Posts
Chapter One. Part One
55 mins of being a corporate whore
We had pita pockets filled with awesome stuff like peppers, romain lettuce, cheese crumbles and spicey ranch dressing. We had appetizers of crackers, cheese cubes and grey pupon. We had pumpernickle bread with homemeade spinace and artichoke dip. But most importantly we had cosmopolitain mix, orange juice, redbull, club soda, cream soda and pretty much anything else you can mix vodka with. After the vodka ran out it was ice cubes and SoCo staight.
Yes, we were having a party.
It was me, Patrick and Schwei over at Sam's place. Sam owns a giant three story, twelve thousand sq ft fortress called NuRelm. I run 10-34 Entertainment out of the first floor.
As of right now, 10-34 Entertainment consists of a front room with a loading dock stage for live shows, a back room with a huge live room and an iso booth for recording, my office and sams car and old bed. We also put the heavy bag down there to work off frustrations.
On the second floor of Nurelm is Sam's business. About 10 little work stations where his computer nerds do their thing. It's a room full of conversations like "I configged the CSS to match the DIV but for some reason the template wont conjugate to the spreadsheet." "Did you try re-ramming the rom with a deco card?" "In safe mode I did. But it only is giving me a jillion mega pixles in the combox." "Well try re-routing the JPEGS to the X Drive where we can store them without having the ghost drive notice." All of these things sound like fun amusement park rides to me. Im really not sure what they do all day but it seems like they make a LOT of money.
On the third floor is Sam's huge loft apartment. Complete with the greates kitchen i have ever seen. It looks like an Ikea Catalouge vomited all over his place. But in a good way. It's nice and spacious with high ceilings. It comes with the workout room, a great soundsystem, a bar, a laundry room, two guest rooms, a huge master bath and a prison style shower room is on the way. It also has roof access which is nice on the fourth of july. In short, Sam's loft is tits.
So there we were drinking and eating and celebrating my last day as a free man. After months of doing nothing but touring and hanging out, I had to go get a job. I am simultainiously launching a comic book shop and relaunching 10-34 studios so money has been pretty short. Add to that my wife's $1000 court fines and my thousand dollars in fines from the city of New York and a job seemed to be the only way to get out of debt quick. Plus I've been ducking the landlord for the last couple of days. She thinks my name is Sean.
We drank, we danced, we sang "House of the Rising Sun" a bunch. Then we piled into my van and drove around Uniontown with the sliding door open singing the Ateam theme and playing a snare drum. Schwei and I have had this A-Team fantasy ever since we bought his ill faited van, The Dolphine Fucker.
So we drove aroudn making up new words to the ATEAM theme. It's a haze but they went something like this:
"Schwei Pat and Lance/ Uniontowns A Team/
They drive around/ They dont really help out anyone/
they actually kind of jerks/ yup real assholes/
they dont make things better/ they just drive around all night."
After that I went to bed with the knowlege that for me, Summer was over and I started Corporate America at 6 am the next morning.
I was laying in bed at two am. Still full of Vodka and RedBull when there was a large crash. Brae, my wife, startled awake. I told her it was just the cats knocking shit around but she somehow knew what was going on before I did, even though I was the one who was awake. There was a chipmunk in our apartment. How the hell this could be was beyond me due to the fact we have a third floor loft with no trees around. It would half to have come up the fire escape and let itself in, fallen from the mouth of a bird through our window, scaled our building, or snuck in the front door, climbed three flights of steps and waited for us to open the door for it. All of these prospects greatly delighted my drunken mind while i watched the cats trying to keep up with it.
4:45 a.m. came around and i got up to go to work. My morning ritual involved looking for the tv remote in vain, reading some charles dickens, and looking for my car keys in vein. I'm not sure what happened to the Chipmunk. I don't think the cats caught it because they were on high alert around the apartment. I never found my car keys so i had to use the spare.
The problem with the spare is that its not actually a spare key to my van, it's just a random Pontiac key that happens to sometimes turn my van on. I can never get it to work. After about 15 mins of humiliating failure in front of the garbage men, I went and woke Schwei up. He lives in my comic book shop which is in the same building as my loft. He is usually better at the van starting then I am. He got it running after about 10 more mins. I raced to work.
The place where I got hired is the largest call center in the world. Basically, when people are pissed off at their Cellphone bill, car insurance company, dvd player, bank, microwave or anything like that, they call customer service. Or at least they THINK they call customer service. They actually call us, Fayette Counties working moms, crippled elderly, mutants, midgets, deformed people and me. I got to work about ten minutes late.
I was pretty sure I would be fired on the spot. The building has pretty tight security. I've tried to figure out what the security is for and my only guess is for the disgruntled worker gone gunman. I've heard they have a high turnover rate.
At the desk I gave them my drivers liscense so they could take a picture of me and make me wear it everywhere i went forever. The woman who was taking my picture had a picture key card on as well. I asked her how long she had worked there. 4 years. "Is that the same picture they took at 6am on your first day?" I asked. She said yes and snapped my picture.
My plan was to work for this place for 5 weeks. I had been hired as a Supervisor for this scheme to put soldiers wives in debt. Some bank was offering lines of credit to wives of active military personel with almost no screening. That way while Billy Braveass is getting blown to hell guarding an oil field, Holly Homemaker can insure his lifelong debt through a series of nice jewlery, dvd players and state of the art kitchen appliances. If any of those things Holly bought on her card should happen to break, she would probably be calling the desk next to mine to complain. Anyway, my job was to make sure 16 people in my little area were adamently telling the Holly Homemakers of the new war generation that "No, we can not accept partial payment." or "Well, since your credit card bill is 60 days past due this will be put on your credit report." My job was to make sure that no one was soft and everything was inforced. All I had to do was listen and monitor all day.
The reason I only planned to work there for 5 weeks was the 5 week paid training it took for me to become a Supervisor. I figured I could sit in class for $8.50 an hour for 40 hours a week and then just peace out when it came time to actually do work. After taxes I figured I could have made $1,624 to learn how to be a heartless dick. I wasnt even planning on paying attention.
So I got there 10 mins late, had my picture taken and joined the class. I went to sign in and was told that my name wasn't on the list. The lady said that it wasn't a big deal because I must have just signed on this weekend. I told her I had signed on June 15th. I remember because it was two months to the day before my birthday and the thought of being a telemarketer on my birthday had made me suicidal. She checked again and told me I wasnt there. I showed her my hire-on papers that were signed by Beth. She seemed to know Beth and went to go solve the problem. In the meantime she gave me a yellow legal notepad and a grey ink pen to take notes with.
I sat there in silence with the rest of the class for about twenty minutes. She came back with the guard from the front door. She said "I'm sorry Lance, but HR forgot to add you to the list. And the problem is they aren't here this week. So you will have to come back next week and they can put you on for the following week." I smiled and said ok. I was still trying to be liked and agreeable. She instantly got mean. " So that means you have to leave." "OK" "NOW. You have to leave NOW." I started shoving my things into my bag. "Ok no problem. Is there a number I can call?" "Yes you can look it up online or in the phonebook but you can't be in the building if you aren't on the sheet. You have to leave NOW." I was then escourted out of the building by the guard. I lasted 55 minutes.
I walked back over to my van and tried to start it for another 25 mins. I finally gave up and walked the two miles back downtown. I felt stupid wearing my corporate clothes with my nice bag and my hair slicked back. I walked to the Import Store and got some chocolate milk. I sat down under a tree with my newly stolen yellow legal pad and grey inkpen and wrote this all out .
With my long hair all tucked back and my nice shirt and slacks on I looked like a Jehovas witness or a Gideon or something walking through town. Some sort of Bible salesman. And if I had a bible on me I would have sold it to the first sucker who would have bought it. I would have told them it was the key to instant salvation and immortality. Cause after this morning I wouldnt have needed it. More now than ever, I know where I can find immortality. I know now more than ever that my salvation lies with Rock and Roll.
-----------------------------------------------
all of lance waste's thoughts are fictitious and do not represent the real thoughts of any person, living or brain-dead. the writer of this blog does not necessarily agree with all of his opinions listed above and reserves the right to change them at will. please just completely disregard.
Blog Hard!
chat with me:aim= lancewaste
