I’ve had a lot of shitty jobs. I’m sure just about everyone can attest for that, anyway. After spending most of my teen years cleaning up bathrooms after goddamn strangers, I’ve decided that this summer I owe it to myself to end up bring home easy retail money with the least amount of responsibility possible. I don’t want to be driving any fork-lifts, handling food, handling babies, wielding hedge clippers — no, I want to scrape the bottom of the barrel. I want to get paid to clock in and clock out. Sure, I’ve had jobs in past, decent jobs at that, where I made a good amount of money. I’ve almost certainly come to the conclusion, however, that the amount of work that goes into a summer job should equal the amount of work that I’m willing to put in in the first place. I’m only able to work in between semesters like the rest of the college-going world, so why shackle myself to a demanding job run by demanding people who demand work demandingly? I’m not going to is all I’m saying.

About two weeks ago I realized that I should hop on the employment train before all the other college kids got back into town and claimed all the high-paying, do-nothing jobs I so desperately wanted to see myself in for the next three months. Having seen the EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY BUS parked outside the Harris Teeter that’s opening at the end of the month, I figured I’d give it a shot. What the hell, maybe they’d let me handle produce. That sounded like a nice, easy job. Just sitting there in my little apron, puttin’ fruit where fruit should be. Maybe head to the back and wash some corn off or some shit– I don’t know! I’d worked at a grocery store before, anyway. Food Lion was the first job I’d ever had and I only realized how ridiculous it was after I left. Ridiculous as in, I didn’t do anything and got paychecks. Sure, it seemed like a pain in the ass when I had the job, but I didn’t know any better. Now I know, I thought. So I pulled up to the EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY BUS after a cold shower, my hair still wet and asked for an application. Man, was it hot. I’m talking clothes melted to your skin hot. I felt as if I were to try and peel said clothing off my skin, it would peel the epidermis off with it. Fuck, man, I can’t have that happening, I thought, so I filled out in my car. Eric came with me, he too seeking employment within two miles from his home. So there we sat, the sun shitting on us in all directions, making up numbers and addresses to jobs we may or may not have ever had. I figured out a long time ago that jobs don’t check the references you list so I started making up companies. I’ve owned a landscaping company called The Lawn Wranglers and even employed local immigrants to paint barns with me. That’s what my applications said and that’s all they needed to know, anyhow.

Harris Teeter is a pretty ritzy grocery store; about as ritzy as a grocery store can get, anyhow. I knew they’d probably be really anal and precise but I didn’t care. I applied for positions where a manager isn’t breathing down your neck and where one could bury oneself in one’s work– if one so desired. If I could stock, I could always look like I’m working. If I had a produce headquarters then I could duck out and eat lettuce or something if things were slow. It’s not that I don’t like working or am lazy — I actually don’t mind working at all. I just don’t like the idea of having someone watching my every move, waiting for me to drop a cake or for me to slow down, if even for a minute, giving them a stepping stone to hound me because, let’s face it, managers tend to watch their workers since that’s their job description and are usually individuals who are finally in an administrative role and exercise their authoritative powers any chance they get. I’ll get the job done as long as somebody isn’t telling me where to shit, you know?

Anyway, Eric and I finish the applications and approach the EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY BUS. A stout man with a Stretch Armstrong look to him approaches us in that familiar, fake manager tone, excited as hell to meet complete strangers. It’s fairly easy to discern genuine people from those who aren’t, and my bullshit meter was going off big time. Whatever, I thought, it’s a job. He pretends to read our applications and glances over our desired positions.

• STOCKER
• PRODUCE
• DELI

“So you both want to be stockers?” We nod. He shakes his head and tells us they’re all full up, is there anything else we’d be alright with? Basically he’s got his heart set on making us meat men whether we like it or not and entertains our “produce” dreams only because, well, he’s a fake manager guy. I bet all he sees in his own mind is Pong. All day long. Forever.

“Fresh foods is really great. I worked there during my tenure in college because you make more than the cashiers and I was getting tired of eating ramen and peanut butter!!!!!”

We giggle a bit and he invites us into this shitty bus where Harris Teeter’s base of operations was at the time, being that the store was infested with plumbers, day laborers and dozens of fake managers just like the clean-cut man before us. I figure this bus is air-conditioned since it’s housing a bunch of snobby Harris Teeter managers and potential employees which are little more than bubble gum-chewing teenage girls with neon pink nails and a bored look on their faces. Well, no, this bus might as well have been a fucking Nazi furnace because people were roasting in there. This aluminum deathbus roasted under the sun. I felt like a prisoner of war — you know, when they put them in those tin boxes and let them roast under the Vietnam sun. It’s a form of torture, I’m sure, the name of which eludes me. Anyway, we’re informed that the jobs are ours!!! after we take a bunch of 100 question tests for some reason. I wasn’t really worried, I’d taken these bullshit “Be a team player!  ” tests before at previous interviews. He put my social security number and other secretive, vital information I don’t like giving to complete strangers into the “testing station” which was little more than a bench and some shitty Dell from 1996. The test consisted of various honesty questions which I assume they use to weed out unwanted candidates right up front. There were four boxes: strongly agree, probably agree, probably disagree and strongly disagree. No sweat, I thought, as sweat trickled down my face in fucking bucketloads. I’d taken many similar tests before. The third question on the test, I shit you not, asked me if I would turn my parents in to their employer if I found them to be stealing from said employer. No, this man, this fake manager told me to answer this test honestly. I figured they didn’t want the typical brown nosing so commonly associated with job interviews and I wasn’t about to tell the man what he wanted to hear; this job really didn’t mean much to me. Hell, all I wanted to do was stock fruit. So I answered “probably disagree” since, come on, this isn’t a modern day Stalinist era we’re living in. I’m not going to turn my family in — that’s blood, man. Many of the other questions involved similar cold-blooded questions such as, “Tina was having a bad day and accidentally yelled at a customer. Should she be fired?” I, of course, ticked the “probably disagree” box since, come on, that’s someone’s career or something. I don’t know what kind of social background Tina has. I don’t know Tina’s situation. Furthermore, who the hell is Tina and what is her problem, anyway? Plus, that’s Tina’s first mistake as far as I’m concerned. People make mistakes.

Well, I made a mistake. I bombed the test. Eric was already on part two which could only be accessed if part one was completed to their specifications. The test didn’t immediately inform me of my failing, but it redirected me to a page which assured me that “Harris Teeter values [my] application”. The fake manager waddled between the benches in the deathbus and, curious to my lack of testing, questioned what had happened.

“Did you close out of it? I told you not to close out of it!”

“I didn’t close out of it.”

I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who has ever failed that test. As in, like, ever. The managers seemed completely clueless as to what they were supposed to do with this stupid kid who didn’t know how to lie on employment tests. They stared at me, bemused at my stupidity as if I were the first white man that they, the secluded tribesmen, had ever seen. They looked at me and didn’t know what to do or say. Yes, you’re supposed to lie. Yes, you’re supposed to sound like a robotic Harris Teeter yes-man. You’re supposed to tell them everything they want to hear. I wasn’t about that, see. As corny as it may be, I’m not going to injustice myself with such nonsense. He said be honest, I was honest. I guess Harris Teeter isn’t interested in human beings who have blood coursing through their veins– or they only want people who know to lie on an honesty test. How ironic is that shit? An older woman sat down next to me on the bench and looked at me with motherly eyes.

“Welllll let’s see here,” she said smiling, opening the browser to examine what had taken place, as if some fluke in the computer software was to blame. I knew. I wanted to walk out right then and there and get in my car and go home but this kindly old woman was blocking my only escape route. Had she not been so friendly, I was thinking on manically screaming and jumping around before hopping out of the bus and running to my Cherokee. But I didn’t. I sat in that bench, my shirt now soaked in my own perspiration, waiting for this woman to tell me something I already knew. Something she would inevitably declare to the entire bus. This bus was filled with people who all passed the first test– who knew how to answer “yes” to those questions to which I had answered “no”. There, next to my name in a long list of other potential employees was the phrase “not recommended”. I didn’t feel bad because I’d lost out on a job I didn’t care about on the first place, it was the simple juxtaposition of my name and “not recommended”. I don’t care if that phrase accompanied my name if I were to apply to be a stock broker or a fireman — jobs which I am severely under qualified for in the first place and thus would take no offense at being turned down — it’s just the principle is all, you see.

“Try again in six months, sweetie,” she smiled again.

Fake manager guy didn’t even look at me. He was too busy fiddling around with outdated technology that some girl had fucked up. She got the job. This girl, this stupid girl who didn’t have a thought in her head or a hope in her heart — she got the job. For being sincere, honest and over-qualified to cut up lamb and pigs into cute, thin little slices that go in between bread, I didn’t. I tilted my head in that sort of, “Look, I know I fucked up, can you move out of this bench so I can run away,” the woman moved and I hopped off the bus and ran to my car in an attempt to stay out of the sun’s warpath.

It’s alright, though. I’m told wearing a hat is part of the uniform and personally I don’t think I look all that great in hats. I wouldn’t recommend them, anyway.