Works
Works
By Bryan May
“Who do you think is older?” “Umm, I don’t know. You?” “No, not me! Sucker!” Polite words spoken to a 15 year-old boy during his first day at his initial place of employment. Well, it wasn’t my initial place of employ, per se. When I was thirteen I worked during nutrition and lunch at the Student Store. Imagine that, a kid so driven to make money that he gives up his nutrition and lunch at age 13 to work with a couple of three hundred pound English women. They were enormous. And English. Their accents would have been endearing, except they were brutish in their behavior, ridiculing me with whenever possible. I was a trustworthy and wholesome lad, and nothing could corrupt my strong work ethic and pleasant demeanor. But these two nipped at me, and as I sat rolling coins my hands became soiled and sticky. I cringed whenever a student would dump a handful of palm-heated pennies on me because I knew I’d have to sort them. The bill counter was rather fascinating, and I always dreamt of lifting a fold. But they eyed me with such coldness that I never dared even pocketing a single five-pence. It was always a distant mystery how two women of such girth could possess such tiny eye sockets which housed such tiny eyeballs, tiny eyeballs which encased such tiny pupils. My friends would come around not to buy some Cornuts, not to browse the Trapper Keepers, not to flirt with the pig-tailed girls in line. They came to taunt me. It worked to some extent, but when I received my envelope filled with one-dollar bills and hand-me-down greasy pennies, I knew I hadn’t wasted my time. With that money I purchased baseball cards not that I wanted for my collection, but cards that I knew I could sell for even more money, and take that money and purchase cards that I wanted for my collection and still sport some leftover loot.
My second job was indeed working in my field of expertise. “The Baseball Card Co.” was a richly perverse environment full of temptation and harsh characters. A sports card shop is a haven for gamblers and washed up husbands that have unhappy home lives. It’s like the daytime watering hole. Countless men would roll in, lump themselves on a stool and start opening packs while they told my bosses and me about their ills. They could gamble, cuss, verbally bash their wives and get some companionship and still return home sober. Plus, occasionally they would pull a valuable card and be able to sell it for maybe $100 or so, in which case they would return home and take their hot mama out for some Olive Garden. Their treat. Steve and Mike were 20 when I was born, and 35 when I started at the shop, but you wouldn’t know it. We laughed and related to each other like kids on a little league squad. I am proud to say, eleven years later, they are still my friends. The co-owners of the card shop heard about my first girlfriend, they were there for my first bet, and they participated in my first “big” stakes poker game. Hell, I was gambling and talking trash with them about dames before I could even drive! Steve called me a “sucker” on my first day of work for responding “you” when he asked me who was older between the two of them. Mike was six months older, but had a full head of hair. Still does. It’s red.
It was April, which meant I was two months away from graduating high school. Senior Year was by far my best at ole’ Chaminade, and I was getting sad watching the culmination get closer and knowing that it would be over so soon. I was walking through the office and decided to check the tack board for job postings. In three years, I’d never been in this room of the office, but I had heard about the job postings, and I was curious to see what it was all about. “Tutor needed for 6th grade middle school student.” And so it was. I arrived at Nick’s house April 1996, and tutored him until 2001. I watched him talk about girls publicly for the first time, saw him get his first car, graduate high school, and showed him the rules of poker. He used to call me his brother, and just two months ago we smiled and laughed and hit each other while watching “Napoleon Dynamite.”
After that it was a little shaky. I graduated college at 21, and whatever was going on, I ended up pinballing around jobs and endured long lapses of unemployment. I gave Mortgage Banking a whirl, but quit that in favor of writing articles for a Cruise and Travel company. I worked from home and made a ton of money for a few months, but blew most of it on trips to Vegas and frivolous endeavors. Then, the Company, a dot com, went under, and I was back hitting the streets. I was a golf club salesman for a day even though I’ve never golfed, I dealt blackjack at a local Casino but walked out after mere hours because of the depravity, and I was hired as a security guard but my dad wouldn’t allow it. “I’m not having my oldest son stabbed by some jackass while trying to make a couple bucks.” I gambled huge sums but never got hurt too badly, and I had two market research agents that would call me to test products all around the city. Only in L.A. do you have a market research agent. Make that TWO market research agents. I had a nine-day beer study, where I went to an office with a dozen other people every day for nine straight, where we drank beer and wrote down our opinions. That paid almost a grand. Come to think of it, I did four or five alcohol studies during my market re tenure. I worked at a couple more small dot coms and at a company that specialized in building amusement park rides, but none of those lasted very long. For a bit I thought I’d be a professional card player, professional sports handicapper, or a writer, but none of those are too consistent. Besides, who the hell would spend their free time reading my thoughts anyway? And pay for it? Ha! Let’s see you make a living off writing for free newsletters.
So after all of that, and a few others here and there, I ended up at Warner Bros. Records, where I spent two years. That was some kind of crowning achievement as far as commitment and hard work were concerned. But I couldn’t stay there with the .0000071% annual raise that I was seeing, and Madonna baby tees and concert tickets don’t pay this proper pauper, so it was time to salute the good friends that I made and move on. Move on to the coveted affiliate network. The business that I never knew existed. Amazing. And here I am, ravenous at the thought of contacting a new Publisher, shaking with delight at the prospect of a new offer, and scrambling with glee at the notion of working our booth at Ad-Tech.
Think about the jobs you’ve had and what happened where did when met who to get you where you are today. If it hasn’t been a worthy journey, then it hasn’t been a trip worthwhile. But here’s the thing- worthwhile trips can be initiated at any moment.
Bryan May
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