The Job Pirate

by Brandon Christopher

  The supervisor proceeded to lionize his filtration system for another 20 minutes before getting to the part about how much money he had made in the past year alone. He explained the patented charcoal filter system “designed in Finland and so cutting edge that most of America didn’t even know about it yet.” Then when someone at the front table raised their hand and asked how come the display model said “Made in Pakistan” on the bottom, he explained that Pakistan was the world leader in cutting-edge plastics, like the plastic used to make the AquaTastic water filtration system. Then he said, “Good question!” with a finger gun at the guy.

  “Any other questions?” the supervisor asked us, and several hands shot up.

  “So, we’re selling these filter systems? That’s the job?” a middle-aged guy asked.

  “No … they sell themselves!” the supervisor exclaimed with a grin. “We have two patented models, which you’ll be selling: the AquaTastic faucet filter for purified drinking water—which pays for itself within a year from all the bottled water customers won’t have to buy any longer. And there’s also the AquaTastic shower filter, which screws right onto most showerheads and filters all the bad stuff out. Both amazing!”

  “Where’s the store? Where do we work from?”

  “Great question! That’s the beautiful part: no store! You are the store! Customers are everywhere. Your neighbors, your friends, your schools … drive to any neighborhood you like and you’ll have all the sales you can imagine! Remember, these things will sell themselves. People will thank you. You’re saving their lives.”

  “So we walk around and sell these? From my sales experience, people don’t like it when you show up at their door trying to sell stuff. They think it’s a rip-off.”

  “Apparently, you weren’t selling AquaTastic!” the supervisor replied with a loud laugh and pointed to someone else.

  “Do we get a paycheck or anything? Or is this just like a commission thing?”

  “Great question! Neither! Seriously, you get it all! You get all the money. Everything you make goes right into your own pocket. When you sell one of our filters at $89.99, you put that $89.99 right into your own pocket.”

  The same woman blurted out, “How?” before the supervisor could point to someone else. His smile was waning but still toothy enough to launch into the mathematics of the deal. “This is where we really work with you, folks. We want you to succeed here. We want people to be healthy and drinking pure water all across this country. That’s why we sell our AquaTastic filtration systems to you at half the price of retail! Yes, really! What we do is give these to you for just $44.99 and you turn around and sell them for double that. And they’ll still sell themselves. It’s an amazing deal!”

  Half of the crowd immediately shifted in their seats at the thought of having to buy anything for the sake of getting a job; the supervisor saw this and tried to salvage his pitch from all of us who had just seen behind Oz’s curtain. “I can tell that you’re all a little worried about that part, but you’ve got to spend money to make money, right? Wrong! I’m so sure you’ll make a fortune selling these systems that you won’t have to pay us back until you’ve made some sales. AquaTastic has its very own lending system with a very desirable APR. It’s like a loan between friends, and we won’t charge you a cent for 45 days. After you’ve met with someone from our AquaTastic credit team, you can pick up as many filtration systems as you want and get started getting rich. Think about it, if you sell ten of these a day, you just made yourself a lot of money … like a week’s salary for some of you. For one day of work!”

  The room grew quiet as people did the math. The supervisor knew he was losing most of us the longer we thought about it. But he had an ace up his sleeve just for this very moment—what would be called “the turn” in a magic trick. He waved to the back of the room, and two attractive women in pantsuits wheeled a dolly with several large boxes to the front. Gary opened one of the cardboard boxes and pulled out a crisply packaged AquaTastic faucet filter, then opened another box and pulled out the shower filter. He displayed both white devices on the table beside the projector so we could see how pretty they were.

  “Listen, I know what you’re thinking, folks. Some of you are thinking ‘this is too good to be true,’ and others are thinking ‘this must be a scam.’ Both are wrong. This really is that good. And I’m so sure of it, and I’m so sure of all of you, that I want you each to take home a set of these and try them out overnight. Then you can come back here tomorrow and tell me how good they are. That’s how confident I am in this product. And I want you to be that confident, too, so you can sell a million of them. You just need to try them out to know how good they really are. I’m telling ya, they sell themselves.”

  It was a clever approach and had most if not all of the room nodding their heads—not so much for the actual job but for getting to take something home for free. It was meant to build up a level of trust between the supervisor and us, and it seemed to be working. But nothing ever comes for free; people just don’t want to accept that.

  “Anybody’s who’s interested, please come on up and take your two complimentary filtration systems—a $200 value. That’s the level of faith I have in this product … and in you. Try it out tonight; take the first pure shower you’ve probably ever had in your life. And I know you’ll all come back tomorrow raving about it and ready to get to work. All I ask is that you sign my list up here so I know you each got two.”

  The entire room rushed to the open path between the tables and formed a line. I could not believe how fast those two old Vietnamese ladies were—from the back table to the front of the room in record speed; we bookended the line by the time I got there. It was a slow-moving parade for giving away free stuff, and when I reached the front where Gary and his assistants were, I realized why. There were two clipboards filled with scribbled home addresses, signatures, and phone numbers on the table before me. One of the ladies offered me a pen and asked to see my ID and social security card, which I vaguely recalled being asked to bring the day before.

  “But I’m not sure if I want this job yet … I want to be sure of the product first,” I replied, giving her my best poker face.

  Gary shook my hand and asked my name. I gave him the first moniker that popped into my mind. “Conrad, I know exactly how you feel. I was the same way. I wouldn’t sell an inferior product no matter how much you paid me. This is just for precaution, in case some of these people don’t come back. Or don’t bring back the filter systems. It’s just a little formality. I wish I could trust everybody like I trust you.”

  I glanced back at all of the salespeople admiring their shiny, new packages and sneered so that the supervisor could see me. I nodded. “Smart move. You can never be too sure with people these days, especially with a product as pioneering as this. I’m really proud to be a part of your organization … an organization that might improve a lot of lives. I will do this!”

  He shook my hand again, and I smiled one of the loudest, friendliest smiles I could bullshit and still get away with; I even revealed my missing tooth. I had decided about a minute into this interview that I wouldn’t be entering the lucrative world of selling AquaTastic water filters to friends and loved ones, but I did really want to have “the first pure shower I’ve probably ever had in my life.” Ever since he had said it that was all I could think about. How amazing would it be to bathe in fresh, pure water? Like melted glacier water, I imagined. Crystal purity showering down upon me, forgiving me of my sins and washing me free of my impurities. Like the warm tears of gods bathing the unclean right off me.

  I figured I should at least try it for the night; maybe bring it back tomorrow, maybe not. I assumed most of the crowd felt the same way. So I grabbed the pen and exclaimed, “This sounds great! I want a piece of this!”

  “It will be the best investment of your life,” was what Gary said to me before turning away to answer a question from the young woman with the resume. And that’s when I really realized
we all were getting duped—and not just by a shitty product. When he said “investment,” it awakened the frugal part of me. Although this very same frugal part of me had lost $700 in the stock market the year prior, it still knew its business and that part of me knew something wasn’t right with this scenario. I scanned the page on the clipboard and noticed the tell-tale signs: mother’s maiden name, social security number, home address, yet nothing about citizenship or past employment. This clipboard wasn’t a sign-up list; it was a credit application, and the nineteen people before me had all just signed up without even realizing it. And they had all just purchased two of their very own AquaTastic water filtrations systems at $44.99 a pop. The guy was right about one thing: These fuckers really did sell themselves.

  Even knowing this, I still really wanted that shower purifier. I wanted to feel that first pure shower of my life. There was no way I was going to actually buy the filter system, but there must have been some way I could leave there with one. Then the devious part of me kicked in with a plan, replacing the frugal part’s cause for concern. While the supervisor and assistant were answering questions from the crowd surrounding the table, I wrote down that my full name was Conrad Reinhardt Racer and gave an address near my old apartment. As for my mother’s maiden name, well, she came from a long line of Eskovitos from the hills of Poland. I returned the pen and eagerly grabbed my two new water purification systems and prepared to disappear into the crowd when the female assistant politely grasped my wrist and said, “Oh, wait, wait … Mr. Racer, you forgot your social security number here,” and she pointed the pen to the big blank line which I’d completely neglected to fill out. “And I’m supposed to check your social security card too.”

  I had jumped the gun in my excitement. I was caught in my grand lie and only had a split-second to figure a way out. I was too close to the prize to say that I had forgotten my paperwork in the car, only to rush out and escape empty-handed. I was too close; I had come too far. I could already feel the pure, warm sunshine water showering down upon me, and I wasn’t going to leave without getting a taste of it. I would have to go for the gamble … I would have to go all or nothing on this one.

  “I’m afraid I lost my social security card years ago, but I can get you the number. I believe I told the lady on the phone this before deciding to come here,” I said with a trusting smile.

  “Sir, Mr. Racer, I’m going to need something, some kind of legal document with that number on it,” she replied.

  I pulled out my wallet and fumbled through it as if looking for something that would work, but I knew I didn’t have anything in there. But I did find a Bank of America business card with my new phone number handwritten on the back of it—a number so new, in fact, that I hadn’t yet remembered it and was forced to keep reminders of it scribbled on papers in my wallet. I pulled it out and showed her both sides of the card. “This is what the bank gave me when I said I needed some kind of proof of my social security number today. They said this would do it … it has the name of the bank on there. I don’t know how much more legal you can get than Bank of America.”

  “Oh, okay …” she took my card, examined it, then wrote 8-1-8-5-0-8-5-0-5-4 in the blank area on the application and handed it back to me. “Wow, 8-1-8, those are the same numbers as my area code. Must make it easy to remember that way.”

  “I still forget it … need to keep it written down, as you can see.” I couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the tenth number in mine when all the other’s only had nine. But she was young and cute and wasn’t hired for details like that.

  I took my two new water purifiers and gradually drifted to the back of the room. The old Vietnamese lady and I met eyes, and we flashed our new toys at one another with big smiles. Then Gary happily shouted for us all to go home and enjoy our purified showers and drinking water for the night, and to return the next day at 9:00 a.m. ready for a big day of making money. He also made it clear that we were to return the purifiers with all of the packaging intact.

  I don’t know how many of us went back that next day to begin work selling those overpriced water purifiers, but I can assume not many. And I’m sure the ones who never went back must have thought they had the best bit of luck imaginable until that credit card statement came in the mail a few weeks later saying they had been billed. Maybe that might finally show them that nothing in this life is free. Unless you’re wily like me, of course.

  I got the first angry message on my answering machine about four days later. It seemed that Gary had finally broken the code of Conrad Reinhardt Racer’s social security number actually being his phone number. I didn’t pick up until his third phone call of the day, and that’s when I told him how absolutely right he was: That first shower with the AquaTastic filtration system was simply amazing, and it really did feel like the first pure shower that I had ever taken in my life. I then went into great detail about how wonderful I had felt since drinking the purified tap water for the past four days, and how many lives his devices would affect. I told him the $89.99 retail price for these babies was well worth it, and they would most definitely sell themselves—they sold me. Then I explained how the hunter had become the hunted.

  THE MORTUARY DRIVER

  JOB #30

  Spending two months in your apartment without a job is a lot like visiting another country without a camera: It’s great while you’re there but then some time later, when you’re back home, you start forgetting about all those good times you had and only vaguely begin to recall those magnificent sights you once saw when watching French films on TV.

  My eight-week vacation had burned through all $2,100 that I had saved up. And since I had quit my previous job, or, to be more precise, just walked away from my previous job, I was again unable to get any money from the unemployment department.

  I had to look for work yet again, and that next morning I was ready with a fresh pot of Starbucks coffee, the Daily Variety, the previous day’s L.A. Times, and my laptop computer. By 10:20, I had already faxed and emailed eleven resumes to various positions that I thought might be of some interest, and called several other companies that I felt more than qualified for.

  There were no callbacks by noon. No email replies by the third cup of coffee. Nothing. By 2:45 I was beginning to worry. Had I lost my touch? Was twenty-nine jobs the limit for one person? Was I going to have to borrow money from my parents or, even worse, get a retail job? Too many questions, at least on only three cups of coffee.

  By 4:00 in the afternoon I was frantically emailing every job on four separate employment websites. There had never been this long of a lull before getting some type of reply from a prospective employer. I began adding even more variations to my resume, equipping myself with working knowledge of almost any position available. By 4:25 I was a qualified landscape technician, an executive assistant, a script supervisor, an office manager, and finally, a medical billing assistant. Still no calls. Quitting time for the day grew nearer, as did the worry.

  Six o’clock did finally arrive, and just before I turned off the computer to pour a glass of cabernet, I noticed the job posting. Glowing in thick black print at the bottom of the Times’ classifieds section—which I had stolen the day before from Starbucks—read: MORTUARY DRIVER NEEDED. GOOD MONEY, GREAT HOURS.

  What luck, I thought to myself. I promptly called the phone number, and the woman on the other side of the receiver set up an interview for me that night.

  The way I figured it, I had two kinds of experience in the mortuary-driver field: I was once a limo driver, and I was once arrested for breaking into a cemetery. Although I would omit the latter part of my experience, the limo driver bit would come in real handy. I just had to throw in a few past sales positions and maybe a summer job at a cemetery in, say, Colorado, maybe? No, Phoenix—a summer job gravedigging in Phoenix. Perfect.

  Traffic was light that evening, and I made it to the small Encino office in 20 minutes flat. I walked up the stairs to the second floor of the stucco buildi
ng, and inside suite #11 sat Phil, the portly owner of the company, and Cheryl, the portly wife of the owner. They both swung their leather office chairs toward the sofa and asked me to sit.

  “Basically, Brandon, we pick up expired bodies and take them to different morgues around Los Angeles,” Phil explained very casually. “Now, sometimes these expired bodies are messed up, okay? Sometimes they’re decomposed, sometimes they’re infants or children, and sometimes they’re just parts of bodies, and that’s truly the worst! Hands or legs, but you have to remember, they’re just empty shells, vacant vessels.”

  “Hmmm,” I nodded, tapping my index finger against the cleft in my chin, taking it all in and yet having nothing to say.

  “I’m not trying to scare you, all right?” Phil added. “I just want you to know what you’re in for. Sometimes when you pick the bodies up, the pressure pushes out the body juices from their nose and mouth, and you don’t want to get any of that on you.”

  “Don’t want to get it on me,” I repeated to myself.

  “Are you a religious man, Brandon?” Cheryl chimed in and asked.

  “I was a Catholic when I was a kid, even an altar boy,” I replied. “But now, you know, now I read too much to be religious.”

  They both looked at me with confused expressions. Phil finally nodded his head, “Well, good then. So, you don’t believe in ghosts?”

  “My Catholic upbringing battles my better judgment, but I’ve never seen a ghost, so both yes and no on that one,” I replied, ambivalence being my trump card in a baited question like that.

  Phil and his wife chuckled to one another, and I knew I was in for a ghost story. “I ain’t no religious man myself, but I’ve seen things that would freak even Geraldo Rivera out. This one time, when I was dropping off a body at a mortuary in the early, early a.m., I kept hearing laughter coming from this closed coffin, then something took my keys from my belt and threw them across the floor in front of me! I took a little shit in my pants that day, Brandon.”