ME: “Am I getting fired?”
BofA Wig: “Oh no, not at all, we just want to ask you some questions…”
I had some hot wings delivered to the parking kiosk I was working at and got caught by management. If memory serves me, that was the best shift; the medical center kiosk. Everyone who worked the booths ordered food but I got caught. I worked parking for almost 2 years and saw people come and go like toilet paper. My ticket was up and the hot wings stunt was just what they needed to fire me. When I returned to the yard after my shift was over I got into a shouting match with the shift manager. I told him, "you can’t fire me, I quit!"
Right before I quit working at Ann Taylor the manager asked me if I had stolen some merchandise. I told her in my most honest voice that I had not. But I had. One morning after running late to work without any socks on, I stole a pair from the stock room. A month later it turned out that the night manager had been embezzling money and stealing jewelry and shit and within a year the store was shut down.
I worked for a crazy balloon lady who had big fake tits. She was coked out and disorganized, but she hired me because I went to her Alma Mater. My adventure began at dawn in an A-team van with a handful of other students huddled together like immigrants, illegally crossing the border. We got to some posh west-side private school and began constructing balloon arches with no training and vague instructions. On the way back home the coke-head slammed on the breaks of her rapist van and I flew to the back while a large helium tank smashed into me. That was my first and last day.
My summer as a Library page was spent shelving books. Leafing through copies of books too sophisticated for my tender mind. I took my time in the audio visual department listening to obscure music and watching movies under the guise of checking them for defects. I worked with a tall unattractive girl who had recently lost a lot of weight and flirted shamelessly with older even more unattractive men. I would watch her practice her runway walk because according to her, she was going to be a model when she grew up.
The blue and yellow big top was posted under the Santa Monica pier for a couple of months. Back then one could flip a bitch on PCH and easily find street parking. Le Cirque left town and wanted me to come along with them but silly me, I had dreams and goals. They ended up taking this older version of what I was to become. She was less idealistic and was all too happy to run away with the circus.
A stripper I knew got me a gig selling bongs at this head shop in Venice Beach. I sold more glass stems to crack heads than anything else. This old man I worked with was skimming off the top. He got wise to the fact that I was wise to his little act and he got me shit canned. The owner felt bad letting me go and gave me a beautiful green piece with gold glitter as a parting gift.
During the summer when 'Independence Day' premiered I worked concession at Edwards Cinema. This big Samoan dude brought in a whole pizza in a box and I told him, "No outside food allowed sir." He laughed and tossed me aside like an annoying fly. Burns on my arms from cleaning the popcorn machine and the knowledge of what the "butter" is comprised of, is enough to keep me from ever eating popcorn again.
At the seedy sex shop I clocked in about a week of work before I pulled a no call/no show. It was a toss up between the disgust of unsuspecting “normal” men who had a thing for trannie porn and the gay dude who gave them blow jobs in the stalls that did it for me.
Free bras and panties were not enough to keep me at Victoria's Secretion. Panty tables, store sets, wearing a black blazer and paying for my own parking proved too high a price for ill fitting bras and cheaply constructed undies.
I met the Possum at some Jewish Center. My job there was to shock innocent school children with images of poverty and abstract art. The goal: to illicit some raw emotions in them. Which in turn they would use to scribble their apathetic feeling onto a small blank white box. The Possums job was to photograph the boxes. The whole project was some lesbians answer to heightening homeless awareness.
One Christmas after a grueling interview and a 100 question morality test I went to lunch and never came back from my seasonal gig at Urban Outfitters. A bunch of things lacked price tags and the store was a mess. I remember that I started giving a bunch of shit away when I knew I would not be coming back from lunch.
I enjoyed teaching sex Ed for PPLA. My car was new (to me) at the time and filled with boxes of condoms. I lived in the West side and I did not mind driving EVERYWHERE. I felt confident, I was educated, and most of all I felt productive. Eventually like with most non-profits I was phased out due to budget cuts.
Once after a week of hard rain I found the dead body of a diabetic tenant that lived in one of the units of the apartment building I managed. He was swollen and flies feasted on his body.
The union was a job. I did not hate it, and I did not love it. But when you work for someone who lives in a world of their own creation they sure as shit ain't gonna let you fuck around with their little operation.
That one summer I worked as a youth marketer was a dream/joke. Best job ever. I got paid to go places, have fun and pass out free shit. Totally ridiculous. When I got paid to go to Vegas, I tore down the curtains and wrote on the walls that I loved Johnny Depp. When I went to Satan's asshole; Phoenix Arizona, I dyed my hair and left the bathroom and towels blood red. Priceless.
“Fake it till you make it”, is what some broad with a skin condition told me in HELL. Bank of America was an awful place and in the vein of disgruntled ex-employees I can with overwhelming certainty say that I worked with the stupidest bunch of morons EVER. Never have I met such vapid stupidity. People so fucking unaware of the world around them, so out of touch with reality: global politics, music, cinema, even state capitals. People with nothing to contribute to a conversation, nothing to teach or impart in the least bit. I felt my brain drying up during my 4 year stint in that shitty hell hole. I found myself forgetting words and facts. My conversations were reduced to sophomoric colloquialisms.
It’s not entirely fair for me to demean the job that I begrudgingly stayed at for 4 years. There were a few lost souls in that crummy place that knew a thing or two, or three whose friendships and company I enjoyed. But for the most part I was misplaced. I did not belong there. It was such a lonely soul numbing experience, so much so that when they called me into the little room to ask me a few questions (they lied; the very next day they shit canned me) I was filled with euphoric optimism.
The nostalgic cynic within drove me to read through my old diaries and a common theme recurs, the need and desperation for a job, the constant dissatisfaction with my station and overall quality of life. As I embark on this familiar journey I HOPE that my ship sails in forgivingly calm water. That my destination be not a mirage but a welcoming port filled with promise and future, that my days be filled with beautiful weather, health and riches unknown to man.
