Sidetracked

You know, I think these striking writers are a little spoiled.

I mean, yeah, they don’t get the same pay as the stars. And, sure, a writer in Hollywood never has job security. But at least they generally work more than a day. And at least the boss doesn’t get on them about facial hair. (It’ll all make sense in a bit.)

After college, I would have done anything* for a chance to write for a TV show. Instead, I was a salesperson at The Shoe Carnival, leading to the inevitable question:

Should political science really be offered as a major?

It wasn’t any better for my friend, whom I’ll call “Brad” because that’s his name. By the time he was 26, Brad probably had more jobs – none of them good — than anyone on the planet.

One day a couple of years ago, we tried to name all of those gigs, but we quickly found that task impossible. So we decided to stick with positions he had held for just a day.

“Weren’t you a trash collector once?” I asked, keeping count with several raised fingers.

“Oh yeah,” he said, reminiscing. “But that one lasted a week.”

“What about the time you worked at Waffle House?”

“Which time?”

“Either.”

“Of the three?”

“Any of them.”

“I think the second one was a one-day.”

“Yes! That’s eight.”

I suppose you might say he took the car-buying approach to the job market: You had to do a little test driving in order to see if it was for you. Hence, during those years Brad was a pizza delivery driver, a cook, a factory worker, a city bus driver, a naval recruit, a slaughter house worker, a college student (four times), a semi driver, a trash collector, and everything else that didn’t involve a contract or benefits.

We eventually reached around a dozen one-day jobs before we gave up.

“So, did you ever get paid for any of those days?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said, though I knew the truth. It’s fairly tough to return to a place for which you worked only a day and actually ask for money. But, on the other hand, you always hate to admit you worked for free.

I know this because I had a few of those brief stints myself.
The grocery store gig, for instance, ended when I asserted my constitutional right not to shave. (The boss, obviously, did not embrace civil liberties.)

The pizza delivery job ended because, well, I didn’t want my car to smell like everybody else’s pizza. It was hard enough being a 23-year old single guy when your no-thrills, economy car doesn’t smell of pepperoni.

I know — that makes me sound like a snob. Truth was, I just couldn’t block out a nightmarish scenario of me — a college graduate who was supposed to at least be in Congress by that time — knocking on a door, hot pizza in hand, only to see, in stunned horror, one of my high school teachers staring right at me.

TEACHER: Why, hello, Pat. What are you up to these days?

ME: Aaaaaaarrrrrgghhh!!!

After a couple of trial runs, I cowardly waited for the right opportunity, then drove home when no one was looking. Later, when I returned home an out-of-work deadbeat, another friend of mine was disturbed by the news of my abrupt resignation.

“You didn’t even give them a two-week notice?” he asked, repulsed.

“I never even worked there two weeks, man. Why would I give them a two-week notice?”

“I dunno,” he said, sarcastically. “Courtesy, maybe?”

As a manager (a.k.a., “one of them “), who was obviously biased against the layman, I knew he wouldn’t be reasonable.

Eventually, I figured the jump from Pizza Express to Capitol Hill was just too unrealistic. So I begged the journalism program at Indiana University to let me into their graduate program.

Brad had a few more test drives – as a nurse’s aide and an undertaker – but he also went back to school (again) and wound up becoming a safety inspector pulling in around 70 grand a year.

He was such a bizarre and funny guy, I always thought he’d make a great sitcom character. Of course, with the strike, there’s no one to write the show, so maybe I’ll just imagine it while not shaving.

* Except listen to Whitney Houston music

–Pat P.

Posted on January 16th, 2008 by Pat
Filed under: The World According to Pat