Job Journal: Office Assistant, private preschool in Manhattan

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Temporary Office Assistant, private preschool in Manhattan

Duration: 5 months

Year: 2008


I've talked about my time at the private preschool before, and teased you with a tale of Tiger, the English bulldog.  Well, dear reader, your day of fat slobbery dog-reckoning has arrived.

As mentioned in that previous post, I was given the duty of manning the front door of the building in which the school was housed during the changeover from morning to afternoon session.  You may not be aware of this, but every child is born with the instinct, when they see a door to the outside, to run through it and keep going until they're hit by a car.  Since these children were young and had yet to temper that instinct through teaching, I was the only thing that stood between their lemming-like habits and NoHo traffic.

The school was the second floor of this building, and as far as I know the rest of the building was occupied by tenants, some of whom seemed to be holdouts from a previous era when it wasn't necessary to sell an organ in order to stay in nice places in Manhattan.  Most old, upscale buildings on the island have people like this living in them.  They resisted the buyout when it came along, and like a tree absorbing a fencepost, the building just grows up around them.  For example, the entire second floor of the hotel at which I was a doorman was reserved for people who wouldn't leave the building when it was converted.  They were left to their own devices, like Morlocks.  My coworker said the second floor smelled like his iguana cage.  I've never owned iguanas, but that seemed about right.

I'm stereotyping, and there's certainly a degree of classism in effect here, but I believe Tiger's owner may have been one of these holdouts.  He was a lovely person, but he just didn't seem like the type to pay however many thousands of dollars to live in a loft in a historic Manhattan building.  I would see him when I came over to the school from the offices 10 or 15 minutes before the transition, when he brought Tiger down for their afternoon walk.  I would hear them first, as they lived on the third floor.  The first day I met them, I began to hear an epic procession of wheezing and uneven tramping down the stairs.  This went on for a while, slowly drawing nearer, until finally on the landing at the end of the hallway I saw one of the fattest English bulldogs I've ever seen.  He was, of course, adorable.  He was mostly brown, with darker brindle stripes and white highlights.  His owner was also very large, a late-middle-aged man, and I could not tell for whom the descent was more difficult.  They stepped off the last stair and just stood there for a minute, collecting themselves.  The man introduced his dog as Tiger, and they both limped out the front door, panting.  I don't recall ever seeing them make the climb back home, and I can't imagine how it occurred without some sort of pulley system or winches.  Tiger was a big boy.

I saw them several more times, and we got to "know" each other as you do people in this city whose paths somewhat regularly cross yours.  Always the racket of them wheezing down the steps into the empty hallway, the rest at the end, and the gentle regard from Tiger as they went out the door.  They always did this before the class change, except for the one day they didn't.

The morning class had come down with the teachers, meeting the waiting parents and nannies in the hallway.  Most of the afternoon children were there as well, and the hall was filled with the happy din of parents, teachers and four-year-olds catching up with each other.  Over this I heard the familiar wheezing and stomping, but no one else knew what they were hearing.  Then suddenly Tiger had joined us, tired and happy.  They did not know how to handle his presence.  This fat, sloppy dog had absolutely no place in the allergy-ridden Montessori upper-class worldview of these people, and I was just delighted.  So was Tiger.  It turns out that he loved kids.  He weighed more than any two of them combined, and all he wanted to do was jump on them and lick face.  His owner was responsible enough to keep this from happening, and Tiger was straining as hard as he could against his harness to get his huge tongue on these kids.  Parents, kids and teachers all shrank back so that there was a circle around Tiger wherever he went in the hallway.  Due to the exertion of the stairs and his excitement, he threw up in the middle of the floor.  Everyone but me, Tiger and his owner was horrified.  Finally one of the teachers had the presence of mind to get some paper towels, but not before Tiger tried re-eating his breakfast.  One of the children started weeping.  Tiger's owner apologized, and they waddled out the front door to see what the city had in store for them.  The children made their way upstairs, contemplating what they had just seen like Siddartha after he saw his first old man.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Outbound Customer Service, Call Center in Oak Ridge TN

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Outbound Customer Service, Call Center, Oak Ridge TN

Duration: Two months

Year: 2002

I first detailed the particular tortures of this job, and what led me to it, in this entry.  Take a moment to refamiliarize yourself.

Great.

I mentioned there was one good thing I took away from the job, amongst all the cold calls telling people they couldn't yet get the service they were paying for, watching the redneck next to me obsessively and clumsily hit on the girl next to him for months, and wondering just how much the Starfox poster in my furry boss' cubicle turned him on.  That one good thing was Pocket Tanks*.

My shift would occasionally overlap with Mark's shift.  You may recall him as my friend who was hired the same time as me, but in tech support.  That meant he was somewhere else on the floor, and we only got to hang out on our lunch breaks.  Lunch breaks here were sad, obligatory affairs.  The break room was small, situated between the main part of the floor and the entryway.  There was barely room to sit and have lunch, and if I remember correctly, no real meals were available for purchase.  I brown-bagged it.  However, there were a few computers in there, and when our breaks coincided Mark and I would play Pocket Tanks.

It's an incredibly simple game, variations of which have been around for as long as personal computing.  You set the angle and power of your shot, pick your weapon, and fire.  This continues, one shot per turn, til your enemy on the other side of the screen is exploded.  That's it.  No graphical innovation (nor was any needed), no fast-paced run-and-gun action, barely any sound.  Just a cool, subtle guitar track that can only be described as mid-90s video game music (see also: Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade's Revenge, and Streets of Rage).

After four hours of obsessively clicking and calling strangers in an otherwise completely silent environment, this game was like Call of Duty.

Pocket Tanks and the drive home were the only bright spots in the dim majority of my day.  Once I got home, life was good.  I was freshly graduated from college and content to simply have a job and hang out with my friends.  We watched TV together, played Xbox (the first Halo) and Gamecube (Super Monkey Ball), and generally goofed around.  This wasn't just Saturday nights, mind you; we all lived close enough to see each other regularly.  We didn't have any other obligations or the strangely crowded lives of people in their 30s.  Most of us were in the same apartment complex.  As such, I actually have fond memories of this time period; memories scored by the sweet, almost-rockin' guitars of Pocket Tanks.

But good god that job was terrible.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

*You can download the game for free at this link.  I see Super DX Ball is also available.  If you'd like to murder the next four hours and fail to accomplish anything else today, go ahead and download them both.

Job Journal: Assistant, Hodges Library, UT

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Student Assistant, Hodges Library, University of Tennessee

Duration: 11 months

Year: 2001

My boss at the library was Al. I have no idea what his last name was. He didn't need one. Not like he was one of the most gregarious characters in East Tennessee and everyone from Chattanooga to Johnson City knew who you meant when you said Al. More like he was incredibly peculiar and I had my doubts he was borne of woman, so why would he have a last name?

Al was in his 60s. I'm pretty sure he had only ever worked in libraries. For all I know, he had only ever worked on the fourth floor of Hodges Library at the University of Tennessee. He was a skinny turtle. Slight hump in his shoulders, head pushed forward, bald head and sloping nose. He had a soft, deliberate voice with a Tennessee accent. He was from a small town. I know this because he regaled us with a story from his childhood of a gang of youths who went around town throwing axes. He said they had no problem with him, but one time threw an axe into a door by his head. In any city, this sort of behavior would land the youths in jail and on the front page. In a small Tennessee town, it was only met with the sort of boys-will-be-axe-throwing-boys chuckle Al had in his voice when he told the story as my fellow assistants and I looked at each other, horrified.

Al was perfectly suited for the job, which, as I described, could be mind-numbingly tedious. He never waivered, physically or mentally. He always moved at the same steady, deliberate pace (though I doubt he won any races), and he never seemed upset. Never seemed very happy either. His version of small talk was pacing past me and simply naming the day of the week. "Tuesday," he'd say in his soft Tennessee drawl. Indeed, Al, it is in fact Tuesday. How do you feel about that? I have no idea. Once, he got a drink from the water fountain. He stood up and walked away, saying to no one in particular "That water was terrible," with the exact same tone he'd use to state the day of the week. I would occasionally get lost in the study carrolls by the windows and take a quick nap. My spidey-sense was too slow one day, and I heard his shambling zombie step too late. He caught me with my head down, and simply said "if you want to take a break, you should go to the break room." For all I know, he was barely containing a murderous rage at my transgression. Or he wished he could take a nap too.

The break room could be a bleak affair. On the top floor of the library, it was actually beautiful. Roof access, plenty of comfy seats, a fantastic view south of the stadium, the river, and the Smokies. But also, Al. Sometimes we would take lunch at the same time, and have exactly nothing to say to each other. Much like large bodies create a well of gravity around themselves, Al created a well of absolute ambivalence. I couldn't muster the willpower to say anything.

When my mind would wander in the stacks, I'd daydream about breaking bad news to him. "Al, I just ran over your dog." "Al, I just drop-kicked your sister off the roof." "Al, I'm raping you at this very moment." I didn't think these things out of any ill-will for the man. I just wondered how he'd respond. I could imagine no reaction but "Hmm, that's too bad. Thursday."

When I was "promoted" to keep the sixth floor in order by myself, I didn't see Al any more. I did start to understand how he came to be that way. The library was his own hermitage, just as the sixth floor had become mine. My walk slowed. My thoughts slowed. Had I not gone home for Christmas break and left the job, I could have taken his place eventually. I like to think he's still there, pacing slowly, naming days of the week and fondly remembering the sociopathic axe-throwing denizens of his youth.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Doorman at fancy women's clothing store

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Doorman at upscale women's clothing boutique in the Meatpacking District, NYC

Duration: 3 months

Year: 2006

My manager was just the sort of uptight social climber you would expect to manage a chic women's clothing boutique. She treated me nicely enough, but had very little patience if I ever questioned the way things were done around the store. I had exactly two opportunities to do so.

I always worked Sunday, when the store opened at 11. However, we needed to report to work at 10:15. Every other day, I needed to arrive about ten minutes early, to sweep the sidewalk and make sure everything looked orderly. I had no added responsibility on Sunday, but I obligingly showed up on time anyway. For a while. I was told we were there early because sometimes the designer liked to swing by the store after she brunched across the street at SoHo House (I wish I could explain how much that sentence hurt me to type). Realizing that she was never going to do that, I decided one Sunday to show up at 10:50, as if it were any other workday.

"Train problems?" asked my manager.

"No." Here's a tip for having a productive conversation with me: I'm intelligent, and often two steps ahead of people who don't get to the point. If you don't get to the point, I will be certain to act like I don't know what you mean and force you to say it. Hence, my blank stare after I said "No."

"We're supposed to be here at 10:15 on Sunday."

"Yes, why is that again?"

"In case Catherine decides to come by."

"Is she aware of what time her own store opens?"

And that was the end of that conversation.

Here's another case of me wildly bucking trends at the store. I was often compared to the previous doorman, Jason. "Jason did it this way." "Jason wouldn't do that." Well, Jason wasn't working there. As doorman/security/the only male in the store, I had to do some light maintenance. Literally, maintenance of lights. The interior of the store was actually remarkable, with a lot of specially-built lighting fixtures that I had to keep clean. I was also once asked to replace a boring old floodlight in the ceiling fixtures. I got the aluminum ladder out, climbed up and took a look at what I was dealing with. These weren't normal screw-in bulbs; rather, there were two forks that slid over screws, which were then tightened to keep the bulb in place. Everything I could see was metal--no shielding of any kind. I wasn't wearing gloves. You may remember what they taught you in second grade about metal and electricity.

"Can we turn off the breaker for this fixture?" I asked the manager.

"Why?"

"There's live electricity running through this and I can't work on it until you've turned it off."

"Jason never turned it off."

"I'd just feel a lot safer [ON THIS ALUMINUM LADDER] if we could do that."

"OK," grumble grumble disappear in the back.

She flipped some switches until it seemed like we found the right one. I took out the old bulb with no trouble. As soon as I touched the new bulb to the contacts, I saw a spark.

"That's still live. We need to turn that off or I can't do this."

"I don't know which one it is. Jason never needed to do this, he just changed the bulbs."

"Jason was an idiot."

And that was the end of that conversation. They called an electrician.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Toys R Us

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Cashier/Wheel World associate at Toys R Us, Clarksville TN

Duration: 3 months, both times

Year: 1999, 2000

I left my cashier position at Toys R Us at the end of the summer of 1999 to return to school at UT Knoxville. That's something both parties knew would happen from the get-go; something I can't imagine happening today, even at the most menial of jobs. Hiring someone you knew would be leaving in three months? What can I say, we were riding the gravy train that was the end of the Clinton administration. But they knew I'd be back, and back I was in 2000. With a promotion!

I was no longer a cashier (that is, unless the dedicated cashiers needed backup). I was to work on the floor, in the Wheel World. That's self-explanatory, but it meant I was also responsible for the big-ticket items in the back. If you wanted to buy a bike or one of those Little Tykes forts (which were awesome, by the way), or god forbid a swingset, you pulled a ticket from a pouch in front of the display, payed with said ticket at the register and drove around back where I'd be waiting with a giant box. You'd then realize there was no way you could get that box home in your 1983 Datsun, I'd tell you it wasn't my problem, and then close the door and chuckle maliciously.

Just kidding. That only happened a few times, and the customer tied the item to the roof of their tiny car and possibly killed dozens of people on their way home to rural Kentucky. Which is why we weren't allowed to help them tie it down.

This job was one step on the road to manhood. I had a scanner on my hip that beeped when someone bought a big ticket item. I kept a socket wrench in the other pocket, because in my free time I was to assemble any bikes that didn't have a display model. I went from using tools exactly .5 times in my life to regularly assembling bikes and adjusting brakes, gears, & seats. I was always dirty from lugging around boxes in the warehouse. My very kind manager Libby very kindly recommended I wash my shirt. Things weren't so bad.

Eventually, boredom set in pretty hard. In the summer, most people hit Toys R Us on the weekend. I worked at least three weekdays, which usually meant I stood around no less than five hours and tried looking busy. Then my mind would start working, and that's never been a good thing for me at a day job. The result is always a deeply existential undermining of everything the company stands for.

I was a Toys R Us kid. I know what it felt like to score that action figure you'd been looking at for weeks. I know what it was like to take the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sewer playset home and put on all the decals and stage the most epic battle you could imagine. But as an employee and adult, I knew how absolutely worthless all this plastic was. The kids fiended for the toys like junkies. We bought the toys from overseas, marked them up astronomically, and sold them. The kids pestered their parents until they finally caved. The kids played with the toys until the next new one came along. The toys ended up in a landfill.

For what? Six months to a year of joy? Kicking off a lifelong cycle of wanting, getting, and discarding? Material proof that the parents did not in fact wish to undo the existence of their children?

You can see how this sort of thinking can be problematic at 2 PM on a sunny Wednesday. And honestly I think it all came from trying to find an excuse not to re-shelve the toys I found laying around the store. There's the Carl Sagan quote, "if you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." I suppose the opposite could be, "if you don't want to do a menial task, you must find a reason that it's a hindrance to all of humanity." I am a pro at this.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Sales associate at Dillard's department store

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Sales associate in the home department of Dillard's

Duration: 11 months

Year: 2003-4

I've put off writing about this one for a long time. I suppose of all my jobs, this was my 'Nam—in that I never really knew why I was there, I couldn't figure out how to leave, and somehow I ended up with an ear necklace.

I'd been at UT's Alumni Association for quite some time, and while the job wasn't bad and the people were great, I felt like I needed to move on and grow up. That "growing up" at the time meant getting a job at a department store fills me with such a sweet nostalgia for my simple youth that it hurts.

Anyway, my friend Mark had been shopping in the home department of Dillard's for someone's registry, and the sales associate tried to get him to apply for a job on the spot. He knew I was looking for something else, and friend that he is, he mentioned it to me. I still appreciate him looking out for me and absolve him of any guilt for the following 11 months. Come to think of it, we both started working at that horrible call center at the same time. Maybe he's not such a great friend...

I went in a few days later to fill out an application, and the department manager, Chris, interviewed me. To say it was fast is an understatement. This was one of a few jobs where the manager saw I was a mentally competent human with four working limbs and decided immediately to hire me. What can I say? It was a boom economy. In truth, the department was filled with women, all of whom were either old or pregnant. The home department was one of the few areas of the store that actually needed someone who could carry a little weight, because they received shipments of pots & pans and appliances that needed to be hauled around the department, and that's not something at which pregnant or old women are known to excel.

In addition to cargo duty, I was expected to sell. Like, for real, talk people into buying things. This was new to me. Dillard's is known for being one of the highest-paying mall retailers around, and here's their secret: you're hired at a rate of pay that's pretty tough to maintain. It's not commission exactly, more like a quota. To maintain your introductory hourly pay, you're expected to sell a certain amount of goods every month. If you don't, you take a pay cut. If you sell more, you get a raise. There were women making more there ten years ago than my wife makes right now, working in the corporate Manhattan offices of a major clothing company. Those women would cut you to make a sale.

Like any job in a place you previously only frequented as a consumer, there was a very slight initial thrill of peeling back the curtain and seeing the guts of the machine. But soon you realize the lighting's awful, the floors are dirty and everything you're selling is garbage.

Why was this job so bad? It's too much to detail in one post, but I'll bullet-point it:

• I knew absolutely nothing about the stuff I was required to talk people into buying. Coffee makers? Toasters? Skillets? Why are any of these better than the others? Could the manufacturer even answer that?


• The job was by-the-numbers in the worst way. Clock-in was computerized. Ten seconds late was the same as fifteen minutes late, and after nine tardies you were fired, no questions asked. Many was the morning I sprinted to the clock to swipe my card, while the store manager stood by and watched. Luckily I only lived five minutes away.


• The break room. It was conveniently located right by our department, upstairs. For someone at the makeup counters downstairs, half your break would be consumed by walking to the break room. Unfortunately, it was the saddest room I've ever been in in my life, and I've been to a few funerals. The fluorescent lighting was at its vibrating yellowest in here. There was a dirty coffee maker that was never on. There was a 13" TV with rabbit ears at the front of the room, tuned in to poorly received daytime television. No snack machines, no magazines, no joy. How many people made the decision to end their own lives in that yellow room with bad TV? I almost immediately started taking my lunch breaks in the food court of the mall.


• The store manager was the worst kind of used-car salesman glad-handing lizard you could imagine. He looked down on all of us with poorly hidden contempt. It was widely known he was cheating on his wife. He was paid far too well, yet still wore ill-fitting suits. He had yellow teeth and a voice that made you want to break them. He did the morning announcements.

Some of the people I worked with weren't bad. Chris, my manager for most of the time there, was an absolutely great guy. I'll give him his own post. Some of the people were awful. They'll probably get a post too. I'll also tell you about some of the worst things we had to sell (balsa wood parrots, anyone?), how I learned to wrap a present like a boss, my ever-expanding lunch break, and what it's like to sell discounted Christmas ornaments for four straight hours.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Temp Office Assistant, private preschool in Manhattan

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Temporary Office Assistant, private preschool in Manhattan

Duration: 5 months

Year: 2008

While technically a temp job, this is one of the few long-term temp assignments I've done. I believe there were more temps than, um, perms, in the offices of this school. They were interested in someone with decent computer skills who could research things for them. I got hands. I can Google. Hired.

I got dropped right into this one. I didn't have any day-to-day regular tasks. From day one I began working on projects, the first being to research bus companies in the city and get a ballpark on how much it would cost to transport the 20 or so kids whose parents had expressed interest in this service. Short answer: good lord would that have been expensive. Had they been a fully chartered kindergarten, subsidies or something would have played a part, but that had yet to occur. Fun fact: there are approximately three companies who actually run bus service in Manhattan. You've no doubt seen at least ten different names on the sides of buses, but trust me when I tell you that every call I made got routed to one of three people.

Shortly after I wrapped that up, we moved our offices closer to the school and I began researching things for the new facility they were planning to move into. You may currently have an image in your head of adorable little desks, and hutches for their jackets & lunchboxes, and like paper. Allow me to disavow you of that image. This was a Reggio Emilia school (think Montessori). As such, I was researching things like climbing walls, giant soft geometric shapes, and insanely advanced whiteboards.

Around the same time, they decided to start sending me over to the school to man the door during the changeover from the morning class to the afternoon class. This gave me a chance to meet, and be terrified of, some of my favorite actors, whose children attended this school (ahemBillyCrudupahem). More importantly, it gave me a chance to be incredibly awkward around and somehow more terrified of their children.

These kids didn't know me. They weren't introduced to me. There was never a "hey everyone, this is Colin, he'll be in the hallway at lunchtime now!" moment. No, one day there was a strange, quiet man stopping the children from running out into traffic or the arms of waiting kidnappers.

I got comfortable at this job. I had my own desk, that no one else ever used, for I think the first time in my working life (age at time of job: 28). I started my own snack/candy drawer. They let me move my schedule around for auditions and/or classes. It was a good setup. I'm concerned I may have comforted myself right out of a job though. They increased my hours so I could get more done. I don't think I got more done. When the semester was up, that was all she wrote.

In future posts, I'll tell you how much I learned about urban gardening, how much I bonded with a gecko, and I'll introduce you to Tiger, the excited old English Bulldog.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Outbound Customer Service, Call Center in Oak Ridge TN

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Outbound Customer Service, Call Center, Oak Ridge TN

Duration: Two months

Year: 2002

It's tough to say if this was my worst job. Had I remained for close to a year, I'm guessing the answer would be yes. As such, I stayed at Dillard's for far too long and they win.

I'd been at my campus job at the Alumni Association past graduation, and felt like I needed to take a step towards adulthood. That meant getting a job (dun dun dun) OFF-CAMPUS. My friend Mark and I applied here at the same time, in response to a classified ad. We had to take placement tests; being more tech-savvy than I, he was placed in tech support. Being an actor with a good phone voice, I was placed in outbound customer service. At the time, this call center's client was BellSouth—specifically, BellSouth Fast Access DSL. That phrase rolls off my tongue now, but it took some effort getting there.

My duties were to sort various accounts in a queue into the appropriate subcategory (read: a lot of clicks on a computer). The only category I remember now is Pending Facilities. What that means is that a new customer awaiting their BellSouth Fast Access DSL service to start up is going to have to wait a little longer. That further means that I get to call them and tell them this. My stomach still turns at the sight of the words "pending facility." Ugh.

I would have a hard time believing this job is not now automated. There wasn't a true quota that I remember, but you definitely wanted to keep the number of accounts you sorted as high as possible. That meant a lot of repetitive actions, eight hours a day, five days a week. No music. No conversation, even though you're surrounded by people doing the same thing. And I had the good fortune of sitting near my boss, who was a furry.

No, seriously.

There were people in my training class who were surely, legally, mentally deficient. Nice people, but they could not wrap their heads around all the pointing and clicking we were being told to do on these computers. The training supervisor, sensing I was not in fact mentally deficient and maybe was getting the hang of this, had me take one of these poor souls under my wing. I did. He stayed on. One week after training. The first time we got paid, someone asked me what they were supposed to do with their paycheck. "Umm, you could deposit it?"

"I don't have a bank."

"Funny, you don't look like an Amazonian tribesperson."

The same guy marvelled at my ability to say "Hello, this is Colin from BellSouth Fast Access DSL," without, I don't know, chipping a tooth or something. I should've known something was wrong with him on the first day, when we were talking about the weather and he said that something about rain made him drive faster.

In future posts, I'll tell you more about ruining people's day via phone, the one redeeming thing I got from this job, and the glorious day I quit.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Student Assistant, UT's Alumni Association

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Student Assistant at the Alumni Association, University of Tennessee

Duration: 1.6 years

Year: 2/02-10/02, 12/02-October 03

This was the first job I got through a recommendation, and the first of several jack-of-all-trades positions. A secretary at the Honors Department was friends with a secretary at the Alumni Association. I had come back from Christmas break with no intentions of returning to the library, which surprised my supervisors there. I was weakly sending out feelers for jobs and this came back to me.

It was typical office busywork: filing, mailing, lots of things involving paper. It was, and still is, located in the Tyson Alumni House on campus. It's a beautiful house that's been on that site since the late 1800s. I worked out of a big room with five secretaries, all hardcore East Tennesseeans. I learned two oddities of East TN grammar there: you'uns, a variant of y'all (the thickest of accents would rhyme "you'uns" with "buns"), and "I don't care to do that" with the meaning of "Yes, I would be happy to do that." I would interpret the latter as "I don't care for you and I don't want to do that job." But hey, what do I know? Kind of a lot, actually.

They were all great women to work with. I think they lived vicariously through the students who worked in the office (there were sometimes up to four of us in there) and they always took an interest in what we were doing with ourselves. One of the secretaries, Michelle, kept a candy drawer, and she occasionally brought in homemade beef jerky. I've never had better. This mama's boy handily made the transition from living at home to living on his own and working with five surrogate mothers.

The best part of the job was the state car. I have fond memories of cruising around on various errands listening to the radio, in no particular hurry. We started with a Chevy Malibu, and moved up later to a bigger Dodge. We'd use it mostly for on-campus mail runs or other various deliveries, but sometimes we'd get to drive across town to the university's mail facility. Depending on traffic, you could count on up to an hour of hanging out in the car listening to the radio. I became very familiar with Mancow's morning show at this job. The car also got me into trouble a few times, but more on that in future posts.

Overall I enjoyed this one, though I remember feeling a little stagnant after I'd been there a while. I stayed on well after graduation and really had no business at a job like that as an "adult," but the die was firmly cast in favor of acting so anything else I moved on to would just be killing time as well.

I left this job for two months to work at a call center, which was of course a huge mistake.

In future posts, as mentioned, I'll tell you about that car trouble as well as what this job taught me about walking into new buildings, how the RIAA probably could have prosecuted our office, and how I got black lung.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Hotel Door/Bellman

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Doorman/bellman at Upper West Side hotel

Duration: 3 months

Year: 2005

Previous Entry

One assistant manager, who had a random European accent and seemed very much like he should be assistant managing a boutique hotel in NYC, asked to talk to me one day. At this time I generally gave no shits about my appearance, so my hair was the longest it's ever been. He said "Colin, we like to keep a certain image here at the hotel and your hair, it is not fitting. Could you keep it a little neater?" Basically Alan Tudyk's "tighten it up" speech from Knocked Up, but with a sleazier accent.

So I complied. I went to my normal place, which happened to be the barber shop in the subway at Columbus Circle, since closed. At this point I had only had my hair cut in subway barber shops in the city. There was a young guy working and I got in his chair, told him to cut it down to 1/2 an inch on the sides & back and a little longer on the top. He trimmed up the sides and without changing the clipper guard zipped right up to the top. "Uh..." I said, knowing we definitely just trampled all over the point of no return.

"Oh shit man, I'm sorry."

"May as well keep going. Just even it all out." He did, and that took quite a bit less time than my usual, though of course I probably could have done it myself and saved $12. If I didn't have the face of a boy and the skull of a baby left on a mountainside to die, I would've been cutting my own hair all along. But I still tipped him. Low-wage workers of the world unite.

So I went from this:


To this:


I showed up at work the next day to many surprised comments from my coworkers. The manager told me that I had not in fact needed to cut my hair and that the assistant manager was, how do you say, talking out of his ass. Karma came around when the assistant manager was fired for trying to seduce a front desk girl who was hired the same time as me, in one of the rooms. She quit shortly thereafter.

Yaaaaay.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Assistant, Hodges Library, UT

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Student Assistant, Hodges Library, University of Tennessee

Duration: 11 months

Year: 2001

This was only my second job, and to this day one of the longest durations I've ever withstood at a job. If I remember correctly I got it through a university-only classified site. I'm not sure. This is pre-Craigslist time, so my memory of how things happened back then are vague.

There were two major departments at Hodges: circulation and stacks. Circulation sat at the front desk, checked out/received library books, and put the returns on carts in the back. My department, stacks, got those carts and took them up to our various floors to reshelve them. When that was done, we checked the stacks to make sure the books were all in order. Hodges Library is six floors, and at the time home to over 2 million books. They use the Library of Congress system (vs. the Dewey Decimal system), so call numbers like PS1360.B64.1907 were not uncommon. Needless to say, walking down a row of books and making sure those numbers all line up can start to work on you over time.

I started out in the spring semester on the fourth floor. This is where most of the books people were coming to read were located: fiction, plays, poetry, general humanities, fine arts. You know, all those fun things your parents don't want you to major in. Given my shorter shifts during the schoolyear and the volume of books moving in and out due to finals, most of the time I was just shelving. In the summer, the grind really hit. We'd finish shelving books within an hour, and I'd have six or seven hours in front of me of just walking down the rows, checking every shelf for out-of-place books. I tried bringing my Walkman in and listening to the radio. The signal was weak in the building. This is a job that would have been revolutionized with an iPod.

In the fall, I was given my own floor (oooh!). They sent me to the sixth, and smallest, floor. I alone was responsible for maintaining order! This mostly translated to me sitting in the floor reading The Right Stuff, thumbing through arty photography books, and returning the medical photography books from the men's room to the stacks with a pair of tongs on a daily basis.

I went home for Christmas at the end of the year, and upon returning to school I quit showing up for this job. I didn't tell anyone; I just quit going. Apparently they were expecting me for some crazy reason.

In future posts, I'll tell you about the joy of living on my own for the first time, one of the strangest bosses I've ever had, and a few translation quirks with my coworkers.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's just an actor and a writer.

Job Journal: Doorman at fancy women's clothing store

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Doorman at upscale women's clothing boutique in the Meatpacking District, NYC

Duration: 3 months

Year: 2006

This was my second summer in NYC, between my second and third year at grad school, and I needed a job. I couldn't go back to the hotel job after telling them I'd decided to go back to school last year, because what excuse would I use at the end of this summer? Turns out, the same one, but at a different job.

This was a Craigslist ad, just like the hotel job. I had experience this time, all the experience one needs to stand in one place for eight hours and open a door. They wanted a headshot too, which makes me think they wanted a big handsome model. Well, they got me instead. I believe they were considering another modelesque applicant, but apparently, spoiler alert, he was dumb as a rock. Which is saying something when your chief duty is opening a door.

In addition to opening the door, I was also "security." If someone wanted to walk out with a $500 dress, they probably could have. But I took it quite seriously, having grown up secretly spying on people anyway. I kept a mental map of every customer's position, made easier by the small size of the store. I made a game of wandering from the door to watch people without them knowing I was watching them. Creepy right? This is what happens when you're told to STAND IN ONE PLACE FOR EIGHT HOURS. Also, I follow every rule ever told to me with such fervor you'd think I was a Fascist in a former life. If you tell me to keep an eye on people, I damn well keep an eye on them.

Now, the uniform. Some of you reading this may have been fortunate enough to swing by and say hello to me at this job, so you know what it was. For the uninitiated, see below:



Note also the large glass wall I'm standing by. That meant a couple of things. First, several gay men popped in just to say things to me like "Aren't you just a little angel!" or "Is it your job to just stand here and look fabulous all day? Then you're doing great!" Don't get me wrong—that's super flattering. But I look like a clown. Which leads to number two: I'd stand so still, and so close to passers-by, that many times if I did slightly move they'd jump out of their skin. That was fun. I still have that shirt and belt.

Some of the people who worked here were nice enough, but come on. This was not my world. I make no claims to geniusry (see?), but I think it's not immodest to say my mind is active enough that if I stand in one place for eight hours, five days a week, I will slowly go insane.

In future posts I will tell you about our champagne stock, the racist music we were forced to listen to, and the time my manager tried to kill me with stupidity.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Hotel Door/Bellman

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Doorman/bellman at Upper West Side hotel
Duration: 3 months
Year: 2005

I found this job through Craigslist. I had no relevant professional experience, though most of my previous jobs also did not allow me to sit and as a polite person I've opened many a door and carried many a bag for other people. Suddenly they were handing me 1s, 5s, and sometimes 20s for being polite. This was the first and thus far last job I ever had that involved tips. I liked it. If I had to go back to one of my old jobs tomorrow, I'd probably pick this one. Because I did not, in fact, have to dress like that guy in the picture.

The duties were self-evident. Open the door genially, carry any bags that needed carrying, and give directions/recommendations if asked. I didn't know the Upper West Side very well at the time, so whenever someone asked for a good restaurant I would just parrot the places I heard the other doormen recommend. I'm sure they were basing these recommendations on doormen before my time and so on, so that we were in fact recommending Tammany Hall-era speakeasies. If so, it never got back to me.

I was living by myself at the time in Inwood. This was the first summer after grad school. The hotel of course thought I was quitting school because it wasn't for me. I knew this entire time that at the end of the summer, I'd be telling them the school offered me an attractive scholarship and I was going to go back (see also: 2006). Taking a look at my somehow-still-increasing amount of student loan debt, I wish desperately this were true.

I usually worked the 3 PM-midnight shift, and since I was living alone I decided to flip my own script. I would wake up around 1 PM, eat breakfast, shower and head to work. I'd eat lunch at work around 6, then eat dinner at home around 1 AM. I would stay up til 4 or 5 playing video games or writing short pieces about how much I wanted to burn down my neighborhood. It was a solitary summer, but I'd gone through a bad breakup and I think it helped me reset to 1.

My fellow doormen were all pretty nice. There was an even split between blue collar and actor/artist types. One guy filled most of his time by getting DVDs from Netflix, copying them, and sending them back as fast as he could. Another guy was apprenticing with someone who was teaching him how to win online poker. The teacher made a steady living with his skill, and was including a few other people in a pyramid where he'd fund their playing after teaching them to at least break even, and giving them a cut of the winnings. If this is true, I'm still convinced it's the best way I could make money right now. There were at most three of us at the door at a time, but usually just two. Eight hours of standing around with another guy, you get to know them fairly well. The poker apprentice and I had the most in common. He was also an actor and generally into the same stuff as me, though frustratingly he would not hurry up and read the sixth Harry Potter, which came out while we worked there.

We were given shirts to wear with the hotel logo on them, and we had a locker room downstairs. I believe there may have actually been a working shower in there. Fun fact: I've never seen a shower in a locker room in use, though I've never belonged to a gym either. One time I was in the locker room getting ready for work with the poker apprentice. He looked at his shirt and said "do you think they'll let us keep this when we quit?" Career men, we were not.

In future posts, I'll tell you about how endearing a racial epithet can be to a white guy, why Italians have skin like their luxurious purses, and why I don't like French people.

Colin Fisher is many things to many people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.

Job Journal: Toys R Us

The United States workforce is represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: those who plan on keeping their job for the long haul, and those who are biding their time before becoming the Next Big Thing. These are stories from the second group.

Job: Cashier/Wheel World associate at Toys R Us, Clarksville TN
Duration: 3 months, both times
Year: 1999, 2000

This was my first-ever job. I got it the summer after my freshman year of college. My parents had never really encouraged me to get a summer or after-school job, for which I think I'm grateful. I certainly liked all my summers up to this point. I asked mom later why they never made me get a job, to which she said something along the lines of "it sucks and we wanted you to enjoy yourself for as long as possible." Fair enough.

I don't remember what motivated me to start working that summer. I think it just seemed like it was time. I had applied at a few places I thought I might enjoy: the Sound Shop in our mall, bookstores, things like that. These were all places I liked as a customer, so naturally working there would be fun right? Which incidentally is why I'm an actor now. I also loved Toys R Us.

That might be a bit of an understatement.

My hometown didn't have a Toys R Us for a long time. When I was young, we would drive to Nashville every few months and go to Showbiz Pizza and Toys R Us. I am too inexperienced a writer to describe to you the joy I felt on these trips. I remember marveling at the walls of strange toys, characters and entire worlds I'd never seen before. I remember the Millennium Falcon, out of the box, high up in the action figure aisle. Amazing.

So this was a natural target for me. They needed a cashier, and a cashier they got. After I was hired, I came in on a Friday afternoon for training on the register. Once I got it all down, the person training me walked away and left me to fend for myself. What I thought would be a quick few hours turned into a full eight hour shift on my feet. I had never stood for that long in my life. I don't think I ate dinner. I came home in shock. The MTV Movie Awards were on. It was the year Jim Carrey did that weird Jim Morrison thing.

The assistant manager had written down my schedule for the next week for me. I wasn't due in again til Sunday, so I was relieved to have Saturday to recover from my first ever day of standing for no reason. I was accustomed at this time to sleeping in until noon or so. The phone rang shortly after 10 AM, and mom came in and said it was for me. It was the store manager. "You're scheduled to open the store today. Are you going to make it in?"

Um, what? "Oh, Libby told me I wasn't coming in until tomorrow."

"Well, you're on the schedule for today. Come in as soon as you can and we'll show you how to read the schedule, OK friend?"

Fantastic first impression.

In future posts I'll tell you about my second summer here, how much I loved working at 3 AM, and my skill at finding deeply existential reasons to dislike any day job.

Colin Fisher is a lot of things to a lot of people, but mostly he's just an actor and writer.