Tired

I read an excellent post on The Doorman's blog about his job. Evidently, even though he hates working as a bouncer at a club in the city, he believes that it's a positive place because the people there are striving to better themselves, grinding it out during long nights in the most competitive and intense place in the world- NYC. They don't have much... except for hope.

Now, my job, it ain't like that. If his club is "Livin On A Prayer", than my job is "God's Gonna Cut You Down." It seems like the place is the last stopping over point for those that are about to either end up dead or in jail. On the application for the place, it doesn't even have that box that says, "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" Why? Because they don't give a fuck. They take any and all.

I guess it's a vicious cycle. Most of the fucks who go through there aren't great people, so the bosses don't have a reason to pay all that well. Consequentially, the low pay and shitty hours draw only those desperate enough to work for $8 an hour on Easter Sunday. That's pretty fucking desperate.

It's funny, because even the high schoolers that get jobs there are dumb bastards. They are the troublemakers and the auto shoppers, the burnouts and tough guys. I don't like all of them, partly because it's nearly impossible for me to relate to seventeen year old know it alls anymore... I realize how I was at that age, and realize now that I didn't know shit (When I'm 30 I'll look at this and laugh, and say again, "Man, I didn't know shit back then").

One of the guys who just came back for the spring looked at me today and said, "Man, I don't even know why I came back. This place makes me miserable." The wharehouse is drab and smells like old fertilizer, and the cobwebs stack up in the rafters so thick that I wonder if I might be able to hang from them myself. The mood depends entirely on the weather, and when the bosses are angry because it's rain is thrashing the leaking roof, there's nowhere to hide.

Things are the same year after year after year. Guys I haven't seen in years come back to visit, and say, "So what's new here?" My answer is always the same, no matter how long they've been away, "Nothin'. Nothin' at all." The same stuff is moved around each year, the same rocks sit in the same places, the same spray painted graffiti on the same cinder block walls from 1978. Just in case you were wondering, "Joey Dee was here" at some point that year. Fuckin tool.

On top of this, the people who shop at garden centers nationwide with a religious fervor are always the old ones. If the place doesn't make you miserable, the old people will. It is a constant reminder to my fragile psyche all the time: "Weightlift all you want. Eventually, you'll be just like me, arms folded behind your back, hunched over, shuffling in, haggling over a nickel and tipping the workers quarters. Have fun with those deadlifts. You WILL DIE ANYWAY, son." They are walking death, deaf and lost in their own fog, hitting inanimate objects with the dented bumpers of their Grand Marquis or Crown Victorias, taking an hour to back up the car. These are the men who saved the world in 1945, who cannot save themselves in 2007. My last hope is that God takes me before I get like this.

I'm 22. I'm not staying there. Somewhere, something better awaits me. God bless the poor souls that can't say that. They're the reasons God invented alcohol and Democrats.