Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered

by Karen Kilgariff

  Thinking about that now, I am cringing so hard my shoulder blades hurt. I was so dumb and spoiled. IT WAS A JOB. I was being paid. I didn’t just overeat her product, I did it in front of her WHILE READING THE STAND BY STEPHEN KING. And I never thought to myself, If I’m doing here what I do on vacation, there’s a chance I’m being a bad employee. Then one day, my two friends and I had a shift together and we carved our initials into the fudge, even though she expressly told us not to touch it. The frozen yogurt shoppe to-don’t list was one item long. I was fired soon after. I was definitely embarrassed, since the other girls were not fired or fat, but also incredibly relieved to get away from the temptation. Also, no one makes frozen yogurt that way anymore, so it’s not as good as it used to be. Thank god.

  Person Who Works at the Gap

  This was definitely one of the worst jobs I’ve ever had, mostly because, as I made clear in my yogurt shoppe hijinks above, I think I’m above working in any way. I think I’m better than being gainfully employed. And based on my love of bleu cheese and horses, there’s a good chance I was a royal in my past life. But even if I were a common peasant, working at the Gap sucked. They paid minimum wage, only scheduled you part-time, and they expected you to say hello to every single person who walked in the door. Ugh, how gauche. Working there barely covered my rent, so I never had any money left over to buy any of the clothes I stared at and was required to dress in all day.

  Retail sucks. It’s genuinely hard work and it pays like shit and no one appreciates you. Meanwhile, the CEO of the Gap at the time—I keep wanting to say Donald Fisher, but that could be wrong—was in the news once a week for how much he’d increased sales and revenue for the company. I’ve been living proof that trickle-down economics are bullshit since 1992.

  It didn’t help that we had to listen to the same thirty songs for eight hours straight. That was maddening. I mean, so much Enya and Enya-like behavior on that playlist. And there were so many rules and regulations. So much prodding to be a better salesperson, to add on some socks, to intrude and “help” people. I hated all of it. I only wanted to work at the Gap because my friend Dave already worked there, and I’d just moved to San Francisco, so I wanted to inherit all his friends. I wanted to do the easiest thing I could (see: yogurt shoppe story) in the most painless way possible and leave fifteen minutes early.

  But the Gap was for go-getters. It was for people who fought over who got to be the greeter, who never felt awkward barging into a fitting room to really assess the fit of some weirdo’s hideous jeans. The Gap was for assistant manager hopefuls. I just wanted to phone it in.

  So standing on the floor of this clothing store filled me not just with boredom but with a certainty that I was going to work there forever. And that certainty filled me with a dark fear. It scared me so badly I became compelled to try to get stand-up sets around town. You need to have an engine to get anywhere. The fear of stagnation can be a very powerful one. So I started to really try. I called in and signed up and did everything I could to be like a “real” comedian. The ones who didn’t have shitty day jobs. The ones who sat around writing in coffee shops in The Sunset for hours and hours and had new bits every night. Someday, I would whisper to myself, standing at the dressing rooms, staring at piles of ugly striped rugby shirts that I had to fold.

  Someday.

  Georgia on Working for the Weekend and Also Free Snacks

  I got my first job the moment I was old enough to get a work permit from my high school guidance counselor, the minute I turned fifteen. Yes, having an after-school job meant I could skip sixth period and get out of class early, but I was a regular ditcher, anyway, so that wasn’t what was important to me. What I wanted, what I had dreamed about having since I was a kid, was pure and simple. Money.

  I knew that money meant freedom and the ability to make my own decisions. No longer would my mom be able to tell me that I couldn’t buy the king-sized Reese’s peanut butter cups at the grocery store or that knock-off Doc Martens were just as “hip” as the brand-named boots, which we all know is total bullshit. I could buy whatever I wanted, and eating cheese fries from Del Taco and buying cigarettes from the one gas station in town that sold to minors was my dream life at that age.

  * * *

  My preferred brand was Marlboro Reds, but the cheapest were an off brand called Smokes, which was written in a really cool old-timey font across the package. I think they cost ninety-five cents or something crazy like that. I’m sure they were made of pure asbestos and paint chips.

  * * *

  I wish I’d known how good it was back then, not needing to pay rent or have a car to get around (I lived in a very walkable town). If I’d known that I was going to have to have a shitty, entry-level job for the next fifteen-plus years until I stumbled into internet success, maybe I would have waited a couple of years before entering the workforce. Probably not, though. Those cheese fries weren’t gonna pay for themselves.

  But really, I’ve always liked having a “job” job. It made me feel like a productive member of society, like I was an adult. Despite having dropped out of school for court reporting, cosmetology, psychology, and early childhood education, I never really pictured an actual “career” as something I was worthy of. Careers were for smart people who had the patience to sit through class and the self-discipline to do homework. I thought I was dumb, and my patience is not and never has been go—OH HEY, LOOK AT THE PRETTY HUMMINGBIRDS!

  Where was I? Oh, right. Here are some jobs I’ve had.

  Shop Girl

  Unlike Karen, I loved working retail. I have a bit of a shopping addiction to begin with (see: my closetful of vintage dresses), so being around clothes all the time and being up on the latest trends was pretty awesome for me. Granted, I couldn’t actually afford any of the trends, as I was always paid somewhere near minimum wage, but every once in a while, I’d have a cool manager who would slip me a blouse I’d been eyeing as a reward for a particularly good sales week.

  At eighteen, I worked at a clothing store on Melrose Avenue that sold generic factory-made ladies’ clothes that they had bought in the garment district downtown and sold at a 300 percent markup.

  When I was twenty, I was hired as an assistant manager (a fancy way of saying I got paid a dollar over minimum wage and had a key to the stockroom) at Hot Topic. It was in the dark corner of a mall that was empty most of the day, so I’d kinda just wander around the store and pick out things I’d buy if I had more money. It was actually pretty fun, since my coworkers were all cool burnouts like I was. But then one day, my new boyfriend, who I was out of my mind in love with, dropped by to see me, and I left with him to go get a part for his new Vespa in Compton, and I never went back. The boyfriend ended up SUCKING (more on him later), so I’d actually have been better off staying at Hot Topic, which is something no one has ever said in the history of Hot Topic.

  After he dumped me, as my heart was still in the process of piecing itself back together again, I got a job at a vintage shop in Santa Monica. It was a large, kinda fancy shop that had great clothes and sometimes celebrity clientele. The owners were a husband and wife that had come into some money and clearly had never owned a clothing store before. They were never not bickering about the business. It was a total mess. The shop employed a few other girls that ended up becoming some of my best friends for a few months and were instrumental in helping heal my broken heart.

  That job ended when six of us decided to become roommates and moved in together in a converted janky office building in a bad part of town and swiftly couldn’t stand each other. We all went our separate ways after that.

  Lunch Lady

  I am truly a whore for food, and I freaking love it. Food is my favorite hobby. I’ve waited tables and did the unavoidable Starbucks stint, stuffed my face with cookies behind a bakery counter, and washed dishes in a fancy restaurant.

  The weirdest food job I ever had was as a lunch lady at a school for troubled kids when I was twenty-three. It was bas
ically an offshoot of the Los Angeles school district for kids grades three through high school who for behavioral reasons couldn’t hack it in regular public school. I’d gone to a similar school in my hometown during a particularly hard and rebellious year of high school, so I felt right at home. It was a small school, one classroom per grade, and I quickly became a fixture and got to know the kids by name, and they me. I’ll never not love being called “Miss Georgia.”

  Every morning, I’d pick up the kids’ breakfast and lunch for the day at the regular school, then hand out each meal classroom by classroom at the appropriate time.

  One thing you should know about me is that, while I fucking LOVE eating at fancy restaurants and know a ton about gourmet cuisine, junk food is my PASSION (I’m literally eating gooey mac and cheese at my favorite café while I type this). Maybe it’s because my parents were health nuts, so growing up, it wasn’t just stuff like sugary cereal and soda that were off-limits but also processed food like white bread and mass-market peanut butter. I didn’t have a proper classic white bread, mustard, bologna, and shitty American cheese sandwich until I was out of high school. My mind was blown.

  Unfortunately, the school food was all processed-to-hell chicken nuggets and pepperoni pizza with gobs of greasy, plastic cheese product. The food in the shitty rehab I was at when I was thirteen was better than that trash.

  At the time, I was a broke community college kid and had just moved in with a boyfriend for the first time. Before I met him, I’d never weighed more than 105 pounds in my life due to a variety of eating disorders, which meant that at five foot five, I was a scrawny mess whose head was too large for her tiny frame. I’m not saying that that weight is inherently unhealthy (everyone is different!), but as an adult who doesn’t starve herself, I know that if I’m doing things right, my comfortable weight is somewhere around 130–135. That weight means I’m happy, healthy, and taking care of myself (and also that my tits aren’t nonexistent). At 105, I was none of those things.

  But somehow, after I passed out all the prepackaged Uncrustables for breakfast or bean-and-cheese burritos for lunch, there would inevitably be a leftover serving. I didn’t want it to go to waste, and I was broke, people! So I’d eat whatever was extra, and even though it was trash food, I fucking LOVED IT. And slowly but surely, I gained weight and filled out, until one day when I met my dad for lunch, upon seeing me, he exclaimed awkwardly and happily, “Oh! You’re filling out!” I laughed my ass off but knew what he meant. I looked like how I was supposed to look. And I liked it. I had cleavage and hips and even that little under-chin pooch that I hate but try to ignore.

  Office Drone

  My last job before I was lucky enough to quit and give entertainment the old college try (which thankfully requires little to no college) was as an unhappy, slacks-clad office drone when I was in my late twenties. I was a receptionist at a multibillion-dollar corporation staffed by the same boring WASPs I had so happily escaped post–high school. I hid my large tattoo on my calf under pants I bought at a thrift store in high school for four dollars that I’d hemmed with duct tape and whose zipper was held in place with a safety pin because I REFUSED to spend any of the little money they paid me on business-casual work clothes. I was depressed as fuck and thought that this was my future. I truly thought that for the rest of my life, I’d be a low- to mid-level employee at some nameless company, never making enough to save for retirement and eating breakroom granola bars for lunch till I died. I’d get drunk with equally miserable friends every night because I was so unhappy with my day. I’d take hangover naps under my desk during my lunch break or wander around downtown LA and break a sweat to release myself from the layer of air-conditioning that kept me shivering at my desk on the thirty-third floor of the high-rise that I was SURE was going to come down in an earthquake. I was fucking miserable.

  I started blogging to relieve my boredom. I’ve always loved writing, and blogging was an easy way to “get pen to paper,” even though neither are involved. I’d write about stupid stuff and funny stuff, sentimental bullshit, and random stuff I was interested in: cooking and clothes and cats, and all the gritty shit I had gone through in my life. Nothing was off-limits, I was a born blogger (read: an over-sharer). It was a lot like the essays you’ve been reading in this book, only now I know the difference between your and you’re and have a really great editor so I seem super litterit! Thanks, Ali! [Editor’s note: Your welcome!]

  Blogging got me out of my rut and made me feel like I had a purpose but was also a great way to put a positive spin on my life. When my car got broken into one morning and my stereo stolen, my first thought wasn’t about how much it would cost to fix it, it was, I can’t wait to blog about this! I joined the first and only dating site I used knowing that even if I didn’t meet the love of my life (spoiler: I didn’t), at least it’d be great blog fodder. And instead of sleeping during my lunch breaks, I’d go outside and take cool pics of my cheap, homemade lunch and the book I was currently reading, and then post them on my blog. I learned to play the drums, dressed up in my favorite vintage dresses on the weekends so I could post the photos, and taught myself to decorate cupcakes like a pro.

  When my best friend and I made up a gross, inside-joke cocktail that we called the McNuggetini in the summer of 2009, I insisted that we actually make it so I could blog about it. That turned into a funny how-to video that we shot in my grandma Thelma’s kitchen (she was the one who made all my Harry Pottering afghans) with the help of a friend who had a video camera, and we were shocked to see the view count explode when we posted it on YouTube. When we got a message on Facebook from a dude at Cooking Channel who asked if we wanted to make more tongue-in-cheek cocktail videos online, I quit my job to give myself a chance at doing something real. Something for me. My only goal was to never go back to the thirty-third floor. It’s been nine-plus years, and so far, I’ve been able to make ends meet doing things I love: a food and travel show on Cooking Channel, recurring narrator spots on Drunk History, and later, a podcast about murder with my tuna melt friend, Karen, that’s made my life blossom (like a goddamn field of wildflowers shot in that shaky fast-motion style) into the insanely wonderful career and community it is today. And look at me! Now I’m writing a fucking BUK! [Editor’s note: Your doing great!]

  My grandma Mollie’s favorite saying was “Bigger dummies than you.” That admittedly somewhat-cynical saying has been my motto pretty much my entire adult life. It applies to so many different aspects in life. Bigger dummies than I am have written a book. Bigger dummies than I am have made a fulfilling career despite not having graduated college. Bigger dummies than I am have beaten their eating disorders. So why the hell not me, too?? I don’t claim to be better or more talented than anyone, but I do know I deserve just as much of a chance at a happy life as everyone else, and I think I deserve that chance because I’m not a shitty person, which really is the point of life in my eyes: “Don’t be a dick and do good things.” That’s my other motto. It has the word dick in it.

  Can we have a sincere moment of vulnerability for a sec? You guys, oh my fucking god, I am so lucky that my life turned out the way it did. The word gratitude doesn’t even begin to cover it, and I can’t imagine there will be a time in my life when I’m not in awe of what has happened—namely, this podcast. It changed my entire existence. While your job doesn’t define you as a person, who you decide to bring to the table (or desk, cash register, classroom, whatever) does have an effect on how you interact with the world. So if you’re doing a job you totally hate and that makes you feel small, you’re going to bring that feeling with you everywhere you go. That makes for a pretty miserable world.

  I don’t know, if I have to give some sort of advice here to all you sweet baby angels who want more than how you’re currently living, I’ll say, just remember that as long as you’re attempting to not be a dick and doing your best to do good things, you’re worthy of a good life, one that you’re proud of and that when you wake up every mo
rning makes you stoked to be yourself. And if you don’t wake up stoked to be you, figure out the first step you can take toward that life you want. Once you’ve taken that first step, then figure out the next step, and so on. It might feel like a long journey (it is), but for me, that was the most important part, because once I got to where I wanted to be, I was confident in my ability to grab that opportunity by the balls and make it my bitch.

  Get a Job: Final Thoughts

  KAREN: What was the first career you ever seriously considered and why?

  GEORGIA: I really wanted to do hair and makeup when I first got out of high school. It seemed like a chill, creative field where I could be myself and actually be excited about the job instead of just being a working stiff for the rest of my life. I ended up dropping out of beauty school three months in, but it was a super fun three months and I’m still pretty good at cutting my own bangs!

  KAREN: What’s the hardest job you’ve ever had?

  GEORGIA: The hardest jobs are always the ones you don’t really like. So while this podcast and everything surrounding it (oh, I don’t know, say for example: writing a FUCKING BOOK) is insanely hard, I feel so lucky that I get to do it, so it doesn’t seem that hard. But really, though, it’s made my hair gray and made me double up on therapy and the stress has probably taken a few years off my life, but it’s made the years I do have so much better, so I’m at peace with it.

  KAREN: If you had to get a new job but you weren’t allowed to do anything you’ve already done before, what line of work would you go into?