Steve's Guide to Shitjobs (or.. What's The Least I Can Do?)

By Steve Levandoski

Let's face it. If you are a musician you will probably never make enough money to pay the rent on that 2-bedroom apartment you share with 8 other people. IF you are lucky enough to get signed, the little money the record company doesn't screw you out of will be squandered on MC Hammer-type mansions (he's doing credit card commercials now), or tied up in some lawsuit. You will need to get a shitjob. I've enjoyed the privilege of having a losing about thirty different jobs in the four years since I dropped out of college. This is my guide for al you young bloods out there. Each issue will feature a different job I once had in chronological order,and how to take advantage of it while it takes advantage of you.

June 2003: Brick Factory

One day, the good folks at Addecco sent me to the metropolis of Leola PA to work at a concrete brick factory. (Somehow I managed to successfully block out the name of the factory.) Anyhoo, I arrived there at some obnoxiously early hour of the morning, and met up with the foreman. He hooked me up with the standard OSHA gear. I was given a yellow hard hat, some safety glasses, gloves, and earplugs on a string. I not sure why, but I really have a thing for earplugs on a string. They just make me feel really butch for some reason. And, as a double bonus, they were the soft kind, not the hard, ridged, cheap-o kind. I may dig looking diesel, but I'm all about the lobe comfort.

I was paired up with some young Nascar, peach-fuzz mustache, yocal. Our job was to stuff Styrofoam blocks into the open spaces of concrete blocks as they were sent down a convater belt. To this day I have no idea what the purpose this served. Maybe if the delivery truck crashed into a river, it would float like a barge down to the Chesapeake. Or it could be that someone at the plant's nephew has a cake job at a construction site, pulling out styafoam bricks from concrete bricks. Who knows?

The job was about as exciting as a blow job from Strom Thurmond. The only perk was that the conveyor belt only ran for five minutes every half an hour, so me and Nascar could take turns catching a snooze throughout the day. I did eaves drop on an awesome conversation walking through to the bathroom though. Some redneck was talking some typical racist shit, and some dude in his late thirties, who was also temping there said to him, "My favorite memories as a young punk rocker coming up was my friends and me driving down to Maryland with baseball bats, and putting Nazi skins in the hospital." That shut him up. I wish I got a chance to shoot the shit with him.

The last day, we were told that they didn't need us past noon. It was a hot day in August, and they said they would fudge our hours if we washed their company pickups for them. It was actually kind of fun.

Here are the past issues, in case you missed them or need to review:
August 2001
November 2001
January 2002
February 2002
March 2002
April 2002
May 2002
June 2002
July 2002
August 2002
October 2002
December 2002
February 2003
March 2003

Don't miss Steve's other regular column: Steve's Not Having It