Effing Jobs
By Adam Greene
There have been times, you’ll be stunned to learn, that I've been forced to hold down a form of honest employment. Yeah... I know. Even now I can hardly choke back the bitter tears.
Sometime last year I received notice that my insurance license was about to run out, prompting a Nam-like flashback of the hellish two weeks I spent attempting to sell life insurance to human beings who, at some point in the future, wanted to celebrate the death of a loved one by building a giant Scrooge McDuck-ian money bin and fucking hookers in it.
God, two whole weeks of that. That’s like ten business days. It’s long enough to be forced to submit an angry e-mail to an eBay seller informing him that if you don’t receive your Rick Force 8 inch Bowen Designs Sasquatch Mini Bust within the next three days, he can expect a harshly worded piece of negative feedback in his vendor profile.
Half a month, for shit’s sake. I might as well have been trapped twirling through the galaxy inside the Kryptonian Phantom Zone.
Now that it’s all behind me, I should probably be more grateful my big toe was too large to fit inside that shotgun trigger guard. But that’s neither here nor there.
Your first day at any new job is always a fiendish ruse. Your new boss is trained by his diabolical corporate devil cult into making that first day somewhat bearable. He’ll say stuff like, "Hey, Adam, let’s go grab some chili cheese fries at O’Charley’s. My treat” and “It’s 4:15, dude. Why don’t you take off early today?"
"Yeah," you think. "I could probably come back to work here for the next millennium or so and not execute everyone inside with a crossbow."
It isn’t until the third day when you realize that this job, no matter how scrumptious the funnelcakes are, just isn’t going to work out.
On my third day at Unnamed Insurance Company*, I was subjected to the many motivational training tapes that were designed to teach me exactly how to tell a customer, in no uncertain terms, that they or one of their family members could be brutally killed by a meteorite or cloned tyrannosaur at any moment.
My favorite "film" starred one of the vice presidents of the company. In it, he related a story that affected me to my very soul. He was once an agent "just like me." Excited to sell life insurance, he didn’t realize its true value until one day, while tossing a wad of cash to a newly minted widow, he had a revelation. Here he paused, obviously a little choked up at the memory of the widow rubbing 100 dollar bills all over her bare breasts. "Up to that point," he said, "I was in the insurance business. But that was the moment when I realized that the insurance business was in me."
It was in him, you see. IN HIM.
I was pretty sure it wasn’t in me. I came home, stripped, and inspected every inch of my body closely. No sign of the insurance business anywhere. Unable to check there myself, and almost too afraid to look, I asked Amy to assist me in an anal cavity search. After her third shot of Jack Daniels, she agreed. Much to my relief, my ass was insurance business free. It was not, thank God, "in me".
The biggest problem with the job, obviously, was me. When I applied for my insurance license, it plainly stated that I couldn’t be "financially irresponsible" or "grossly incompetent" in order to get the license. There may not be four better words in the English language to describe me. Yet here I was, fully and legally licensed. How could this have happened?
Now, two years later, my anus still insurance-less, I look back a little shocked that I lasted the two weeks that I did. I had to wear a tie. Tuck in my shirt. Shave. It was total madness over there.
On the morning of my 11th day I called in to quit, and, just for comedy’s sake I offered to work out a two week’s notice. They, believe it or not, declined.
Read more..!
There have been times, you’ll be stunned to learn, that I've been forced to hold down a form of honest employment. Yeah... I know. Even now I can hardly choke back the bitter tears.
Sometime last year I received notice that my insurance license was about to run out, prompting a Nam-like flashback of the hellish two weeks I spent attempting to sell life insurance to human beings who, at some point in the future, wanted to celebrate the death of a loved one by building a giant Scrooge McDuck-ian money bin and fucking hookers in it.
God, two whole weeks of that. That’s like ten business days. It’s long enough to be forced to submit an angry e-mail to an eBay seller informing him that if you don’t receive your Rick Force 8 inch Bowen Designs Sasquatch Mini Bust within the next three days, he can expect a harshly worded piece of negative feedback in his vendor profile.
Half a month, for shit’s sake. I might as well have been trapped twirling through the galaxy inside the Kryptonian Phantom Zone.
Now that it’s all behind me, I should probably be more grateful my big toe was too large to fit inside that shotgun trigger guard. But that’s neither here nor there.
Your first day at any new job is always a fiendish ruse. Your new boss is trained by his diabolical corporate devil cult into making that first day somewhat bearable. He’ll say stuff like, "Hey, Adam, let’s go grab some chili cheese fries at O’Charley’s. My treat” and “It’s 4:15, dude. Why don’t you take off early today?"
"Yeah," you think. "I could probably come back to work here for the next millennium or so and not execute everyone inside with a crossbow."
It isn’t until the third day when you realize that this job, no matter how scrumptious the funnelcakes are, just isn’t going to work out.
On my third day at Unnamed Insurance Company*, I was subjected to the many motivational training tapes that were designed to teach me exactly how to tell a customer, in no uncertain terms, that they or one of their family members could be brutally killed by a meteorite or cloned tyrannosaur at any moment.
My favorite "film" starred one of the vice presidents of the company. In it, he related a story that affected me to my very soul. He was once an agent "just like me." Excited to sell life insurance, he didn’t realize its true value until one day, while tossing a wad of cash to a newly minted widow, he had a revelation. Here he paused, obviously a little choked up at the memory of the widow rubbing 100 dollar bills all over her bare breasts. "Up to that point," he said, "I was in the insurance business. But that was the moment when I realized that the insurance business was in me."
It was in him, you see. IN HIM.
I was pretty sure it wasn’t in me. I came home, stripped, and inspected every inch of my body closely. No sign of the insurance business anywhere. Unable to check there myself, and almost too afraid to look, I asked Amy to assist me in an anal cavity search. After her third shot of Jack Daniels, she agreed. Much to my relief, my ass was insurance business free. It was not, thank God, "in me".
The biggest problem with the job, obviously, was me. When I applied for my insurance license, it plainly stated that I couldn’t be "financially irresponsible" or "grossly incompetent" in order to get the license. There may not be four better words in the English language to describe me. Yet here I was, fully and legally licensed. How could this have happened?
Now, two years later, my anus still insurance-less, I look back a little shocked that I lasted the two weeks that I did. I had to wear a tie. Tuck in my shirt. Shave. It was total madness over there.
On the morning of my 11th day I called in to quit, and, just for comedy’s sake I offered to work out a two week’s notice. They, believe it or not, declined.
Read more..!
posted by Adam Greene at
11:42 PM
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