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Hardly workin' | page 1, 2
You can't spend a lifetime dissing the 9-to-5 world and not expect the attitude to show on some level. The standard "Tell me about yourself" sends me into the kind of panic attacks a former stripper might feel when meeting her in-laws for the first time. I'm afraid I'll blurt out something that will betray my past -- and blow my attempt at reformation. As I try to dupe the wise, I wonder just how long this whole thing will drag out or, more important, how much more I can stand before I say screw it, revert to my old ways and apply for a night manager position at 7-Eleven. Knowing I am weak and bordering on recidivism, my father often calls to offer moral support and check on my progress. He's a generally caring man but, unfortunately, his phone manner has all the subtlety of a gunshot. Our conversations go something like this: Despite the general view that the unemployed are shiftless louts, I've found that being out of work is as tiring and demanding as working at a job, but without the paycheck, the security or the cute girl in accounting. Crushed by the remarks of friends who call me a cheapskate and the irritated look of store owners when I fish my pockets for change, the reality is that basic survival -- never mind luxury -- is expensive. Couple that with the earning power of the ungainfully unemployed and you've got problems. My decisions have become utilitarian in nature. I have stripped my life to the bare necessities. No socializing -- costs money. No vices -- drinking, smoking and sex all cost money. I spend money only on the promise of making money and, invariably, it's money ill-spent. The endless stream of faxes, cover letters and résumés sent have nearly bankrupted me. Each time I enter Mail Boxes Etc., the Brooklyn store that has become for all intents and purposes my office, the Jamaican manager greets me with a look of compassion mixed with steely-eyed capitalism. Though I'm sure he wishes me well, at $1 per color copy, $2 per fax and $12 per hour of computer time he is slowly getting rich off of my marathon job search. Not every waking moment is dedicated to the hunt, though. In the bipolar world of the unemployed it's all or nothing, and when I say nothing, I mean it. When not temping, applying or interviewing, I spend my hours in a dizzying haze of banal activities and daytime TV. Time is marked by the shows that become my daily obsessions. In the fall it was "Law & Order" reruns at 1 p.m. and "Northern Exposure" at 2 p.m. I have since moved on (that is, seen all the episodes). Lately I've been riding high on the wave of courtroom shows, such as "Judge Mills Lane" ("he's fair and he's firm"). I dig that righteous old tart "Judge Judy" too. I snack on pretzels and offer my own version of justice to the feckless litigants, losing myself in pure silly abandon until a wave of nauseating guilt over wasted time hits me like a punch in the gut. Another fascinating, if ironic, byproduct of my unemployed state is that I've become a horribly materialistic person. Like the most cartoonish of scoundrels, I see people only in terms of their finances. At parties or on the street I sneer and make comments like "Did you see that man's shoes? They're scuffed!" My fine-tuned eye for money has its drawbacks. When I moved to New York a year ago (to further my writing career), I was under the impression that the city was still the bombed-out urban jungle depicted in '80s movies. I had no idea I was landing at ground zero of the economic boom, no clue I'd be living in a virtual showroom for America's revitalized buying power. Every day Midtown bustles with tourists from Middle America spending newly minted dollars with gloating smiles. My own home isn't even safe as each week my roommates, smitten with their newfound disposable income, parade a slew of luxury items (stereo systems, cell phones, Italian shoes, DVD players) past my bedroom door. Even my grandfather, a man who has used the past 20 years' worth of family gatherings as his pulpit to lecture on the inevitability of a catastrophic stock market collapse, is pouring money into tech stocks. The sights and sounds of the economic machine on full throttle are inescapable -- and I am cracking. Last week on Madison Avenue an Armani-clad ad exec turned into a walking mutual fund right before my eyes. I had the sudden urge to grab him, call his broker and cash out before he could squirm away. It was a full-on Wall Street acid trip. Barring an interview or temp assignment, I've stopped going into Manhattan altogether, preferring to stay near my Brooklyn home, where the prosperity is less obvious. At least there I only hallucinate 401Ks and gold teeth. In what seems (in my fragile state) like fate's attempt at a knockout punch, my most recent temp assignment has landed me in the payroll department of a prestigious nonprofit organization. Yes, readers, it is the time of year for raises, and yours truly has been brought in to help administer the upgrades. Calling out the new salaries yesterday, I felt such a yearning for money and the luxury it can buy, it created a physical ache in my bones. Weak-kneed, it was all I could do to stand and plainly recite the numbers to my unfazed superior. After work I went home, made dinner and picked up yesterday's Sunday Times from its resting place on the floor. Scanning the litany of numbers and addresses, I grew weary. Tomorrow I will do it all over again: the faxing, the calling, the mailing, the hoping, the hustling, the elaborate and exhausting interview dance. For some the working week is a tiresome, self-questioning experience. In typically backward fashion, for me just getting there is proving to be the same.
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