Spitting Off Tall Buildings

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I GOT MY first job in New York City two days after I arrived. Monday. It’d taken me four days to hitchhike from L.A. I became a staple puller at an advertising company that did effectiveness studies for TV commercials. Clerical Assistant.

270 Madison Avenue. Third Floor. Schwermann Research, Inc. The gig came through an office temp place that advertised in the want-ads in the New York Times.

At eight-thirty that morning I began asking people on the street near Penn Station the way to get to Olson’s Temp at Forty-second and Sixth. The second guy I asked gave me directions by bus. I walked to save the carfare. It was ten blocks.

Ms. Herrera, the placement counselor, never looked up when she called my name and I got to her desk. She had lots of black make-up above her eyes and there were no apparent breasts behind her shirt. I was handed a pen, a clipboard and a long double-sided application. I sat down with the form and did what I do most of the time with job applications – make shit up. It’s a game I play to balance out the boredom and stupidness of having to spend time filling out forms and waiting endlessly in lines at employment agencies. I invent two or three companies where I’ve worked and say they have moved or gone broke. I use that as my ‘Reason For Leaving Last Position.’ It usually works and it eliminates the discussion of whether I was a good employee or not. The challenge comes when the agency person behind the desk asks stuff about my work history and I have to remember the sequence of what I wrote down on the application. If I’ve been drinking, concentrating and recalling my lies can be difficult.

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