Around the first of this year, I decided to quit my job. It was a relatively good job and I really liked the people with whom I worked; I just needed to change some things and that was a best, first step in doing so. Regardless of how enlightened I believe myself to be, change is still hard, and sometimes, the only way to make a change is to force one, so I left one job without another; never a smart move.

I have been unemployed before, but I have only been fired once; when I was sixteen and working as the dough-maker at a Pizza Hut. Newly emancipated at the time, I was living in a death-trap of a trailer, in an actual trailer park, with a girl much older than me that I had managed to impregnate. King of my white-trash fiefdom, I wondered if life would get any better than that… maybe it hasn’t?

My Pizza Hut job was simple; I arrived to work each morning, before the sun, and made the day’s dough in time for it to rise to its future as pizza. This came to an abrupt end when my easily-distracted, younger self, screwed up all of the dough for the entire day. The most unfortunate part of the fiasco was that I did it in such a way that nobody could tell that the dough was ruined, until every single order started coming back, thanks to its cardboard-like consistency. As a parent, I am pretty sure that I fed the future pizza maker for Chuck E. Cheese that day, because I am yet to have a slice from that overpriced, germ-buffet of a playground, that didn’t taste exactly like shipping material.

When the General Manager fired me, personally, I remember him using many expletives and insisting that his biggest regret was that, “firing me was worst thing he could do to me”. Convinced that I was the dumbest person he had ever met, he informed me that I would not be given my last check. He openly admitted that this was not legal, but he held out his arms and shook his head as he exclaimed, “I will not be able to live myself if I do.”

Fast forward a quarter-century and there I was; unemployed by my own hand and looking for a new future. I have been an adult (legally, at least) for a long time, so not having a job is kind of a rarity for me, but it has happened. In the past, I would do as so many others during these times; sit around and shoot out resumes, while hoping the universe would send me a new job.

Once, it even happened in the summer and I told the stay-at-home moms at the pool I frequented during those lazy afternoons that I was a retired dildo model. They knew this was a lie the moment I emerged from the water with my shorts stuck to my body. At least I had a great tan.

This time, I decided that I was going to stay productive until I found a job that might make me happy. An added benefit to this plan was that I would have some new experiences to write about. Luckily, in our modern economy, there are plenty of options for making money without an actual job. Thanks to the efforts of “free-market” lobbying over the last twenty years, many of the jobs that companies once relied upon have been relegated to temporary work agencies.

Note: I would like nothing more than to write two thousand words here on the destruction of the middle class caused by this shift to temporary workers, but this is my blog and not my soapbox, so I’ll just hope you take a minute and research the thought on your own. I won’t hold my breath.

My first temporary job was for a contractor friend that was remodeling a house. I thought I was in pretty good physical condition until I spent a day manually removing a roof. Just in case you ever decide to become a roofer, there is something you should know; there are muscles in your body that you only use for tearing off roofs and they turn to internal molten slag the first time you use them.

I tried to find fun in the roof job, so when an ironically rousing AC/DC song came over the headphones, my tear-off tool became a Gibson SG, as I powered my way through Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, while straddling the apex of an exposed gable. A little, old lady walking by stopped to stare, so I threw her some devil horns and stuck out my tongue. She merely shook her head and moved on, but I decided then and there to make an addition to my growing list of life-rules.

New life-rule #47: Take a few moments every day to play music too loud and pretend you are Angus Young – you will feel good, but be prepared, should you choose to do so in public; not everyone will be a fan and you just might break your neck.

In between construction work, I did some jobs for a local temp agency. Not unlike this blog post, it took biting my lip not to explain to the woman managing the agency that her business model was ruining America. Considering the other applicants I observed while in her office, I probably could have jumped up on that soapbox and still been put to work regardless.

I did a few different jobs for the temp agency, but my favorite by far, was working at a large automobile auction. I showed up for Auction Day and the place was a madhouse. There are hundreds of used car dealership representatives running around and you have to weave through them, as you slowly work the car you are driving toward the main auction area.

Used car salesmen are a stereotype, and like all stereotypes, there are many that fit perfectly and a few exceptions. Among these men, there seemed to be a moratorium on kindness, or even smiling, as if they only used those things when selling. I, personally, have made a habit of smiling at strangers lately, just to see how many smile back, and the return on my smile investment has never been lower than in that large group of used car salesman.

The best part of working at the auction was driving the cars. I drove everything from Mini Coopers to Mini Vans and even a piloted a Corvette. I was the only person in my group that knew how to operate a manual transmission, so they kept pulling me out of one car to take over for some flabbergasted person after another, staring at a stick-shift like a dog stares at a ceiling fan.

Some of the cars were in terrible condition, and some were like new. Regardless of the state, I drove those cars with the same care I typically give a rental car – none. Many of the cars were actual rental cars being auctioned off after fifteen thousand miles were put on them, which made me wonder if the future owners would even know that they had been rentals. Cars you don’t actually own, like hookers, may be fun to rent; but you should never… ever… buy one.

As luck would have it, I even drove a beige, late nineties Nissan, exactly like the one my first wife owned. I imagined it was the one, as I allowed the memories (aided by the fumes) to wash over me. I really do think it was the exact car, and momentarily considered taking a picture of the interior and sending it to my seventeen-year-old son, to inform him that I had found the actual car in which he was conceived. He is currently shopping for his first car and I would offer to buy it for him. When my son tells his friends, “My dad is a nightmare”, he really means it.

By the end of the day, I had decided I was going to embark upon a journey of discovery with the temporary workers of America. Like a minimum-wage combination of Anthony Bourdain and Dorothea Lange, I was going to spend a year working with the lowest rung of America’s barely employed, and then write a book about it.

Admittedly, not all of the people I worked with had stories worth writing about. The vans which ferried us drivers around the auction were often filled with the distinct odor of booze, cigarettes, and crack-breath, but I suppose you are going to have that too. At least they weren’t at the pool; developing their tans on an unemployment or welfare check.

But alas, my career as a ground-breaking gonzo writer; documenting the plight of American temp workers would have to wait. Upon returning to my car and retrieving my phone, I found that I had a message from a prospective employer offering an exciting new job doing exactly what I wanted.

I did enjoy my short time with the temp workers. Not only did I learn a much-needed lesson in humility, but humanity as well. I will never forget the way people looked at me while I did the work; it was a strange combination of mistrust and irrelevance. I could tell that they either saw me as a person taking away a real job, or more likely; that they didn’t see me as a real person at all.

New life-rule #48: Always see people. All people. No exceptions.

When I consider the way I have thought of myself as better than another, based entirely on the arbitrary fact that my job was better paid, I think of Colin Powell, because he said it best – “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.”

 

Post Script: Shortly after my illustrious career as a dough-maker came to an end, the wise men at the Pizza Hut Corporation began shipping pre-made, frozen dough to all of its outlets, thereby eliminating my old job. I would like to think I played a part in that decision. I would also like to think that my old General Manager came up with the idea, and was made an executive, all thanks to the lesson he learned from my dough catastrophe.

You are welcome Pizza Hut. Can I have my last check now?