my fickle ways

04-16-00

Who's the big loser today? Betsy's the big loser!

Recording session number three this afternoon. It's a really shitty feeling when you arrive fifteen minutes early for a gig and then realize your music is at home, roughly 40 minutes away. The worst part is telling the guy in charge. He didn't make a big deal out of it, I have to give him credit. I'll bet from now on he brings the spare parts with him. I had to read my parts from a hastily-Xeroxed full score. It's embarrassing to admit I've done that before.

So, yesterday I didn't have my mute, because John took it to work with him and didn't put it back in my car where I thought it was. Today I forgot my music. I must look so responsible. I'll bet they all want to hire me now. I am the BOMB.

Did I mention that I sent my resume out a couple of times last week? Once for a clerical something-or-other and once for a music retail gig that I would be very embarrassed if I got. I think my chances there are good, so I can't say much about it, just that I'd be schlepping crap band instruments in a leased space of a large discount store where I swore I'd never work. The large discount store may or may not start with the letter W. But it's part-time, and at least it's somewhat musical and at least it's not dog shit.

I've held a lot of jobs since I've been, well, jobworthy. I've never been fired or asked to leave. The only time my employers were even happy to see me go was when I worked at Wendy's for three months in high school, spring of 1993. I was the SuperBar attendant. My big job there was to top off all those tubs of stuff on the bar from the giant tubs of stuff in the back. Huge cans of chocolate pudding and pineapple chunks, and a big trashcan full of watery lettuce. Yep. And the garlic bread was made from toasted stale hamburger buns.

Since that fateful first employment, I've worked as a real estate secretary, an optical technician, a grocery cashier, grocery cash office clerk/customer service, band librarian, office temp, file clerk, veterinary tech, and private music teacher. I've had so many jobs, and I've never been fired, so why am I always looking for a job? Why?

Let's see. I quit Wendy's in an underhanded way. I'd been planning since January to go to Interlochen Arts Camp in the summer between high school and college. In April, I went and got myself hired at Wendy's under false pretenses. The other employees thought I was a stuck-up college-bound brat, and they were right. I pretty much thought I was slumming in fast food. My dad didn't want me to go to college without ever having held down a job. In late May, I explained to my manager that this scholarship to Interlochen had "suddenly come up" and, well, see ya. Buh-bye.

My first summer home from college, 1994, I worked for Mr. Crawford, a friend of my parents'. He had a small real estate/insurance company and one secretary who liked to take the summers off to spend with her kids. I spent the summer working 9 to 5, reading books, working crossword puzzles, and occasionally typing ad copy. My friend, Manda, tested the viscosity of silicon products at the plant where her father was a higher-up. She and I used to meet for tennis on Tuesdays, and spend weekends sailing, out at her cottage on Devil's Lake. What yuppie fun.

I spent my second collegiate summer, 1995, living in Ann Arbor. Made the rounds of the mall stores a few months in advance, and got a call from the optical department at one of the anchor stores. That summer and fall season was bizarre. I drank too much and picked up guys who worked at Peace Frogs and JC Penney. I'd go to parties and explain to stoned people how polycarbonate lenses could change their lives. By the end of the summer my boss had me covering shifts at stores in the Detroit area, on the fast track to middle management. She was only 23 when she hired me in. I was 20 when she asked me to skip my morning classes to cover a busy shift. I quit the next week. I'd just met John, and I was preoccupied. A little.

Being with John, I spent more money. By February of 1996 I needed cash to pay off the parking tickets that I'd acquired in his dorm's permit-only parking lot. So I went grocery, working as a cashier in a yuppie gourmet wine-and-imports store in North Ann Arbor. There I learned the meaning of retail, and I learned of my amazing obsessive-compulsive ability to remember hundreds of veggie PLU's. I was one of the fastest cashiers in the place. Within six months, I was "promoted" to the cash office part-time, where I counted and counted and counted money, all day. What fun. The store was a corrupted wasteland of politics, with the owners in and out all the time, screwing over the employees. Customers there were snooty, unappreciative, and mean. I became a born-again cynic, but I didn't quit until I went to grad school in a town over an hour away. I shudder to think of this, but I actually considered staying there. The money was decent, John was working in the same store, and Ann Arbor is an addictive little town. If I'd stayed, postponed my master's, I'd still be there. I've seen it happen.

So...I moved to East Lansing in the fall of 1997 and started my gig as band librarian. A thankless, underpaid position, but I had an office, which I shared with my friend Daryl. It was a benign job, most of the time, with a few harried evenings spent slaving over a hot copier. I left when I graduated in 1999.

During the same time, I worked for grocery store number 2. This was a plain old grocery store, with normal, middle-class patrons, and I was treated much more fairly by the management and the clientele. I was hired right into the cash office, based upon my experience in the Wine Store From Hell. The store directors and my own boss loved me, teaching me everything, drawing me in as deeply as they could. Within a few months I was one of the more powerful employees, even though I had no seniority and little responsibility. Everyone came to me for information or assistance. I was the shit. After about a year, the retail politics overwhelmed me once again, and I walked. I was loaded with master's degree crap and a solo recital, and my manager at the store left for a different position within the company, so nothing held me back. There were no hard feelings.

I was unemployed then, except for teaching, until I got to Georgia. I signed on with a temp agency and took a few short-term positions before I got the evil file clerk position. Filing and phoning all day with an officeful of well-meaning but racist Southern smalltown people, I didn't last past two months. I told them that I'd been offered a job in a music store and I ran. It wasn't a week before they called the music store and found out I didn't work there. I felt bad, but not bad enough.

And now I scrape dog shit off of cage bottoms. I bathe dogs that have been rolling in piles of their own excrement for their entire lives. I listen to my boss spew insane political beliefs. I come home smelling like flea shampoo, on good days. I wear rubber gloves to work. Nobody should have to say that. Why will I leave this job? Do you really have to ask that question?

One thing most of these jobs have in common is that I really wanted them when I was applying for them. I thought I could work in optical sales forever! I could be a grocery cashier and teach music lessons! I could create a job in a music library.... I could be a file clerk until I get a gig.... I could, well, be a vet tech for, you know, a while.... But after I start the job, I no longer want it. Like every guy I ever dated before John: I did everything in my power to get that guy's attention, and when he was smitten, I dumped that loser like old news.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm being incredibly irresponsible. I've never had trouble getting a job, and the jobs I've held would make other people dance, they're such great jobs. But I'm never happy doing them. I don't seem to be happy doing any job. If you ask me what I want to do, I have a quick answer: I want to teach at the college level. What I can't say is whether I'd get tired of that job, too. Maybe I'll just keep changing what I want to be doing, just to keep myself unhappy. A crappy job is a good reason to be unhappy. And God knows, I wouldn't want to be content with my life, or anything.