I had money in my savings account and didn’t have any debt, so losing my benefits wasn’t going to put me on the street. I was confident my bachelor’s degree was enough to land me an entry-level office job, or I could always go back to delivering pizza. If things really went south, I could get a loan from my folks.
An on-site role at Expedia paid the same as when I worked from home but required an hour commute across a congested toll bridge. As a temp I didn’t qualify for benefits or holiday pay, but at least during my previous stint, I enjoyed the luxury of working from home. The comfort of attending conference calls in my underwear and never having to eat a PB&J in a break room made it easy to overlook the mistreatment and stagnation.
I considered what my life would have been had I accepted the job.
Alarm at 5:00 a.m., in the car by 7:05, I’d choke down cigarettes to keep calm as I fought my way through congested lane changes. I’d spend the morning writing consumer-catching words like luxurious, affordable, and spacious. I’d eat lunch alone on a bench outside, even if it was cold, or in my car if it was raining, all the while dreading the moment when I would have to return to my desk. I’d spend the afternoon fighting off a yawn and scrolling through Reddit and panicking every time my email chimed, fearing I’d published another typo. I’d smoke two more cigarettes on the ride home, the whole time praying for available parking near my apartment. If I was lucky enough to locate a spot in under fifteen minutes, I’d run to the grocery store; otherwise, I’d be so defeated from circling the block I’d only have enough energy to flip channels until bed. I’d put off doing laundry until the boxer briefs with the broken elastic were the only pair left in the drawer, and I’d spend Saturday drunk and waste Sunday with a hangover.
A few months of near poverty on a diet of Rainier beer and generic brand macaroni and cheese sounded like heaven compared to that life.
The desperation set in when my savings could only support one more month of expenses. Fearing the possibility that I’d have to cash in a CD, which I anticipated growing for at least another ten years, I applied to a Craigslist ad looking for a sexy housecleaner. Half a bottle of Canadian whiskey deep, I took a bathroom mirror selfie while wearing little more than purple rubber gloves. I held a scrubbing brush in front of my face, making sure, if the image ever ended up on /r/gonewild, I’d be unrecognizable.
I never got a response and, honestly, was a little hurt. My abs looked tight! Thankfully, one afternoon when I was considering selling off some books and records for gas money, a recruiter offered me a two-week position in a warehouse that manufactured sporting goods.
The pay was significantly lower than what I was used to, but I liked sports and I worked in warehouses throughout college. Unlike office work, warehouse duties had clearly defined goals. The job was done when the truck was loaded or the racks were empty. A completed piece of copy could go through ten drafts before someone decided it was headed in the wrong direction.
“Do you think you could give this another shot?” one of my previous bosses used to say when she was unhappy with my work. “I don’t think this is the right message. How about just starting over with fresh new ideas? Really entice the reader! There’s a free buffet. It almost writes itself.”
Warehouse managers were direct and stated what their expectations were for each project. The work was logical, and the most efficient way of doing something was the only way. Office managers weren’t as direct and often used passive-aggression as a means to control your work. After a six-year hiatus, I was kind of looking forward to blue-collar work.
Anticipating that it would be difficult to park, I showed up twenty minutes early. There were vacancies in the warehouse lot, but it was off-limits to temps. When my start time was just a few minutes away, I pulled into a pay lot. The fee was equivalent to one hour of work I hadn’t even done yet. I subtracted a few dollars from the budget I already formulated in my head and rushed inside.
“Good,” said the baby-faced manager as he evaluated his newest piece of livestock. “You look like you can carry a few boxes.”
“I can.”
He handed me a cardboard box filled with tags. “These are your sizes. S means small, M means medium, L is—” He stopped himself. “You get it. You’re not an idiot. Apply one sticker to each card. When you run out, let me know. There’s plenty more.”
I hoped that wasn’t my only task for the next two weeks. I had been so thankful to get a job I’d forgotten warehouse work could be painfully repetitive.
The rest of the temps each held a box similar to mine, and we traded nervous smiles. We all knew it was best to assess the situation before getting too comfortable. Managers all had their own way of interacting with short-term contractors. Some were grateful to be helped out of a jam and sprang for sandwiches at lunch, while others were against on-the-clock bathroom breaks.
“Really appreciate you all being here,” said the project manager. “I’m going to be running around all day, but don’t hesitate to stop me if you have any questions. Let’s get to work.”
There was a beat-up boom box in the corner of the room. The volume knob was missing and the tip of the antenna was kinked. “Kokomo” buzzed out the blown-out speakers and I thought, with all the great Beach Boys, songs how come that abomination gets the most airplay?
I considered sharing this contemplation with the group, but figured I should first locate the temp who would be most appreciative of my insight into contemporary pop music. Only then could I present my argument on why “Kokomo” is, without question, the worst Beach Boys song ever recorded. My supporting facts included the detail that Brian Wilson took no part in writing the song, as well as the point that any shred of cool the band still possessed in the early nineties was eviscerated by the music video featuring the cast of Full House in neon beach attire.
Across from me sat a woman in her early forties, and based on the way she didn’t concern herself with placing the sticker directly in the designated outline, I sensed she’d expected more at this point in her life. Her yogi body and turquoise necklace inspired me to call her Hippie Chick.
At another table sat a dumpy little fella who was blabbing on about a recent trip to Japan to an uninterested frat boy. Dumpy was quite pleased with himself as he regaled Frat Boy with stories about eating eel and seeing cherry blossoms. I would have rather listened to “Kokomo” on repeat than hear about how “they don’t even know what a Seattle roll is over there.”
“How about you? Are you a traveler like me?” Dumpy asked Frat Boy.
“Not yet. I’d been counting on baseball to provide travel opportunities, but I blew out my shoulder last season.”
“The Japanese love baseball.”
“Me too,” Frat Boy said while placing a hand on his shoulder as he rotated it. “Doc’s diagnosis was so bad I lost my scholarship.”
“You should study abroad. Japan changed my life.”
The girl behind me piped up and said something in Japanese.
Dumpy quickly responded, and even though I didn’t understand the language, I could tell whatever he was saying was annoying.
I called the Japanese-speaking girl ComicConQueen. She wore a Zelda T-shirt and had a Hello Kitty backpack. She was unassuming, but I imagined she was the type to spend late nights constructing ambitious costumes to wear at comic book conventions.
We worked in silence until the project manager returned. “Now for the fun part,” he said, with the phony enthusiasm of a youth pastor delivering an anti-masturbation sermon. “Now we get to add these cool new labels to replace the old lame ones!”
I barely recognized the difference, but imagined market research showed that a label with an image of a guy scaling a mountain sold more gloves than one without.
“You guys are doing great so far,” he said and pulled a box from the cart. “Super awesome, really.” He tilted his head forward and put his hand on his chest. “You guys are my homies.” He threw a peace sign in the air. “No frontin’.”
As I adjusted from sticking stickers on cards to replacing old tags with new ones, I tried to figure out what time it was based on the songs I’d heard.
First was that atrocity “Kokomo,” followed by a Phil Collins song I called “Take a Look at Me Now,” even though I’m sure that’s not the title. Then a Macy’s Christmas commercial made me think about a time in kindergarten when a classmate got a nosebleed during the holiday concert. The irony that it happened during “Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer” had never occurred to me. Somehow I’d gone my whole life seeing an image of little Scotty Northrep’s nose pouring blood every time I thought of Rudolf, without making a red nose connection. I lost track of the next few songs while noodling on that revelation, eventually coming to in the middle of “Love Shack.”
“Finally a good one,” I said to Hippie Chick.
“Not bad,” she responded without looking up.
“‘Rock Lobster’ is probably my favorite jam of theirs, but this one is good too.”
“I don’t know that one.”
“The bass line might be one of the best in music history,” I proclaimed. A fact I only partially believed, but thought might spark a conversation.
It didn’t.
Two hours later the project manager returned. “Looks like you guys could use a break,” he said. “There’s water and coffee down the hall. Sodas on the second floor, but those will cost you a buck and a quarter. Let’s meet back here in fifteen minutes.”
The room emptied to the first few chords of Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” I didn’t want to miss the best song of the day and found myself staring out the window at a busy street with no crosswalk. A woman in heels waited for the perfect moment to cross four lanes of traffic. She had a bulky purse tucked under one arm and balanced four cups of coffee in the other. She stutter-stepped into the road and then pulled back when a car appeared in the distance. Two more cars passed and she looked down at her watch. She stepped into the first lane, only to retreat when the sound of a motorcycle engine cut through the air. After it sped by, she clumsily stepped into the road. An oncoming pickup truck slowed to a stop as she crossed the four lanes. Her apologetic smile was returned with a middle finger.
That afternoon, I played a game in my head where I tried naming the title and artist of each song before the DJ announced it. I was really good at titles, but had difficulty with the band names. Tuxedo Junction, Nick Gilder, who were these people? When a really good forgotten song came on, I made a mental note to add it to a playlist when I got home.
“They don’t make songs like this anymore,” I said to Hippie Chick when the Patti Smith Group’s “Because the Night” came on.
“I love her,” she said while putting down the glove she was working on and looked up at me for the first time all day. “Have you read her memoir?”
“I’ve been meaning to. I heard it’s great.”
“If you’re a fan, you’ve got to. It’s so good.”
Patti was a conversation starter, and we talked about our favorite local running trails and our mutual fondness of western Washington.
“My girlfriend and I spent five years living in a cabin in the woods.”
“That sounds peaceful,” I said. “I imagine it was a great place to run.”
“It was gorgeous, but it’s hard to make money out there. Logging is the only industry, and I’m not cut out for that.”
“Few people are.”
“I worked a few jobs with the parks department,” she said.
I looked across the table at her hands as she pressed each sticker into the cardboard. Her thick fingers and tightly trimmed nails gave off the impression she was more comfortable digging in the dirt than working in an office.
“Must have been nice to work outside all day.”
“I loved it. It was just too bad their budget couldn’t support any new full-time staff members.”
“Lame.”
When I got back to my apartment later that day, I loaded my iPod with Patti Smith then went for a run. By mile four I’d burned off the nervous energy built up from doing the same motion all day and was content knowing the next two weeks of my life came with a paycheck.
The repetitive nature of the work caused my mind to wander. Hearing New Edition’s “Candy Girl” reminded me of Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative,” sparking the memory of a dance routine my friends and I performed at a third grade talent show. I had a mock debate in my head between the principal and a concerned parent after witnessing ten-year-old me simulating sex with a microphone stand.
The radio planted jumping-off topics for me to ponder, like a critique on the fact that, although commercially more successful, and with the exception of “Janie’s Got A Gun,” everything Aerosmith produced sober was inferior to the songs recorded when Tyler and Perry’s drug use was so out of control they were dubbed the Toxic Twins. Or the realization that Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” can make any moment feel significant.
I spent a whole afternoon debating with myself on whether “Roxanne” was an amazing song or one of the worst ever written. I was torn. I always turned it up when it came on in the car, but was it good? It couldn’t be. It was pop-reggae sung in falsetto. Nothing about that made sense, just like the lyric “you don’t have to put on the red light.” How does Sting know she doesn’t have to turn on the red light? I bet under different circumstances she’d love not to put on the red light, but she’s got bills to pay. If he’s telling her she doesn’t have to turn on the red light, he needs to offer an alternative. I’d appreciate Sting’s suggestion more if he followed, “You don’t have to sell your body to the night,” with “because I found you a stable nine-to-five that comes with benefits, a dental plan, and a matching 401(k).”
Had I taken the other job and spent the day writing marketing content, my mind would never have had wondered further than my favorite pizza toppings.
The second week we were tasked with rebranding balaclavas. I pretended like I knew what those were, but thought, is a Greek dessert considered sportswear? Then I realized a balaclava was what I’d been ignorantly referring to as a bank robber mask.
“Now you get to use these hella neat guns,” said the project manager, holding up a pink pistol with a needlepoint barrel. He pointed it at me and turned his wrist. “Break yo self fool.”
“Nice,” I said then nodded my head to let him know I caught the reference.
“I need you guys to snip off the old labels, then use this gun to attach the new ones,” he said while demonstrating the process. “This isn’t my regular job, but sometimes I go upstairs and help because it’s so much fun.”
I snipped the label off the first balaclava, then poked the barrel through the fabric and pulled the trigger. As I got comfortable with the process, I recognized the subtle beginning of “Radar Love.” I snipped another, attached another, snipped, attached, snipped, attached. We’ve got a thing, and it’s called radar love.
I was about to answer “Golden Earring” in my mental game show when the gun misfired and broke my skin.
I sucked the blood and wiped my fingers across the back of my jeans.
Snip, attach, snip, attach, snip, STAB.
Frat Boy looked up at me with concern, “Did you nick yourself?”
“This song makes me want a fast car,” I said as I tried to distract attention from the blood trailing down my hand.
“Yowza,” the project manager said when he noticed my flesh wound. “You need medical attention.”
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“Let’s get a Band-Aid on that, so we don’t ruin the merchandise.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Happens all the time. Up on the fifth floor they can’t keep Band-Aids in stock.”
“There are people who do this every day?”
“How else would we get the tags on the gloves?”
“A machine, maybe,” I said then found a new appreciation for tag adders across the globe. “I’m surp
rised you haven’t sought cheaper labor overseas.”
Before he had a chance to respond, Frat Boy approached holding up a bloody hand.
“Welcome to the medical tent,” the project manager said. He handed Frat Boy a Band-Aid. “I have to go take a call, be careful out there.”
“Imagine having to do this every day,” Frat Boy said while bandaging himself up.
“That would be awful.”
Frat Boy and I spent the afternoon talking about sports. He told me about his injury and how he’d originally planned on entering the minors after college, before getting hurt.
“I guess I’ll start focusing on class now,” he said.
At the end of the day, we exchanged information and talked about meeting up for a beer.
When I drove home I got stuck in traffic because a Mariners game had just let out. I listened to talk radio in an effort to drown out the car horns.
A story came on NPR about a suicide protest at a Chinese factory. One hundred and fifty workers threatened to leap to their deaths if their working conditions weren’t improved. After a two-day standoff they were coaxed down. Suicide was so common at that factory they installed nets to catch jumpers. I’d never worked job conditions so bad that I considered taking my own life, but there were mornings where I prayed to be involved in a minor car accident, just so I’d have an excuse to take the day off.
Now for the Disappointing Part Page 9