Equal Opportunity Employer

My former gearshop was truly an equal-opportunity employer. One day a man walked into the shop and asked for a job. He'd been living in a cabin on a remote tract of land in Wisconsin by himself for several years. He'd saved enough money to buy the land and supplies, then he built the cabin and tried to support his meager needs only through the sale of his art. He was coming out of the cabin for air and trying to find work to replenish his bank account before returning to the woods. My boss hired him on the spot, and he put his backpack in the basement and began working immediately. We sent him outside to do some handyman work, and it got a little weird when he came back into the store wearing only his hiking boots and short cutoffs to ask for water. Evidently he hadn't spent much of his recent time hanging out in retail stores. He ate hotdogs for every meal and kept his work clothes in the basement next to our shower. Then one day he packed back up and left. Hopefully his art proved more marketable this time around.

Narcissism

My girlfriend asked what 'narcissistic' meant, and I said 'full of yourself.' Then she told me that she'd read a short online article that claimed people with unusual names were more narcissistic. I could see it. Having an odd name like 'Rocky' or 'Darth' means you get a little bit more attention than everyone else on the first day of school, when you meet chatty strangers, and when you have to leave your name on a waiting list at restaurants. Taken individually these moments mean nothing, but add them up over the course of a lifetime and it makes sense that you'd get an overinflated sense of self-importance. I'm talking about everyone else, of course.

Owner vs Renter Rights

Our U.S. Government teacher in high school took a practical approach to education. Every week we'd have a guest speaker from the community come into our classroom and lecture on something that would be useful to us upon graduation. One week it was opening bank accounts, another it was our rights during police confrontations, but the oddest was the time he brought a local landlord in. If there was a slummy part of our community, this guy owned it. He expounded at lengths on the binding nature of leases and pounded the lectern while driving home the point that landlords have more rights than tenants. That weekend, I hung out with some older coworkers from the bike shop, and we rode the guy's brand new mountain bike down the steps of his apartment. Well, some of us rode it, others bailed on the first step and let it tumble all the way to the bottom of the stairs. The next day my friend received an eviction notice, and I laid some knowledge on him about his rights based on my learnings in U.S. Government class--basically that he was screwed. That's when I found out that the landlord who'd come into our class was there to indoctrinate us with his side of things, and that tenant rights far outstrip anything a landlord can throw at you. Now I make sure to ride my bike down the stairs everywhere I live.

Movie Stores

You can never really close your video rental store accounts. I've opened a rental account in most cities where I've lived over the years, and it's come back to bite me. My friend was served a notice from a collection agency on a past-due Blockbuster account in Minneapolis. We'd rented several movies there including the one that they called him about, but I'm certain that we returned the movie. Sadly, I didn't have access to any film documentation or other suitable proof that we'd returned the movie, so I had no recourse. All I could do was go to the movie rental chain in Utah and tell them that I was closing my account. I related my story about the lost video I'd returned and then be charged for, and that's when the guy told me he couldn't close my account. It's just not an option. Every movie store account I've opened since being 13 is apparently still on record somewhere. Now I tell people to put a note in my account saying not to ever rent a movie to anyone--even me, just in case I become the victim of identity theft and someone tries to rent Blade II on one of my former accounts again. I just hope I never move back to any of those old towns and try to rent movies since I've put those notes in every old account.

Gangsta Rap and Kenny Loggins

I always assumed that my generation would outgrow gangster rap and start listening to Jim Croche and Kenny Loggins at some point. The idea of us listening to the same music as we age is somehow troubling. Once in awhile I'll worry that my friend Chrissy is going to still be bumping N.W.A. in her Corolla when driving her grandkids around in 25 years. Well, I guess she wouldn't still have the Corolla. I suppose that rap and speed metal will sound tame compared to whatever kids are listening to in 25 years, but that's somehow not a relief at all.

Entry-Level Job Hunt

There was a bit of a recession when I graduated from college, and entry-level jobs were hard to come by. I went on a lot of interviews and complained about how bad the economy was, and no one hired me. Interviews started getting a bit thinner, so I 'd go and talk to anyone who'd give me a callback. I remember telling my co-worker at the college newspaper that'd I'd just applied for a job selling office equipment. I didn't get an interview for that one, but I did get contacted for a sports marketing job with a vague online description. I borrowed a friend's car and followed my handwritten directions until they terminated in a sketchy part of town. I almost turned around, but I figured I'd bought a new shirt from the Gap for the occasion and already driven all the way out there, so I went in to see what happened. The interview ended with me taking my application off the guy's desk and tearing out my social security number and contact information. It turned out to be a pyramid scam that somehow turned handing stuff out at baseball parks into money. When the economy tanked again last year, I wished that I'd taken that job so that I could prey on college kids and somehow get them to make loads of money for me.

Looking for a Place

I'm looking for a new place to live, which means that I've spent my lunch hours and time after working rushing around looking at apartment after apartment. I've worked with a few realtors. One of them kept showing me places that sounded amazing on paper and in really spectacular neighborhoods. Then we'd arrive and walk through it, and I'd find that it had a big bedroom, but lacked a living room. You went straight from the kitchen to the bedroom. Sure, it's a one-bedroom, but you could have told me that there's no living room. One them that sounded immensely promising looked great until I opened a pantry in the kitchen and found the shower. It's such an odd mentality for the realtor to show me that place--did he think I wouldn't notice? A shower in your kitchen is a pretty important fact, something you might want to put in the listing in the interest of not wasting everyone's time.