Just how bored are you, really? I mean, it's all well and good to sit there with your back sticking to your Naugahyde loveseat, with your forehead like a sponge in reverse, with your privates swimming in summer-uncomfortable undies, and tell me you're bored. But this one requires a little more than garden-variety humdrum, inattentive monotony. For this one, you've gotta be suffering from that special soul-sucking, spirit-crushing, sandpaper-eyed lack of input that inspires such venerated human distractions as 25,000-piece jigsaw puzzles, pet taxidermy and hari kari. So turn within and ask yourself — just how bored are you, really? Because to want to go through the trouble of obtaining a horrible job for the sole purpose of enduring it for one day and then quitting, you've got to be pretty fucking bored.
Or possessed of the kind of badly misfiring sense of humor that perceives David Cronenberg flicks as comedy.
The upshot is, any job you're likely to find on short notice to occupy eight hours of your nonproductive summertime existence is apt to be of the manual variety. When one has been lying on soiled carpet for five or six days in a row watching television sideways rather than prop one's head upright, a day of sweaty toil tends to do wonders for one's self-esteem. Don't go down to the Burger Emporium on the corner and apply for a fry-cook's position on a lark; in three days, when the manager calls to schedule an interview, you will already have come to your senses. Or, as happened to me, you might not get called at all.
But everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who delivers furniture or details cars or runs a lawnscaping business or bar-backs or something. These are the kinds of opportunities you're looking for — an easy connection to some physical labor with a high employee turnover rate. Call your buddy who refinishes armoires and ask him if he needs another hand on the truck. Find out whether or not your co-worker's roommate could use somebody at the construction site. Sweeter options might present themselves, like a shift delivering pizzas in your air-conditioned car or rearranging the filing cabinets in somebody's air-conditioned office, but the chances of your landing a gig reviewing new pornography or initiating a hostile corporate buyout are slim. If you had access to those kinds of jobs, you'd already be doing them full-time.
Acute nocturnal ennui and a dire need for extra cash led me back to a job I once held part-time and occasionally still undertake — slinging drinks at St. Pete's State Theatre. Perhaps going back to previous employment for a night or two could be construed as cheating, but a connection's a connection, and a buck's a buck. Now, anyone who has never tended bar and frequents half-empty watering holes automatically assumes it's a fun and easy job. Chat up the customers, fill the orders, get shots bought for you and see the bands for free. Sounds great, right?
Well, after lugging more than a dozen cases of beer and a couple of beer tubs up two flights of stairs, and setting up the State's not-quite-finished balcony bar, I spent the next three and a half hours wishing I had enough time to briefly contemplate a postal-style murder/suicide blitzkrieg. But I didn't, what with explaining repeatedly to the same customers that I didn't have mixed drinks, explaining repeatedly to other customers that the prices were non-negotiable, explaining the difference between Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Silver (negligible), and running out of everything four times. I mean shit, I barely had time to conspicuously ignore attempts at eye contact and unsuccessfully flirt. About 30 minutes into the headliner's set, I parted with the absolute last malt beverage I could scrounge up. It actually might have been a bottle of spring water with a soggy Bud Light label wrapped around it. Then I shut off the neon, donned a jaunty straw cowboy hat as a disguise, and tried to limp down the stairs and out the front door unnoticed.
No such luck. I was spotted, corralled and dragged behind the lobby bar, where five of us (the State's main bar can efficiently accommodate, oh, one and a half 'tenders) continued to exchange alcohol for cash, credit and wildly varying degrees of courtesy for another hour and a half. My knees buckled. My arms sustained massive bruising and charley horses. My confidence suffered perhaps irreparable damage, and my "bottle cap finger" still lets me know when it's going to rain four hours in advance. I swore, loudly and more than once, that I would never, ever, ever do anything like that again.
Then they gave me my money, and I considered a radical career-trajectory shift.
In all, it was much more interesting than spending another Thursday night waiting to see which syndicated episode of NewsRadio would come on at midnight. I sure as hell wasn't bored. So this summer, when you've gotten to the point where you're starting to feel a little too much like Jimmy Stewart's character in Rear Window, and even pleasuring yourself with the other hand has grown tiresome, maybe you should consider the unthinkable.
Get a job. Then reward your ingenuity and effort — by quitting.
This article appears in May 15-21, 2002.
