I’m trying to wean myself off of AIM at work. It’s proving to be as hard to kick as nicotine. AIM gets me through a workday in the same way a bump of coke gets a stripper through a bachelor party. However, I think this is a necessary measure, given that most companies have found correlations between employees with access to AIM and a general lack of productivity and blocked AIM from their computers (I’ve also heard AIM makes you impotent, but I try to take every warning like this with a grain of salt). Why should this make any difference to me? Well, in the near future I think I may be working for one of these companies; actually, I know I will considering I started looking for jobs with these companies recently. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of conducting my search at home on the couch while watching the Rose Bowl with the roommates. I quickly realized that this would be about as productive an exercise as a guy with no arms trying to win a sword fight. Not that I didn’t appreciate their suggestions though, a smattering of which I’ve included below.

Matt: You like shirts, don’t you? You could go work at the GAP. Employee discount. I call Fives on all the flannels.
Terry: What about Starbucks? They’re hiring, aren’t they? You could be a barista… (He pronounced it like baahreestah. He just wanted to say barista is all)
Matt: Is this what you and your girlfriend were arguing about this morning? (Matt overheard a spat between Mizz Chaatch and I this morning, which actually was because of Matt’s rather loud morning rituals, the most annoying of which is his tendency to tap the side of his cereal bowl with his spoon before each spoonful of Rice Krispies.) She thinks you should work at Baskin Robbins, doesn’t she? She probably said “Lord knows you’ve had plenty of practice with your right hand in your life. You could scoop your way through the management training program in no time.”

This of course leaves Terry and Matt in stitches, as any reference to jerking off, veiled or overt, does. It’s like an unspoken rule in our house that, even at age 26, masturbation jokes are not only expected, but still as funny as the first time you heard your Family Life teacher utter the word vagina when you were in the 4th grade.

Matt: You like cars, don’t you? You could go work at Sunoco. I think they are hiring. Employee discount. I call Fives on the regular unleaded. I bet Georgia Ben would hire you. (Georgia Ben, for those who don’t know, is an Alexandria institution. A purveyor of petroleum and all things car maintenance). Georgia Ben is great. He plugged my tire for free the other day. Of course, he did charge me to plug my ass. (At this point, Matt begins talking in his “Will and Grace” voice whilel mockingly describing Ben reading off the bill, with no charge for the tire patch but a rather substantial charge for the other “plugging.”)

Terry: Is your resume in a Word or PDF format? (Me staring at him blankly as if he’s just asked me if I wanted to go see “The Vagina Monologues” with him and his mom.) ‘Cause if it’s a Word document, people can fuck with it. (I hadn’t realized that resume sabotage had become so rampant; has Bush assigned anyone from FEMA to look into this?) Like, someone can get your resume over email, and change it to say that your career objective is to be a Chief Poop Grabber.

Matt: Aw, that would be great. You could go work at the zoo. Since you were the new guy, you would have to do all the shitty jobs at the zoo, like scrub the giraffe’s penis (At this point, Matt and Terry begin talking in “Mork and Mindy,” nasally voices as though they were my superiors at the zoo, barking out orders: “Clean up the elephant’s poop!” “Watch out for the giraffe’s big tongue!)

Terry: (Still in Zoo Supervisor/Mork nasal voice) Now scratch the monkeys’ asses and look out for their syphilis…

Abrupt end to our laughter. Silence in the room. Terry, whose ability to take a joke one punch line too far and thereby kill it, who is rivaled only by me in this capacity, had struck again. The zoo jokes, which seconds ago were so funny, are now not. Taking a joke about zoo animals’ genitalia to the venereal disease level will do that, I guess. Luckily (not just for Terry but for all of us, I think), Reggie Bush, after ripping off a beautiful 35 yard catch and run, tried to lateral the ball to one of his unsuspecting blockers, which turned all eyes back to the game.

So, the job search went nowhere, but I’m not even sure it can, for the simple reason that I have no idea what I want to do. I envy people I know who can get out of bed everyday and at least be okay about going to work. Yet, when people ask me what it is that I could be okay getting out bed to do, I have some sarcastic answer like Will Hunting’s “shepard, herd sheep” answer. I really don’t think that a person’s career trajectory should be a series of trial and errors, though. But if we extrapolate my first years out of college until retirement age, I will have had 70 jobs at the rate I’m going. At that rate, one of my jobs really could wind up being “Chief Giraffe Penis Cleaner.” Oh God, help me! Therefore, this blog entry has become a cry for help. Someone, anyone, help me find a job. Decent pay, good benefits, no giraffe cock. I don’t think that’s asking for too much out of a career.
Send suggestions to stevenpglass@hotmail.com.