Working for the weekend: Job 6

Summer came around again and I decided to rent an apartment and stay in Lincoln. I finally made more than one friend and had something to do with my free time, and the homesickness for Bridgeport was gone, never to return. I found a junky little basement apartment that was relatively cheap. It was ugly as fuck, I had no furniture except for a three-legged chair and an air mattress, the bathroom had no door, but it was my first apartment, and I loved it. I needed a job. My parents were helping out with the rent until I found a job and my "walking around money," as Ray Smuckles calls it, was zero. I tried hard to find a job. I scoured the want ads, filled out dozens of applications, dropped them off, and sat around the apartment, waiting. The phone did not ring. I repeated the process. The phone did not ring. I repeated the process. The phone did not ring. I repeated the process. The phone did not ring. I repeated the process. The phone did not ring. Will I get tired of typing the same two sentences before you get tired of reading them? Answers in next week's USA Weekend. Was I that unemployable? I was having the worst luck of my life, to date, in finding a job. My parents were getting tired of covering my ass, and I was tired of getting my ass covered (though I have no current problems with receiving handouts. If you'd like to chip in, leave your e-mail address in comment form under this post. I will get back to you about receiving the handout. Thanks in advance.). Desperation led me, once again, to telemarketing. But don't worry, everybody. Dry your beautiful eyes. This would prove to be the shortest rest stop on the trail of tears that is my resume. I worked for this telemarketing "outfit," as my father refers to every business, for a whopping three days. Three days of pain, misery, and degradation that made the Vietnam War look like a blowjob and a refreshing glass of cider. (At least for me. Vietnam was extraordinarily easy for me, due to the withdrawal of U.S. troops four years before my birth. Thanks, America. You're alright.) The advertisement for the job taunted me for about a month. I knew it would be easy to get. My financial woes and freeloading could end, and I could buy books and CDs again. But I would have to put the enormous veiny swollen member of phone sales back in my mouth and swallow its bitter issue. After two and a half months of unsuccessfully looking for a job, I got on my knees. (Why is this post so phallocentric? Could it be the surplus of vodka in the apartment, rendering all dick jokes hilarious? Answers in next week's "Cheers and Jeers" in TV Guide. Prediction: jeers.) I drove to the building's location. It was a strip mall in a part of town I'd never been to before. This part of town was hideous. I saw lots of children in the neighborhood, and they were all phenomenally ugly. This sentence should mean something, because I think most small children are cute and adorable and refreshingly honest and spontaneous and all that other bullshit. These kids were monstrosities, however, born from some colossal mutation in a genetic code apparently confined to a single zip code. The other businesses in the strip mall included a sporting goods store, a toy store, and a bail bondsman. They hired me without an interview and told me to start right away. The office had lots of empty carboard boxes stacked around the very small room. This should have been a sign. What kind of a sign, I don't know, but lots of empty boxes scattered haphazardly around a room sends me some kind of signal. My interpretation: Your paycheck will bounce. Run away. Fast. My boss had a mustache. (Another boss with a mustache or goatee? What the fuck? This would be the final occurrence of that particular coincidence. All my future bosses were either fully bearded, clean-shaven, or women.) I was given a script and told to sit at the only empty phone. The other three phones were occupied. Yeah, that's right. Three phones out of four. For a job that had been advertised for a month before I applied. My stomach dropped. At least I was selling something that didn't make me feel like a worm: tickets for a charity dinner for the fire department. This also seemed odd, however. The dinner was a month away, but the job was advertised as an ongoing, permanent type of gig. What else did they sell? I was never told.
I remember very little about two of the other three telemarketers, except that they were middle-aged women who kept to themselves. The third guy, however, was a titanic asshole. He looked like he was maybe ten years older than me, and he had a mullet. I bring this up reluctantly and feel it's important as a means of physical description, but, please, can we think up another word for "mullet" and stop laughing about it? The word "mullet" got to the "show me the money" stage at least two years ago, and is more nauseating each day. People lacking in wit, timing, humanity, and interest throw the word around constantly, hoping for a quick, empty, undeserved laugh from their peers. The word is boring. The jokes are boring. Move on to something else. (I suggest dick and fart jokes. Timeless, baby, timeless.) Anyway, this guy hit my shitlist the second the first night's shift ended. He leaned over to me, and said, in a silky radio-friendly voice that completely contradicted his redneck metalhead look, "Hey, Josh. Listen, Josh, you're doing real good, but just a quick word of advice. Josh, you need to just slow down a little bit. You're coming at 'em just a little bit fast, Josh." First of all, anybody who doesn't know you intimately and uses your first name liberally is a complete piece of shit as a human being and is only out to sell you something, abuse you, steal your identity, and/or attempt to control your life. Stay away from these people. Secondly, he was not a manager or a boss. He was a fellow co-worker. Maybe I was reading the spiel a little too rapidly. Maybe he was right. Let's assume everything he said was right on, down to the four references to me by my first name. He's still a cocksucker who needs to have his face beaten into pulp by a steel pipe. The next two days were the same. The morning before my fourth shift, I got a call from a grocery store I had interviewed with a week earlier. They offered me a job, starting whenever I wanted. I quit the telemarketing place over the phone via answering machine message, the only time in my life I've dropped anyone or anything over the phone. They retaliated by never sending my paycheck. I called back several times. No answer. I finally got through. They told me they sent the check and that I should have it within the week. I never got it. I drove down there, to pick it up in person. The boss' wife gave it to me. It was already addressed. They'd never mailed it. I cashed it immediately. Amazingly, it didn't bounce. No more telemarketing for me.

I watched these movies last week:
Fast Company (David Cronenberg) The DVD also had Cronenberg's two early shorts, Stereo and Crimes of the Future, on it. These are probably the three weakest Cronenberg films, the first one because it has none of the themes that dominate the rest of his work and because it's kind of a silly, exploitation script, the latter two because they're early, naive, and pretentious attempts at what he would perfect later, but all three are full of interesting shots and ideas and are worth your time if you're as fanatical about his films as I am.
The Disenchanted (Benoit Jacquot)
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (John Huston)
Palombella Rossa (Nanni Moretti)