Take this job and...

All right. I'm down to the wire here.

I have been thinking seriously about quitting my place of employment. It would be the only time in my life I would be consciously abandoning a job with nothing else on the horizon. I've weasled in and out of many jobs, as a matter of fact, without actually quitting them.

A brief synopsis of my work history:

MCDONALD'S: Age 16
After my mom died, my dad insisted that if I ever wanted to drive, I had to get a job to pay for car insurance. I mentioned this to a good high school friend, who happened to be employee of the month at McDonald's every month for the past five months, so he got me in easily, unbeknownst to me, so I felt obligated to start showing up. My time there was marked by earning the coveted drive-thru position (coveted because it consisted largely of making Happy Meal boxes and it was extremely easy to sneak milkshakes into The Hole) and learning the ins and outs of polishing sheet metal with club soda water squirted directly from the soda fountain. The highlight of my time there was when the restaurant was held up at gunpoint. It's the only time in my life I've ever had a real gun pointed at me. But I never quit the job... after I went to college, I came back for winter and spring breaks, with the promise of more. Because I never quit, I still have my uniform. If I ever weigh 115 pounds again, I'll wear it for Halloween.

CONVENIENCE STORE/DELI: Age 17
This was by far the best summer job I've ever had. It didn't pay much, but I got to meet people who gave me all kinds of unsolicited advice throughout college. One old lady told me that if I kept cut onions more than a few days in the fridge, they would poison me. Another told me that while my engagement ring was frighteningly small, it was a "perfect" diamond. (Much later I had it appraised: $400.) I was exposed to all kinds of people, including a lot of trailer trash who had kids out of wedlock, which I have aspired to and become. My boss was a creepy old man who took all the girls back to the office and made them sit on his lap while he told them what a good job they were doing. While I was there I learned what was really in Isaly's chipped ham. UGH. Other perks included sneaking Good Humor out of the ice cream case. Which probably started me on the road to never seeing 115 pounds again.

COLLEGE NEWSPAPER: Age 17
It was a lousy stipend, but I totally fell in love with everything about newspapering there. And I did it all, including photo editor and production editor, and I helped get the paper from paste-up to pagination. My aunt still has on her wall a framed copy of my first published photograph of Light Up Night in Pittsburgh. As ambitious as I might have seemed, I turned down an editor-in-chief offer there. Writing seven inches three times a week would have cut into my Euchre/Boone's time.

AD AGENCY INTERNSHIP: Age 20
The woman who owned this home-based agency was totally psycho -- and once left in the middle of the day to go see a friend who claimed to see the vision of Jesus in the wood-grain paneling in his mobile home. No fucking lie. I think she liked me very much, though, because she had me watch her kid while she left for the afternoon, for what I never knew. Her husband, A PROVOST AT MY UNIVERSITY, would come home before she did and seem puzzled too that I was there watching their kid and supervising the crew pasting wallpaper in the kitchen. I wrote an honest paper about my internship, and I would bet a lot of money that my paper is nowhere to be found in the journalism department's archives.

LOCAL NEWSPAPER INTERNSHIP/JOB: Age 20
It was extremely unremarkable. I remember a lot of bickering among the older employees, some wishing each other were dead out loud. I stayed on after the internship to work part-time. I remember during this time learning how to drive a stick, graduating, and getting married that first time. But I remember very little about the job. Oh, and the fight for parking spots. Most of us had to feed the meter every few hours. I got a lot of tickets during my time there.

FLORIDA NEWSPAPER: Age 22
I spent 10 years in Florida. I said the convenience store was the best job, but really, I didn't have to sit on an old man's lap at my paper in Florida. Even though I couldn't steal Slim Jims from there, I just LOVED my Florida job. When I was looking for employment in Florida, I resisted the paper and went for ad agencies, but they all turned me down. So I grudgingly took the newspaper job after working briefly for a dot.com that failed. I moved through the ranks quickly at the paper, going from glorified secretary to, finally, senior copy editor. I thought I was going to retire in Florida, at that very job. It was just heaven to me. They paid me to read stories! To design shit at my whim! But, obviously, things changed, as things often do. And I was eventually reunited with my homeland.

PENNSYLVANIA NEWSPAPER: Age 32
At the risk of sounding like a lame local news station promo for a lame local news station segment, FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS WHEN...

I know it's not safe to talk about work on the internet, but it may be time. Let me think about it.

Please stay tuned.



I wouldn't know where to start.