Tuesday, March 06, 2007

A lesson learned

I've been desperate for a job for roughly a month and a half now. I quit my last job at bath and body works because they weren't giving me enough hours. Plus the place was starting to suck my life away. I worked as a runner so I never really sold stuff and affirm my quite possibly absurd notion that I'm a good salesman, and when I did, I found out way too many old women shopped there. They would come in and stock up on anti-aging lotions, and I'd be in the background pointing at stuff saying, "yeah that's good... my mom uses it". This is got boring quick.

And I've loved the time off. Most of it at least. Mainly the week after I got my last check. All the weeks after that have sucked. Cuz I blew all my money, if you didn't catch that.

Which is the worst feeling in the world to me, being broke. It's one of the top things I hate, right next to taking the bus, waking up, and some might even say movement in general (most of my laziness is motor laziness. I have ambitious thoughts though). It occured to that I'd make a good living as a waiter. I think I have a good waiter look. This of course, could just be another one of my positive delusions, but I'd like to believe of have a certain aura of zen-like patience.

Now in reality, I'm not patient. But I've had enough customer service experience to know that I can at least deal. Quite well actually. I'd argue I need at least 10 more years of customer service experience to take a gun to work (even then I'd only shoot the men). And thats if I laid off smoking marijuana. Which probably won't happen. So I guess I can make that 15 years. I'll be successful by then, and the only human I'll have to deal with will be my manager. And I won't be selling him shit. So I'll be set.

I went for an interview at Islands down by the marina. I really wanted to work by the beach, and there was definate potential there for drinking on the job. They made me take this quiz on all the burgers there, which i actually studied for, and they hired me. The guy who hired me told me to come in that Saturday at 8:00 for orientation. He told me to buy black shoes, which mean I was set.

Friday 2:00am: I am still drinking. Anyone who knows me would have forecasted this. The only thing unpredictable would be me getting up in the morning, but I was feeling pretty confident I would pull it off. After 4 hours of sleep I figured I'd still be drunk and wake up gracefully without a hangover, which would ultimately come later but at least I got through the hard part.

What followed was roughly 20 minutes playing with the snooze button and roughly 30 minutes of presumably deep sleep while my buzzer blared right next to my eardrum. When i finally woke up to shut it off, it was 8:20, and there was no way I could make it on time. I called later that day, asking if I could make an orientation some other time, and they told me my position had been "refilled".

So I learned a valuable lesson. Besides not trusting myself to wake up drunk, I learned I could still sleep soundly even if what sounded like a an oscar meyer weiner whistled went off repeatedly by my head. I do not know how long I will remember this lesson. Luckily they can't fire me if they never hired me. Right?