Let me tell you a bit about the summer of 2009 to tie everything together.

In 2009, I ended up in the Outer Banks on a job offer at Dunkin Donuts, which my university agency kindly provided. At first, working there wasn't bad—it was just fast food, and I had nothing to compare it to. But two weeks later, I found a second job at a Go-Kart track (those little cars that go pretty fast, basically karting). The second job involved seating people in those cars and keeping track of their ride time. In principle, I really liked it, plus they paid more. But then my beloved fast-food joint started acting up, saying things like, 'You shouldn't be working two jobs – this is your primary job,' etc. Then I started having conflicts with the manager, who forced me to run around the yard in a big foam Dunkin Donuts cup costume and wave my arms. Naturally, I didn't do it. After that, my manager scheduled me for the evening shift the following week, exactly when I was supposed to be working at the kart track. Two days before that, there was another incident—I was riding my bike to work and got soaked in the rain. It took me about half an hour to get there. Well, I arrived, started working while wet, and the manager told me, 'Go stack boxes in the freezer' (a big refrigerator, the temperature is about -30 degrees Celsius). I said, 'Are you idiots? I'm soaking wet, I'll catch a cold!' The response was a smile and the words, 'We have a contract, you MUST go in there.' That was that.

And just at that time, my boss at the kart track, Harry, offered me a full-time position. I agreed, spitting on Dunkin Donuts. Threats of deportation and so on followed me. It was scary, but I took the risk because I wasn't going to slave away and be humiliated there for pennies. As it turned out, the risk was worth it.

I worked at that very kart track all summer in 2009 and earned a pretty decent amount of money. I really liked working there. Therefore, when I arrived in 2010 and realized that our schemes were starting to fail, I decided to look for work. My previous boss had gone bankrupt for some reason, so I went looking for work in similar places. And I found it. Almost immediately. Near the place where we lived, there was one of those Go-Kart tracks. They hired me almost immediately because I had experience. True, they gave me a few too few hours at first—only 20 a week—but they paid well—10 bucks an hour.

I liked working there. Good people, ex-cons, absolutely all of them. You can talk to them about anything, they smoke weed, do coke, no managers for you, you could take a nap for an hour or two when there were no customers. Beauty, in general.

But that wasn't enough, since my brother was still without work, so I looked for something else. And I found it—a restaurant needed a DishWasher. Without hesitation, I went there immediately. As it turned out, it wasn't a bad job—putting dirty dishes into a special machine and then taking out the clean ones. And they paid decently—9 bucks, plus free food, since it was a restaurant. Well, they gave me 30 hours a week there too. Later, I dragged my brother to work at that restaurant too. In principle, at that moment, everything started to suit me, and I decided to just enjoy life in America. But as they say, that wasn't the end of it...