3/12/2004 The Obligatory Blog Post About Hating My Job

Close to five years ago, I wrote a short play and a short story that were so good the College of Mount Saint Vincent was going to let me go there for free. Then I went crazy. So I went to Saint John's. I graduated with honors with a minimum of effort. For two years, I and a few of my friends pretty much ran the Stagers Society, and I acted in several plays in addition to doing some sketch comedy writing. In my senior year of college, I wrote a play which was produced at Manhattan College under the direction of my oldest friend.

I have to be at work in two hours. You know what I do at work? I sell suits, sometimes. Shirts. Pants. Jackets. Whatever. At least that's what I'm supposed to do. More often than not I just stand around, listening to the stereo or one of my co-workers.

One of my co-workers is from upstate New York. I think he graduated from high school, but I'm honestly not sure. He is, technically, my boss and, honestly, one of the stupidest people I've ever met. He's a genuinely nice guy, a good person, a real shirt-off-his-back kind of guy; a little messed-up in his stance on women, but whatever. I honestly like him as a person and wish him nothing but the best. But the fact remains that on my slowest day I am still exponentially smarter than he is.Two of the company's big guns are going to be there tonight. One of them if the wife of the nephew of the heads of Sarar. The other is the son of one of the former owners of Archie Jacobson, which was bought out by Sarar over the summer. The woman barely speaks English and admits to knowing nothing about running a business. The man is a strung-out former musician who speaks in riddles and got a job because his daddy ran the show.

I am a gifted writer. I know this about myself. "It ain't bragging if it's true." Muhammad Ali said that, back when he was a young man, back when he was Cassius Clay, before he fought too many fights and left his brain inside the ring. (Dan Bern, a Canadian folk singer whose name, coincidentally, when re-arranged, is "Brendan.) When I write, I work hard at it and do well at it. Beyond that, in my life up until this point I have done everything I was supposed to do, and then some, and was told that I would be rewarded for it once school ended. I go to Church. I give a few dollars a week to various charities. I respect my elders. I obey the speed limit. I won't let my friends ride shotgun because the seatbelt is broken and I don't want to risk them getting hurt. I don't drink, or smoke, or take drugs. I am not a homophobe, or a racist. By all modern standards, I am an exceptional person if only by virtue of my lack of vices.

And yet I work for people who can't carry on long conversations with me because I use words that are too big. And they, in turn, work for people who got well-paying, high-ranking jobs through accidents of marriage or genetics, and are in charge of my life because my best friend happens to work for them, and I came in one day to complain about the job I got through my cousin Cathleen, chasing carts like Richmond Avenue's answer to a sheepdog in the freezing cold parking lot of the Costco Wholesale. A $3.50 pay cut and half a block away, I am warm, and well-dressed, and completely and utterly disgusted with what has become my life, and the only consolation I can give myself is, "It beats Costco." Which isn't saying a great deal.

The adage, "It's know what you know, it's who you know," which I used to dismiss as jaded cynicism has come painfully true for me. And while it may be the way of the world, it doesn't make it suck any less.