An individual’s first job often can shape their future, regardless of whether it inspires or traumatizes.
For state labor economist John Tirinzonie, his very first job at age 14 was pure torment.
“[It taught me] what hell is really like,” Tirinzonie laughingly recalls. “I worked on tobacco for six weeks and I thought I never wanted to work again. It was awful.”
There was the filth factor that clearly wasn’t suited for the future economist. “It took 30 minutes in the shower to get clean,” he said. “You wanted to burn your clothes. Even your hands turned brown.”
And then there was the heat factor. “Under those nets, it tended to be like a sauna. It wasn’t pretty.”
The lesson from his tobacco picking tenure taught him to never again complain about doing chores around the house.
It also taught him about the value of higher education. “My mother would say, ‘This is what happens if you don’t get a college education,’” he recalled.
A native son of both Hartford and East Hartford, his family moved from Hartford to East Hartford when he was 12 years old. Tirinzonie attended Central Connecticut State University where he majored in psychology and earned a double minor in mathematics and economics.
His second job also steered him towards a career in economics. At age 16, G. Fox & Co. hired him as a stock boy and then later as a salesman. “It was wonderful to make money and have money to spend, but I was so glad my job was done at the end of the day. Stock work was really hard. Lifting and loading up the shelves, and back and forth again to the stock room. It was very hard work.”
But worth it, because Tirinzonie wanted to buy a car. “It was the only reason I went to work,” he said.
It took a year and half at G. Fox to earn enough money to buy a navy blue, 1967 Ford Mustang convertible with a three-speed on the floor. “By my senior year, I was very much in demand in school,” he said.
His interest in economics flourished while working at G. Fox. “I guess that made me become a compulsive saver,” he said. “I think that [job] got me so interested in economics — an obsession with money.”
Tirinzonie said his cautious attitude about spending was commonplace when he was growing up. “None spent wildly like the way they do nowadays,” he recalled. “You didn’t see bankruptcy in those days.”
Upon graduation from college in 1975, he was hired as a claims agent for the state labor department. A few years later, Tirinzonie was promoted to research analyst. Eventually, he became the state’s labor economist where his passion for numbers and economics are still utilized and he has the opportunity to interact with the public.
“I am very fortunate,” he said. “I have the best of both worlds.”
