I find that interviewing for jobs is about as enjoyable for me as watching a dog turd dry in the heat of the summers sun. It’s difficult, given the fact that I have never left a job on good terms, to use past employers as references; and when I do, I hope to God they never are contacted. When asked, “why did you leave your previous employer?” Instead of saying, “I was caught smoking pot in the bathroom, I was seen on tape stealing money out of the ’Children’s Mercy’ donation box, or I was sleeping with my co-workers and things got complicated,” I lie and say, “there weren’t enough hours and I wasn’t feeling challenged enough.” “If I called your last employer what would they have to say about you,” is another question I fear more than death itself, because if I were to tell the truth, more often than not the answer would be, “well he had a bad attitude most of the time and he told me to go fuck myself before walking out in the middle of his shift.”
It’s not that I’m opposed to being a good employee, it’s just that working hard at the places I work is almost always rewarded with nothing more than a long list of things I’m still doing wrong. Also, I really hate rules and people. For example, at the job I currently have, we cannot rest our body weight against the counters, show human emotions that are below ecstatic, or drink out of cups that are not certified by Osha, just to name a few. Personally, I find the fact that I am given the responsibility of thousands of dollars each day but banned from drinking out of containers void of straws a little infuriating. The fact that I have, at minimum, four bosses watching every move I make at any given time in addition to being monitored by 360 degrees of video cameras, doesn’t help me push towards the inclination of enjoying myself at work.
Recently, I found myself working hard for the first time in my life for the grocery store I work at. I went above and beyond my job description, did research on what I can personally do to lower waist and improve profit and sustainability in order to get the opportunity for a promotion. When the time came for the interviews my name was blacklisted the second they saw my secret shopper results. Because I did not greet the customer before ringing up the first item, and because I made a Jane Fonda reference, I was overlooked for the position. I am sick of working for companies that see only the negative in people, and I am sick of trying to impress impresionless people. This is usually the point where I take a shit on the floor and call it a day, but unfortunately I really need this job to secure my uncomfortable life of poverty. I think what I miss most about being younger was the lack of responsibility that afforded me the luxury of telling a boss to blow it out their ass, before pushing over a display of candy and running out of the building.
I once worked for an Indian man named Akesh at a tannery called, ‘Sun Paradise’ when I was 18. Why this man owned a tannery is beyond me because his skin was darker than a bats ass hole. Akesh hated white people, in fact the only thing he hated more than white people were women, especially women who felt entitled to self respect. At Sun Paradise, there were only five of us that ran the store, myself and Andrea being the only important ones, while Akesh sat at home watching, via internet, the video camera’s he set up in two feet increments throughout the store. The phone would ring, “Are you smoking pot in the laundry room?” He would demand. “Umm no?” was my only reply as I furiously put the joint out in a bucket of tanning bed sanitizer. “Oh, because I just watched you smoke a pot in my laundry room.” “Oh yeah, maybe I did, I’m sorry.”
As favorable as he was to women he was arguably less favorable to gay people. He found out I was gay, I assume because he listened to conversations between Andria and I where we talked about the biggest cocks we’d ever seen and how many blow jobs we’d given that week. I don’t know how he didn’t know my persuasion the moment I interviewed for the position as I am not only extremely gay to look at, but I was a guy wanting to work at a tanning salon. The only thing gayer than a male tanning salon clerk is a male Pomeranian dog groomer who also performs anal bleaching. He told me that if I ever told a customer I was an abominable homosexual that he would fire me. This was shortly after telling Andria that if she didn’t wear long sleeves he would also fire her. Andria and I would smoke pot in the tanning beds when no one was in the store and drink wine coolers in the bathroom to avoid the watchful eye of Akesh.
Andria was 25, 5 foot 2, and was probably the biggest slut I’ve ever known. It seemed that every day she had a new story of some slob she went home with. I loved it, I was in a relationship at the time and needed to live promiscuously through her, though my boyfriend at the time had the largest penis I’ve ever seen and knew how to use it so I wasn’t jealous, just curious. “I went home with this guy Chad but he was a lousy lay, so when he fell asleep I went in to his roommates room and fucked his brains out. They were both pretty bad, but now I can say I got fucked twice in one night by different men,” she raved once. We became bonded at the hip, a bond that was secured mostly in our love for sex, weed, and our hatred for Akesh.
After about ten wine coolers at a joint the size of a rolled up sock, we decided to not show up to work the next day. She lived with her parents and I was mooching off my boyfriend, so our financial obligations were slim to none. It was a Friday when we quit, and our last pay day. We deposited our checks and went on with our lives. Turns out, Akesh did not find the hilarity in our resignation as we did, because he canceled our pay checks which caused both Andria and I to overdraft in our accounts. That’s when we formulated the plan.
“Look, we both have keys to the place, and we both know the security code. Lets just break in after they close and take the money out of the safe.” Andria suggested. Seeing no problem with it, I obliged. It was 12:45 am when we broke in. We wore all black and covered our faces with tube socks, holes where our eyes were cut out. Her job was to cover the camera’s up front and my job was to deactivate the alarm and retrieve the money. Twenty minutes later we both left with enough money to cover three months worth of rent, or in her case, two weeks of drinking money. We left a note that read, “what you did was illegal, if you want to press charges please do, but be prepared to loose your business.” He never took suit and we walked away slightly less poor. I never talked to Andria after that night, I often find myself wondering how she is.
I had an equally crazy boss at the gay porn store I worked at. His name was Garry Lail. Like Akesh Garry found it necessary to place camera’s within inches of each other around the store and watch from his home, every customer and every mood I made. I swear to god he called once and said, “Ryan, you knocked over the black dildo by the poppers case when you were running movies, please pick it up before we loose a sail.” It’s surprising that he never caught me stealing poppers, which I was rapidly becoming addicted to. Poppers, as they are called, is nothing more than video cleaner that when inhaled, gives a rush of euphoric relaxation. They are usually used by men during sex to relax the anal muscles during fornication. But for me, they were a tool to forget where I worked. Every time I inhaled a whiff of a popper, somehow the fact that I sold but blugs and bareback cum pig porn for a living didn’t seem so bad. And that’s one thing all my past jobs have in common; the use of chemical substance to temporarily rid myself of the actualization that I work where I work. That I am doing what I do not want to be doing.
Currently it’s wine. I’ve been drinking wine every day after I get off work to forget that I worked that day, to forget that instead of painting or writing, I am for 8 hours a day, faking. I don’t like faking, it’s not who I am. It’s hard for me to smile at customers who share the intellect of dirty dishes. I need to get somewhere fast. I’ve been biding time with shitty jobs for far to long, and I desperately need to find something that makes me happy. But what will I say during the interview when they ask, “why did you leave your last employer?” Do I tell the truth? “I left because I was unhappy, and I need to be fulfilled artistically and spiritually, that’s why I’m here.”
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