhi)
• then i'll get a job
• then i'll create content along with the job
• once i reach break-even in that, i'll quit the job and will do it full time.
• and then i will get my own apartment on rent.

i was able to follow this plan only till step 2.

when i came to delhi the first time, i was super excited and tried metro, lift and delhi public bus on my own.

visited all the famous places i had read only in books.

after that i started looking for jobs.

my masi suggested to look for jobs in nearby hotels.

i did that and failed very badly.

i used to walk into hotels and ask for the job and when they used to see an 18 year-ish boy with no beard or moustache, no experience and no proper way to talk, they had their "NO" already prepared.

this way i spent around 3 weeks finding the job. at one point i was so desperate to get the job that i got scammed 2400 INR by a fake job agency company.

that day i came back to the room, didn't eat anything and cried silently.

because almost 50% of the money my father gave me was gone for nothing.

i told my masi that i'm finding it very hard to get a job.

the next day, she gave me two phone numbers and asked me to go for an interview.

i wore my suit with a tie and shoes and dressed up like the best day of my life.

(me in suit)

called the first phone and reached the hotel, he denied.

called the second phone and she asked me to come to the hotel.

i went. i was curious, full of hope, but ready for the worst.

at reception, i told them i have an interview and the receptionist told me to wait in the lobby.

while waiting, i was looking here and there because it was the first time i was in a four star hotel.

after some time, the MD of the hotel arrived and called me into the office.

i went inside and she asked me to sit.

then she asked some questions in english. like "what's your introduction?", "what did you do before?", "why do you wanna do this job?"

fortunately i knew english because i learnt it when i had an SSB interview.

i replied honestly. with 0 tactics.

after that she asked me to wait outside.

after some time, she called me in and said "we'll offer you a trial of one day, if we like you, you'll become the permanent employee"

these words pumped blood into my veins at an insane rate.

i was happy

the next day i woke up at 5am and reached the hotel at 8 am.

for the whole day, i forgot everything and just focused on learning so that i could impress them.

in the evening, when the MD was leaving the office, she asked seniors in front office about my work. they replied "he works really well".

and the MD said "okay, now you're the permanent employee from today"

this was the happiest moment of my life. while going back home, i was just smiling.

called my mother and told her that i got a job.

in that hotel the working hours were 12 hrs, mine were 8am to 8pm.

also there were no leaves for the first month.

in that month, i hadn't seen the sun for the whole month. (it was winters)

also the salary they were giving was 11,000 INR per month.

i was new in this thing, never had any experience, was from a village and had no friends or connections in anything related to these things.

so all of these things were exciting to me.

after i got my first salary, i bought a laptop (my first computer) on 24 month EMI.

(24 month EMI because i wasn't sure when they'd fire me)

when i had a laptop, i started exploring like crazy.

i started learning coding that i wanted to do since i was a kid, started creating content and started learning about the stock market.

(me learning to code while doing the night shift)

so at one point i was doing a 12 hr job, 2 hrs of commute, 5 hrs of sleep, 2 hrs of miscellaneous things and 3 hrs of these side interests.

initially it was quite hard. i lost 20 kgs of body weight in 3 months.

but after some time, i got the night shift so it allowed me some time to focus on my side interests.

i did this for a couple of months and i've started realizing that my progress in these things is very slow.

i was hardly able to give more than 5 hrs to coding in a week and same for stock market and content.

at the same time, my hotel had 3 long-staying guests who were staying from a company's side.

they were software engineers.

i was curious so i used to talk to them.

they were also chill enough and used to talk to me on coding, programming languages, frontend, backend etc.

soon enough we became friends.

once i've asked them for advice they suggested that you can get a job in tech even if you don't have a degree but it'll sometimes create problems.

this advice along with my frustration of not seeing any growth led me to a painful and important decision to quit the job, move back home, enroll in a CS degree and get a job in tech.

because that job at hotel was absolute hell. a pure torture. owners never used to care about employees, management was messed up. guests were abusing and threatening employees anytime. anyone could be called into the office anytime even though they're at home.

this made me realize i had no future here. that job was a dead end.

so i took the decision to quit that job and told my parents that i'm coming home.

this decision was really painful because:

• i felt like a loser who's going home
• felt bad for my parents and their hopes
• felt bad about leaving my friends (that was a good thing about that job)

still i had to do it and i did.

i came back home after almost 2 years. to start things from scratch. to make myself an engineer.

some other imgs of that time:

(day 2 at the job)

(me working as a receptionist in day shift)

(img of me and a colleague a customer posted in a review)