Everyone Wanted to Hire Me.
Occasionally during our wild nights out, Larry would pull his chained wallet from his back pocket to pay for the booze and laughingly say, “You gotta get a fuckin’ job.”
Since I spent my days doing literally nothing, the thought had occurred to me. But what would I do? I’d wanted to be a journalist but in Florida, journalism seemed like a pipe dream. Lifeguarding – for which I was in no way qualified – seemed like a more likely career choice. I had no idea what to do with myself.
Unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life watching palmetto bugs in my living room, or learn to build a functional motorcycle from a rusty frame with a gas tank, I needed to find an actual job.
I knew how to get a job: I needed to read the want ads in the Sunday paper and send out my resume, with a well-written cover letter. I learned this not from college, but from my parents. So one Sunday, at around 2:00 in the afternoon when I finally rolled out of bed, I walked up to the gas station and bought a carton of cigarettes and a Sunday newspaper.
It was heavy and I had to walk a whole block with it, while smoking a cigarette. Life was hard.
When I got to the house, I read the comics first. Then I read Ann Landers. Then I took a shower. Then I lit another cigarette and flipped to the employment section.
Everyone wanted to hire me. The ads offered entry-level opportunities in retail, food service, administrative work, car sales, general sales, and telemarketing. I could do anything!
But what I wanted to do wasn’t available. I wanted to be a writer, and there were no ads looking for writers. My second choice – working in TV or radio – didn’t seem to be available either.
I did not blame my total lack of professional experience or unwillingness to do an internship in college. I did not blame the stupidity of wanting to work in an already overpopulated field.
I did not think about my friend, Debbie, who had a ton of job offers and was working in a beach town as a public relations professional. I did not think about the drunken afternoons I spent at college when she was working in the admissions office.
I did not think about my lifelong resume which included three weeks at The Gap, two summers at Kennywood, and a few months tossing forks around in the college cafeteria before being fired.
In other words, I did not in any way blame myself.
I blamed Florida.
“They don’t have any good jobs here!” I whined to Larry. “I don’t want to do fucking sales!”
“Then don’t do fuckin’ sales,” Larry said, barely looking up from whatever he was spraying with grease.
I didn’t want to be around people, I didn’t want to work hard, I didn’t want to work retail ever again, I didn’t want to do anything related to food service, and I didn’t want to talk on the phone.
That left me with office work. I loved, loved, loved to type. I was the fastest typist in my high school class, and I made very few mistakes. (Accuracy was essential in the days of typewriters and white-out.) And in 1986, fast, accurate typists were still in demand.
So on Monday afternoon, I started calling places. And by the end of the week, I had a job! I’d be making slightly more than $3.00 per hour.