Life on the Outside: Blue Collar Blues (BARRY BUCCANEER: 2002)

Trust me, graduation ain’t all that. Especially because of one four letter word: W-o-r-k! For me, it’s the scariest thing about getting out. It is the harsh realization that it is all I will be doing for the rest of my life. The only possible interruption to the rut is even less palatable for some people I know: Marriage!

But work! It gets to you, man. Do you even know why they invented grad school? The masters program was started as a way of delaying the pain for those who were not ready for the world. For some, even those additional years were not enough so they invented the doctoral program. And that is where I see my life going. Maybe if I am able to become a man of letters, I can get a teaching offer and then I can never have to get out of school. But maybe I am going to have to get out there to the world and actually work if I am to fit to into the capitalist dispensation. Thank you, Adam Smith.

As Matt Damon’s character in Mo’ Money said “a job ain’t nothing but work,” you know. Believe me, I have worked some. My abhorrence of work comes not from a life of silver spoons but from one of blisters and hard hats that have eaten up my appetite for work. You name it, I have done it. Moral jobs and those that defied same. Overpaid and underpaid jobs. Also, jobs for which I have not been paid to this day. I have done jobs I wouldn’t want my mother to see me do. I have done jobs just because somebody’s got to and I’ve done jobs nobody asked me to. I have done some legal work, some non-legal and some downright illegal. But like someone said, “Hey, I’m selling crack to Junior here, but at least I’m not taking his candy.” It’s kinna like the men who patronize strip clubs because they “want to help a young lady through college.” And is that wrong?

I have done the clothing retail thing. Don’t you hate it when your loser supervisor asks you to look busy? Not BE busy. Just LOOK busy. What the hell is that! You see, we have been socialized to think that you have to “earn your money,” whatever that means. That is why jobs are not fun. Think about it, why would they pay you for it if it was fun? So paying for sex flies in the face of that logic. That is why it is illegal. I spent half of my time working retail BEING busy and the other half LOOKING busy. In fact, in a clothing store, you do not have to try that hard to look busy ‘cos you get busy, child. For some reason, customers have an uncanny talent for trying on the clothes you just folded, so all day its fold, fold, fold. When you’re working the register and there are no customers, that is your cue to go afolding.

A friend of mine worked at Macy’s for all of 30 minutes because she was so busy being busy that she could not afford the luxury of looking busy. But even with all the busyness, you do get a lot of time on your hands to look busy. This may sound weird, but I think I preferred being busy to looking busy cos being busy is an instinct but looking is an art. But I’ve had to do it for so long, I’ve practiced it down to a science. So if you don’t mind, I’ll share with you a few tips on looking busy in the retail business.

Nothing stops you from going to the bathroom on the top of every hour and spending 10 minutes each time. You see they record your lunch time but not the number of times you do a number one or a number two, and that’s probably the only place in your store where your store where there’s no camera. Congress forbids it (so before you vote, ask the candidate, “Where do you stand on cameras in the bathroom?”)

You can also tell your friends to come so you can “help them make their selection,” which of course you would buy later with your employee discount. If you have five friends come in everyday and spend fifteen minutes with each, you wouldn’t even need to go hang out after work.

Remember I told you I’ve done some jobs I wouldn’t want my mother to see me do? See, I used to work in the adult video/DVD section of a major entertainment retailer in New York City. It was fun working in that section not for the reason you’re thinking but because I would have all these Wall Street types coming up to me, asking me if this or that movie was good, I guess because I looked like I had seen all of them, which of course I hadn’t. But of course I knew how each one ended, so I would tell them something like “errrrrr, the storytelling is banal, the acting is worse, but I bet you would love the action sequences.”

Working video and stage production, you do get some supervisors who try to look busy by telling you to look busy. Video production involves early preparation and consequent long waiting periods so looking busy doesn’t really make sense. Once I had someone ask me to look busy two full hours before a show. At that time, my camera was ready so I walked around the hall eight times, did two hundred pushups and traced all fifteen hundred yards of cable with time to spare. With time to spare, I dismantled my camera and by time show started, I was not ready because I had little tiny pieces of a fifteen thousand dollar piece of equipment in my hands. Happy now?

Come to think of it, I do not want another job in retail. If with my B.A, I’m worried about NOT getting a job in retail, then I have bigger problems than that, I should be worried about getting a job in retail. I will make it without a real job. I swear I will prevail. Inflexibility in the face of adversity.