The Job Pirate Read online

  My shift started out wonderfully. A handful of senior citizens had hobbled in with canes and bad hips, and my only duty was to say “Good morning” and maybe flash a smile. The sun finally crept up over the great mall and shined down onto my courtyard, galvanizing the grass, the concrete, and my coupon table in the glow of a comfortable backyard. It was a perfect Southern California day and there I stood getting paid $9 an hour to soak in it. It was the life. It was the perfect job. There were long stretches of time where not a soul came around, and I was able to ponder all the things I hadn’t had time to ponder—while getting paid for it. There was such a rush of thoughts and ideas that I used one of the customer-survey pens and the blank backs of whatever I was giving away to write them down before they were lost forever. Brilliance ran from the ballpoint pen that day, and I captured each fleeting notion on a tether made of ink and coupons:

  1. Tell a skinny person that they have “those Labor Camp good looks.”

  2. Perpetual motion is possible by using two magnets opposite one another.

  3. Call Grandma and wish her a “Happy Birthday.”

  4. I am the Jack Bauer of the temporary employment world.

  5. The human mind functions like a courtroom, with one litigator representing the Creative Brandon and another for the Analytical Brandon, plus a sole judge who’s the core thinker and who makes the final decisions after hearing both cases.

  6. If evolution was genuine, why do monkeys still exist? Or fish? Why do hairy chests still exist? What possible benefit does the hair around my asshole present?

  7. Follow a stranger around for an entire week, take pictures of them at various locations, document and time-stamp these locations, then put all these photos and reports into a manila folder and present it to this person. Then wink and walk away.

  8. Obese women compensate by having really pretty hair. And smelling good.

  My philosophizing and note taking were going great up until about 1:00, when Carlos and his girlfriend emerged from the parking garage. He had been a coworker from my last real job, and he sauntered up to my table in shorts, flip-flops, and a bewildered expression. In my initial agreement of taking this job offer, I had forgotten that I even knew anyone who lived on this side of town.

  “Wow, really, man? This?” Carlos asked snidely as he lowered his sunglasses to the bridge of his nose and examined my coupon table. “You work at the Galleria now?”

  “It’s temporary. Not much out there right now.”

  “Really? I found another job just fine. This is seriously the best you could do? Handing out coupons and shit at the galleria?”

  “I was a professional mover last month. This gig’s new, just started today.”

  “I’d say congratulations, but I wouldn’t feel right about it. Really? From writing to this? Boy, you really fell far from the tree. You remember Rebecca, right?”

  “Of course, nice to see you again,” I answered, and his girlfriend and I shook hands. I could see in her eyes that she felt sorry for me and my immediate career choice, as well as for her boyfriend rubbing it in. But I knew Carlos well enough to realize that he was just having a little fun at my expense. We had worked together a few years back writing half-assed TV scripts for a little film company that eventually went belly-up. He seemed to have done alright with himself after the company-wide layoffs, while I was broke and still pissed that my Elvis documentary never saw a set of eyes outside of the Czech Republic.

  “Well, it’s getting hot out here,” Carlos ended the weird five-second stretch of silence. “We need to get a printer for my new Mac. Good to see you, bro. And good luck with this shit.”

  “Yeah. You too.”

  The whole dynamic of my galleria job promptly changed once Carlos and Rebecca walked away. As I watched them push open the doors of the mall and shake their heads with a “thank God that’s not me” glance to one another, I realized how pathetic I must have looked standing there at the coupon table—not even sitting, like a gentleman, but fucking standing, like a prop.

  They never came back out, at least not through the doors nearest me and their car. They must have exited through the front and walked all the way around the mall then circled back to the garage just to avoid seeing me again. I began to feel like I had asked them for spare change or the last half of their cigarette. My shirt felt dirtier and my white socks screamed from my ankles. I couldn’t help but inspect every approaching face the rest of the afternoon for someone I might have known or worked with in some better-paying capacity, and my “Welcome to the Sherman Oaks Galleria” greetings became riddled with guilt and conspiracy.

  For the rest of the day I did nothing but fill up my back pocket with a dozen more scribbled-on coupons and debase my current livelihood. I stuck it out for a few more days until Dottie called back and asked how I liked the job. She said they missed me at the old company, and relayed that no one could stack boxes both alphabetically and by date like me. She then said my old manual-labor position was still mine if I wanted it.

  The legal defense for Creative Brandon blamed Carlos for my decision to leave the galleria job, while Analytical Brandon’s attorney tried to prove it was simply time to move on to something a little less in the public eye. The judge sided with Creative Brandon’s litigation team on this one, and now history will forever remember the exiting of Job #57 was as a result of that motherfucker Carlos.

  MOST OF A DAY AT WHISPERING MEADOWS

  JOB #36

  “The world is too focused on sex. Everything you see or hear or read—it’s all about sex. They’re making it out to be the panacea of everything.”

  “Interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that out loud before.”

  “I’ve never been this certain of it before. It’s everywhere now! It seems like the most common answer to every problem is to have sex. The troubles of this world cannot be healed by vagina meeting penis. Poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, genocide, global warming; these things don’t give a good goddamn whether or not you’re boning Jody after she puts her kids to sleep. As a matter of fact, most of these problems are caused by having too much sex.”

  “Do we know a Jody?”

  “No, we don’t know a Jody! Can we focus on the matter at hand, please?”

  “Which is that sex doesn’t solve the world’s problems? We’re still on this one? Or that sex causes the world’s problems?”

  “Not just the world … I’m talking about local things, too. Things closer to home. Like us, for instance. How much time per day do we think about sex? How much money do we spend on stupid dates that end with a kiss and a ‘real nice to meet you’? How much porn do we watch on the Internet? If we had the best sex ever tonight, would it magically put a few thousand into my checking account? No. Would it even lend me a ten-spot to treat myself to a Denver omelet at IHOP? No. Sex is a bad investment. Sex is a time-share condo. You put $10,000 in and you get a couple of cloudy weekends a year. Sure, it’ll take your mind off of things for an evening, but so will a decent video rental. And speaking of movies, why is the focal point of every film ever made centered around love? Seriously. In the most inappropriate of films—war movies, hitman movies, bank heist movies, zombie movies, horror movies—there’s always this thick plot thread about the power of love and how it can shield a teenager from the guy with the machete or forgive all the contract murders a handsome agent committed.”

  “You’ve moved from sex to love in your diatribe.”

  “It’s all the same. It’s all bullshit. It’s a Band-Aid for reality.”

  “Someone’s a Bitter Billy today. I think this is just another good example of you trying to force your beliefs onto society and then scorning them when they don’t see things your way.”

  “You’re way off. You’re just arguing for argument’s sake now.”

  “A good psychologist might even say that you feel this way because of … your little problem.”

  “Our little problem. You’re no angel in this matter.
And I’ll agree with you there to a certain extent. It originally might have been the seed of my stance on this matter, but now it’s opened my eyes. Now it’s a flower in full bloom. I can see the truth now. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

  “I think we just need to get laid, pal. What’s your stance on that?”

  “Seriously? After all I’ve just said, you’re going to offer that little turd of advice up?”

  “How long has it been? The last time … was with that gal at that bar in Los Feliz. She had the gay guy friend who tried to handjob you at the table.”

  “No, it was the first grade teacher we met on the Internet. The gal from the bar told us she had Hepatitis as we were undressing, and it ruined the mood, remember? Our ‘little problem’ came in real handy that night. The first grade teacher was the last one.”

  “That’s right. It was her birthday or something. Man, we were callous with that one. Real Grade-A assholes. I bet she’ll think twice about going home with someone on a first date after that night.”

  “The dark side of the little problem. The blame game. But we’re drifting too far from shore now. I wasn’t finished with my diatribe, as you put it. Sex is going to kill this country. Look what it did to the Roman Empire; it destroyed it.”

  “That wasn’t because of sex, and you know it. It was perversion, it was greed, indulgence, power; it was a stronger enemy, it was devaluating its own currency, it was the stretching of its armies across half the globe that caused the fall of Rome.”

  “Well, those perverted Caesars near the end didn’t help matters.”

  “Seven months. It’s been seven months.”

  “Since the first grade teacher? Seven months? Well, sex is your thing now. I’m done with it. I wash my hands of it. I could go seven years, if I had to. You’re shit-out-of-luck, pal. I’m calling the shots now. I’m Mad Max and this is the Thunderdome. I run the show.”

  “Not when we’re drinking. That’s my time to shine.”

  “You’re a selfish son of a bitch, you know that?”

  “Back at you. Dick.”

  The door to the garage-turned-office opened and a middle-aged woman in salmon-colored shorts and shirt walked in with a clipboard. She wore the same phone headset as I did, but the thin microphone on hers rested beside her mouth; mine was pushed up around my eyebrow.

  “Hi, you must be our new operator. I’m Denise. Any calls yet?” she asked with an anxious grin.

  “Not yet, no.” I replied.

  She shook her head and glanced at her clipboard. “And you’ve been here since eight this morning? That’s too bad; I really thought we’d get at least a few calls by now. Sorry for making you sit here by yourself for four hours with nothing to do.”

  “Oh, I’ve kept myself busy,” I lifted Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar from the table. “I’m actually having a really nice time sorting out some thoughts.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re having a nice time, but I was really hoping we’d have gotten a few calls. We paid a lot of money for that commercial last night. Did you happen to see it?”

  “No, no, I didn’t,” I replied. “But I came up with a pretty good theory as to why I think no one’s called by now … if you care to hear it.”

  “Okay,” she replied sharply, “let’s hear it. I’d like to know why you think our $106,000 commercial failed to garner any interest in our treatment center.”

  “The timing. You’re targeting alcoholics and addicts to seek your help, so you have to get them at their most vulnerable time: right after the bars close. The counselor before you, this morning, she said you aired the commercial last night at 10, 11, and 12. Most alcoholics I know are still in the bars at that time—they’ll usually close the place. You should have aired your commercial at 2:30, 3:00, and 3:30 in the morning. That’s when they’re depressed and hating themselves—that’s when the booze is wearing off, and they’re trying to get to sleep to face another grueling day—that’s when you can really send your message home.”

  “Do you know very many alcoholics?”

  “More drunks than alcoholics. But it’s the same principle, isn’t it?”

  “No, Brandon, it is not the same principle,” she snapped back. “An alcoholic has to want to be helped before we can help them. We’re not selling a magic pill here; we’re offering an inpatient recovery program in a friendly home setting. We offer substance abuse treatment, not a substance abuse cure. If someone should happen to call, I hope you can remember that. And someone has told you the procedure for when someone does call, right?”

  “Politely get their name and number then transfer them to extension four,” I answered. “And don’t try to help.”

  “Exactly. And it’s very important you get that phone number. A lot of the times they’re curious or scared, and they’ll try to hang up before you can transfer them.”

  “Got it.”

  “How are you doing on lunch? You need a break?”

  “I brought a sandwich and I have my book. I may need to pee pretty soon, though, and I didn’t notice any other doors than the one I came in through.”

  “Oh,” her head tilted up a little, “okay, yeah. The bathroom. I guess we never thought about that; you’re going to need to pee. You’re our first call receiver … I didn’t even think about that. I guess you’ll have to use the bathroom in the house. But we just got some new … guests staying with us, so please be aware of what they’re going through, and please don’t communicate with anyone. One of our counselors will have to escort you in there, for legal reasons. And, I know I shouldn’t have to say this, but you can’t bring any drugs or intoxicants into that house for any reason. Even cough syrup. There’s always someone who tries to sneak in a bottle of pills or a little baggie of something—friends, parents, boyfriends, daughters; that’s why we don’t allow anybody not in treatment inside that house. We take it very seriously.”

  “That would explain the counselor patting me down this morning.”

  “Just tap on the kitchen window when you need to go, and someone will come out,” she said before leaving.

  Denise had been a welcome intrusion from my four-hour episode of Plath and internal conversation. I took the headset off and walked around the room, when suddenly, and maybe for the first time in my life, I craved interaction with another person. Whether it was the full pot of coffee all to myself, the pristine walls at all four sides of me, or the lone phone sitting on a long barren Formica table, I felt the deep yearning to share a conversation with another living, breathing human being—even Denise again. But she didn’t come back, so I ate my sandwich and poured another cup of coffee, and then I returned the headset back onto my head. It was kind of nice getting paid $9 an hour to sit and read a book in a quiet room, but 102 straight pages of The Bell Jar was enough to make anybody want to walk into a crowd and stay there. Everything was so still and peaceful around me; the silence in the room was as thick as the tan paint across the drywall walls. No car alarms, no yelling, no trash trucks, no televisions—there wasn’t a single sound around me. It almost felt like time had stopped outside of this room—that the rest of the world had paused and didn’t bother to invite me. Or, even worse, as if I had died but my conscious mind had refused to accept it, and this tan room was my eternal ghostly afterlife until I admitted that I was no longer among the living. I could have drunk too much coffee, had a heart attack, and didn’t even know it. I could have slipped into a coma, and all of this was my active imagination recycling the last few precious hours of its life over and over again: this tan room.

  “I think it’s called Cotard Syndrome.”

  “When you believe you’re dead, yes, I think that’s right.”

  “Sounds kind of mean. Cotard sounds like retard.”

  “Nice. Nice mature thought. And you think you’re going to meet some beautiful lady and get her to have sex with you with that kind of witty banter? You’ve got another think coming.”

  “Candor is all the rage
with my kind of gals.”

  “What’s the other one called? That other mental malady? It’s a cool one … What is that?”

  “Capgras Syndrome is, I believe, what you’re looking for.”

  “Capgras Syndrome! Yes, that’s a great one! When you believe everyone around you, all your family and friends, are imposters. Man, that’s messed up. I bet a few of the guests in the house have it.”

  “We could really fuck with them.”

  “We need this job too much, pal. This gig is gravy—getting paid to sit here and read a book? This is the graviest job we’ve had in months.”

  “I don’t think ‘graviest’ works well as an adjective.”

  “Agreed. Alright, I really have to pee now. I think it’s time we went in and met the houseguests.”

  The tapping on the kitchen window, as Denise recommended, merely incited a wave from a gangly woman in a bathrobe sitting at the dining room table inside. She didn’t look like a counselor, at least not a counselor against the use of drugs and alcohol. But she continued waving at me like a scene continuously replaying on a blemished DVD. I attempted to pantomime a clipboard and pen through the glass but the translation got lost somewhere in the curtains. She shot me a bewildered expression before opening the back door and leaning her upper half out.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she asked with the drawl of a content pothead, but her pimpled face said methamphetamines.

  “Hey. I just started working here. Is Denise in there? Or any of the counselors?”

  “Nope,” she replied. “I’m just watching TV. You got a smoke?”

  I pulled out my pack and slid a Basic her way. “I thought we weren’t supposed to smoke near the house?”

  “I just said the counselors were gone,” she said and motioned for a light by bending a thumb.

  I lit both of our cigarettes just three seconds before realizing that I was now breaking two very important rules on my first day: the aforementioned “smoking near the house” decree as well as speaking with a patient. The young woman in the bathrobe didn’t seem like she had much to share in the way of conversation, so I stood there and smoked quickly, keeping an eye out for anybody with a clipboard. But things then took a turn for the worse.