It's a Good Thing They Didn't Hire Me

Neither the telecommunications behemoth incapable of delivering a reliable cable TV signal to my home, the computer software giant unable to supply my computer with a functional operating system nor the business services firm staggered by the prospect of processing a rebate in less than six months would dream of hiring me.

I mean, as a long-term unemployed old guy, I'd just screw everything up.

The latest example of an enterprise able to remain at peak operating efficiency through its careful and judicious hiring is Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois.

A little backstory: after extracting myself from the morass of HFS and their redeterminations and being elevated to an income strata which precluded Medicaid, I signed up with a Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO late last year.

All was fine until the health care insurer announced the plan wouldn't be offered in 2016. Okay, that's not quite right. Technically it would, but in a highly-altered form which would cost 354% more.

Grateful that my health care wasn't veering into simplicity and ease-of-use, and fairly sure that my income wouldn't see a similar increase, I began a search for a replacement after enjoying the PPO for exactly one month.

Affordable options were scarce. I scoured the offerings repeatedly just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. Visions of Helen Hunt in As Good As It Gets nonwithstanding, I swallowed hard and enrolled in a Blue Cross Blue Shield HMO.

(That it cost three times more than the original PPO, offered fewer providers and covered less was just a bonus.)

After clicking the 'submit' button, I exhaled. I thought the fun was over. 

But what did I know?

Predictably, the bill arrived first. Besiged by e-mails warning of the plagues and locusts that would ensue if I didn't enroll and then remit promptly, I hustled my payment off to the mail box and waited for my membership ID card.

I received notices advising me that my PPO would not be offered in 2016. I received notices stating that I needed to select another plan immediately or face government-imposed fines. I received notices detailing the coverage of the revamped PPO.

I received notices about everything except my new HMO and the whereabouts of my membership ID card.

Sigh.

Wanting to continue medical treatment begun under the PPO, I desired urgently to set-up a PCP and locate a specialist who could pick-up where my previous specialist had left off.

Silly me.

Not that I was the only person cast into this healthcare hell by Blue Crosses decision to pull the plug on their PPO. A quarter-million of my fellow Illinoisans were forced to change their plans simultaneously, stretching many Blue Cross Blue Shield resources to their breaking point.

Phone lines were jammed night and day. Provider information was nearly impossible to get. When it was available, it was listed on outdated web sites and it invariably took until the day before an appointment to discover the listings were obsolete.

E-mails to Blue Cross Blue Shield yielded responses which hid behind procedure and protocol. None acknowledged their colossal screw-up.

I was, however, able to print a temporary copy of my plan's ID card. Because of the repeated delays in discovering exactly who was and who wasn't included in my plan, I consider myself fortunate that I never had to use it.

The lowlight arrived in late-January, when I again attempted to learn who my providers were. My joy at having a call answered was, regrettably, short-lived. A carefully-modulated voice on the other end of the line informed me that I wasn't in their database. 

I snapped. I unleashed a torrent of four-letter words. Compound words. Bad words. I took the Lord's name in vain. I was screaming.

"That must explain the bills I'm getting, huh?"

I inhaled. The fresh oxygen provoked a second explosion, the details of which are better left unspoken.

While my health care remained on hold, Blue Cross Blue Shield bills arrived like clockwork. While I was amused to realize they resembled one of my favorite drummers and like him, never missed a beat, I also found this highly irksome.

I pondered it at length. What did it mean? What did it signify? I eventually arrived at two possible conclusions.

Either this was incontrovertible proof that despite the warm, fuzzy marketing that depicts a caring and nurturing collective of medical professionals, Blue Cross Blue Shield is a hard-core, show-me-the-money business as mercenary as any found on Wall Street.

That getting the money is job number-one.

Or, that the folks staffing Blue Cross Blue Shield's billing department were geniuses. They were the only employees able to cope with this giant shift, and by virtue of their unwavering performance, ought to be running the whole show.

That said, it remains a good thing they never hired a long-term unemployed old fart like me. I would've just screwed everything up. 

Not that you could tell.

J Is for Jealous

I get out of bed at 4 AM each morning to perform a menial job rich in stress, dissatisfaction, potential health risks and exposure to liability. It is equally-poor in remuneration and benefits.

Owing to a felony conviction for long-term unemployment, there is little else.

This allows me to hold forth on the working poor at festive occasions like birthdays, christenings and New Year's Eve parties. (Yes, I receive a lot of invitations.)

As such, I am trying very hard to understand the dullards fortunate-enough to win lotteries who see no other way forward than to continue reporting to work.

If we were speaking of concert pianists or successful filmmakers or renowned brain surgeons, that would be one thing. But we're talking about an employment strata decidedly less-elevated; one way, way downstream.

We're talking store clerks, municipal laborers and in the case of one recent winner—warehouse supervisors.

I have worked in warehouses. They are ugly, dirty and drafty places full of mice and mousetraps and unhappy people living on the margins of solvency. Warehouses have lunch rooms with burned-out fluorescent lights, sagging paneling and chipped Formica tables. Filthy microwaves and broken coffee-makers.

So I'm wondering why, when opposed to a month in Spain or Italy or overseeing the construction of a new dream home, someone would choose to remain in one. 

I mean, do you have nothing better to do than to get up and go to your dreary, dead-end job? No imagination that stretches beyond doing what you have always done?

It is sad. Infinitely and inexplicably sad. Some combination of your education and your parents have failed you, and I am sorry.

I get three magazines, a daily newspaper, read books and am a voracious consumer of movies and music. There aren't enough hours in the day to read all that I want to read, see all that I want to see and hear all that I want to hear.

I won't even broach the ten years without a vacation which has left my thirst for travel parched and unrequited.

And you can't think of anything to do but get up and go to work? 

The only thing more remarkable than your short-sightedness is why, even with the likes of you about, scientists continue to develop robots and drones. 

How about volunteering with the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity or Doctors without Borders? Or the local food pantry or children's hospital?

What about building a new animal shelter, or a complex of affordable apartments? Or buying that elderly widower down the block a new roof?

How about getting really out there and turning your job over to someone who—gasp—actually needs one?

Yes, I am jealous. Hideously so.

But whatever our respective fortunes, I at least am curious. And know how to remove my blinders.

Falling Through the Cracks

There's just something about September.

The last month you didn't post was September of 2012. Excepting the month of your father's death, the last one prior to that which found you equally torpid was—surprise—September of 2011. 

You have struggled this September to post even three pieces, and one of those was a quote. Creativity and the approach of winter do not go hand in hand. 

Autumn is a pretty word for dying of the light, which itself is a pretty metaphor for the looming calendric cancer that neither William Shakespeare nor James M. Cain could improve upon.

There are, of course, other contributors to this Super PAC of sloth.

After three months of pestering HFS (the state agency that administers medicaid) to learn the status of your re-determination, they are finally able to inform you that you are above their income limit and are no longer eligible.

You didn't know you were capable of making too much money.

You review your lifestyle and smile ruefully at the tank of gas you paid cash for just last weekend. At the groceries you purchased yesterday. At the needless extravagance of your subscription to Car & Driver.

You wonder when Forbes begins compiling their annual list of the five-hundred wealthiest people in the world.

The cold, unblinking reality is that this is the result of a raise you received at work; a raise which will barely cover the cost of the insurance you are now required by the state to purchase.

Before the indignity of it hits you, you laugh.

It is, in a twenty-first century America kind of way, quite funny. It is the answer to the seemingly improbable question when is a raise not a raise?

Being possessed of a blinding genius, you inquire of your employer whether you fulfill their hazy and nebulous definition of full-time, since you have picked-up hours and now regularly work over thirty owing to their perpetual shortage of employees.

You do, on an hours-worked basis. But it isn't that simple.

In our business-friendly culture, your employer has been allowed to declare that since your route has not been designated a full-time one, you don't.

In other words, you could work forty hours a week until the Florida state legislature acknowledges climate change and you still wouldn't be considered a full-time employee. 

This is a manifestation of your worst fears; that your life is seemingly incapable of moving forward. 

You have maintained for years that employment is an alternate universe.

You, for better or worse, are the starship Enterprise.

Now Hiring

Hello. I'm La Piazza Gancio, President and founder of Total Business Solutions.

We understand that businesses large and small can get overwhelmed when it's time to make a critical hire. Many companies report receiving thousands of responses for a single opening, meaning their HR staffs are stuck wading through applications when they could be managing executive-level perks.

Fortunately, TBS has a solution.

Our software engineers have turned what were once profit-draining headaches into revenue streams. With FourChoice business software, job-seekers control their futures at the same time you rake in the cash!

It's true! Our clients have turned employment openings into profit centers, and they couldn't be happier!

So. How did they do it?

By embedding Total Business Solutions' FourChoice software into their job listings, businesses offer each and every candidate four options which lets them decide just how far their application goes. 

This means you can say goodbye to annoying and time-consuming calls from frustrated or even angry candidates wondering what's become of their resumes.

Here's how it works.

When a job-seeker has finished the application process, they are asked to choose from one of the following. (If finances don't permit, applicants can opt out and apply another time.)

Accepted—Our first level doesn't guarantee a submission will be considered, or even read. But it does guarantee his or her resume will pass through vocabulary scanners unmolested, even if they contain words and phrases such as 'union', 'organize' or 'state ownership'.

Only you know the Great Pyramid of Giza will be dust before it's looked at.

Cost: $10,000

Read—At this level, the job-seeker's resume will be looked at, but for no more than thirty seconds. Submissions of this type do occasionally catch the eye of decision-makers and receive consideration, but only with the frequency that fifth-round draft picks wind up in the Hall of Fame.

That will be our little secret. And who doesn't love a secret?

Cost: $25,000

Considered—This price point guarantees the job-seeker consideration from the appropriate department head. If it is determined that the candidate is worthy of further review, references will be required. This requires vetting (available for an additional fee) based on a per-reference basis.

Cost: $50,000

Sold!—For the candidate's first year's salary or one-hundred thousand dollars (whichever is greater), the job is theirs.

Cost: $100,000 (minimum)

Applicants will then be directed on how to make their non-refundable payment based on your businesses preferences. 

All you need to do from this point forward is sit back with your favorite administrative assistant and count the cash!

Yes, FourChoice protects you from inappropriate applicants in ways that screens, filters and personality profiles just can't. Our proprietary algorithms guarantee that only the most-talented, most-deserving and wealthiest candidates get the pot of gold at the end of your rainbow.

Furthermore, Total Business Solutions research shows that multiplied by the typical number of applications per opening, FourChoice can turn every vacancy into a revenue stream washing between one and two-million dollars your way!

And don't forget our newest option—The Veil of Obfuscation. The Veil (as we like to call it) allows you to accept up to twenty applicants at the Sold! level and then withdrawal the position—without any exposure to liability whatsoever!

The small print in our user agreement states openings are based solely on needs of the business and aren't guaranteed in the event of a downturn, slow-down or recession. It's completely legal and litigation-proof!

FourChoice is the business software that turns problems into profits. Give us a call and find out what we can do for you. 

Total Business Solutions. Anything else is total b.s.

Dammed If You Do

Economists are alarmed. Americans aren't spending. And since their spending drives two-thirds of the economy, economists warn of dire consequences should this trend become permanent.

(Of course, they have warned of the dire consequences of not saving as well. Hence the title of this post.)

I would love the opportunity to ask these economists (many of whom, it must be remembered, are policymakers) why they suppose Americans aren't spending.

Could it be that with memories of the Great Recession fresh in our minds, and of the vicious and wholesale job-shedding that followed, private-sector Americans have realized exactly how tenuous their livelihoods are?

Is it possible we have finally come to understand that most of us are merely expenses to our employers? Expenses to be winnowed down and/or eliminated lest shareholders become upset at not being made exponentially wealthier than they were last month?

Or that, with the inevitable passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership looming, we will become more vulnerable still?

Why, exactly, should we spend? I mean, who does it benefit?

China? Bangladesh? Mexico? Some tax-dodging executive shoveling cash at Republican misanthropes? Perhaps e-Bay is the biggest beneficiary—at least when we desire to rid ourselves of the junk we've accumulated.

I was once an enthusiastic consumer, and for that I have been rewarded with a lifetime supply of underemployment after committing the unforgivable sin of being unemployed when the Great Recession hit. 

(I was preparing for a cross-country move, if you must know.)

It is sobering to realize the economy you once so obediently served now wants nothing to do with you. To think nothing of the money spent on entities which now refuse to even consider hiring you.

It is also a powerful incentive to save.

Our captains of industry have been repeating a thinly-disguised threat for years, that the American worker needs to remain competitive in the global market place or face extinction. And the American worker responded. American workers are among the most productive in the world, even as the buying power of our wages remains flat or even falls.

But—big surprise—it isn't enough.

Without the one-hundred percent profit margin, business is just having a really tough time making this thing work. How are they to pay living wages and buy our elected representation?

However easy their virtue, you should know Congressmen don't come cheap.

Businesses solution is to outsource jobs and re-locate corporate headquarters to foreign tax havens as their increasingly contracted and part-time work force requires government assistance and health care.

It is the most indefensible kind of cost-shifting.

In the end, what is really curious is that even as the American worker becomes ever more marginalized, the American consumer is apparently still very much in demand.

Does anyone—anyone at all—see the disparity?

You and Your Job

In my ongoing efforts to supply you, the valued Square Peg reader, with timely and relevant blog content, I offer this highly-scientific profile builder designed to articulate your feelings about work.

It will tell you whether it's time to look for a new job or get measured for a boardroom-ready designer suit. You need only to respond to the statements below to discover if you and your job are just a tawdry one-night hook-up or a bona fide LTR.

Read each of the eleven statements and choose the true or false answer that best matches your feelings. Hint: first responses are usually best.


01. Work is a continual annoyance, like a stone in your shoe which cannot be removed. True or false.

02. Only kidney stones pass more painfully than time at work. True or false.

03. When you exit the building at the end of the day, you look skywards, spread your arms in supplication and beseech an uncaring and spiteful god with the words “What did I ever do?” True or false.

04. You’ve ceased listening to Highway to Hell because it bears an uncomfortable resemblance to your drive to work. True or false.

05. Every day you don’t claw your eyes out in sheer agony is a small, but significant, victory. True or false.

06. Sartre’s concept that hell is your co-workers (admittedly a rough translation) may be truer than anyone suspects. True or false.

07. Only a proctologist sees more assholes than you do. True or false.

08. You understand the significance of the German expression arbeit macht frei, and wonder that your employer hasn’t inscribed it on the walls of the cafeteria. True or false.

09. Horrible Bosses isn’t a comedy, it’s a documentary. True or false.

10. Inducing internal organ failure is becoming an increasingly reasonable alternative to getting up and going to work tomorrow. True or false.

11. You are troubled by recurring dreams of animals chewing off their limbs to escape a trap. True or false.


Scoring:

For each true response, give yourself three points. For each false, zero. Total your points and match the total to the profiles below.

00 – 00 Once, you were upset at work. But you don’t remember why. You wonder why you’re paid, because you’d work for free. Work is fun. Like a puzzle. And you like puzzles. And singing songs. And just having fun. At least until your meds wear off.

03 – 12 Stealing office supplies provides temporary, short-term relief only. It’s not a cure. In other words, when you find yourself in a hole, put down the shovel. It’s time to update the resume and begin the search for new employment.

15 – 21 You regularly experience significant discomfort at work. Ditto the realization that sleep aids and anti-depressants only camouflage symptoms. Time to increase your dosage, find a good therapist and ramp-up your search.

24 – 33 Elvis isn’t the only one who’s left the building, is he? Let’s face it: at this point, quitting is just a formality. Like our favorite besotted and jump-suited singer, you left the building a long time ago.

I Almost Have a Job!

If the paucity of posts weren’t clue-enough, you should know: I found a job.

Not a full-time-with-benefits one mind you, for I am clearly unworthy of such extravagance. But I have found temporary work--with benefits (the exact nature of which escapes me at the moment).

Oh yeah. I’m being paid.

What I do was once the province of college graduates. I am a human resources benefits administrator. Yes, the finer points of health insurance, 401(k)s, pensions, payroll, COBRA, vacation and FMLA administration are being stuffed into me as rapidly as I can clear space on my internal hard drive.

Week five was completed Friday.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. I am. To have a forty hour paycheck for the first time in two years is the proverbial rain in the desert. But I am troubled.

Troubled by the degreed HR staffers who no longer have a job because their jobs have been outsourced to temporary workers like me. Troubled by a company that either doesn’t realize its raging hypocrisy as it speaks of the importance of commitment from its temporary workers or doesn’t care.

I am troubled by the ongoing conditions in a supposed first-world country in which highly-educated people make fifty and one-hundred mile commutes for a temporary paycheck while chasing a vague and nebulous chance at permanent employment.

As I suspect is true in many American offices circa 2011, the mood is grim.

Weary, stressed-out workers swallow hard and multi-task while working for stagnant wages as executive compensation rockets upward in an unbroken trajectory independent of company performance or economic conditions.

In the hour and a half it takes to negotiate the twenty-five mile trip to work, I realize I am uncomfortably close to a conundrum where I work merely to perpetuate my ability to get to work.

But then there is my resume. The official record of my contributions to corporate America.

If nothing else, this position will allow me to show recent experience. Which, if you haven’t looked for a job lately, is the mantra of our business class: only the employed (or recently-employed) need apply.

And would all of you ninety-niners please just go away? Or something?

But the days aren’t without mirth. The monumental tedium that results from eight hours of ‘What are the restrictions on withdrawals of after-tax contributions made to the DC plan after December 1, 1986?’ is an extraordinarily fertile breeding ground for humor.

I long to quote Dr. “Bones” McCoy from the original Star Trek and say “Dammit Jim! I’m a doctor—not a retirement specialist!” I struggle to resist publicly identifying the three types 401(k) distributions as hardship, regular and regular with cheese.

Or to inquire of our off-site facilitator “Does a 401(k) participant get a treat when they roll over?”

But these aren’t even my biggest temptations. Let me explain.

In our classrooms, we sit in individual, high-walled cubicles. As mentioned earlier, we take our instruction from an off-site source as we are monitored by on-site instruct—I mean facilitators. The off-site facilitator speaks to us from Texas via speaker phone.

When questions are asked over the speaker phone, they produce a stadium-like echo, which creates in me an irresistible urge to say things like “Upon further review, it has been determined that the offensive player had both feet down at the time of the catch. The call stands. Touchdown Chicago.”

Alas, I have not. Corporate America takes itself very seriously.

But as any temporary can tell you, dreams die hard.

Much Ado about Nothing

I will admit right off the bat that life could be much worse. I could have been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this morning. I could be homeless, or filing for bankruptcy. I could be off to the hospital to visit my girlfriend after she was raped and beaten last night.

But I’m not.

Yet at the same time, it could also be a great deal better.

For example, I could have two compatible part-time jobs. Or just one full-time job with a living wage. Or sleep not riddled with eye-opening anxiety. Is an apartment with appliances that don’t date from the Carter administration asking too much?

I am weary. Life has become a slog through wet cement. Round and round and round I go, expending energy and effort but never arriving at my destination. True, you could argue that I now have two part-time jobs, whereas last spring I had none.

But consider this. Part-time job number one mandates where I live. And despite its offering of one week’s employment per month, it forbids me to be otherwise employed, as I must (technically) be available virtually around the clock, each and every day of the month.

Forgive my impudence, but didn’t the Emancipation Proclamation eliminate slavery?

Part-time job number two recently informed me that after September, I will no longer be able to take a week off each month to perform part-time job number one.

This despite my making this condition clear when asked if I had any extenuating circumstances that might affect my availability in a job interview last August.

With their subsequent extension of a job offer, didn't they indicate that this was reasonable and acceptable? That they were okay with it? Or am I just a dumb fuck?

Alas, I ask for too much. What on Earth am I thinking, smoking, drinking or otherwise ingesting? That I could conceivably be self-supporting? That I could conceivably possess two crappy part-time jobs?

My presumptuousness is as alarming as it is outrageous.

On my good days, I think to myself “OK. This isn’t working. Change it.” But it soon becomes evident that I am between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

The apartment? Even within the geographic area allowed by part-time job number one, I’m stuck. Landlords in my adopted state are the definition of provincial.

“You haven’t lived here all your life? You haven’t been at your job fifteen years? Hmmm. What are you? Some kind of transient? A job-hopper? You’re not very stable. You’re a very poor risk. And I can’t rent to you.”

And the job(s)? Logic would decree that if I find my current employment unsuitable, I should seek employment elsewhere. But I’m already playing the lottery, thank you very much.

Which is another way of saying I may as well petition the Yankees to become their centerfielder as apply for a position in the field in which I’ve spent the majority of my work life.

Employers have made it crystal clear that as a prospective candidate, I rank somewhere between a death row felon and a drooling imbecile who smells of feces.

Which is why I find myself in two incompatible part-time jobs that can dictate so many facets of my existence. Only the desperate need apply.

Serfdom, anyone?

Good Advice

If you have a job, buy it the best, most-expensive bottle of champagne you can afford. The biggest, freshest bouquet of flowers. Invite it to your home.

There, sip the champagne. Breathe deeply the bouquet. Take your job in a long, meaningful embrace.

When appropriate, retire to the bedroom and make passionate love to it. Scale the summit of orgasm many times.

For you have no idea how fortunate you are.

A Bit of Silliness

Dear Sodomy Corp.,

I am responding to your Internet post seeking a Resource Allocation Specialist and am submitting my resume for consideration.

Resource allocation has been a passion since childhood, and a position with the Sodomy Corp. is a dream I never thought I’d have the opportunity to realize.

Let me tell you about myself and my qualifications.

As the senior member of a bio-team with working parents, I had extensive experience serving as a Resource Allocation Specialist (RAS). For instance, a junior team member was frequently assigned school projects. These typically required glue, paper, scissors, crayons and rulers.

As the on-site RAS, I would retrieve the educational enhancements from a hallway distribution center and deliver them to the appropriate team member. (I should add that I was instrumental in having senior management upgrade facility terminology to better reflect current marketplace realities.)

Another junior bio-team member was struggling with a pile of reports. After identifying the need, it became apparent our distribution facility did not stock the required item. Outsourcing was clearly the best option.

As a customer-driven RSA, I not only secured financing through our financial arm, but was able to locate and deliver elastic bands with a minimum of project down time.

The reports were secured and, most-importantly, the junior bio-team member received the tools they needed to succeed.

While I lack the requisite master’s degree in supply-chain economics and resource distribution theory, I have demonstrated, real-life experience in getting things to the people who need them—on time and within budget.

I am also certified in cyber and ‘legacy’ resource management, which gives me the product knowledge critical for thriving in a pluralistic work environment with diverse resource needs.

I am fluent in the operation of compressed air keyboard dusters, as well as mouse pad replacement. On the legacy side, I can source and replace chisel-point staples for Swingline units dating as far back as the nineteen-eighties.

In a summer internship with Phukum, Goode & Hart, I had the unique experience of training on a nineteen-seventies-era typewriter. My background is as extensive as my ability.

In an on-demand world, efficient and timely resource allocation can be the tipping point between project success—and project failure. Resource allocation stands on the very precipice of those extremes and demands strong focus and high attention to detail.

It’s not just handing out paper clips to receptionists.

The Sodomy Corp. is one with a reputation for standing behind its employees and one whose executives are well-known for the personal attention they take in filling every opening.

Through their careful probing, the Sodomy Corp. has achieved the market penetration that is the envy of the business world.

It is for these reasons I wish to bring to the Sodomy Corp. the results-oriented resource allocation it deserves.

Thank you for your time. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

Sincerely,

Jonathan Hynde

Blog Therapy

A friend of mine (Marcus) graciously re-posted a story of his, one called The Book Collector.

It is a tale haunted by regret; one which resonates with the consequences of the road not taken. It is the story of choosing safe and sensible over passion and dreams. It is a story which demands to be read.

And I have—many times. The narrative is Luke’s, and I identify with him completely.

When I was young-enough to be making such decisions, I wanted to write. Photograph. Paint. Make music. In my eyes, the traditional work world was a place steeped in the stench of slow, insidious death.

If you’ve ever seen Brazil or Joe Versus the Volcano, their office scenes captured what that world looked like to me. A place where people turned grey and lifeless. A place where unthinking regimentation and soul-sucking conformity gnawed away at you every single day.

But like Luke, I was afraid. Afraid to take a chance. And I have come to understand that was the biggest risk of all.

My father was a free-lance writer. Despite being talented-enough to support a family of six, he needed to supplement his job as the managing editor of a quarterly industry publication by selling the odd article to whatever publication was interested. It was, in its way, a grueling life.

True, my father didn’t have to fight rush hour every day or battle the office sociopath. But out of necessity he sequestered himself in the bedroom and banged away at his typewriter from eight in the morning until nine or ten at night. It was a ceaseless grind of research, queries, deadlines and rejections.

Despite my love of words and pictures and music, I knew I didn’t want to work twelve or thirteen hours a day sans benefits and with only an uncertain reward to show for it. There was also this nagging question as to whether I even possessed the talent. I wanted stability and security.

All these years later, that reads like a sick joke. There is no stability. There is no security. And there is certainly no fulfillment.

I lost a publishing job because, in the words of my boss, a financial wizard in New York City figured trimming payroll was the fastest way to boost stock values, and in turn, excite shareholders.

I lost a job in telecommunications when a union-hating gentleman by the name of Joe Nacchio engineered the ouster of my co-workers and I by reconfiguring our jobs so that it was virtually impossible to meet its sales goals.

Then there was Kathy Lovett. She was a company director so disliked by her peers and subordinates that she sat alone at the office Christmas dinner until there—literally—wasn’t another seat in the room.

This same woman made it agenda item number-one to rid the company of me, and succeeded.

The only clue I have for her intense dislike was that I negotiated my wage with her. And judging by her reaction, you would have thought it was coming out of her check.

It wasn’t.

You are familiar with my latest tale of woe.

Life sucks. Or more specifically, work sucks. Contrary to what we say at meetings and performance reviews and in the hallways, very few of us love it. I take that word to mean we’d do it for nothing, but I don’t know anyone who would.

I failed to locate that elusive place where ability and interest intersect. We make our own beds and then must lie in them.

That being the case, I hear Motel 6 is looking for maids. I’m experienced.

Work

In addition to making the posterior portion of my anatomy really, really sore, work has also taught me many valuable lessons.

My first job was a very short one. After two days of being a go-fer at a car dealership, I was informed by the service manager after showing up for day number three that I had been hired without the knowledge and/or consent of the owner and had to be let go.

It wouldn’t be the last time.

Lesson: Like water, blame only flows in one direction—downstream.

A few weeks later, I was hired for a similar job at another dealership. I worked six days a week—3 PM to 9 PM Monday through Friday and all day Saturday (even after my senior year of high school began). After five months of faithful service I was let go when the dealership found someone who could come in an hour earlier than I could.

It hurt, but at least I got the last laugh. My replacement attended the same high school I did, and I knew him to be an irresponsible fuck-up. Sure enough, a few weeks later the same man who fired me was on the phone asking if I was working.

Lesson: Like you, your employer is always looking for something better. Take nothing for granted.

While a freshman in college, I worked as a stock boy in the china department of Marshall Field’s. I got along famously with the department manager, her assistant and the floor manager. I didn’t mind work a bit. In fact, it was rare it felt like work.

Imagine.

But however sweet it seemed, it was after all, a workplace. A workplace rife with all the jealousies, conflicts and grudges that workplaces have. And the perception that the china department had its own stock boy because the department manager was in a relationship with the floor manager ran deep.

And while the store was air conditioned, precious little of it made its way into the stockroom. As a result, hours spent heaving sixty-pound boxes of china onto stockroom shelves made me rather warm. To cool off, I would remove my stock jacket when I went to lunch.

Somehow, the store manager got wind of it (it certainly wasn’t because we dined at the same places). I protested, saying the stockroom was hot and I needed a breather. Besides, I wasn’t being paid for lunch. What business was it of theirs what I wore?

I even took to walking outside the mall—all to no avail. After a heated meeting with the floor manager, I resigned myself to wearing the bloody jacket.

Lesson: There is always someone looking to undermine you. Watch your back.

I graduated from college in the early-eighties. Like now, the economy wasn’t very good. It especially wasn’t very good if you were an English major. I worked temporary jobs during the day and one of the most-dangerous jobs in America at night.

I worked the graveyard shift at a convenience store.

Oh, the stories I could tell: the woman who arrived in high heels and a men’s white dress shirt. The guy who emerged from the bathroom in his dress shirt and a hard-on, asking if I could “help” him.

Ugh.

The drunks, the thieves, the cops, the cons. There was never a dull moment in the convenience store trade.

I worked every other night. When I wasn’t breaking up fights or kicking out drunks, I was anticipating armed robbery. It happened, but to the other guy.

That was when I got really serious about finding a full-time job.

Unfortunately, that was when the other guy got really serious about finding a full-time job, too. And since he found one before I did and the owner couldn’t find a suitable replacement, I worked thirty-six nights in a row.

Enough was enough.

The owner was making a very nice living from the store. I but an hourly wage—sans benefits. I decided he could assume the risk and work the graveyard shift and gave notice that I would no longer be able to do so. Not one but two nightmen were found.

Lesson: The squeaky wheel gets the grease.