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| at Cockbuster with my boy, Dmitri, at age 19, pulling my pants up ridiculously high, and letting it fly! |
Homer: Yes, son. You can have an electric guitar just like your old man!
Bart: Dad, I'm asking if I can get a job.
Homer: Gig, son. When you're a musician, a job is called a gig.
From The Simpsons “Bart Gets Famous”
For most of my adult life, I have preferred to call a job a “gig” à la Homer J. Simpson. Maybe it’s because I treated many of them like gigs.
Counting my current job, I’ve had 30 different jobs since I started working when I was fourteen years old. This total includes gigs that lasted a month, but it doesn’t include ones that lasted a day (a canvasser for Clean Water Action) or a week or two (a door-to-door salesman when I was kid).
I’ve learned a lot from all these jobs. I figured it’d be interesting to catalog. So here’s what I learned:
1. Dog walker/Dog sitter
-how to mow a lawn
-that maggots are wretched creatures
-that being old and blind doesn’t stop dogs from being non-stop hornballs
-that walking three dogs at the same time is a physically difficult task to manage
-that two-year-old English Springer Spaniels have a lot of energy
-that having a short commute—say, a five-minute walk to work—is a splendid gift
2. Teacher Aide
-that people get jobs they are not qualified for all the time, especially if they happen to know someone from the inside
-that 3rd graders are cool
-that kids start to suck once they reach 5th grade
-that it's possible to have a crush on two sisters
-that it's possible to have a crush on two sisters
-that kids will run all over you and not respect you if they suspect (or know) that you are basically as playful as them
-that wearing a Pinky and the Brain shirt is a sure-fire way to get the nickname, Pinky—and no matter what you do, you will never be able to shed it
3. Food Server – Leatherby’s
-that you can quit a job in about a month and land on your feet in no time
-that it’s weird when someone—namely, your supervisor—refuses to make eye contact with you but will instead stare at the space just above your forehead
-how to hide food from your boss
-that, in terms of our evolution, there is something truly decadent about the invention and consumption of ice cream because it seems to be one of the favorite ways to celebrate a birthday
4. Janitor/Food server – Hometown Buffet
-that you can go to work with a 102 degree fever and somehow or another feel better after your shift (thanks, mom)
-that working with your sibling can be awkward
-that this world is full of dickheads, and that store managers of chain restaurants probably make up a significantly higher portion of said dickheads
-how to plunge clogged-up toilets real quick
-that Asian men, namely Chinese men, tend to treat bathrooms like a safe haven where they can hock up loogies and make the most disgusting sounds like there’s no tomorrow
-that there is something inherently soul-depleting about the lights hanging over a salad bar
-that I have a seemingly endless motor
-that it is incredibly hot and stuffy within a mascot outfit
-that kids fucking love balloons
-that it feels good to quit on the spot when your boss is a gaping asshole
5. Teacher Assistant
-that kids start to suck once they reach 5th grade
6. Customer Service Clerk – Kentucky Fried Chicken
-that working at a fast food restaurant fucking sucks
-that a job can feel like going to hell
-that signing up for a restaurant job because you like the idea of eating their food for free all the time is not a worthwhile reason to work there
-that it royally sucks when your coworkers hate you
7. Clerical Assistant
-that it’s quietly infuriating when the business owner repeatedly calls you “Jose” when your name—albeit also a Spanish one with four letters—has only one syllable
-that repeatedly reviewing and filling out the same form, shift after shift after shift, is soul-sucking
-that I like ordering and organizing things, such as filing boxes, in a pristine and logical order
-that I derive more pleasure from completing a physically demanding job instead of a clerical gig that requires minimal concentration
8. Order Picker
-that drinking two hot chocolates in the evening is a good way to start a bout of insomnia
-that I really have a motor, and that few people can match it (especially when I was 20)
-that I work too hard when many people in life slack or merely coast
9. Customer Service Representative – Blockbuster
-that the majority of the populace will watch whatever is deemed popular
-that most people watch crap movies (in my opinion)
-that it’s almost comical to find that the majority of suburban men will watch any crap action flick and that most suburban women will watch any romantic comedy no matter how awful and predictable it is
-that the best way to steal from a corporate store is to keep it simple: just grab something near the entrance and decisively and quickly bolt out of the store (the element of surprise will usually buy you a few key seconds)
-that having to wear a corporate uniform fucking sucks
-that I hate having my first name displayed on a nametag but its okay if I use an alias at work
-that when you work a register rolls of quarters are a beautiful and necessary thing to have in your possession
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| working hard, digging deep, 1998 |
-that dating a coworker is troublesome terrain
-that it’s incredibly awkward and pitiful to work with a coworker after you dumped them
-that back in the day Blockbuster Video made nearly a quarter of its revenue on late fees (if my memory serves me correctly)
-that district managers for corporate retail stores tend to be an elevated breed of fucking cunts
-that there’s a refreshing kind of camaraderie that manifests when you stay up all night scanning every single item in the store with your coworkers
-that running around the store throwing pennies at your fellow coworkers when business is slow is a fun way to pass the night
-that you can indeed swiftly give yourself a film education with five free rentals every week
-that working at a corporate video store is not necessarily a place to discover great films—obscure and well-known—since the majority of the populace watches crap movies (including your coworkers)
-that in a suburb one of the most concise ways to determine that someone is not part of the herd is to see what movies they typically rent
-that just about no one put back returned movies to the store shelves faster than me
10. Courtesy Clerk – Safeway
-that I am not adept at manufacturing a fake smile
-that I should never have a job in which I am expected to be smiley and overly cheerful to strangers all the time
-that I prefer retrieving shopping carts in the rain instead of being in a subservient position with a constant flux of strangers
-that I am perfectly capable of writing an overly dramatic, fictitious handwritten letter to quit on the spot if I hate a job enough
11. Assistant Manager – Blockbuster
-that working a 5 pm to closing shift on Friday and Saturday nights is a good way to sabotage your social life
-that I respect people in managerial positions who get some of the daily grunt work done instead of those who prefer to simply bark orders to their underlings
-that it’s hard to accurately complete the nightly deposit on a busy weekend night when you are absolutely fucking shitfaced hammered (and that I would never allow that to happen at work again)
12. Shipping Clerk
-that you will stand out and make an impression on your fellow blue-collar warehouse coworkers if you consistently smoke and read during your mandatory fifteen-minute breaks
-that I’m a restless person and I would prefer to be kept busy at work instead of having jackshit to do
-that scurrying around a pallet stacked with boxes to wrap it in plastic is fun in a physically poetic way
-that I work too hard when many people in life slack or merely coast
13. Aquatics Specialist
-that many humans have an innate curiosity in experimenting on animals—like seeing what will happen if you toss a goldfish into a saltwater tank full of vicious, carnivorous fish
-how to catch a foot-long koi in a huge tank with two large hand nets
-that freshwater cichlids are voracious animals
-that people regularly buy live mice and rats to feed their tank full of cichlids—and that it’s a shitty feeling to be the guy who picks up a tiny mouse to box it up in a carton for transport to its ugly, helpless death
-that I am capable of grabbing a cute mouse by his tail and looking down into its eyes as it bends and twists to claw and bite at my hand without crying because I know I have picked it to be fed to a snake or a tank full of carnivorous fish
-that betta fishes are resilient motherfuckers
-that tree frogs may be undercover amphibious buddhas
-that blue lobsters exist
-that healthy saltwater tanks are much harder to maintain than freshwater ones
-that fish sicknesses are extremely contagious
-that it’s an awful feeling to scoop out fifty to one hundred dead goldfish at one time
-that I will keep my mouth shut and go along with a group even in the face of animal cruelty
14. Camp Counselor – YMCA
-that working with children is not my strong suit
-that creating a curriculum of activities to basically entertain children for an entire day is a challenging and draining endeavor
-that fucked-up people work in childcare
-that fucked-up people work in every industry—and it definitely does not mean that they can’t do a good job
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| con mi abuelita auditioning for CHiPs |
15. Security Officer
-that with the proper focus and motivation you can get a lot of reading and thinking done if you’re a security officer at a remote post
-that some women do have a weakness for men in uniforms
-that drinking on the job can be amusing
-that bouncing a Super Ball around a construction site can be really fun
-that Goldilock’s makes delicious marble loaf bread!
-that bringing an acoustic guitar to work to pass the time while sitting at a desk to watch warehouse employees leave to use the restroom or go on their lunch break is an act of workplace rebellion in the eyes of a production supervisor
-that the food industry benefits from illegal immigration
-that the majority of people really like keeping to their kind
-that a vast server room is a spacey but kind of cool place
-that working a graveyard shift is a way of life
-that graveyard shifts attract really unusual people
-that working swing shifts has its benefits for people who have night owl tendencies
-that Sartre was absolutely spot on when he said, “Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”
-that the pool of friends and relationships you can have is severely limited when you work a full-time job that is not a typical 9 to 5 M-F
-that masturbating on the job is a perfectly reasonable way to pass the time when you have no human beings to interact with for eight straight hours
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