Sdtrk: ‘Cleopatra 2001’ by Pizzicato five

Scena: DAVECAT, a tormented tele-fundraiser, is on the phone speaking to a household’s RESIDENT PRESCHOOLER, who resides in Illinois.

DAVECAT: Is your mum or dad at home?
RESIDENT PRESCHOOLER: My dad’s at work, and my mom’s in Branson.
DAVECAT: Branson, Missouri?
RESIDENT PRESCHOOLER: Yeah.
DAVECAT: Heh, what; is she seeing Buddy Hackett or Don Rickles or something?
RESIDENT PRESCHOOLER: She’s in a dance contest.
DAVECAT: Ahhh, that makes sense. Y’know, if I didn’t have a calendar in front of me, I’d swear it was 1963.
RESIDENT PRESCHOOLER: Yeah.

Good ol’ Branson, MO. Like a segment of the late Fifties trapped in amber

Sdtrk: ‘Lynda (Jensen sessions, 1982)’ by Strawberry switchblade

During my ten-minute break at work today, I was reading my copy of Q Magazine’s ‘Depeche mode + Electropop’ special from last year, when George, the fatter, more churlish of my two supervisors, lumbered over to my cubicle. ‘You into New wave and all that stuff?’ he asked. I very nearly choked on my drink.

Now, for a better explanation as to why this question was so out of left field for me, I’ll try to describe George, going by the kind of experiences I’ve had with him. As stated before, he is an immense beast of a man, who does indeed lumber when he walks. Also, if there’s a person on one end of the office opposite from where he’s at that asks him a question, he’s 95% more likely to shout across the office than he is to actually walk up to the person and speak to them, like a civilised person would. I attribute this to the fact that he walks so slowly, it’d be easier and quicker for him to shout a response than to mobilise himself over to the person before, y’know, the sun sets. His arms sport a number of gangsta-related tattoos, and in the four months I’ve been working there, I’ve only seen him smile or laugh about four or five times. His management skills consist mainly of haranguing the employees, such as, ‘speak up! It sounds like we’re whispering’, or ‘now would be a good time to check our equipment, so we can log in at ten o’clock’, or ‘we need to speak with some volume and enthusiasm’. He repeats those mantras at least once a day. Truly, an admirable man, with an infectious love of life and laughter that fills the room whenever he enters it! Heh. No, honestly he’s just a fat cunt with a complete lack of personality.

So! Back to the scene: I replied that yeah, I love New wave from both the Eighties and now. He then asked if I was into Duran Duran, to which I replied, ‘not so much, but I like their really early stuff’.
‘Yeah, I used to be a big fan of them and Soft cell’, George replied, ‘I used to have a lot of their tapes.’
I can’t remember, but I think I actually shook my head as if to clear it. ‘O.. wow,’ I responded.
‘That was some good stuff,’ he said, and made his leave, nodding approvingly.

Really, where do you go with knowledge like that? What else can you say?

Sdtrk: ‘Hey let loose your love’ by The focus group

COWORKER IN HIS LATE TWENTIES (addressing another coworker): This guy just blew me off and told me he couldn’t make a donation because he’s got jetlag.
What’s jetlag?
ME: *gritting teeth*

I swear to christ, stupidity should be painful

Sdtrk: ‘Your daddy’s car’ by The Divine comedy

As stated before, I don’t really plan on ever writing very much about my job on ‘Shouting etc etc’, cos it’s a hideous and dreadful position; however, yesterday’s workday stood out a bit, mainly due to its going-out-of-its-way-to-be-noticeable stupidity.

I work the first shift at a telemarketing fundraising place, which means I go in Monday – Friday, from 10am to 2pm. (Save your envy, I’m only getting paid $8 per hour.) On my shift, there are roughly 40 employees present, all doing the same bollocks I’m doing; calling churls in a couple of states, and requesting donations. Ever since Thanksgiving, though, the donations are down to a trickle, as people are obviously concentrating on buying gifts, giving to other charitable organisations and whatnot.

So over the course of the day, the two supervisors are walking up and down the aisles, loudly exhorting people to ‘speak up’ and ‘get strapped in’ and ‘knuckle down’ and other would-be motivational bullshit, but as anyone with a brain knows, all the loud talking in the world really won’t make a lick of difference, as it’s ultimately down to the person on the other end of the phone to decide whether or not they fire off a cheque or money order. Now, round the third hour of our day, our supervisor George — the fat surly one with a complete lack of a personality — goes up to the cubicles of several employees and speaks with them semi-privately. Shortly after, those employees collectively punch out and leave. It turned out that those particular employees hadn’t had a sale in a little over three hours, so they were sent home. The Fat Angel of Death merely passed by my doorway, as I had just gotten my first sale of the day fifteen minutes before then.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but does that not seem a little.. fucking stupid? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep more employees in their seats in the hopes that they might get a donation, as opposed to having less people on the phones, and decreasing your chances? It’s the exact opposite of buying a mess of lottery tickets. That whole event struck me as being contra-productive at best, and petulant & childish at worst. Such a lovely work environment, I’m tellin’ yer.

I’d also just like to add that today, I wore my black cardigan with the HAL 9000 patch on it, and not one, but two coworkers, on two separate occasions, asked me what that patch was about. *grits teeth* Of course, in my mind, I’m screaming ‘have you never fucking seen “2001”??’ but then, I work in a place where more than a couple of people are into hip-hop. And when I say ‘more than a couple’, I mean ‘ninety-nine per cent’. Trying to explain something ‘artsy’ like ‘2001’ to these people is like.. well, I don’t want to say anything along the lines of ‘pearls before swine’, but you can’t say it doesn’t fit

Sdtrk: ‘You and I’ by Silver apples

Today was my first day at my even newer job! Yep, new job. Let me bring you up to speed on my recent attempts at ‘gainful’ employment: The job I previously had driving to and fro wasn’t really bad at all, apart from the fact that the hours were virtually non-existent. It was an on-call kind of thing, and during that time of year, there wasn’t a hell of assignments available – more often than not, it was a case of there being more drivers than tasks available. Whilst at work one day in early October, my dispatcher called me over to the side, saying ‘Just so you know, if you want to look around for another job, you can, cos we’re really not going to have a lot of work until the beginning of the year’. At first, I thought it was just me he didn’t have any work for, but as it turns out, it was across the board. My friend/coworker Dave Z was firing off resumes left and right as well, as the hours were really scarce. One day I came in, worked about an hour, sat round in the dispatcher’s office for another 45 minutes waiting for a new assignment, was told there wasn’t anything left for that day, and was sent home. Now, a two-hour workday would be feckin’ ace if it were a normal job, wherein you’d be paid for eight, but we were paid by the hours we actually worked. WOO HOO.

So! I did a bit of job-hunting, and interviewed at some place that needed outgoing callers in the daytime. They called me back a couple of days later; they told me that I was hired, but they’d let me know in a week what day to come in, as they were in the midst of getting a project from a new client. So a week went by, and I was in relatively high spirits. The bloke who interviewed me called me back while I was in line buying my laptop, saying ‘Well, the hours for the job have changed, as the new client wants us to call some days in the evening’.
‘What days?’ I asked.
‘Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday’, he replied. ‘I remember that you said you have classes, but I don’t remember what days..’
‘Monday and Tuesday eve’, I replied, cutting him off. As you suspect, I was rather pissed off at that point, especially since I had just quit my driving job the day before. He hemmed and hawed, telling me that they’d keep my name on the list, and I hung up on him.

Thankfully, two weeks ago, I was graced with an interview and a callback for my new job, which I’ve just come home from. It’s *sigh* fundraising via telephone again, but this is something that’ll be able to put fuel in my tank until I graduate. Mon – Fri, 10am to 2pm, at $8 per hour, plus commission when I get succesful sales. Err, I mean donations. It doesn’t sound like much, but 20 hours a week is a hell of a lot better than six to eight hours a month.
The office contains about 40 people, and since it’s in Southfield (a nice 15 minute drive from mine), 95% of the workers are playas and would-be gangstas. So of course I’ll fit in even less there than I usually do most places. *shrug* Our paid orientation was four hours, and it’s about as straightforward as you can get. Like I’d said, it’s something to put fuel in my tank.. It’ll be nice not being absolutely broke!

Ooh, look at what comes out at BestBuy tomorrow!

Sdtrk: ‘Corporeal’ by Broadcast

Err, yesterday afternoon I motored over to Record time in Ferndale, in order to pick up Broadcast‘s excellent new release, ‘Tender buttons’. As I’d already heard it thanx to the pirates that sail the vast binary seas of the Internet, it was a guaranteed keeper purchase. It’s not as good as ‘Ha ha sound’ in my opinion, but it definitely has its own subtle Derbyshire-esque charm. And did I mention that they’re going to be in town again on 5 November? And word has it that there’ll be copies of Vol.2 of Microtronics for sale at the show! I am Brimful of Excitement!
But also while I was in the store, I wandered past their DVD rack and noticed that the long-awaited New order DVD box set, ‘Item‘, was out, which I’d forgotten the release date for, so I grabbed that as well and headed up to the register. If you’re a New order fan — and why wouldn’t you be? — it’s definitely worth a purchase. Especially watching the documentary ‘New order story’ on the second disk, and seeing Hooky’s interview segments, where he’s in a bar, dressed like Don Johnson, and surrounded by trannies. LOL, as the kids say..

And ‘Corpse bride‘ and ‘Serenity‘ are practically out already?? Can I view them both simultaneously? Is that even possible??

Heh, funny story about work today: I arrived there at 8.50 am, as per usual, and my first job was to drive a vehicle to one of our drop-off points over by the Pontiac Silverdome, which took roughly 40 minutes. The other two drivers and I returned to base, and kinda sat round for a number of minutes until Kelly started doling out work orders for us.. John was given a Jeep, Dave was given a PT Cruiser, and I was given a van. So as Dave and John locate their respective vehicles, I’m still wandering round the lot looking for my van when it turns out that I was supposed to be given another vehicle entirely. As it turned out, there was a mix-up with the paperwork, which meant that there were really only two vehicles that needed to be delivered. So I sat round the dispatch office again for another couple of minutes, when Kelly informs me that that’s pretty much it for the jobs that day. I ended up being at work for about 90 minutes. Heh. Could’ve been worse, though; round 10 after 9, another driver showed up, and was sent home five minutes later, as there were really more drivers than jobs.
Working part time is ace, until you realise that there’s no money whatsoever in it. I’d look for something else, but as my machine shorthand teacher Mr Floury has mentioned multiple times during our class sessions, the less time you have at a job (or with other classes, or what-have-you), the more time you have to practise. Which makes sense, as remember, I’m dealing with an alternate universe keyboard layout here. So, while the long-term effects should be good, the short-term effects are shite in the meantime. Am I going to have to embark on a series of extravagant casino heists in order to afford getting out of bed in the morning?

Further nonsense, triggered by glancing at an issue of People magazine:
+ A friend of mine recently asked, ‘what the hell happened to Britney Spears?’, as regards to her recent getting preggers and looking like she was dragged through a hedge backwards. Nothing really ‘happened’ to her, inasmuch as she simply reverted back to her lowborn, south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-line lifestyle. Her entire career up to this point has been the equivalent of a sheep that has been taught how to walk on its hind legs as a circus performer. Once the sheep is back on the farm, it walks on all four legs as it’s always known. Britney is that sheep.
+ Jessica Alba is the Anthony Quinn of today’s Hollywood. Need a white chick? Call Jessica! Need a black chick? Call Jessica! Need a Hispanic chick? Call Jessica!
+ ‘Hollywood is a verb’ – painter Ed Ruscha

Sdtrk: ‘Be’ by the Hospitals

After eight months, nearly the gestation period for a human being, I’m back to being ‘gainfully’ employed, circa this Friday. I’m workin’ for The Man now! Well, a man. Well, a couple of men. And there’s women, too, in the corporate offices. They don’t discriminate.
Anyway! So I arrived at the warehouse at 9am, and went through a brief walkthrough with Herb, one of the drivers who reminds me of Warren Oates’ character from ‘Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia‘. He even kinda sounded like him, too. He showed me how to go over the various points on the pre-drive checklist, using a Crossfire as an example. I’ll tell you, one of the few American-made cars I dig is the Crossfire, cos it looks like an SD version of a Jaguar ‘E’-type, and I naturally thought I was going to drive this bad boy. Nope! It needed to be dropped off at one of our clients, so I had to follow Herb in a chase vehicle so he could get back to the office after the drop-off. However, my chase vehicle was a Stratus. Although my first two cars were stickshifts, I hadn’t driven one in a couple of years, but thankfully, it all came back to me in only a couple of minutes’ time. Not too shabby!

Later, I got to drive the Stratus a second time, being a chase vehicle again for a gigantic pickup truck, and my last assignment for the day had me riding along with Herb and another driver, in order to pick up a Magnum from a client downtown. I don’t know what to make of that car. It’s like a station wagon-sport ute-car, or something. Rather nice acceleration, however. I didn’t get to drive that, which was just as well, as I was starting to get sleepy on the journey to get the Magnum. You have to understand that, after I was ejected from my last job my sleep schedule changed, and consequently, I’d be up at noon, and up until 4am, so much to my chagrin, I have to get used to being a Daywalker again. *points to timestamp on post* Heh, good luck with that.

So my first day wasn’t too bad, although it only lasted six hours. Considering the fact that I was sleepy as all get out, it worked out for the best. Since this is a part-time job, our hours are based on the number of assignments that the dispatcher has available, and I’ve been largely told that an average week is usually about 20 – 30 hours, but as I’d said, it’s better than being utterly skint.. It’s a shame I have to take my earrings out while on duty, though. Ugh, how pedestrian. Ha, a pun!