work

I have had several jobs.

Many, many jobs. So many in fact that I've never really tried to figure out exactly how many... until now. See, I was raised in a blue collar family... so little things like "an allowance" or "a car" were a fucking joke to my parents. I had to go to work early on, and I was never allowed to slack. because "slack" meant "no cash."

So, to any of the five or six readers who only had to work part-time during college summers... or not at all: fuck you. I hate all of you. All of six of you. So, for your education on how the working class thinks, read on.

Oh, and by the way, cry me a fucking river when you don't get that NBC sitcom writing job that you think you deserve (with your creative writing M.F.A.) and you have to settle for that position in your uncle’s (Executive VP) company... and your parents bought you your graduate (as well as bachelor) degree(s) so that you don’t have student loans... and then a new car because you finished in five and a half years... and then paid your rent for the first nine months that you put off actually looking for a job... and kept your checking account full... and gave you extra money so that you could fuck off in Europe for six weeks... and yet you still find cause to bitch. You're a cry baby. Shut the fuck up.

And observe:

1. My first job was working summers for a local farming corporation as a “corn detastler.” Let me emphasize that this is “migrant labor.” You have to be at the bus by 7:30 a.m. (seven days a week). The bus is a piece of shit school bus. They drive you out into the middle of nowhere and you have to walk through a corn field pulling this one part of the plant out of the middle of each stalk. There’s about 2,000 stalks in each row. In the morning the field is drenched of dew, so by the end of the first row your clothes are soaked, your shoes and socks are soaked and muddy, your hands are rough and scratched up, and your legs itch like a motherfucker. Then in the afternoon the sun comes out and fries your ass. You get done sometime around 3 p.m. and then go home and sleep because you're totally wiped out. This little stroll through hell happens when you're 14 years old. This job lasts 4-6 weeks. They don't even pay you until the end of the summer, so it's not like you're getting paid as it goes. And they pay you whatever shit wage was a shit wage in the late 1980's... something pathetic like $4 an hour.

Yeah, ha ha... fuck you.

2. I worked at a grocery store with a couple other 17 year olds and several twenty-somethings. There were lots of locals who didn't go to college... so they settled in with a shit job like working at a grocery store, drank nightly, rejected the withdrawal method, cruised the parking lot blasting Motley Crue or Winger out of the Fiero’s tape deck and wore buttons with their kid’s pictures on their work vest next to their name.
You had to be there and punched in at 1:55 if you had a 2:00 shift. I punched in once at 1:56 and another time at 1:58 during my two month trial employment period, and was fired. I was canned by a 28 year old loser who thought he was this shit nicknamed "Shorty". He was a prick about it. He told me that I was a kid and that I was learning a valuable lesson. I looked at him, smirked, and said "who the fuck cares. nice job, asshole." and walked out. About two years ago I was at the same grocery store picking up items for my mother at Christmas and saw Shorty walking through the store wearing the same loser manager work vest. What a choad.

3. I then took a job cleaning all of the floors and deep fryers at this buffet after hours. It was good because no one else was there and I could listen to music while I mopped the floor. Sometimes I'd let my girlfriend in and she'd give me head in the back office hallway while I looked at pictures of my fat middle-aged co-workers on the employee of the month board to keep from blowing early.

4. After my first year of college I thought that the college that I was attending sucked. It was expensive, in Kenosha, there was no drinking allowed on campus and everybody lived in a dorm. I thought it was pathetic to see 23 year olds bunking with an R.A., so I said fuck sophomore year, and moved to Madison to be a 19 year old college drop out. The first job I got was working at a gas station in the ghetto, and then I quit and worked at a record store after a gun was pulled on one of my co-workers on a different shift at the ghetto gas station. The record store was cool because I got to listen to, and make copies of, imports and because nobody cared if you were high on the job.

5. I worked on a tire assembly line for large trucks produced by GM, lifting 40 lb. rims onto a conveyor belt that moved the rims onto a line that placed the rims inside of tires for 18-wheelers. All of my co-workers had enormous forearms. This was one of those 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. jobs with two 10 minute and one 15 minute breaks during the shift for $6.50 an hour. You weren't allowed to take a piss until your break.
Then I worked at a factory that produced the fiber-cloth liner that goes inside of the trunk of your car, in between the metal and the carpet liner. It was in a warehouse that got to be about 95 degrees in the summertime with no cross wind. Occasionally the cloth would catch fire on the giant weaving machine. It was an awesome and horrific sight. My co-workers were pleasant morons, unaware of how bad they were getting it. I've never met more functionally retarded people working in one place in my life. Somehow they all afforded new cars on lease.

6. I worked as a janitor for one and a half summers for the college I attended in Milwaukee after taking the time off. It was awesome. They hired a bunch of students and we worked for the full-time janitors. My janitor Lucy was an awesome middle-aged black woman who smoked pot and didn’t care if we didn’t do anything. You had to punch in at 7:30 a.m., and then we'd go find an empty dorm room and go to sleep. The main guy Gary (who looked like an adult Dennis the Menace) would make the rounds to all of the dorms. Everyone and anyone had to check in at the front desk, so the girl at the desk would page Lucy to tell her that Gary had entered the building... Lucy would then walk up the hall and say "Gary is here!" and we'd all get up, plug in vacuum cleaners and begin to vacuum as Gary walked the hall inspecting. When he left, we'd go back to sleep for another hour.
At lunch we'd either smoke a j behind the dumpsters in the back of the building and cut in line at the dorm cafeteria and eat for free (we had cashier friends), or go to a bar. We’d come back, work for approximately 45 minutes and then watch TV in the basement lounge. Usually “The People’s Court” followed by “Love Connection.” We got out at 2:30 p.m. everyday and had the rest of the summer day to fuck off. The second summer eight or nine of us got fired in one sweep of the axe because Gary saw us leave 15 minutes early and walk into a bar at lunch time, and then come back 20 minutes late. Walking back in, I got tipped off that Gary was looking for us, so I started to vacuum. Gary came in an said "I saw you guys leave early and go to the bar. I can't have that. I have to let you go." I said "That's cool. I still like you Gary." Gary started to laugh and said "Yeah, I like you guys too." Gary was cool.

7. I got a job at a bank processing loan applications with a bunch of old women. It was super lame, but they paid $10 an hour and let me listen to headphones while I pile-drove through this easy work. I got the job after taking a bottle of my friend Shawn's piss to the last interview. The whole time that this old lady talked to me, all I could do was smile, nod and think “I’m carrying a bottle of piss inside my pants.” I had Shawn piss into a Evian water bottle, then I crushed it flat and had it snug tight against my waist, held in place by my belt. Then she walked me through the department and I shook hands with 30 people… hoping that that the bottle didn’t come loose in my stride and slip down my pant leg to the floor. You can’t explain that. You have to walk. I took the bottle to an off-site clinic and squirt Shawn’s piss into a cup during the drug test. I got the job. I quit when school started again, so they gave me a raise to $12 an hour and let me work part-time in between classes.

8. I got a job selling advertising space in the college paper to the local liquor stores. I took photos of the burnouts who delivered kegs to parties and wrote ad copy with jackass headlines like “You tap… I’ll pump.”

9. I got a summer internship at a marketing agency working for a hot 28 year old named Carolyn. She took a liking to me when I told her that I was surprised that she was older than me (23). Carolyn dated the agency owner's son... a 30 year old prick who worked at the agency after failing at all attempts to establish himself elsewhere. He wore golf shirts and drove an SUV. I then got a copywriting internship at an ad agency where I wrote radio ads about Velcro lace-up b-ball shoes for Foot Locker and worked on the shoot of a TV ad for a website. One task I got was getting to choose "the talent" from a stack of headshots. We hired a hot 26 year old local model who spent the entire morning being filmed tapping her fingers on a keyboard and smiling at a blank computer monitor.

10. I worked the door at a popular Milwaukee bar. The drink of choice among the door guys was jack and coke. We'd swallow a hit of trucker speed - that over-the-counter asthma medication sold at truck stops - and wash it down with three or four stiff pints of jack and coke.
I learned how to be direct with people. Some drunk would come to the door when the place was packed and I’d tell him that we were capacity and that he had to wait. He’d either listen to me or stare at me. If he stared at me I’d look him direct in the eye and repeat what I’d said. He’d either back down or hand me $10 and I’d let him in. One time I stood at the door at close, making sure that no one snuck out a bottle of beer or drink. A super drunk guy came to the door from outside and wanted to come in. It was 2:37 a.m. State law said that we had to have everyone out by 2:30 a.m. There were cops all over the streets, and they were serious about this law. They’d fine the owners and fuck with their liquor license. Anyways, the drunk walked up and I told him that he couldn’t come in. He looked at me like I was some fuckin stupid kid. He said “let me in. I gotta piss,” and pulled a police badge from his wallet. I looked at the badge and said “well, because you’re a cop you know that we can’t have anyone in here past 2:30… so why don’t you go piss in the street and when a cop comes up to you, you can show him that badge.” He looked at me and then walked away. Fuck with cops when you can.

11. I got a job for the summer after college stocking Nabisco products on the shelves at grocery stores 40 miles away in Kenosha. I drive 40 miles each way. My boss was a total stroke. He was a couple years older and was clearly pissed that I was a college graduate and would only be working for the summer before moving on. Making small talk, I asked where he was staying in town... if he was a renter, homeowner, what? He told me that he lived in "a luxury condominium" and then later asked me "if I was making it or faking it." (as in money). What a fucking tool, he knew what I made an hour. The week that he was on vacation, he’d still stop by the stores once or twice to see how everything was going. Most of the time he’d over-order his weekly delivery, and the stores would refuse and send back the pallets. He told me that he’d asked his manager for a raise and had been denied. He was a total joke. I must admit to taking advantage of the nightly call in your hours and mileage deal though. I knew that I was out at the end of the summer, so I ran with it. Throughout August I averaged $800 a week. I quit and moved to Chicago.

12. I worked the door of an Irish bar on Sunday nights. There was never any trouble, I got to drink, I didn't have to clean anything or carry the band's equipment and they paid me $75 cash at the end of the night for working 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. After the band finished at midnight the only people left were white collar alcoholics and off the boat Irish. They used to play Cher’s “I Believe in Life After Love” at least three times before close. To this day I cannot get that song out of my head. I had to quit after a few months though because it made Monday morning at my straight job a total bitch.

13. I worked for an ad agency doing the media planning for TV and radio broadcast of a major fast food chain. I had to be to work at 8 a.m. sharp and usually left around 6:30 p.m. Even in the summer. In between 8 and 6:30 I got yelled at on the phone by New Yorkers. This paid $24,000 a year. I hated this job because I hate math. Fuck math! I also hated it because I was trying to get a copywriting job. On my last day I hid over 50 pictures of Charles Bronson throughout my cubicle.

15. I eventually got a copywriting job. I wrote about it last week in the "personal evolution" entry.

16. Presently I write advertising for a major non-profit association. So far so good. It can be boring... and there's a lot of useless fucks attempting to justify their job... but it's work.

That's what work is. It's work.