Jobber

As I drove by the Las Vegas Convention Center today, the working class masses made their exodus out into the streets, some headed off to the local bar, others to the convenience store for their booze, while the rest wandered away anonymously toward the various corners of rundown apartments that resided a few blocks away. The clean up crew were dressed in bright red shirts in order to make them visible to their superiors who from my experience took a certain pleasure in towering over their subordinates dictating mandates like a power crazed czar high on meth and LSD. Those types of moments always made me uncomfortable, partially for those people whose work career opportunities appear to have peaked with this particular job in the sanitation service. I was this guy with some techincal experience, given full access to all the overindulgent pleasures usually reserved for the fat white collar bosses, but did these Fortune 500 executives understand how to operate all this machinary that enabled these CEO's to manipulate their sales force into attaining higher sales without all the old school methods of torture, exhortion, and indentured servitude. Media has become the wizard of illusion in cooperation with such breakthroughs as television, cinema, and the internet; selling corporate underlinks or the general public on everything from politics to increase profit drive has become a hybrid of sports competition, Hollywood cool, and the attainment of music video material wealth status.

I was at this one corporate show about a week ago, where some execs put together some green screen video depicting the three of them rapping in a manner not much different than the Black Eyed Peas or Lil John, if these types are familiar to you, in regards to selling enough product to make the President's Club, the Golden Circle, or Achiever's Chamber, some sort of moniker to reinforce the need to be better than the best, to distant oneself from the underlinks, those who just existed, void of passion, drive, and leadership, the CEO's want winners, closers, and people motivated by excessive measure. The point of the brief video was one of the CEO's rapping about hanging in Barcalona, Rome, and Greece for a boat cruise, using the most uncreative, over plagerize style of lyrics that would make even the most over produced sellout of a pop artist go running to their attorneys to file lawsuit papers seeking damages in the billions. Watching three CEO's use vulgarity, bleeped out of course, as well as light mitigated sexual overtones as a female CEO danced in a Captian's booty pants outfit did not seem to me the right message to be sending to the sales force, who had given these three people the intel on how to reach the masses, probably some fresh faced communications graduate with a pulse on the youth of America. Voice of the Comm grad: These young 20 and 30 somethings, relate to this hip hop culture; that is HIP HOP culture, you want them to drive sales, sell them the same shit JayZ, TI, and 50 Cent do, the American Dream, Ferraris, Yachts, Big House with Marble Floors, and Tons of Young Hot Woman in Bikinis. It is a no brainer, offer up trips around the Europe, turn them into mini pimps, take over the world, start passing around the cocaine, Hugo Boss suits, and leases on Porchses, then watch your investment take off, keep flashing those images on the screen, until they all start drawing down on each other in a sea of machine gun fire, those stock holders will go ape shit when you start blowing away the quarterly prediction by 10 dollars per share, a virtual watershed, don't wait, start with this video, talk shit, smack some booty, and make it rain, the rest will take care of itself.

I could not see an immediate effect on the audience after the video and once the conference ended most of them filed out even more dejected than when they came in as if they already knew who was destined for that Millionaire's Retreat, not many of them, these people were just happy to have a job still, putting off the fear of unemployment for one more month, while wondering the penny slots of Las Vegas hoping to hit a 300 hundred dollar jackpot. I remember my days as a jobber with not much experience in anything, still a part time rocker and artist, did not have a mechincal bone in my body, fixing sinks, cars, and anything that might have saved my mother some money would have only resulted in her continuous bitching about me fucking something else up that she ultimately ended up paying for in the end, so there was no father around or male figures who really gave a shit when they were not fucked up on drugs, booze, or both to teach me anything, at all, of course sex is easiest to learn, when you have good looks and get good at talking young girls into doing what you want, after that lesson, I spent the rest of my time becoming good at partying, that was pretty much it, besides stealing, dealing, and dreaming, not much else. It was my first week as a Teamster, where you go down to the hall, pay them some money come up with some sort of fake resume and a week later you are down at the Las Vegas Convention Center rolling up carpet with a bunch of other fringes, outcasts, and losers, but shit it paid 25 bucks an hour and at the time, I had never earned that much an hour in my life.

All I had to do was roll up large sections of carpet with other people who seemed to be counting down the days until the next tragedy was to befall them. At first, I did not say much, cause there was always someone there who looked to be running the show, telling everyone else what to do. It was fairly simple, roll the carpet up into a large tube, keep it even so it did not cone on one side or the other, which always happened with a crew of misfits on the job. It was easy, there always happened to be a few ding dongs who knew how to do everything better so I would just stand back and let them fight over the proper way to finish the task. The heated exchange between the two guys always ended up in a fight or words then once and a while fists. It was amazing anything got done at all, yet what I did not realize was that I was on the extra crew, the retard crew, my presence was only needed for the Teamsters to pad their payrolls with tons of overcharges that they just pocketed while taking a cut of my money as well, what did it matter, making 600 bucks a week was a godsend at the time. I just shut up, came to work in a Crip Blue Dickies shirt and black Dickies pants, no one messed with me. I could talk to the Vatos, the White Trash, and the Loonies; these people were all relics of my environent growing up in the rural trailer parks of San Diego County, no beach bums, tasty waves, or hot tan female bodies, no just drug addicts, meth lab busts, and a small 6x6 room with four walls to keep the rest of the world at bay.

It did not take long to get the picture, luckily things were busy, so while the tweekers rolled up at least three one hundred foot pieces of carpet a minute, my crew, stood around with their arms on their hips watching the same two guys argue about how to put tape on a finish roll of carpet. It was not too techincal, but eventually I made way out of rolling up carpet onto building exposition booth where companies show their products and shmooz distribution agents and potential clients. This required nowing how to use power tools as well as hand tools, of course being the new guy, I got set up by some of the other veterans who saw my fresh bag of tools as an opportunity to add to their personal collection, so while the shift boss had me sent to the other side of the convention center without my tools to do a job that turned into 13 hr shift, when I came back to collect my tools, they had mysteriously dissapeared, as well as the entire crew for the evening from that point on I never brought more than I could fit in my jeans, which was a knife for protection, and a utility Leatherman. So passing these jobbers who live day to day, hour to hour, getting fucked up everyday to erase the memory of being caught in an never ending circle reminded of my time spent as a jobber, happy enough to buy a Snickers bar and a sandwhich, while using the rest to pay my college tuition while feeding my two kids. I learned a few things there, the most important one being I never want to go back.