November 22, 2009
UTNE READER

The Everyday Quitter

(Page 2 of 2)

September/October 1996
Randy Russell, American Job 
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Evening office cleaning job. I get hired instantly. Start work that night. I feel really good to be just cleaning the place, not working behind a desk there. Empty disgusting fast food trash and menthol ashtrays. One day I discover the liquor in the architect's office. A half-gallon bottle of bad Canadian whiskey. I take a few drinks each night. It keeps me going.

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When they call from the bookstore again I agree to go back. The whiskey level is getting low.

At the bookstore there are three bosses and two of them don't like me. I walk in on one boss talking to another boss about me. 'Get rid of him,' he says. I quit and we're all happy.

I get a job washing dishes at the Holiday Inn, work till 3 or 4 a.m. each night. It lasts three nights.

I'm hired to deliver frozen pizzas, cookies, and trash bags for 65 cents per delivery. My first night I use half a tank of gas and make seven deliveries in five hours. You figure it out.

I stop for coffee, leaving the frozen pizzas out in the car. I'm in no hurry now. The waitress must be 16. Crazy Muzak plays; I actually like it. There's a 'Help Wanted' sign on the door. A guy asks the waitress why they've got the air conditioner on (it's snowing outside)? 'I don't know . . . 'cause it's 85 in Tampa,' she says. How is she so cool and only 16, with braces? Why can't I deal with things like that?

The waitress says she can't date anyone who sits at the misfit coffee counter all day. At my pizza delivery job they say we aren't officially required--but still expected--to buy an insanely ugly red-hooded company sweatshirt for 15 bucks out of our first paycheck. Bullshit. It's everywhere. That's the way it is. Some people can take it and some people can't. I return the pizzas undelivered and don't go back.

Part of cover story, September/October 1996.
Exerpted with permission from the zine American Job (#1). Published infrequently by T.B.S. Publications, Box 2284, Portland, OR 97208.

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