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 and 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.
My Friend Mike told me about this temp office he worked at that was like Addeco but the white collar eqivlilent. I totally forget the name of it, but it featured menial office work instead of menial labor jobs, and I was turning twenty, so I figured it was time to for me to enter a new stage of life. No more would I slave in the hot sun for a measly seven dollars an hour. It was time to put on a thrift suit and tie and bask in the air-conditioned glory of almost skilled labor. (I lied a lot on my resume.) Plus I would be making NINE dollars an hour. The company also had the bonus of computer training on my days off. There was no way this could possible suck.
It sucked. I’ll tell you about the first job I had. I arrived because I got lost, but I looked sexy in my new polyester brown suit with my navy blue tie. I had my mom help me tie it cause I was a bigger retard back then than I am now. I was introduced to some chick who would be my boss. She was hot. I forget her name. So Hot Boss Chick tells me my duties. It was some kinda doctor firm place, and I had to collate the files. For those of you in the don’t-know, ‘collate’ means you get a file off the pile, and put it back where it belongs alphabetically. I was basically a human Commodore 64. So Hot Boss Chick then leaves me, and a couple of other people in the room. My brain turned into sludge after a bought five minutes. The other people were working like busy little beavers, hoping to impress HBC so they could get that permanent job. Through experience I’ve found that the coveted permanent job was just the carrot on the stick, so I figured I would just try to pretend I was somewhere else. Needless to say, daydreaming and the alphabet never get along, so I fucked up everything royally. HBC came up to me later that week, and said she didn’t think things were working out. Let’s just say, I’ve heard those words come out of a lot of chic’s mouths, and strangely I got the same feeling of emotional inconvenience mixed with relief that I got from girls who said that in a dating situation. I called work, and they said to come to the office to find another job.
As far as the computer training, I think I went once or twice. I had all these ambitions of coming out the new Bill Gates, but it so boring it would make a toll booth operator cry. I went and got my own computer for the day, and a training disk. The disk was like, “To press enter with a mouse, put the cursor on the block that says ‘enter’. Then click the mouse. Now you try. “ Imagine six hours of that. I felt like they were teaching me how to pee. I just couldn’t hack it.
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
June 2003
Don't miss Steve's other regular column: Steve's Not Having It