In fact, unless you manage a team of
poisonous animal masturbators at the zoo, you probably don’t hear as many
work complaints as I do. And the ones that I hear are astonishing in their
variety: commuting is a long and smelly ordeal, office furniture makes my ass go
numb, the vending machine only carries Dr. Soy’s Deliciously Healthy Chocolate
Peanut Soy Protein Bars. You get the idea.
As much fun as complaining is, I can’t get into the spirit of it, because I
actually like my job. Objectively, it’s not even a great job. The pay is far
below what I deserve, and I have yet to be rewarded for my perfect attendance
with a complimentary basket of fruity soaps. But it’s all a matter of
perspective. You see, before obtaining this position, I spent several years
floundering at some hellish ones. After that, killing time at a desk seems like
a god-given present.
"I took odd jobs, all of which sucked and made me feel about
as low as an ant. And not one of those self-determined ants that star in Pixar
movies."
At a young age, I nearly fell into the vortex of spiritual
emptiness called telemarketing. Before I was even out of junior
high, I was conducting goddamn telephone surveys. Yes, at a time
when many of my peers still received an allowance, I was out in the
workforce, earning minimum wage and saving for my future via
baseball card investment. However, it didn’t take me long to learn
that calling strangers during dinner in order to ask what toothpaste
they use is an open invitation for abuse.
It’s said that Canadians are excessively polite, but let me assure you, that
doesn’t extend to market research survey-takers. When you’re 15 years old,
there’s only so many times you can be called a worthless sack of shit before
your life becomes the kind of NBC after-school special where you need the
services of a magical, self-esteem enhancing genie.
I got so bummed out, I just stopped making calls altogether and
forged the survey results. To my credit, I invented people with very
specific and credible toothpaste preferences. However, I needed to appear to be
conducting the surveys. So, I did what any brilliant slacker-in-training would
do—I pretended to do surveys while actually listening to 1-800 numbers. Yes, my
boss could listen in on the calls. Yes, I was fired. But at least I heard about
some interesting things I could do with a goat and a road flare.
From telephone surveys, it was a short trip into telephone sales. And what
did they have me selling? Cable TV, a service everyone in the early 90’s should
have wanted. How else could you learn about “Things that make you go hmmmm?”
It’s not like Arsenio Hall was making house calls at that time.
But nobody would even hear my sales pitch. People who don’t watch TV are
perversely proud of it, for some insane reason. They would pat themselves on
their pseudo-intellectual backs and lecture me for trying to earn college
tuition. Hey, I don’t like telemarketers either, but it’s not like I was trying
to sell heroin-soaked guns to crippled orphans. It was about this time I started
sneaking into bars. I may have been underage, but the defeated look on my face
told the bartender all he needed to know.
By the time I headed off to university, I had quite a bit of sales
experience. So, I quit telemarketing and got a job selling memberships at a
natural history museum right next to my campus. I would walk around the museum
trying to convince people that they’d like to
come four or five more times a year, and that a membership would enable them
to do so.
It sounds pretty crappy, but I had it all figured out. For whatever reason, a
lot of people would want to buy a membership of their own accord. When this
happened, I took measures to ensure that I was credited with the sale. All it
took was a little creative bribery for the guy who processed the applications.
He didn’t care whether it was properly a “sale” or not, but he did like whiskey.
Our arrangement made him happy, and left me free to wander around all day and
look at dinosaurs.
Life was grand for a while, but inevitably I grew sick of fielding questions
from retarded tourists, and pretending I gave a flying crap about history and
culture. I’ve looked at every square inch of that museum, and I can honestly say
that I’d rather watch reruns of Perfect Strangers. There’s nothing about
a collection of Chinese perfume-boxes that can top Balki saying “Get out of the
city!”
That job paid for most of my education, and for spending money. I took odd
jobs, all of which sucked and made me feel about as low as an ant. And not one
of those self-determined ants that star in Pixar movies. I lugged cement blocks
in the blistering heat for some guy’s pool. I was a stockboy, laboring away in
the hot, smelly bowels of a mall. I even looked after some bratty kids when
their overmedicated parents had finally had enough.
There was seemingly no end to these crappy jobs. Some didn’t even last more
than a month. I’ve been a tutor, a hotel concierge, a trade-show greeter, and a
door-to-door salesman. For a while, I was worried that I might have to run away
from it all and join the circus. In Canada, though, that would likely mean
“Cirque du Soleil,” and who needs that kind of gay schmaltz in his life?
Besides, the looming addition of a university degree brought new hope.
I graduated, and after
dicking around Asia for a while, I started to settle into what I thought
would be a long and rewarding career in the field of book publishing. I was
warned right from the start that publishing is a career you should choose only
out of a love for books. I should have expressed my love by simply reading them,
or occasionally caressing them with my penis, because trying to make money off
them is a dead end.
My first foray into the publishing world took place as an intern at a small
press that was so left-wing, I had to pose as a flag-burning lesbian just to
land the interview. The problem, as with so many internships before it, was that
nobody quite knew what to do with me. So I just tried to occupy as little space
as I could until it ran its course. Oh, and I put together a metal shelf, once.
Soon after, I secured a position at a literary agency, where I had high
hopes. I had seen Jerry Maguire, and figured that representing authors
would be as exciting as representing athletes. Well, a year went by, and I still
didn’t have any black guys shouting catchphrases at me. Sure, I was working with
some of Canada’s top authors, but that’s like saying I’ve skated with Mongolia’s
best hockey players. The field is too narrow to be impressive.
I had a nice little office, and could take home all the paper clips I wanted,
but the simple truth was, I was little more than an administrative assistant. At
that point in my life, the megalomania hadn’t set in yet, and I was more than
willing to do the office filing and photocopying. But
fetching coffee and emptying the garbage was just too much. I signed on with
a different agency, where I would be “Office Manager.”
Up until this point, the jobs were horrifying, but at least I didn’t have any
interpersonal problems with my bosses or co-workers. I like to think that I’m a
pretty agreeable guy, but I must have molested baby panda bears in a former life
because karma soon dealt me a deadly one-two punch of bitchy bosses. No,
“bitchy” is far too mild a term. These women are the most objectionable human
beings walking the face of the earth.
At the literary agency, I was saddled with a fat, ugly beast who sincerely
believed that other people were put on the earth to endure her endless abuse.
Flowers in the office had to be arranged a certain way. Water had to be chilled
to the right temperature. And if something wasn’t to her liking, she would
screech like a menopausal banshee. Her sense of entitlement was astounding. No
force in the universe could make her so much as crack a smile, not even the
hilarious prop comedy of Carrot Top. (I can’t actually prove that, but it’s a
pretty safe assumption.) One time, I got her a salad that had a ladybug in it,
and I thought I might have to sedate her with some kind of tranquilizer dart.
I didn’t last too long, and soon after, I found myself working at a bookstore
that specialized in business books. My new boss was a lizard/human hybrid of
some kind, all wrinkles and pantsuits. This was a woman who had clearly eschewed
all forms of human feeling for the sake of her business. She must have been in
her 60’s, yet I’ll swear she was a virgin. Her specialty was telling me in
advance how awful I was, and how hard she was going to work me, probably to
compensate for the lack of joy in her own life.
One beautiful winter’s day, she broke her leg, and couldn’t come in to work
for a few weeks. When she finally returned, I had to push her around in a
wheelchair. I’m telling you right now, with all the staircases we passed by, I
could easily have sent her brittle ass tumbling down to hell, and made it look
like an accident. The fact that I didn’t is a testimony to my infinite mercy.
I’m like Mother Theresa, only a better dancer.
I’ve paid my dues, and now my working life has stabilized somewhat. It’s
been a long and bumpy road, though. It’s scary to think that I’ve actually had
it pretty good compared to some people. If the tools of your trade are a mop or
a shovel, you probably know what I mean. And if your career path can be charted
from Assistant Fry Cook all the way up to Senior Burger Flipper, you have every
right to grumble. But I’m not going to indulge any more complainers unless they
pay me for the therapy.
On second thought, nah... that sounds too much like work.
