Today a man walked up to me at an event in the neighborhood community garden where people were wearing first-name name tags and said, "Carmen. Did you used to work at Levinsky's?"

My jaw dropped. I did, in the late 1980s. I worked at the flagship location of the family-owned clothing store, in downtown Portland, Maine, in the shoe department. I started there when I was 15, at $3.50 an hour, and I stayed on through high school, weekends and summers, until I left Maine for college.

I punched a clock with a paper card, I learned how to use a Brannock Device, I got a 20% employee discount on store merchandise, I spent half of my paycheck there on teddy bear sweaters and Sperry topsiders, and I made friends with kids who hadn't known me since first grade. I loved that job.

It has always meant a lot to be recognized by a leader in the workplace. And it did my heart good today when Ken Levinsky himself, who interviewed me for my first real job, recognized me in the community garden today. I remember that interview, where I impressed him with my grade point average and worried that my inability to fold a long-sleeved button-down shirt might be a strike against me. Maybe that's why Ken put me in the shoe department.

I thanked Ken for hiring me and babbled on about how working at Levinsky's guided the trajectory of my life, which is true: One of my colleagues there applied to Tufts University the year before I did, and he talked it up so much that I ended up going there, thanks to a generous financial aid package. I met brilliant mentors at Tufts, and I interned at The Atlantic when it was still in Boston, and I ended up going into journalism. Yada, yada, yada, here I am.

I still can't fold a long-sleeved button-down shirt.