My First “Social Security” Job
I’ve been in the rat race since I was about 11-12 years old. Growing up in
poverty, money of course was always lacking, but unlike many of the other kids
in the ‘hood, I supplemented various petty criminal activities (The Great
Copper Heist remains my greatest triumph) with doing odd jobs in a more-or-less
honest way. There was an employment program for at-risk youths like me which
usually involved the destruction of various fauna and flora and moving heavy,
unwieldly objects through tight spaces and across broken terrain. Most of my “employers”
were old women who were pleasant and polite for the most part but very stingy
when it came to the dough. In any case, it was all cash under the table.
When I was 16 years old, I was “lucky enough” to be hired by a local
fast-food joint for a part-time job flipping burgers and deep frying various
things. I was told to start at 5:00 PM the coming Friday. Not so luckily, my
new job coincided with a Grateful Dead concert playing at the county
fairgrounds that weekend. Deadheads were all over the place, as if a dam that
impounded the Deadhead Sea suddenly burst and we were a small town directly in
its path. Practically every open space within a 25-mile radius was densely
populated by dirty, dinky, dazed, drunk, drugged and dumb-ass Deadheads. It was
sheer pandemonium from the moment I started until the moment I left.
As if the work and the heat wasn't enough, there were other things going
on. The boss and her ass-licking sidekick were an ugly and oppressive Mexican female
Laurel and Hardy-like pair that took turns yelling and screaming at me (and
everyone else for that matter) to hurry it up, we're waiting, you're too slow,
blah blah blah. "Laurel" was skinny and malevolent, while
"Hardy" was fat, malevolent, and bull-dikey in a way that made Rosie
O’ Donnell look like Jaclyn Smith. I was surprised that Hardy was in charge, as
her fatness alone should have told the owners she was literally eating away at
their profits in addition to her other eatings out. Of the three girls and a
guy who were my co-workers, one of the girls and the guy were cool, one was a
total bitch, and the other one kept flirting with and generally fucking with
me. I went home for the evening wearing about 20 lbs. of grease and immediately
flopped, not exactly savoring the next day, when I had to work a longer shift.
It was as bad as it got. There was a huge line formed long before we
opened. The burger-flipping, deep-frying marathon went on unabated, but then
something happened; we started to run out of food and other supplies! Laurel
and Hardy totally fucked up, and they actually were going to Smart & Final
and other grocery stores all around the area for emergency purchases. The
drunk, stoned, hallucinating, hunger, thirst, and munchie-seized Deadheads were
getting more restive and attitudinal. As the heat increased, so did the stench
of the Deadheads and all of their forms of liquid, solid, and gaseous wastes.
Sunday was still very busy, but nothing like the previous two days. At the
end of my shift, the owner showed up out of the blue, handed me my paycheck,
and wished me luck. Huh? I'm being fired? No, I was just extra help for the
Deadhead surge. Oh, OK, gotcha. I remember being kind of "grateful"
that my employment at that shithole was "dead", but still kind of
pissed that I wasn't told up front that I was a "temp". As if that
wasn’t enough, the place blared one of those stupid radio stations that rotate
about seven songs daily, playing them over and over and over again. Repeated
overexposure to The Thompson Twins, Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, and Cyndi
Lauper has left me with permanent brain lesions and a generally poor
disposition toward other people, especially Deadheads and Mexicans.
