The Idler

Looking for a Crap Job

For the past year I have been blissfully, magnificently idle. But lately I have noticed my pockets are not bottomless, and the bottom I have hit is full of lint and only lint. No hidden pots of gold anywhere to be found.

So I decided to look for a “job”. I dragged myself, kicking and screaming, to a temporary agency. There, I underwent two hours of rigorous, quality control testing to see if I was good enough to join the ranks of their prestigious corps of temps. The testing consisted of typing tests on Commodore 64 computers and multiple choice questions: “On your feet you are wearing: a. pots b. pans c. rugs d. shoes.”

My first assignment was at a customer service call center. I lasted one day there. There had apparently been a recent change in dress code policy and the incessant droning on and on and on about the new code made the office complex feel like a re-education camp. I found this to be entirely too oppressive for my tastes.

My second assignment I liked much better, simply because I made more money on the hour. It was as a manager of an apartment complex. The owner was an absentee landlord, so the place was run by the maintenance guy. He had complex, long-standing grudges against nearly every tenant and quickly developed mysterious new ones towards the dolts trying to get an apartment there.

I delighted, however, in the job because I got to sit in an air-conditioned office alone and read or nap or chat on the phone with friends. The maintenance guy would be there in the morning and say “I’ve got to go look at number 64.” Then he would get into his truck, where a haggy, cigarette smoking blonde waited in the passenger seat. They would disappear and leave me to my napping. I lasted a week. One more day and I would have ripped my hair out by the roots.

Jennifer Hart