March Madness Musings on Odd Jobs and Unemployment

 

Ah, March Madness has started, that magical period of the year that, despite the name, bleeds into early April.  But, if you ask me, the first two days, that Thursday and Friday, those are the best, which, ironically, are made even better if you’re one of those hard-working, textbook nine-to-fivers, like I used to be.  Sort of.  Sure, that kind of job has gotten a lot of flak in the recent years, what with that whole virus thing and then the transition to working remotely—out with the old, in with the new—but, yeah, it still has this perk.  Well, it’s not a “perk,” per se, considering it’s certainly not part of your benefits package or anything, but, come Thursday and Friday, you’re either finagling for a way to get out of the office and head to the nearest sports bar for the early slate of games, or you’re hunched over at your desk, watching them on your phone or computer, quicker than curry through a pensioner as you minimize the windows at the slightest rustling of an uninvited guest at your office door, like, knock knock, yeah? oh hi Nancy, yes, I sent Walter those reports an hours ago, now for fuck’s sake piss off!  Regardless, those first two days of the tournament are the two most not-working-but-working days of the year.

But like I said, that used to be me.  I can still enjoy the games, sure, but it just doesn’t hit the same, like huffing dusters after you’ve already shot up smack.  Not that I’d know, personally—that’s just what Clive from next door told me.  Speaking of, the other day at my barbecue, when Giovanni wasn’t filling my ear hole about the betting favorites in some upcoming Mongolian yak racing festival, Des and Reverend Al were all up on my ass about getting a new job.  That was rich, especially coming from those two.  Des, who’s constantly begging her coworkers at the mall to trade, or simply take, her shifts at the bungee jump trampoline thing, even asking me from time to time to forge for her a doctor’s note, one time for a root canal, another time for a colostomy, like, Des, what’s your boss going to say when you show up to your shift without a poop bag hanging from your gut?  And Rev. Al, who claims that administering the seven sacraments and evangelization is a calling and, therefore, not work, like, yeah Father, easy for you to say when you’ve got those little wicker baskets being passed around the congregation twice a mass—sometimes thrice depending on the state of the Vatican coffers (meaning, whether the rectory needs a new plasma TV, or the cabinet a new stash of bourbon, or the organ a new rank of pipes—God help us, the organist herself being an absolute terror on the keys and pedals)!  Ah, I’m being cynical, but it’s just those two wouldn’t know hard work if it sucked their faces and plugged their arseholes.  Me on the other hand?  Sheesh, let me tell you, for I’ve had my fair share of odd jobs and full-time employment. 

In college, I donated plasma two, sometimes three, times a week.  I’ve since learned that three times is outside the standard practice, which may explain why for four years I felt like a dizzy zombie, but, at the time, I simply chalked that up to a possible overindulgence in alcohol, a perpetual state of dehydration (no doubt following from the former), and a poor diet.  But now that I think about it, the donation center was a bit shady, with its faded and busted cinder block façade, the lack of windows, the big, burly nurses with their strange, Russian accents.  Ah, but the money was still good, even if it was loaded onto a Visa card, despite it being promised as cash in the flyer.  And then, after college, I signed up, along with about a hundred or so other men, to take part in the medical school’s Introduction to Clinical Practice course.  We were the patients, and they divided us up by examination type, and, while we didn’t have too much of a say in the matter, thank fuck they placed me in the testicular check and not the rectal.  There must’ve been, what, three hundred students there?  Christ.  I’m no trained actor, so you’d think I would’ve been a tad anxious to have my balls fondled by hundreds of different sets of hands, but it was strictly business after the first few, if we’re being honest.  My throat was a little sore from all the forced coughing, but everyone was completely professional, a total A+ operation.  I would recommend it to any male who’s in need of a tender touch and/or money.  Yet another stint after college was when I worked as a front desk assistant at a genetic testing center.  That one was pretty boring—a lot of paperwork, answering the phones, etc.—but the weirdest responsibility was going into the recently vacated patient’s room—once the deed had been done, if you will—to sterilize the magazines and rewind the DVDs (Yes, very old school.  I’m aware.), the latter of which were always stopped at the same minute and second mark. 

Now, if you’re sitting there and saying to yourself, wow, Sterling, you’ve really volunteered your body to science, how brave and noble of you—stop, because I haven’t always been so dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the furtherance of such a noble discipline.  Like I said at the beginning, I, too, have been caught up in the rat race, have struggled to climb the rungs of the corporate ladder.  For example, up until recently, I was a crew member at a Little Caesars.  Pretty low on the totem pole, but a jack of all trades, I mopped the floors, cleaned the staff bathroom, refilled the toppings stations, alphabetized the to-go orders in the warmers.  But, in the early evening hours, my primary duty was folding the cardboard pizza boxes.  If you thought there was no need for a designated pizza box folder, you’d be wrong, what with all the soccer moms on their way home after practice, stopping in to grab a quick and easy dinner; the single dads stumbling their way through another week without the kids, resigned to their permanent one-eighty back to bachelorhood; the pestilent teenagers from the high school down the road, stricken with the munchies, eyes redder than the devil’s dick.  The usual suspects, but a lot of them. 

My time at the Little C’s, though, was cut short, on account of Brandon, another crew member, slightly higher than me on the totem pole, and Tod, the manager of the establishment.  Tod was an alright dude but a dud of a manager, his biggest problem being that he was best friends with Brandon, who just so happened to be a degenerate pillhead and an entirely worthless article altogether.  Everyone was always picking up his slack: like, where’s Brandon, he’s supposed to be rolling dough, oh, you didn’t see him Tod? he’s on the floor next to the toilet, in a barely lucid stupor, drooling on himself like an escapee from the loony bin; or, have you seen Brandon, he should’ve been clocked in by now? oh, yeah, Tod, he rang about an hour ago actually, said he’s been locked inside his house for over a day now and can’t seem to get out.  But Tod never seemed to care.  Or, if he did care, it was never enough so to discipline—or, better yet, simply fire—the moron, their bond as friends stronger than that of a superior and his idiot underling.  And yet, somehow, Tod allowed all of Brandon’s shortcomings to fall onto me, to become my problems, like, what the hell Sterling, you knew he was on the floor and you just left him there? or, so you’ve known for over an hour that he wasn’t coming in and you’re just now telling me?  But what was even more infuriating was that Brandon, though seeming to care fuck all about the job, cared a fuck ton about my upwards trajectory at the company, my eyes set on Tod’s position as manager, Brandon’s on my ass as I passed him on my way to get there.  Or that’s at least what would’ve happened.

Brandon’s coup de grâce was when he came in the other day not blitzed out of his mind—that in and of itself should’ve alerted me that the little weasel was up to no good, that he had something up his sleeve.  Even more out of the ordinary was the intensity with which he produced the pizzas.  So committed was he to his craft that he asked if I could take his car and take care of the current stack of delivery orders, given that Jeremy (his friend and, yes, another pillhead) hadn’t shown up for his shift.  Too engrossed in Brandon’s newfound gusto to sense sabotage, I agreed.  He was my superior, after all.  Well, not long after I’d pulled out onto the main road did I spot the flashing blue lights in the rearview, followed by a handful of helmeted men aiming their rifles in my direction, shouting at me to—let me see if I can remember this correctly—get out of the fucking car and to get on the fucking ground before they blasted my fucking face off.  Turned out, they’d received an anonymous tip about a guy who fit my description and was driving the same make and model as the pizza delivery car—Brandon’s car—and who was trafficking a couple kilos of coke.  They let me go after finding nothing, of course, but not before writing me up for expired registration and a faulty brake light.  The conniving bastard.

Anyways, the squeeze-out was successful, and that’s the reason behind my current state of unemployment, Tod’s reasoning being that, guilty or not, his Little Caesars couldn’t be associated with the likes of me.  Too much of a liability.  Whatever.  Rev. Al told me it was never too late to consider joining the priesthood.  I said, hmm, yeah, that’s tempting, Father, but you said it yourself, it’s a calling, not work, and the Big Man Upstairs hasn’t given me a fucking ring yet, or it’s possible I’ve misplaced the phone, or left it hanging off its receiver.  Des, though, told me the kiosk next to her at the mall, the one run by the Arab guy selling fake Rolexes and all manner of other useless shit, was looking for an assistant.  I couldn’t think of anything worse—working in that close of proximity to Des, plus the incessant, though pleasant, assault of pretzel fumes from the nearby Auntie Anne’s—but, someone has to pay the bills around here, and that someone is me.  I gave her the green light to give him—Omar, I think?—my number, so I guess I’ll be hearing from him soon.