Welcome to the Working Week
art by Jason Ericksen
 
Like the rest of us, I believed that after 1995 I’d never have to hear another Ace of Base song ever again. On my first day at a new temp job working in the accounts payable for an L.A. sports club I was proven wrong not once but two times over (with Ace of Base’s one-two punch of “All That She Wants” and “Don’t Turn Around”)! Ah… I knew I was truly employed again.
 
One of the many good things about being unemployed (the only “bad” one being, c’mon, let’s be honest: no paycheck) is being able to listen to your own music. Once you get an office job, it’s all easy-listening pop hits of the 80s, 90s , and TODAY! (I remember when it was the 70s, 80s, and TODAY! Feeling… old…!) That usually means only music that either your mom or youngest sister would like. This is no slight against my co-workers ,as these types of radio stations are pretty much the only ones allowed in many offices. These kind of stations, with their Phil-Collins-and-Martina-McBride-ridden song lists, actually refer to themselves as “listen at work” stations! They know what bosses want in bland, 99% non-threatening, think-free, okay for the masses music ,and bosses know they know! It’s a vicious cycle. Still, when I start humming to Counting Crows’ embarrassing and pointless “Big Yellow Taxi” remake, I start to admit to myself that it’s better than silence. Then Shania Twain’s almost -- what, decade old? -- “That Don’t Impress Me Much” comes on, and I remember what is truly golden.

Aside form listening to lite Top 40 muzak, your average office job -- in my constantly expanding experience -- involves alphabetizing files, filing files, and alphabetizing the filed files. Getting the mail is usually involved ,as well as is the occasional phone answering or envelope stuffing. It’s not hard work by any stretch. I realize this. Of course I do. My grandfathers had to work eighteen hour days breaking bricks with their heads while lifting trucks above their shoulders, all the while inhaling completely unchecked carbon monoxide and going deaf from the sounds of heavy machinery for about a $1.50 a week. I know I have it comparatively easy. A monkey could do my average office job… which might be part of the problem come to think of it.
 
I don’t claim to be the sharpest tack on the postboard -- nowhere near it. But sometimes, the mind numbing repetition of menial office-type work can even further dull an already dulled mind. Back in college, where constant class work and homework and whatnot more routinely challenged my mind, I definitely had more going on in the smarts department. The brain is like any other muscle -- stop exercising it, and it’ll get flabby and soft. I figure at most of my post-schooling jobs I work my brain about as much as I work my abs. And my abs -- being buried under pounds and pounds of flabby, soft, gelatinous belly fat -- ain’t too impressive. I shudder to think what my poor, under-utilized brain looks like compared to, say, Stephen Hawking’s, in the same way I’d hate to compare my abs with Brad Pitt’s.
 
Of course, I could exercise my brain in my downtime from the dumbing office job, but… what downtime? In God’s United States of America, a full-time job (the only way to barely pay the bills and maybe get health insurance) is forty hours a week! And that’s excluding the often-inevitable overtime and the commute to and fro. (Which, here in my adopted town of Los Angeles, is about (last job), oh … three hours a day, fifteen hours a week. ALMOST AS MANY HOURS AS MY FIRST PART-TIME JOB IN HIGH SCHOOL! JUST DRIVING!!!)
 
There are a few people who get actual joy and some fulfillment from their jobs. They are happy to spend fifty-five or so hours a week doing what they do for a living. They’re called “imaginary, magic people.” And those imaginary, magic people are the lucky ones, by God, because try as I might to stay positive, I could never wrap my brain around how spending about 11 hours driving and alphabetizing files I don’t care about, five days a week, could compare to spending time with my girlfriend or writing (and the unfortunately necessary trying to find writing work, which is a job unto itself). It doesn’t compute with me. Everyone says it’s just what we all have to do. I used to buy this until I met a group of nasty kids who found a way to support themselves through their art and spend the whole day working on a cool magazine and drawing and writing and taking pictures and running their mouths off to anyone who will listen. They’re not rich, actually existing somewhere below the poverty level in many cases, but they pay the bills and seem to be doing what they want to, on their own terms.
 
Unfortunately, these freaks are in the minority. Most of us have gotten into the basic work trap. The American dream of buying more than you can afford is what’s done me in. Ridiculous car lease payments, credit cards, and school loans ensure that. Lest a miracle happens and I actually make a lot of money by selling a script or story or winning the lotto, I’m going to be doing the 9 to 6 (didn’t it used to be 9 to 5???) for the foreseeable future.
 
Damn. That reminds me: I gotta find another job…

~~~~~

D.J. Kirkbride is a man of many passions, the foremost being the destruction of Jay Leno. If you're in L.A., look D.J. up -- he's the one with "Hollywood" tatooed on his chin.