KNOW WORRIES #18 - "The only thing I don't like about working is my job"

Deep breath...

I want you to stop whatever you’re doing and think about every book you’ve ever read. Every single one. Every picture book you loved as a child. Every mediocre young adult series you made you whole personality for six months in middle school. Every viral fantasy novel TikTok bullied you into reading and then you finally read it and it was actually pretty bad but you were on a red eye and didn’t feel like paying for in-flight wi-fi, so I guess it was better than nothing. Hypothetically.

I want you to think about allll of those books as well as alllll of the cookbooks, reference books, comic books, and more. And I want you to understand that all of those books were actually about attempted murder, because at some point, each and every one of them tried to kill the person who was writing it.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit dramatic. Really, the only book that’s ever tried to kill me is Organic Chemistry, but cut a poor writer some slack, would you? I mean, it’s not like Hemingway was literally wiping blood off his typewriter. These are just things we say to make our job sound as romantic and spartan as possible, because that way, we don’t feel like god’s most ungrateful little seagull when we whine about work. Oh, tough day stealing French fries? And then you screamed at a bunch of people? And then you flew wherever you wanted for free and became one with the undefinable majesty of the ocean? Poor thing.

I fully recognize that I’m as lucky as anybody on the planet to be able to do what I do for a living, and there’s not another writer alive that wouldn’t back me up on that. The dead ones might have something different to say, but that’s neither here nor there. It’s a wonderful job, and I know this because I’ve had a lot of really shitty jobs too. But jobs are like cats. They’re all the same no matter how different they are. And even if you really love yours, sometimes you wish you had a different one because the one you do have is annoying the shit out of you.

I’m having a rough time at work, in case that wasn’t obvious enough. Things are fine, they’re just very much in flux, and that’s always tough for me. Now mind you, they’re in flux in a good way, but even positive instability scrambles my eggs a little. It’s like when they switched the actress who played Becky on Roseanne mid-season without telling anyone. Like, yes, this new one is way better, but I still don’t like it and how very dare you.

So, to be clear, things are okay, I’ve just hit something of a rough patch. It just seems like everything, both contractually and creatively, is at a hugely critical juncture right now, and I’m having a bit of trouble pushing through it because I’m allergic to the world being on fire. Also, the world is on fire. There’s like two novels, four short stories, and a humor book hanging in the balance right now, and for some reason, the amount of time I have to dedicate to thinking about Greenland is also up like 700%. So, I’ve got that going for me. Not to put too fine a point on it, but everything is a lot right now.

But as rough as things are, they could always be worse. And they often have been, which is really where this is all going. Yes, working for yourself is hard, because you’re pretty much you, your clueless boss, and your most annoying customer all at the same time. But working for other people isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either, and Cthulhu knows I’ve done plenty of that in my time. So, in the interest of perspective, I thought we’d all take a look back at all the jobs I’ve loved before, of which there have been none.

It all started on a gun range. Bet that wasn’t on your bingo card, huh? That’s right. I worked at a gun range every weekend and every summer until I was old enough to drive. And then after that, I didn’t work there any longer, because I was old enough to drive. “But Jonathan,” I hear you say. “What about child labor laws?” Well, as it turns out, they’re very easy to break, and nobody really cares. Which was fine by me, because I was able to save up enough to buy a super sweet Aiwa stereo system with a dual tape deck and a three-disc changer.

I got in on sale from Circuit City, and I paid for that thing with $650 of undeclared, untaxed, under the table currency. And I had that thing for like fifteen years, and I still miss it. Yes, it was incredibly clunky and it weighed a ton and I couldn’t take it anywhere, but holy shit was it nice to be able to play some music without also having to wade through a hundred push notifications. Like, yes, I know my laundry’s ready to be moved to the dryer, but we’re gonna listen to the entire original cast recording of Hamilton first, sooooo…

Now, I didn’t hate that job, to be honest. It was fine, and I got to drive a four-wheeler a lot, so really, what more could a twelve-year-old ask for? I think I just got shot too many times. And by too many times, I mean once. And sure, it was from a distance, but still, it’s enough to make you check the classified ads. So, there I was. In God’s most neglected port-a-potty on a ninety-degree day picking shotgun pellets out of my cheek with a pocketknife. And that was the first time I ever thought to myself, “Wait, do I have a shitty job?”

It was a fair question, after all. And I think for pretty much all of us, no matter what we do for a living, the answer is almost necessarily “sometimes.” Sometimes you get burned out. Sometimes you feel undervalued. Sometimes you get shot in the face a little bit. And sometimes, just sometimes, you find your boss asleep behind a customer’s television on your very first day on the job. And thus began my tenure as North Philadelphia’s premier cable installer assistant guy, which lasted exactly one (1) day. And what a day it was.

It was somewhere around 10:30 when I first heard him snoring. He did look comfortable, there behind the big TV in the corner with his head resting on a coil of coaxial cable. His name was Dan, and he installed phone and television services for [REDACTED], and he hired me to be his assistant for $50 a day, which is like 1/10 of a good Aiwa stereo. But the moment I heard him start to snore, that was the second time I thought to myself, “Wait, do I have a shitty job?”

This time, however, the answer to that question was a resounding yes. My second clue was when Dan insisted on stopping by his house for a coffee refill, because it’s just “too expensive anywhere else these days.” Now, I can appreciate a penny pincher just as much as anybody else, but it turns out that by “too expensive,” he definitely meant, “not made with enough Jameson.” And my third clue was when he accidentally leaned a ladder up against a big transformer and took out the power for a sizeable chunk of Northeast Philadelphia.

It was very loud. And then it was dark. And then we just kinda left after that. I mean, the power was out, so there was no sense in installing any cable anyway. The funny part was that Dan didn’t call anybody or tell anyone what happened at all. He just drove us back to his house in complete silence, gave me my $50, and said “Sorry it didn’t work out.” And then his wife opened the door, she was like “The power’s out,” and all Dan said was, “Probably a transformer or something.” And he was not wrong.

And that’s the last I ever saw of Dan, though I still think of him every time I order an Irish coffee. After that, I decided maybe it was time to stop working for people off the books, and time to get a real job at a real business that pays real hourly wages. And boy was I wrong. But just to be absolutely sure, I decided to work food service for all four years of college. For some reason.

Why did I do that to myself? I still don’t know. And that’s fine by me. Like, I’m sure I deserved it, but that doesn’t mean I wanna know why. But after working at a local deli, the knock-off Pizza Hut in the student union basement, and waiting tables off and on, perhaps the only thing I learned is that food service is for masochists. You have to love pain to survive a job like that. And that’s okay, because there’s no better place to break down and have yourself a good cry than the solace of a walk-in cooler. To this day, it’s still the closest thing I’ve found to having a literal void to scream into.

I did hate those jobs, to be fair. But that didn’t mean there weren’t any upsides. For instance, I never had to wonder where I could buy weed, because there was always five or six people working in the kitchen who were selling so they could afford their cocaine habits. It’s the ciiiircle of liiiiiife. And not for nothing, but when you’re looking for a job, pay attention to how the place smells. Because you will also smell like that. Like, you don’t ever really need to tell anybody you work at a deli, because they already know.

After college, I took a gap year (decade), which was filled with shitty jobs, as one does when they have a fancy degree they don’t know what to do with. I sold knives for about a week and a half. For the uninitiated, that means I sold knives to my family for about a week and a half, then quit once my boss was like “okay now do that same thing but with complete strangers.” After that, I sold tee-time packages for local golf courses. And for the uninitiated, that means I sold tee-time packages for local golf courses to my family, then quit once my boss was like “okay now do that same thing but with complete strangers.”

I did a stint answering phones at an insurance office, which is exactly as soul-crushing as it sounds. But hey, if you enjoy getting yelled at because people who pay for insurance don’t understand how insurance works, by all means…have at it. It was around that time that I wondered into a guitar shop, and lo and behold, there were people working there too. And out of the blue, something clicked. I’m a people. I play guitar. I need to work. What could possibly go wrong? Listen…

One of the worst things in life is finding out you’re good at a job you hate. And there’s maybe nothing in this world I hate more than the culture of commission-based sales. It’s somewhere between being on a pee-wee football team and being trapped in a foxhole in the Ardennes while the whole forest explodes around you, except you have no idea where your next meal is coming from. And I did that for ten actual years. And do you know why? Because my autistic ass was really good at it and terrified of change.

See, I have a really hard time processing anything unless I understand the mechanics of it. Unless I understand how it works. I just can’t take anything at face value, no matter how hard I try. So, when somebody would be like, “I’m just looking,” I would just ask them, “Why?” Then when they would say, “I’m looking for a new guitar,” I would ask them, “Why?” Then when they would say, “Well, I’m not super happy with the one I already have,” I would ask them, “Why?” Turns out customers really appreciate that. Well, most of them.

I hated that job, too, but it did really help me put some things in perspective. And by the end of my time there, I was sure I wanted to do something more constructive. Something more important. Something less slimy and more rewarding, so obviously I moved out to LA to be a screenwriter. I’ll spare you the details, but screenwriting and I had something of a love-hate relationship. I loved telling stories, and screenwriting hated the idea of me being able to feed myself every day. So, obviously, I did that for ten years too.

And that pretty much brings you all up to speed. Life takes you to strange places, and sometimes that place is writing a column in a condo in northern Virginia while you fend off two incredibly needy cats. And sometimes it’s full on ugly-crying in a walk-in cooler in colonial Williamsburg. And sometimes it’s picking shotgun pellets out of your cheek in a port-a-potty in eastern Pennsylvania. Guess which one I prefer.

It’s this one. I prefer this one. The cat one. And honestly, I do love my job. A lot. But that doesn’t mean I don’t also hate it sometimes. And I say that with all the perspective and grace and real-world experience I can possibly muster. And really, that’s the very best thing about venting in an intimate setting like this. Everyone understands you. Everyone gets it. There’s nobody around to misinterpret your gripes and spin it into a portrait of how ungrateful and tone deaf you are. Right? Right, guys? Wait, what are you typing? You’re not on reddit, are you? Hey. HEY!