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 month will feature a different job I once had in chronological order,and how to take advantage of it while it takes advantage of you.
This month's Featured Job is -- K-Mart
I was contracted to K-Mart as temporary help for their refurbishment to turn all of the puny, old-fashioned K-Marts into fierce, competitive "Big K's". Lookout Walmart, K-Mart's Big, Bad Ass,a and now Sporting a Pantry Section for all you one-stop shopping needs!
Anyway, being a temp has its pros and cons. One advantage is that you only have to wear a name tag and not that menstrual red K-Mart issue uniform. So you don't look like too much of a dork. Another perk is that there is no whiz quiz, so all you hippies out there can find work without drinking that nasty-ass tea. You also get a discount at the K-Mart Cafe just like a regular employee. (As a side note, the K-Mart Cafe sells the best french fries in the world. I shit you not. Next time you are at K-Mart buy some. Since this secret is carefully guarded by K-Mart employees, there is a good chance of bullshitting your way to an employee discount. But I digress.)
The disadvantages to temp jobs definitely outweigh the advantages. Temporary, by the nature of the word, means you will have to find a new job in a couple of weeks and when the project is coming to close, they fire people at the slightest mistake so they won't go over-budget. There was a slight chance of being hired permanently, but that involved a lot of sucking up, and if they mad you a permanent employee, you would earn even less than the measly $6.00 an hour you were making. Plus, the regular employees looked down on you as some kind of "scab" so they hated you from the get go.
My duties entailed repainting shelves and delivering them to the other temps so they could finish their displays. This was the best duty to have. IF the other temps didn't get their shelves they couldn't finish their displays and would get bitched at by our manager. So everyone would get on their hands and knees and kiss my ass all day. Since they weren't allowed to leave their displays until the display was completed, I could push the paws on the toy bears that sang the Macarena, and force them to listen to the singing Macarena bear chorus while I walked away laughing. It's good to be the king.
The only problem with my duty was that I had no ventilation in my little workroom and the paint was known to cause cancer in the State of California. Fortunately, I worked in Pennsylvania or I would be dead by now. On the plus side, I got a wicked fume buzz. Anyone that has done whippets or huffed aerosol knows what I mean. I'd walk through the toy isles high as shit and jam out to "Daydream Believer" on the Muzak while being hypnotized by the colors.
One day when I was especially loopy, I spent the afternoon bopping from side to side and singing "baa baa baa" when I went upstairs I would go "bip bip bip" and when I'd push open doors I'd yell "boom shaka laka". I soon amassed a Congo lone of my fellow temps and some of the cool construction workers following me through the store all singing "baa baa baa" and rocking side to side. We passed the store managers three times. They didn't seem to mind.
Speaking of Construction Workers, I need to offer some advice. Don't even try to be friendly with the white ones. They are all assholes. If you don't talk about football, classic rock, or beating up fags, they try to run over your feet with pallet jacks. The black dudes on the other hand are cool as shit. One guy, Jimmy, aka Poppa Smurf, took me under his wing. Everything I needed to know about women I learned from chatting to Poppa Smurf. For example, "You gotta beg them tenderoni's, son, they would give it up for nothin" and " I have 8 kids, I didn't discover oral sex until I was forty!"
This brings me to my last and most important point. Don't shit where you eat. In other words, don't mess around with the girls you work with, because you will be stuck dealing with them when you find out that they have a big boyfriend named Chad who is on probation for kicking the shit out of some poor bastard who spit on his truck. Later when the chick in question got pregnant (not by me - I saw that one coming and never went near her when she was flirting with me - talk about dodging a bullet) when chose to confide in me, of course. (Apparently, standing up after sex is not an effective method of birth control.) She asked if she should quite smoking. "Yes," I said, "smoking is really bad." "What about pot?" "Yeah, that's no good either." "What about Acid? I LOVE acid!" "Sure, do al the acid you want. The Surgeon General just announced that acid is actually good for the fetus. It keeps it entertained in the womb. OF COURSE YOU SHOULDN'T DO ANY FUCKING ACID!" The moral of this story is don't flirt with girls, especially white trash girls, at the work place. It will always come back to bite you in the ass. Following this rule has kept me off Jerry Springer and out of the hospital.
I hope you found this month's column helpful. Please stay tuned for next month's about working at a movie theater.
Don't miss Steve's other regular column: Steve's Not Having It