Please Enjoy #8

Working Stiff

I find having to work one of life’s biggest indignities. It’s on par with having to stand up on a crowded bus or asking someone working in the fitting room to grab you a larger size. Once, while shopping for running shorts at Paragon Sports in Union Square, the woman who was helping me described a pair I was trying on as “snuggy wuggy”. 

Bending to the will of The Man means I’ve pretty much had a job from the time I was 14 until now, save for a few months at 23 when I moved back in with my dad into my childhood bedroom. That was a particularly Dark Period. I would stay up until 7 or 8am, setting an alarm for 3pm so I could walk up before he got home from work. At one point I decided to watch the last two seasons of That 70s Show because I knew Topher Grace left before the final season and I wanted to see how gracefully they handled that transition. After finishing those two seasons, I felt it was unfair to not watch the earlier seasons so I then started it from the beginning. Season 8, season 9 and then 1-7. All this while maxing out a credit card with a $600 limit that I still have never paid off.

You could never categorize me as a good employee. I try to do enough to not get fired, but never enough to have to take on more responsibility. Unfortunately, more responsibility is always bestowed upon even the worst employees. It’s a curse.

My dream job is riding a little bicycle to the store to get a loaf of bread while wearing a cool outfit. Maybe I stop at a park on the way. Hopefully I’ll bump into some friends. In this scenario, I am physically fit and it never rains. I can read a book without having to check my phone every few minutes. I possibly don’t think coffee is disgusting. I want to be on the dole in early 80’s London complaining about Margaret Thatcher with me mates. 

A lack of education or drive of any kind has led me to work at a series of screen printing shops. It’s vaguely skilled labor that can be completed by almost every kind of low life. Punks, junkies, stoners, hippies, thieves, men currently cycling on steroids, gang members, transient teenagers. I’ve worked side by side with them all. 

A person doesn’t earn the nickname “The Crapper Napper” by being employee of the month. At a print shop attached to a record label that at one time was considered cool and then pivoted to making money, I would arrive at 7am, turn on the large dryer that had to heat up to 700 degrees and then go pop onto the john for a quick snooze until about 7:20 or so. Sitting in the stall with my pants fully on and some headphones in. The one flaw of this bathroom (other than the industrial roll of one-ply toilet paper that was always in there) is that it was basically 4 flimsy pieces of sheetrock surrounding a toilet. It had what could only be described as an allusion to a ceiling. Some tiles but mostly empty spaces where, if one was wont to do, you could climb a ladder and peer into this single stall hellscape. That’s how my ingenious plan was foiled. The first time someone told me my new nickname, I was absolutely shocked. “They know? But…. but I’m so slick.” 

This was also the same shop where I was threatened to have my ass kicked by a member of a prominent hardcore-affiliated gang because when he tied the string from a hoodie around me and wouldn’t stop I told him to “go do some work and leave me the fuck alone”. Neither of us were reprimanded at all for getting into a screaming match at 7:30am. 

Arguments and physical confrontations are part of the landscape of low paid menial labor. You can’t physically fight the sense of failure hanging over your head but you can call the guy playing video game music on his stereo too loud a dickhead or figure out how to steal from the vending machines in the breakroom and no one will bat an eye. 

The first print shop I worked at was in my hometown. It was tucked into an industrial park behind the brand new Home Depot and Target. People would talk about that shopping centre “turning the town around” like someone dropped a steel mill down and all of a sudden we all were living off of company scrip. 

I started working there after I dropped out of high school. My father reluctantly signed me out because I was going to have to return for a fifth year based on how often I was absent and we both knew I wouldn’t do that. After a few weeks of total freedom, which was mostly eating ham sandwiches and watching daytime tv, he laid the hammer down and said I had to work if I wasn’t going to be in school. An extremely reasonable request, in retrospect, but it felt like a death sentence at the time. I have to work? But I’m the golden boy on his journey of rest and relaxation.

This print shop specialized in large scale printing, such as huge sheets of Evans bass drum patch stickers and those huge car wrap stickers that transform a lowly Mini Cooper into a Red Bull branded delivery system. Some of the screens were 6’ long and I had to learn how to clean them. They would never let me near the actual printing. I was the youngest person there by 20 years. 

Cleaning screens, also known as reclaiming, is the bottom rung of print shop jobs. You’re stuck in a small space with a power washer and chemicals that can burn hair off of your arms and legs immediately upon contact. Lost a nice chunk of shin hair on my first day. 

My tenure at this shop was short lived. I stayed there for a few months and then one day, tragedy struck. After work one Friday, I was chugging along on my BMX bike on my way to cash my paycheck when the chain popped off and wrapped itself around my back tire. I immediately flew over the handlebars and landed tooth first on the pavement, cracking my right front incisor perfectly in half. Unfortunately, I also ripped my prized Simpsons-in-the-vein-of-the-Sopranos t-shirt. I had never seen an episode of the Sopranos at that point but people in my family were running out of Simpsons related merchandise to give me at holidays instead of figuring out a second thing I enjoyed. 

This injury did something to me where I decided because of this I could never go back to work again. Physically, I was fine minus the broken tooth plus a few cuts and scrapes on my face and elbow. Emotionally, I was in a tailspin. I guess I figured that since this happened on my way home from work I was unable to work there anymore. I had never quit a job before, but I had to do it. Prior to this, I either held summer jobs with a definite end date or was unceremoniously let go, such as when the fried chicken and ribs restaurant I washed dishes at did not put me on the schedule 5 weeks in a row and I finally got the hint. 

The way I quit was, and still might be, one of my most cowardly acts. I was pretty conflict averse at 17 and couldn’t imagine telling an adult that I wasn’t going to do something. What I did do is call up the office at my job, dropped the register of my voice roughly 5% and pretended to be my brother Jimmy. I told them that Mike had suddenly packed up and left town so he probably wouldn’t be coming back to work any time soon. 

There’s a few weak points to this attack. First, I do not have a brother named Jimmy. Secondly, I do not have a brother at all. I didn’t think this phone call would ever come back to haunt me. I was the smartest teenager to ever live. Instead, a woman from the office called my house the next day while I was out and spoke to my dad on the phone. He told her the truth and my entire ruse was foiled once again. She very nicely said I could come back to work and it wouldn’t be a problem but there’s no way I could face them after they had figured out my complicated trickery. They were playing 4D chess at that point. I couldn’t trust them.

Undervalued labor is something you can always fall back on. If you can frame a house, print a shirt, cook an egg or use a weed whacker, you can usually find some work. The people who do these jobs sometimes have a history of no call, no showing and never being seen again so there’s usually room for a new hire. What you do is much more physically demanding and complicated than being an office manager or a “creative director” but since you get dirty, don’t need a formal education and are allowed to spit on the ground, you’re paid far less. 

I’ve left the ink stained days of working in print shops behind me but I can’t say I’m enjoying myself much more at work now. I spent all of my teens and 20s fighting against working some straight job but ended up in one anyway. I sure did spend a lot of time in basements getting kicked in the head while some awful band plays to still end up working a job I don’t care about in an office in midtown Manhattan and eating an overpriced salad that is 3 or 4 different temperatures at the same time. 

A print shop just opened up across the street from my house. The unmistakable blue steel of an M&R press visible through the windows. I fantasize every day about quitting my job and working there. Cutting my commute from 45 or 50 minutes to 30 seconds if I take my time. Popping on the old Dickies cut off shorts and inhaling some spray-on adhesive that plainly warns you on the can that it will cause brain damage with prolonged exposure. It probably still beats having to water the tree in someone’s office while they quarantine at their house in the Hamptons. 

I’m not one to romanticize the past too much. I don’t think my life was better when I worked at these places. It was decidedly much worse. My apartments were small, dark, damp and cramped. I would try to work on 2-3 hours of sleep because I didn’t want to miss out on any precious hanging out time. I worked full time but never seemed to have any money. But the freedom of a low consequence job filled with other ne'er-do-wells has its perks. There’s not much office bureaucracy to wade through. You’re given the design and you print it on the shirt and that’s that. You don’t need to have every move approved by a board of people who may or may not know your name. As long as you don’t punch too many holes in the wall, everyone leaves you alone. 

That’s the platonic ideal for most jobs. Do whatever you have to do so no one bothers you and, for the love of god, stop punching holes in the wall.