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The Future Burns with Promise

15 Jul
image stolen from call4health.com

image stolen from call4health.com

It’s almost 7:30. I had a long commute. I worked hard. I did well at work. Found people looking for buildings. This is my job now. I drive out to the desert and sit in an office at a veneered desk and talk into a phone. In front of me is a giant monitor filled with a grid of warehouses located in a desert county, along with names and phone numbers. I call the place, try to find out if the person is interested in moving. If they are, I get money.

Maybe a lot of money. A piece of the deal. Warehouses are typically leased for periods of ten years so a lot of money changes hands if one of these things come through. But before that happens I have to punch in a lot of phone numbers off this white grid. I am in an ill fitting suit; behind me men walk around and chatter in other ill fitting suits. Their shoes are newer than mine but we pretty much look the same. Talk into the phone and try to make money come out. Outside my window are mountains. An apartment complex. Trees tossing in the desert wind, occasionally a bird. No one gets naked in the apartment windows, ever. Still, I keep a vigilant watch. Continue reading

Shit Jobs: Telemarketing

6 Jun
Telemarketing

image stolen from j.p. sims consulting

You’re sitting there in a tiny cubicle in a moldy beige room with acoustical tile and you are separated from a bear sized homeless man with a loud booming voice by what is basically urinal divider. You have a headset on, an old one with one foam earphone and a curly wire going into a battered phone. You are listening to a cavernous hiss. And then it beeps and your back tenses and it’s showtime.

“…. Hello? HELLO!!???!!!”

The person on the other end of the line has been listening to silence and clicks for five seconds. They are tipped off to what you are. Because the autodialer waits for what it thinks is a human voice to connect you. The person is already pissed off. You have a dumb terminal in front of you. It’s the 21st century but you have a monitor with green block letters on black from the 70’s with what is putatively the person’s name and address, but a lot of times it’s empty or some guy who was about to get fired had put in “Harry Stiffey, 69 Cumshot Drive.” Continue reading

Unemployment Diary: Reason for Being

12 May

There is no purpose to my life. No purpose to getting out of bed. Still. What was my purpose before? Pleasing assholes who can’t be pleased, who were mercurial and cruel, for barely enough money to live off of, and nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of climbing up from the bottom of the assholes to the middle of the assholes. Chasing the privilege of being scared of the assholes above you and contemptuous of the assholes beneath you. Seeing people under you as simpering, grating disposable strivers, dogs rolling over when hit with a stick. Fuck that. You think things suck now, remember how much they sucked before. You think going to work would stop you from being nuts but work drives you nuts, too. Just in a different way.  This way I can go nuts on my own terms.

There is danger in solitude but there’s worse danger in the company of idiots. I’ve seen the movie industry, the TV industry, the book industry, what these things are really like. There is no place for me in this world.  I’ve done some traveling, some writing, I’ve met some girls, made some friends. Seen the stars in the desert, whales breaching in the ocean. Attack ships on fire off the rings of whateverthefuck. But mostly it’s been drinking and jerking off in my sweaty apartment. Fine.  It’s what I was born to do.

Unemployment Diary: Want Ads

25 Apr

Job-interview-300

Are you PASSIONATE about finance? Rock star Executive Assistant needed for C-level exec at up-and-coming boutique firm. Ideal candidate is a detail-oriented, motivated self-starter. Thick skin and ability to handle tricky personalities a must. Salary standard with opportunity for growth. Bachelors degree, five years industry experience required.

They’re all like this. Because these people are all liars. In order for them to pay you they demand that you be a liar too. Are you passionate about finance? Of course not. No one is. No one is even passionate about money; they go after money because they have no passion and don’t know what else to do with their lives. But we want you to be motivated by passion, not a paycheck. Because we don’t want to pay you. Continue reading

Work Diary: Why I Drink

24 Apr

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING YOUR ACCOUNT ENCLOSED TIME WARNER CABLE URGENTLY NEEDS TO SPEAK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR SERVICE PLAN BANK OF AMERICA OVERDRAFT RESPONSE REQUIRED NOTICE CITY OF LOS ANGELES BUREAU OF WASTE MANAGEMENT MANDATORY RATE INCREASE CITY OF LOS ANGELES FRANCHISE TAX BOARD NOTICE OF WAGE GARNISHMENT NOTICE CITY OF LOS ANGELES PARKING DEPARTMENT VIOLATION CITY OF LOS ANGELES TRAFFIC COURT NOTICE OF FAILURE TO APPEAR NOTICE

this is Serenity Flannelcrotch with NPR news. Thousands of priceless ancient manuscripts have been destroyed in Mali, following an attack by Islamist rebels in the north. Unemployment is once again on the rise, according to fiscal reports from the fourth quarter; over half a million new applications were added to the seasonally adjusted figures. Meanwhile, the economy continues to add fewer jobs than projected. There’s been another school shooting, this time in Tennessee, where a student opened fire in a crowded cafeteria at lunchtime killing five and wounding twelve students and faculty. The ages of those killed ranged from seven to ten. A new “super” strain of gonorrhea has now been detected as far west as Colorado, CDC officials reported Wednesday. The strain can cause permanent damage to vital organs and is untreatable by antibiotics. In local news, former teacher Raoul Martinez will stand trial today facing allegations that he molested up to two hundred students over his thirty year tenure at Live Oak Elementary School. Rumors of Israeli involvement in Syria have drawn speculation that the U.S. may send troops, after a possible Israeli airstrike within Syrian borders. The Dow is up eight hundred points. Continue reading

The Hottest Girl of All Time

19 Apr

You gotta understand that the hottest girl of all time is a sixteen year old special needs student with big tits who once sat wet in a white bikini on my uncle’s washing machine. He had a place by a lake; the kids would go there to swim. My aunt drove the special needs school bus in the town of Nottingham, New Hampshire. She rode this bus, so, something was wrong with her, but she seemed normal. She was beautiful. Perfect face. And big tits, bit sixteen year old tits that were still growing, popped out like balloons, a bubble butt that was still growing, a little hair on her pussy but not the pie plate sized tangle of Armenian backthatch that God sees fit to give women in adulthood. A sixteen year old special needs girl. Some kind of ADD or autism or dyslexia before these words were on TV, before they meant a rich kid who fucks up in school, so they just put her with the dumb kids. She was looked down on. The words you used to hurt people were retard and faggot; she rode the retard bus. She was sweet and just wanted somebody to like her. Just wanted somebody to kiss her under the raft, warm skin in cold water, just wanted somebody to touch her. This happened twenty years ago, and not even the part with the kissing, all I did was talk to her. The other kids were laughing at me but I didn’t know why. I didn’t find out she was mentally impaired until after the fact.

I’ve been jerking off to that memory for twenty years. A man’s dream is a woman who is beautiful, but at such a shit station in life that she’ll to talk to him even if he’s nervous. Before he’s a hardened soulless player shuffling through drunken anonymous fucks. You have as much of a shot at finding one as the fat girl does at marrying Justin Bieber.

Unemployment Diary: Timing

18 Apr

jaguar in cage

So it’s great to not work but it has its own set of dangers. You will do nothing with your time; you will sit at a desk and jerk off all day while it’s 73 degrees and sunny outside and people are walking around with interesting stories and the great books of the world sit ignored on the shelf of a library that’s within walking distance. In your own home you have musical instruments, you have a machine that can teach you any language in the world, but the machine also shows you young Thai girls choking on big veiny dicks and I don’t need to tell you which one you end up picking. There is a whole other country, another culture, another language right next door; mountains and deserts and jungles– jungles! With jaguars in them! Toltecs in those crazy blankets with faces like temple carvings selling fruit in some high mountain pass, dark eyed girls and cheap beer. But you’re too scared to go to it. You could be kidnapped. Kidnapped away from what, jerking off? Arrested? Your life is a prison. The difference between this apartment and Mexican jail is I have a slightly better toilet. Continue reading

How to Write

17 Apr

chimpanzee-at-typewriter-300x225

Every morning, get up an hour before you have to. As you take your morning shit, read a book by your favorite writer. I recommend Charles Bukowski.

Then sit down, every day, and just make your fingers move on the keyboard. Just write the first shit that comes into your head. Don’t worry about structure or getting jokes in there or expressing any particular idea. Write this material with the idea that NO ONE is EVER going to read it. You will have a voice in your head chiming in constantly saying OMIGOD THIS FUCKING SUCKS! YOU HAVE NO TALENT! IF ANYONE EVER SAW THIS IT’D BE LIKE EVERY GIRL IN JUNIOR HIGH SEEING YOUR NAKED DICK AFTER YOU WERE SWIMMING IN ICE WATER! You will need to get past this voice. It takes about a year.
Continue reading

Dreams

11 Apr

dreaming-1721

At some point your dreams cease being satisfying. There’s no more fucking and flying. It’s only: a vampire is coming after me, but, sweet, I have a gun! Then the gun doesn’t work. Vampire rips off your face and you wake up. Look, there’s a hot chick, let’s fuck her. You go up to her and she starts yelling at you about politics. You wake up.

I had a dream about my old boss; he was yelling at me. A screener of some film had arrived. I had it in my hands to give to him right away and he was like “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THIS WAS HERE??!!??” Totally something he would do. So I told him “look, it JUST got here,” and then I punched him in the face over and over and over again. He fell down. Then he turned into my mom. I had just beaten up my mom. I woke up.

To my subconscious: I get it. I have problems. Quit fucking reminding me and just give me some imaginary pussy.

Unemployment Diary: Land of Opportunity

5 Apr

oppo

I haven’t received a single call back on the dozens of jobs I’ve applied for. But I did get my first scam call from my resume posted with the Unemployment Department. I’m stunned it took so long.

Mr. Tacos, I found your resume online and I have an opportunity that may interest you.

It’s a boiler room job stealing old people’s retirement accounts. But what isn’t. That’s the entire banking system.

Or it’s not even that. It’s a pyramid scheme selling unemployed people the promise of stealing old people’s retirement accounts. It doesn’t pay. I need to be clear that this is a commission based position. It’s not baseline salary plus commission. But that didn’t come up until later. First it was, are you familiar with the Baby Boom Generation? The way to make money in this economic climate is to attach yourself to a growth industry. Well, the Baby Boomers are turning 65 at a rate of 11,000 per day. Are you familiar with 401k plans? Our company helps baby boomers switch over from 401k’s to a financial plan they have more control over. Is this something that interests you. We work with multibillion dollar corporations. Have you heard of Transamerica, IMG, Prudential. Is this something that interests you. I’m thinking of the box on the unemployment form. Did you REFUSE any work? Uh, yeah, it interests me. Great. Well, there is some training, there is a licensing process. It is clear that it is unpaid training. I have to ask if the training is free. It is. But the license costs money. Continue reading