Working Man Blues
I am so bored today that I can barely stand it. Oh, sure – I have plenty of stuff to do. It’s just nothing that you could call “exciting”, “motivating”, or even “remotely thrilling”. My full time employer is keeping me busy writing worthless stuff; junk that we shouldn’t have to write in the first place. But hey – it’s a paycheck, and it sure beats living in a cardboard box down by the train tracks.
I thought I’d write today about the worst job I’ve ever had, but there’ve been some doozies. I mopped bathroom floors for $3.50 an hour. I loaded food onto airplanes while being screamed at by a redneck and his no-speak-English-good assistant. I wore a moose costume for a theme restaurant. I got slammed against a wall by John Cougar Melonhead’s bodyguard for walking past him in a corridor beneath the Seattle Center. (I belonged there – he didn’t. Didn’t matter, now did it?) So I’ve done some pretty interesting things in this world for 70% of my paycheck (post taxes).
What’s the best job I’ve ever had? Well, that would probably be my time with The Mouse. For the first 3.5 years of my working for Uncle Walt’s company I had a great time. It was just those last few months that began to grate on my nerves, mainly due to really stupid policy changes going on in the division I worked for. Still, I’d love to go work for The Mouse again. They didn’t pay jack, and their benefits were slim, but I’d do it again. Just to see the kids smile. It’d be worth it.
I was also kind of fond of my time working with the Lovely Mrs. G. in Seattle years ago – I was an assistant manager of a customer service phone center (Mrs. G. was also an asst manager there), and although it was stressful and occasionally bizarre, it was still a lot of fun. I liked bossing 17 year old kids around, and I was pretty good at it. I fired my first ever employee there – I can still tell you the exact date, too: December 24, 1986. Yes, your pal Tommy fired a kid on Christmas Eve. Scrooge bastard, aren’t I? But Ron left me with no choice – he and his buddy were updating customer records with bogus phony (and disgustingly lewd) names and addresses. Har, har, right? Yeah, it’s real funny until you mess around in a “live” mode instead of an “update” mode, and accidentally transmit your nasty address information across the system and into the hands of a waiting district manager, who just happened to be standing there when it spit out of the printer. So Ron lost his job on Christmas Eve, thanks to his changing a customer’s information to “Mr. Big’s Disposable Douches” on “123 Tampon Way”, “Bloodyville, WA”. Why couldn’t he have used “1122 Boogie-Boogie Avenue” like all practical jokers?
Termination #2 was about a month later, when I discovered a 16 year old girl who was sitting at her desk, answering phone calls and drinking a large cup of vodka and orange juice. She cried. She begged. She pleased. She was drunk. I felt about half an inch tall, and I puked when I got home. It was not fun.
I fired several more kids over the next 3 years – fistfights, rudeness to customers, sticking a banana in someone’s tailpipe, ala “Beverly Hills Cop”. That’s what you get when you work in a call center filled with 200 people, average age 17. I also made a lot of good friends out of that place, and landed myself a pretty wonderful Mrs. G., although it took another 10 years for us to get together. (Hey, it was worth the wait.)
And yes, I’ve been on the receiving end of the firing stick, too. I’ve been laid off more times than I wish to describe (6, I think, at last count), and I was once made the scapegoat for a company’s bad ways. The president signed up a customer who ended up ripping us off for about $85,000 in fraudulent charges, and since I was technically the “operations manager”, he said I should’ve investigated them before we gave them service. (As if he would’ve let me check their credit. Hah. He practically had a boner when he signed them up – who knew they were wanted by the FBI and Interpol for international mail fraud?) Anyway, I took the blame for it, and he walked away scott free. Of course, he’s dead now, so ha ha to him. He may have won that battle, but I’m the one still breathing. So there.
But now here I am, celebrating 7.5 years with my primary employer. I haven’t had a raise in over two years, and my salary is about $15,000 below what the general consensus says I should be paid, but I’m okay for now. I don’t like how they treat me, but I know it’s not forever. In two years I’ll be out of here, one way or another. And I’m really looking forward to that day.
But until then, at least I can be happy knowing that they won’t make me wear a moose costume. Or at least I hope.
I thought I’d write today about the worst job I’ve ever had, but there’ve been some doozies. I mopped bathroom floors for $3.50 an hour. I loaded food onto airplanes while being screamed at by a redneck and his no-speak-English-good assistant. I wore a moose costume for a theme restaurant. I got slammed against a wall by John Cougar Melonhead’s bodyguard for walking past him in a corridor beneath the Seattle Center. (I belonged there – he didn’t. Didn’t matter, now did it?) So I’ve done some pretty interesting things in this world for 70% of my paycheck (post taxes).
What’s the best job I’ve ever had? Well, that would probably be my time with The Mouse. For the first 3.5 years of my working for Uncle Walt’s company I had a great time. It was just those last few months that began to grate on my nerves, mainly due to really stupid policy changes going on in the division I worked for. Still, I’d love to go work for The Mouse again. They didn’t pay jack, and their benefits were slim, but I’d do it again. Just to see the kids smile. It’d be worth it.
I was also kind of fond of my time working with the Lovely Mrs. G. in Seattle years ago – I was an assistant manager of a customer service phone center (Mrs. G. was also an asst manager there), and although it was stressful and occasionally bizarre, it was still a lot of fun. I liked bossing 17 year old kids around, and I was pretty good at it. I fired my first ever employee there – I can still tell you the exact date, too: December 24, 1986. Yes, your pal Tommy fired a kid on Christmas Eve. Scrooge bastard, aren’t I? But Ron left me with no choice – he and his buddy were updating customer records with bogus phony (and disgustingly lewd) names and addresses. Har, har, right? Yeah, it’s real funny until you mess around in a “live” mode instead of an “update” mode, and accidentally transmit your nasty address information across the system and into the hands of a waiting district manager, who just happened to be standing there when it spit out of the printer. So Ron lost his job on Christmas Eve, thanks to his changing a customer’s information to “Mr. Big’s Disposable Douches” on “123 Tampon Way”, “Bloodyville, WA”. Why couldn’t he have used “1122 Boogie-Boogie Avenue” like all practical jokers?
Termination #2 was about a month later, when I discovered a 16 year old girl who was sitting at her desk, answering phone calls and drinking a large cup of vodka and orange juice. She cried. She begged. She pleased. She was drunk. I felt about half an inch tall, and I puked when I got home. It was not fun.
I fired several more kids over the next 3 years – fistfights, rudeness to customers, sticking a banana in someone’s tailpipe, ala “Beverly Hills Cop”. That’s what you get when you work in a call center filled with 200 people, average age 17. I also made a lot of good friends out of that place, and landed myself a pretty wonderful Mrs. G., although it took another 10 years for us to get together. (Hey, it was worth the wait.)
And yes, I’ve been on the receiving end of the firing stick, too. I’ve been laid off more times than I wish to describe (6, I think, at last count), and I was once made the scapegoat for a company’s bad ways. The president signed up a customer who ended up ripping us off for about $85,000 in fraudulent charges, and since I was technically the “operations manager”, he said I should’ve investigated them before we gave them service. (As if he would’ve let me check their credit. Hah. He practically had a boner when he signed them up – who knew they were wanted by the FBI and Interpol for international mail fraud?) Anyway, I took the blame for it, and he walked away scott free. Of course, he’s dead now, so ha ha to him. He may have won that battle, but I’m the one still breathing. So there.
But now here I am, celebrating 7.5 years with my primary employer. I haven’t had a raise in over two years, and my salary is about $15,000 below what the general consensus says I should be paid, but I’m okay for now. I don’t like how they treat me, but I know it’s not forever. In two years I’ll be out of here, one way or another. And I’m really looking forward to that day.
But until then, at least I can be happy knowing that they won’t make me wear a moose costume. Or at least I hope.
posted by Tommy G at
3:04 PM
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