It took me two days to clean my new place and make it habitable; it took me three days to move into it. It took me two minutes to know I would have to shove, cram and stack my three rooms of stuff into my new two-room place. It took me three minutes to realize […]
Add a third place of employment to your daily life, and you soon find that you live in an multi-layered netherworld of “almost” realities–almost feel like I live here; almost wish I could work more shifts there; almost wonder how the more things change, the more things remain the same everywhere. A very short list […]
As one who despises the first day of any job and struggles with a ridiculous lack of self confidence through the first week, I decided to torture myself by counting up my recent employment firsts–four in three months. And I feel like I might be forgetting one. Job one–event planning in Key West. I knew […]
“I just want you to know,” said the elderly gentleman on a phone somewhere in very cold and very snowy Pennsylvania, “I am booking this family reunion party with you because you were the only one who took the time to listen to all our requests, and you obviously went out of your way to […]
A manager somewhere in D.C. at 9:45 a.m.: “Hello?” “Hey, you awake?” “Yep. What’s up?” “Can you come in to work? Gotta a no call, no show.” “Sure. Be there in half an hour.” “Thanks.” A manager somewhere in Key West at 9:45 a.m.: “Hello?” “Hey, you sober?” Pause. Laugh to self. “Yep. What’s up?” […]
“The money is good there,” said Upset Waitress a few weeks ago as we sat smoking cigarettes on my front porch. “As long as it’s good, use it. When the money stops being good, leave.” “Yeah,” I nodded. “But every day the new owners change something major, then the idiot manager doesn’t tell us, then […]
I left for Colorado a week ago. My local bar manager told me he wanted me on the schedule full time when I returned. With that good news in hand, I turned down another job that had just been offered, and I reduced my shifts to one at the dive. Oh, and I booked a […]
She wandered in at 8 a.m., wide-eyed and only a little nervous. Her crisp apron was tied nicely around her khaki pants, her makeup was just so. Who the hell are you? I thought as I buttered toast and kept half an eye on the line, where my order was starting to pile up. I […]
“How’s the book coming along?” asks a Fort Lauderdale friend in an email. “Fine,” I lie in an email response. In truth, I have to re-write every chapter of my book every day. Just when I think I have the story line that works, everything changes–again and again. I moved here to work in a […]
A long, long time ago, I was a bartender. I was asked to tend bar at a popular resort-town spot, where I worked as a server, because I sucked so much as a server. “You’re off the floor! You work the service bar now,” barked the restaurant’s owner after I was weeded for the billionth […]