ROX-TV takes another look at dead end jobs from the 1990’s. Come look behind my eyes and see how it was for me. Part 1 of 2.

(Excerpt taken from “Shep’s mix tape volume one” available now on Amazon)

Released: October 4th, 2020

Form: Available in paperback and on Kindle

Price: $3.69

Pages: 129

Track Five: Dish water and cigarette breaks 

Bad jobs are like ill-fitting clothes, a person tries them on and when they don’t fit, it’s time to move on. The message is simple enough but sometimes the environment is so interesting, that moving on takes a back seat to witnessing the show. Sometimes the show is good and sometimes the episode can be absolutely horrible, depending on the work and the expectations. During the mid-nineties I was a young man and looking for a means to support my interests. I’ve heard the expression “everyone starts somewhere” and that is true. Most of the time people have to be exposed to things they don’t like before they can get a feel for what they do.  

No one really likes work I suppose but it is a necessity and keeps people busy. That’s how I managed to land my first official “dish washing” gig. I’m not sure what drew me to the profession considering that I hated doing dishes at home. Maybe it was a way to get out of the house or to put a little folding money in my pocket. There is another reason for washing dishes and it usually is caused by the lack of experience doing more meaningful tasks. As a teenager, I didn’t have a lot of developed skills per se, and my age was a factor. When a person is young, they have no history and little knowledge of the world at large. 

Working a shit job can teach a person the value of a hard day’s work but more importantly can instill the idea that continued education wards off crummy jobs like repellant. I had never worked for a restaurant and didn’t understand the culture. In the 1990’s I was looking to get in somewhere that didn’t require age, education, or background in the trade. Dish washing seemed to provide that entry into the workforce and was one place where I could make bones. Like I said earlier, I didn’t like dishes much and was usually forced to wash them by my parents, so it was odd to get into the running, but beggars can’t be choosers and so my story of cigarettes and dirty plates begins. 

It all started when I was screening the local newspaper for job opportunities. Back then, the internet wasn’t particularly useful or nearly as vital as it is today. The classified section in the local paper was where a person went when they were ready to “make something of themselves”. I started to take interest in getting a job when it occurred to me that I didn’t have anything. Some guys and girls were already working while attending high school and I noticed that they always seemed to have money. Besides the green stuff, they also had cars which I did not. In my tiny mind, a job represented a paycheck, which in turn meant money for a car, which finally led to my ultimate obsession: freedom. 

Having a set of wheels in high school meant the difference between a decent social life and the miserable reality of being a bus rider. There was nothing more I dreaded than climbing onto the yellow monster while in full view of my peers. To ride the bus meant a few things. First off it meant while the kids with auto’s were listening to their favorite music and smoking cigarettes, I was looking for a seat somewhere near the back of the bus. While people could drive to the local fast-food joints and have a laugh, I was stuck on a one-hour voyage, breathing in toxic diesel exhaust and riding with middle school children. After what seemed like an eternity of endless stopping and starting, I finally was home and half dead from the fumes.  

I lived about a mile from my high school, but the bus ride took almost an hour to get home. This was unacceptable and certainly not the “cool thing to do”. Besides the poisonous gasses, the blasted windows never worked properly which created their own health hazards in the warm months and during the winter. The busses weren’t heated by anything other than body heat and it was either freezing or a sweaty sauna depending on the time of the year. The whole ship was captained by an odd woman who didn’t really care what was going on in the back of the bus.  

Someone could be getting the shit kicked out of them or a whole host of other unpleasantries, but the old bag never turned around. I was a little older, so I was relatively safe from bully types, but others suffered daily indignities and harassment. It seemed that the older a person was, the more they resented being on the yellow bomber and I was no exception. I needed an escape, and I needed it fast. The ride was lousy and even driving a Junker was better than what I had. The age-old problem was the money. I had no job and that meant no nothing, literally. Something had to change, and I was going to read the damn classifieds until I found a way out. 

Day after day I read the back of the paper and although there were somethings that sounded ok, nothing good was listed for people with zero experience. I decided to put a resume together, but it was almost impossible because I had nothing to really put down. I played sports and had been a boy scout at one time (before getting kicked out) but there wasn’t much else to say. I had other special skills like spray painting walls with graffiti but that didn’t seem like a good one to disclose, at least not up front. I fantasied about being hired to vandalize the competition and that sounded interesting but was just a dream bubble nevertheless. No, I needed a selling point, and it was not coming to me.  

 I was going to have to bite the bullet and just get out there. I remember the afternoon I spent typing my resume, which could have been done in five minutes, but took longer as I tried to “fill it out” with bullshit. I decided to list my attributes as if the employers would believe them. Who fills out an application truthfully anyway? I’ve worked with a lot of lazy MFERS and I’m fairly sure they didn’t put that down in writing while applying. Early resumes are mostly like a creative writing project, and everyone knows it. I thought about listing my GPA but that wouldn’t have helped. I didn’t care for school all that much and my grade point average was a staggering fire number of two point zero zero one.  

 It was the kind of grades people got when they showed up for class alive and breathing, minimally involved in the class, and barely scrapping by with homework. Maybe C students are prized in some other country, but not in the town I was living in. I played soccer for the school and that had to account for something, like maybe I was a team player. It was all I had to sell the job people and it was going to have to do. 

With my pathetic, three paragraph resume of penny whistles and dreams, I borrowed the family wagon and hit the streets in search of a better life. I made the rounds, and an early promising lead was a local pizza shop, right down the road from my house. It wasn’t much more than someone’s dream of owning their “own business” and being their “own man”. The pizza joint was a narrow building on a street that wasn’t Main, but they did have a help wanted sign in the window. I threw on respectable clothes that I still deemed cool and breezed through the door. Armed with my matchbook resume and a million-dollar smile, I approached the counter.  

The air was filled with that magical pizza smell, and I took a survey of the place. Several tables with the regular shit on top, a tiled floor, and a large counter. It was good enough and I briefly fantasized about being on the other side of the glass, making pizza pies, tossing dough in the air dramatically, and cashing in pay day. “Hello mam” I said to a bored teenage girl staring back at me like I was trouble. “I’m here today to inquire about the help wanted sign, you see, I’m a hard-working dependable type of fellow, selfless and up to the task”. The girl didn’t say much and barely seemed to know I was there. “Hold on, I’ll get Frank” she said and took a minute to gather herself before shouting “Frank” towards the backroom. 

 I don’t know why but I was oddly optimistic, this was in fact the first try and my spirit would be broken soon enough, but in that moment, it looked like things might work out after all. Frank, a middle-aged white dude, came out from a mysterious door near the pizza oven and looked at me. “What can I do for you buddy” he said in a friendly manner. I wasn’t as skilled at dealing with new people (like most teenagers) and my words got all tangled up. “Hello, job searching, sign about it, something else, team super star, hard friend” was all that managed to come out of my kisser.  

 Frank looked down at my bullet proof resume, still tightly clenched in my hand, and smiled. “Oh, the sign, yeah I was going to take that down, but since your here, why don’t we have a look at your qualifications and talk” he said with ease. His demeanor helped me calm down some, but I was overcome with nervousness, although I wasn’t sure why. I was looking for a job, not carrying drugs across the border, but the jitters were there, and my face was warm and red. I sat down rigidly in the metal chair that classic pizza places always have and tried to look confident. I handed Frank my see-through qualifications and put on a tough face. 

 “Oh, I see, in school huh? I don’t normally pick up school kids because they have limited availability and don’t hang around long” he said. The words ripped through my body, like bullets passing threw a rubber raft. The air was hissing loudly as I sat there stunned. I took issue with his use of the word “kid” although that’s actually what I was, I just didn’t know it. Somewhere around sixteen, children get the idea that they are full grown members of society and want to be treated like adults. The truth is teenagers know nothing of the real world and how cold it can be. Most live with their parents and have little bedrooms full of bullshit ideas and trendy clothes. Reality hasn’t come to town yet. 

 “Well, have you ever worked in a Pizzeria before? Frank asked and took a pause to let me answer. “Not really, I’m trying to get my first job, and wanted to learn how” I said realizing that I was wasting his time as much as I was wasting mine. To Frank’s credit he let me down with a phrase that I would grow accustomed to hearing over the next few days. “Well thanks for coming in, I’ll give it some thought, and if you are selected, I’ll give you a call” he said and shook my hand. I felt like a fucking idiot. Frank wasn’t going to call, and I don’t blame him looking back. He was right, I was a kid with no experience and probably wouldn’t hang around for very long. Why did he have to inconvenience himself and his staff when he could hire some desperate soul who had made pizza before and knew the score? 

I wasn’t feeling exceptionally good as I shuffled out the door and into the small parking lot. “This guy isn’t calling me” I said to myself and looked up at the cloudy sky. O for 1 and I was ready to give up. Perhaps my shoulders were a bit narrow back then or maybe I just hated rejection. The future looked like shit and the yellow bus was waiting for me, practically laughing in my face. I knew it was premature to lose hope. People found jobs every day, I just needed to keep at it and try again.  

 If getting shot down at one pizza joint wasn’t enough, I decided to head over to the Little Caesars just down the street and try again. Perhaps the chain king of pizza had more time to invest in a small town nobody than Frank. I fired up the family Geo and pulled out of the parking lot in a hurry. “Yeah, I need a bigger player in the game. Little Cheeser’s is where it’s at” I told myself and re-adjusted my expectations. The shop was located smack dab in the middle of a “modern” styled strip mall.  

 I found a parking space and tried to gather my thoughts. “Ok, stay calm, don’t panic, and refrain from saying stupid shit” I told myself and jumped out of the small semi-foreign car. The place was busy, and people were ordering food as I walked in. The smell of the business was wonderful, with pizza and breadsticks in the air. The quality of Little Caesars was an odd story. During the eighties, the place practically owned the market on pizza. Pairs of pizza came in large cardboard flats, wrapped in a paper shell. They sold the stuff at football games for a dollar a slice and were in every respectable town in America. 

 The nineties seemed to be a period of sliding in the wrong direction for the franchise, and mostly cashed in with the good work of the past. The food was still decent, but something had changed. Regardless, I was there, and the time was right. I just wanted to land somewhere and get going in life, part time job or not. I hated standing still, even back then. I waited for the customers to clear out from the counter and then stepped up to the plate. In an odd twist of fate, the guy working would later become a good friend of mine, and I would spend hours hanging out in this very shop with him while he made pizza in the future. After that, we would pour concrete together. I didn’t know it at the time, no one ever does, but the irony is not lost on me all these years later. 

 “Can I help you” my future friend said to me with the enthusiasm of a stoned librarian. He wasn’t a stoner but had a way about him that, if you didn’t know him, might consider him to be a hard case. Actually, it was just his demeaner that day and he would go on to be one of the most laid-back guys I ever ran with, but first impressions are tricky. Hell, he was at work, what did I expect? A ticker tape parade and sunshine. “I was wondering if you were hiring” I said in the tone of a voice that tamped down the enthusiasm from my previous encounter with Frank. 

 I filled out an application which were forever ready and eventually was introduced to the manager. Now, this dude was a stoner, I had no doubt about it. His name was “Moon” or at least that’s what he called himself. This seemed hard to believe but was later verified by my future friend somewhere off in the distance. Moon was about six foot tall and had long dark hair, at least longer than most at the time. He seemed to be a holdover from the hippie era with a little of the nineties charm and style. The kind of guy who had a previous generations principles and who took pride in that old school tradition while maintaining an aura of modern coolness. Shit, I thought he was cool even if he didn’t give me a job. 

 He told me to have a seat in his office while we talked. I remember an odor of marijuana seemed to be in the background or maybe the guy’s name just had me thinking about weed. Whatever the case, the short end was that although they were hiring, he gave me the “experienced” song and dance. There was to be no job there at least not for the likes of me. Moon was groovy enough and maybe it was just my destiny to be told no and find the dish washing gig. The older I get, the more I am starting to believe in a pre-determined outline for our lives. No matter what the message was, this was another strike out and a swift return to the classifieds. 

 Life went on and so did the yellow bus that brought me home each day. I hated the ride and despised the fact that I couldn’t find work, even though I was actually trying. When I was a kid, I always looked down on certain jobs with a bit of arrogance. I wasn’t better than anyone else, but I guess self-deception told me I was above certain experiences. The real lessons in life are learned when we are forced to confront reality, not our own perceptions of reality.  I thought I was more valuable than a video rental clerk, grocery bagger, or dish washer, until the day I became one.  

 We can lie to ourselves but in the end, need outweighs the want and we do what needs to get done to survive. That sounds dramatic but it’s mostly true. Sure, I wasn’t going to starve or be homeless if I didn’t take a dish washer gig, I lived at my parents’ house. But my need to make money, outweighed what I thought I was supposed to be doing. The classifieds gave me a piece of gold the day I found the posting. At the time, it seemed like an option, and although I wasn’t super keen on the job, my needs won out. I swallowed my pride and headed over to the local “hotel” restaurant. 

 I had been striking out all over town and didn’t expect much from my latest lead. I parked in the lot sometime after 5pm and looking back, seemed like it was getting dark as I pushed through the doors of the hotel. It wasn’t actually a functioning hotel but had been sometime around the latter half of the previous century. Like all businesses that survived in those days, the building was located fairly close to the train tracks. I believe an old depot used to rest across the street and the trains still went by once awhile to frustrate the drivers stuck at the light. It was a neat little stretch of neighborhood with charm that older cities often have.  

 The lobby of the restaurant was fancy, and the lighting was low. There was a glorious front desk that looked like part of the holdover from the earlier functions of the building. A lady wearing an eerily similar outfit to the Hollywood Video Tuxedo that I would grow to hate so, was at the front desk. She had on black dress pants, a semi-formal white shirt, a tiny black bow tie of sorts clamped around her neck. It was something that I might have confused with “butler attire” or fancy Italian bus boy shit. The walls were dark red with gold trim and there were tasteful relics around the room. I couldn’t afford the menu but if I could and had a girlfriend, which at the time I did not, this was the type of place to take that special someone. Maybe not for a Friday Night Lights evenings, but a homecoming or prom stop was right on the money…..

End of Part One

Signing Off,

Mike Shepard

ROX-TV Head Writer

shepard2909@hotmail.com