"Will work for money!"
A quick subscribers only post for the faithful.
This is the first subscriber only post I have done in forever but it’s not the sort of ethos I want to slap on LinkedIn. Plus the recipients of this one have been generous and patient and for that I am appreciative but figured you deserved a look at how the other half lives.
Since the end of last week I have been going back and forth, initially via email, then text and finally on the phone with a man who purported himself as a recruiter for AT&T. He lauded my resume and based on what he was saying he had at least seen the thing (do resumes even matter anymore?). The next step, the personal interview.
So, I moved a couple of minimal money making menial things I do around to make it happen today. 90 minutes on a RIPTA bus to East Providence (not the East side of Providence, EAST Providence). I have zero problem with a commute like this, I’m a voracious reader and I don’t get car sick reading on a moving vehicle. I read three essays in Joan Didion’s “The White Album” and over 100 pages in “Fear” by Bob Woodward today. I have followed Grateful Dead, I can read while moving for a LOT of miles between shows. Ninety minutes (a little more today) is child’s play.
This morning I arrived ready. I had been emailed that this was a “professional interview: no shorts, no jeans, no sneakers.” I was oddly impressed by that (I know, but it’s a slight step up above my current home in fast food) and by business casual terms I looked pretty good. When the receptionist, a curvy young lady in an outfit that I couldn’t imagine Talbot’s carrying, told me I could take a seat in a fairly barren lobby I knew. The “exec” in a truly bad suit, brothel red shirt (it’s Tuesday, right?) with visible hand and neck tattoos cruised the lobby, nodded at me and said, “Wassup?” I knew this probably wasn’t the launching pad for many AT&T execs.
Now, let me get one thing right, right fast: I have no issue with tattoos anywhere you want to put one. I have plenty of great pals, some who I know are subscriber/readers to this hippy propaganda rag. Here’s the thing: when those guys are in a bad suit they make it look GOOD and when they invite me to leave the house it’s to head to hear some punk rock that they know I am gonna’ love (or else they wouldn’t have invited me). There are a lot of punks in Cambridge and Lower Allston (Boston, for the uninitiated) who know I took them up on those invites. It’s NOT to haul my ass on the shittiest public transit system I have ever encountered for a bullshit AT&T interview.
RIPTA (Rhode Island Public Transit Authority), I’d like to quote the LCD Soundsystem and say, “I love you but you’re bringing me down,” but I don’t love you. You suck and worst of all you seem happily content sucking which makes you suck even more. On the rare occasions I have had to use the public restroom at Kennedy Plaza I silently thank my parents for the gift of height which seems to scare the lingering human vermin away, though that has never stopped the noise. The fuzzy speaker blown boombox soundtracking the junkie gibberish and pimp come on’s -”Yo. slim, you look like you party,” a much more frequent offer before I cut my hair - was fascinating to me at Port Authority when I was 19. At AARP during weekday daylight in Providence it’s just boring… and annoying. Those two reactions fight in my mind for prominence.
But, I was up at 6 today in hopes I might maneuver that bullshit every day to earn some scratch and once again, dashed on the rocks. Will work for money, ya’ll know where I am!