"Workin' Man"

When I was nineteen years old, in a controversial move, I got a job while on vacation. My entire family was enjoying a little R & R in Avalon, New Jersey for two weeks and I was so bored—it’s nice but the only things to really do there are to go to the beach (which I don’t like), ride bikes?!?, and play miniature golf. (By the way, why do people get so excited about playing miniature golf while on vacation? I mean, no one seems to give a crap about this activity in any other circumstance.)

Anyway, it was a bold and controversial move, made even bolder and more controversial by the fact that I was not exactly prone to working while not on vacation.

And this brings us to my first day of work.

The aforementioned job was at a gas station and I was not particularly excited, or particularly motivated, by the job or the work involved—to tell you the truth, I really just wanted the shirt all the employees got (the gas station attendant shirt was quite chic at the time and I wanted one enough to take a job at a gas station just to get one).

My first day of work started off innocently enough with me being taught the ropes and getting right into the task of filling up gas tanks, squeegeeing windshields, and hoping no one asked me to check their oil, because even though someone had shown me how to do it, I still wasn’t anywhere near confident in my abilities in that department, which is a nice way of saying I had absolutely no idea (even to this day) how to do it.

So there we were, a team of gas station employees, a bonded unit, a finely-oiled machine, working hard, like dogs, toiling under the strain of the oppressive and unrelenting heat of the summer sun at this honest—but let’s be truthful—fairly crappy, job, scampering about and giving it all we had, as we pushed ourselves to the max, leaving it all on the mat—all except for me. Sure, I was doing my “job,” and doing it well enough, but something was amiss to me. I saw something the others did, nay, perhaps could not see: this gas station, our gas station, was the only one on the whole fucking island! (By the way, Avalon’s an island, which I feel is a fact I should of introduced earlier, but whatever, the thing’s an island; one small step away from an archipelago—surrounded by water on three sides, not four). Now this may seem like a totally innocuous fact to you because—like the people I was working with—you’re not as smart as me, but what they (and you) did/do not understand is that we had a monopoly going. So why in Sam Hill were we working so fast and so hard? Where were these people gonna go? I’ll tell ya, sister: NOwhere. And being the nice guy that I am, I graciously shared this information with my fellow employees, who responded in turn by telling me that I’d better shut up and not let the manager hear what I was saying because he already thought I was a slacker. I retorted by saying not to worry, dear friends, that the guy was a pussycat, and that my revolutionary idea (that is, to work slower and with less effort) was in their best interest (which it actually was—I was trying to make their jobs easier.) But some people just have to look a gift horse in the mouth; some people just have to have it the hard way. So I cooled it out for the rest of my shift, and when it was over, discussed with the manager when I would work next, and then started home.

But something happened along the way: I put my hands in my pockets, as I sometimes do when strolling to and fro places, and felt something: a wad of cash. I pulled it out of my pocket and stared at it. Okay, freeze frame on that image. Now let’s zip back through time, super-fast, like in a movie, to the beginning of my shift, and let’s angle on the part where I’m given a wad of cash with which I am to make change with while I work. Okay, now let’s zip back, again, super-fast, to me standing there with the wad of cash in my hand. Unfreeze me and I’m standing there, the realization of the situation having sunken in, and I’m trying to decide what to do: I could take the money, skip town, buy an inexpensive, prob’ly used mountain bike, or do the right thing and take the money back.

So what did I do: I decided to be honest Abe and I took the money back and got totally fired.
BAM! after only one shift, too. The manager basically said he thought I sucked and that I was a slacker, and I also think he had heard about my idea to work slower and with less gumption, and forgetting to hand back the money was the straw that got my ass fired. He stood there, thinking he had delivered the death blow, that he had absolutely crushed my soul—but he couldn’t have been wronger (not a word); I couldn’t have cared less (I mean, I already got the shirt, folks). Honestly, what the hell was this guy thinking? That this job was in any way long term? That I was gonna try and work my way up, climb the ladder of success at this joint until I was assistant manager, possibly even manager, dethroning him? I was on vacation, for Pete’s sake! I was gonna leave the job in two weeks max, no matter what.

But still I was a tad stung by his and the gas station’s rejection of me and my ways, and so I vowed to get another crappy job the very next day. I landed a position at Dairy Queen, where I washed dishes for twenty minutes and then felt really anxious and like I had to get back home (where I’m from) right away, so I told the manager and she somehow totally understood. ?!?.

I went back to the house, told the family I was out, packed up my stuff, and hit the road.

"You're Gonna Die, and I'm Gonna Kill You"

Fresh out of college, I shot for the stars and landed a position at an ice cream store near my house[1]. Now before some of you reading this (you know who you are) race to judgment, pinning me as one of those no-good directionless waste-of-space slackers who deserves to be shot in the head, I had a “real” full-time job lined up for the fall—and on top of that, it was a volunteer position, meaning I was going to be working forty to sixty hours a week, for next to nothing, as I struggled to re-instill hope and goodness to the world, while I simultaneously saved it—and its inhabitants—from whatever doom and gloom that might be permeating the universe at that time. HOWEVER, conversely, before ANY of you judge me as this great altruistic has-it-together saint who also isn’t a total moron a good deal of the time, hang out with me for like two or three days or just read the rest of the story.

Back to the story.

So the job was just supposed to be a summer gig to keep me busy and help me make a couple bucks at the same time.

Now cut to: Me, as I start the job. The training I receive is quick and horribly insufficient, and we’re off to the races as I meet my fellow employees, learn the basics, and then rapidly descend into the living hell known as working at this joint.

Let’s go to the highlight reel, shall we?

Clip #1: One of my co-workers, Ivan, who is a really cool guy, calls me on my cell phone (I should have never given it out on the application) while I’m not working and asks me to go the supermarket (again, while I’m not working) so that I might pick up some honey and lemon juice for the store with my own money (he promised that I’d be reimbursed and I was) so that I can bring in aforementioned items the next time I’m scheduled to work—and I actually do it! (Also, looking back, I wasn’t scheduled to work until at least the next day, so could it really have been a matter so urgent that I had to do it when I wasn’t working? I’m gonna lean toward “no.”)

Clip #2: This girl, who is seventeen, psychotic, and also one of the store’s assistant managers, grabs me in the middle of a shift while it’s busy and hectic and I’m serving up water ice, and whispers in my ear “You’re gonna die, and I’m gonna kill you” for no apparent reason whatsoever, except—maybe—she thinks this is funny?!?

Clip #3: I move to working only the night shift—which has no dinner break so I end up eating ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, and soda for dinner every night—and also, once we’re closed, begin to frequently take my tip money down to a bar that’s about two blocks away, where I use it to drown my workaday sorrows before I stumble home.

Clip #4: With an I-don’t-really-care-anymore attitude brought on by working at the place, I often deliver the following two lines in the following two situations, which, at this job, pop up a lot: When somebody asks me what’s in certain cookies and I don’t know the answer because I haven’t been able memorize it yet, I reply “Well, the main ingredient is deliciousness” (by the way, everyone loved this line. It was gold.) and when a customer is debating about whether or not to get the medium-size whatever or the large, I respond “Everybody dies. Just go for it.”

Clip #5: An older woman who works there, and who is awesome and my only real friend at the place, invites me repeatedly to karaoke night at a local bar and I go, but it’s karaoke night at a bar and the whole situation is awkward for me so I stay for a while, then split.

Clip # 6: My younger brother picks me up to give me a ride home one night and we give one of my fellow employees a ride home and she scares my younger brother to death, scarring him, in the five minutes it takes to drop her off.

Clip # 7: This other employee of mine starts taking me off shifts, of his own accord and without mentioning it to me or anyone else, to better suit his schedule.

Clip # 8: It becomes widely rumored amongst the employees, my family and friends, and perhaps even some random people in town, that I am going to be fired—or possibly already am fired—and everyone—even my three-year-old nephew—makes fun of me, and so with the threat of possibly getting canned looming over me, I dream up this fantasy that I will never carry out where, after getting the axe, I go out, work hard, save up money, and then open an ice cream store right across the street, which is so awesome that it puts them out of business.

Clip #9: After a night of work and subsequent boozing to deal with that night of work that includes someone grabbing me by the neck and threatening me with further and more severe violence (with kind of good reason—it was a misunderstanding) and a group of girls making fun of me because of a Warrant T-shirt[2] I’m wearing, I, broken, distraught, and in absolute shambles—the job driving me into alcoholism, take a long walk (I’m dead serious. It was like over an hour long and I stared out at vistas and everything) to take stock and try and make sense of it all, my whole world falling apart around me, and it is then that I decide to quit the job—especially before I get fired.

Clip #10: Angry, hurt, and nearly defeated, it seems only right to me that I go out in a blaze of glory where I yell at and viscously insult the manager of the store, who I now hold chiefly responsible for all that has happened, but my mom talks me out of it (she was right), convincing me that I need to do the adult and upstanding thing, which is to speak to the manager and tell him the job just isn’t working out. One hitch: the guy is almost never actually at the store so even quitting is a hassle because I keep trying to catch him but keep missing him but then finally catch him, and it is then that I quietly and respectfully tender my resignation, often to return to the store as a customer—their ice cream and cookies are that good.

[3].


[1] It’s worth noting that I had taken a job at this exact same store like five years ago, worked there for about a week, and then quit because it sucked so hard. And it’s prob’ly also worth noting that, applying for and took the same job again, is most probably a sign of severe mental illness.

[2] Warrant is an awesome band and I have no doubt that by making fun of me, and my Warrant T-shirt, those girls have firmly secured for themselves a place in hell.

[3] I know the footnote thing is totally ripped from Chuck Klosterman.

"Headlining"

Fred and I snagged Skull Fracture a basement show with Uncouth Youth and Herb Bermann’s Side Project. We were scheduled to go on third, which in our heads made us feel like we were the headlining band, but there was a noise complaint and the cops shut us down. My mom tried to talk the cops into letting us play our set and almost got arrested. Finally, the fuzz left, and as we were loading up our gear, my mom came flying out of the house with a toaster, chucked it on the lawn, and said, “We better get outa here!” Our first gig.

"There Are Only Five Great Men in the World and Three of Them Are Hamburgers"

"You know, when someone holds the door for someone else, they usually say 'thank you.'" "Exactly! Usually."

"A Decision Has Been Made"

Skull Fracture just isn’t the name of a doo-wop band. It’s that simple.

"Skull Fracture Update"

The only thing “messed-up” about my mom’s Halloween song is how bad it is. After hearing it, Fred panicked and suggested we become a doo-wop group. I slapped him and told him we’d think about it.