Casual_Friday_Will_Be_The_Death_Of_Me
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I do not take well to cubicles. I feel this is to my credit. Cubicles are an indignity to God and man. They take the most organic and freeform species on the planet, and put them into a box.
I managed to avoid them completely until I was twenty-two. Before then, my professional career was held in classrooms, in labs, and even behind a friggin' badge. But a spontaneous trip north, to a new city free of connections, left my anti-cubicle stance flapping in the wind, and I caved.
My first gig lasted a grand total of nineteen hours. My job was to raise money, for a cultural organization I swear I used to respect only the day before. On my second day, the woman next to me managed to bilk $2,500 out of a woman who just had a nervous breakdown - and it was her husband's money, besides. But the commission was killer.
And my boss, in a bizarre twist of fate, asked me for a threesome on Christmas morning.
I finally got dropped because I raised, count 'em, zero dollars. It might have had something to do with my genuine attempts at honesty: 'So we're coming to you, on bended knee, rattling the tin can - with sad, sad, puppy dog eyes - asking, 'Please, sir. May we have some more?'
And yet it pleases me to no end that I can't ask people for handouts, even when it's my job.
I got another job within the week: better pay, but more cubicles. We recruited people for focus groups. And yet, the people there had souls, and they helped to save mine as well.
There were one-armed chefs, frontmen for punk bands, triple-majors who studied piano and played chess in their head. These people had stories about street fights in the Czech Republic, knowledge of Micmaq linguistics, and a conviction that they would one day leave this place, and watch as a ghost town of staplers and clogged Xeroxes disappeared in their rearview mirror. We drank tea, we stood on desks like Dead Poets Society, and gave money away, instead of taking it. We even called people who wanted to be called.
(Mostly. We all dreaded The Sample, in which companies demanded we call unsuspecting poor bastards whose number they'd scored like a pickpocket scores Rolexes during rush hour. Occasionally, they would rage about the no-call list, for which we did not qualify. And I told them: trying to ward me off with a do-not-call list is like trying to kill a vampire with a tomato).
Occasionally, from the other end of the line, a genuinely kind personality would come ringing through. A wrong number called back, and I talked with him for an hour after closing, talking about how it felt for him to see gobs of magma leap from the caldera of Costa Rican volcanoes. When he finally asked what the hell sort of company this was, I told him that we were the front-line of the mating rituals of capitalism. In a world where Santa is a CEO, we are his elves.
I met a beautiful girl. She had seen me around town before, dancing at an 80s night downtown. But I dance like a daddy longlegs in a skillet, always on the lookout for ankles I shouldn't break, and she thought to herself, "I want to talk to that boy. But he's...too fast. And too sober.'
And she’s a priceless, beautiful girl, who my grandmother thought was Lithuanian but strangers think is Cajun. She’s a hardscrabble spitfire of piss, vinegar and grey matter. She once drank a one-eyed, 300-lb. neo-Nazi named Bronx under the table. She was twelve years old, the drink was whisky, and she was dragged away from his unconscious body screaming, ‘I want his fucking eye.’ She’s adorable. She loves the 1920s, deformed kittens, and pinstripes.
I lasted a few months. This was a pit-stop on the long haul that is my life. But it was enough. And from another job on the other side of the world, I sent my old supervisor an e-mail.
Dear Collin, My Collin:
I can't stop thinking about you. The memory of our last hug has burned itself into my fevered mind forever. The scope of your cynicism, the largesse of your misanthrophy sends my heart racing.
Mere sonnets cannot encapsulate the way you bewitched me with your tender slavedriving. You crack the whip with the hand of a poet. Your blackened, corporate heart outdoes the beauty of the most ominous eclipse. And one day, come hell or high water, we will join hands in unholy schadenfreude.
Peace be with you, beloved.
Yours always,
Jonathan
I do not take well to cubicles. I feel this is to my credit. Cubicles are an indignity to God and man. They take the most organic and freeform species on the planet, and put them into a box.
I managed to avoid them completely until I was twenty-two. Before then, my professional career was held in classrooms, in labs, and even behind a friggin' badge. But a spontaneous trip north, to a new city free of connections, left my anti-cubicle stance flapping in the wind, and I caved.
My first gig lasted a grand total of nineteen hours. My job was to raise money, for a cultural organization I swear I used to respect only the day before. On my second day, the woman next to me managed to bilk $2,500 out of a woman who just had a nervous breakdown - and it was her husband's money, besides. But the commission was killer.
And my boss, in a bizarre twist of fate, asked me for a threesome on Christmas morning.
I finally got dropped because I raised, count 'em, zero dollars. It might have had something to do with my genuine attempts at honesty: 'So we're coming to you, on bended knee, rattling the tin can - with sad, sad, puppy dog eyes - asking, 'Please, sir. May we have some more?'
And yet it pleases me to no end that I can't ask people for handouts, even when it's my job.
I got another job within the week: better pay, but more cubicles. We recruited people for focus groups. And yet, the people there had souls, and they helped to save mine as well.
There were one-armed chefs, frontmen for punk bands, triple-majors who studied piano and played chess in their head. These people had stories about street fights in the Czech Republic, knowledge of Micmaq linguistics, and a conviction that they would one day leave this place, and watch as a ghost town of staplers and clogged Xeroxes disappeared in their rearview mirror. We drank tea, we stood on desks like Dead Poets Society, and gave money away, instead of taking it. We even called people who wanted to be called.
(Mostly. We all dreaded The Sample, in which companies demanded we call unsuspecting poor bastards whose number they'd scored like a pickpocket scores Rolexes during rush hour. Occasionally, they would rage about the no-call list, for which we did not qualify. And I told them: trying to ward me off with a do-not-call list is like trying to kill a vampire with a tomato).
Occasionally, from the other end of the line, a genuinely kind personality would come ringing through. A wrong number called back, and I talked with him for an hour after closing, talking about how it felt for him to see gobs of magma leap from the caldera of Costa Rican volcanoes. When he finally asked what the hell sort of company this was, I told him that we were the front-line of the mating rituals of capitalism. In a world where Santa is a CEO, we are his elves.
I met a beautiful girl. She had seen me around town before, dancing at an 80s night downtown. But I dance like a daddy longlegs in a skillet, always on the lookout for ankles I shouldn't break, and she thought to herself, "I want to talk to that boy. But he's...too fast. And too sober.'
And she’s a priceless, beautiful girl, who my grandmother thought was Lithuanian but strangers think is Cajun. She’s a hardscrabble spitfire of piss, vinegar and grey matter. She once drank a one-eyed, 300-lb. neo-Nazi named Bronx under the table. She was twelve years old, the drink was whisky, and she was dragged away from his unconscious body screaming, ‘I want his fucking eye.’ She’s adorable. She loves the 1920s, deformed kittens, and pinstripes.
I lasted a few months. This was a pit-stop on the long haul that is my life. But it was enough. And from another job on the other side of the world, I sent my old supervisor an e-mail.
Dear Collin, My Collin:
I can't stop thinking about you. The memory of our last hug has burned itself into my fevered mind forever. The scope of your cynicism, the largesse of your misanthrophy sends my heart racing.
Mere sonnets cannot encapsulate the way you bewitched me with your tender slavedriving. You crack the whip with the hand of a poet. Your blackened, corporate heart outdoes the beauty of the most ominous eclipse. And one day, come hell or high water, we will join hands in unholy schadenfreude.
Peace be with you, beloved.
Yours always,
Jonathan