A Tale of Two Jerrys: Garcia and Lewis

“When life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door,” Jerry Garcia sang in my head, as Mr. Pahn said good morning.

Just like that, he called me up to inform me he had decided to end the tele-marketing program, because he just was not booking as much business as he should, and now has plenty of time to make the calls himself. He could no longer pay me $10 per hour for each hour of calling plus $20 per census, but I could call all I wanted on my own, and he would pay me $90 per census. Well shit on that, thought I. I decided once again I had to take things in to my own hands, so off I went to Craig’s List to seek my forturne, yet again.

This time, I used everything I learned from Mr. Pahn and Boss J: it is all a numbers game. I started applying for everything, indiscriminantly, I did not care what, afterall, I had sold perfume to old Mexican men in gas station parking lots. I was one step away from being a whore and/or a debt collector at this point; my ego had dissolved along with my shame.

I got one temp agency on the phone, and they lured me down to their office with their bullshit. Of course, by the time I got down there, the $11 an hour tele-marketing job had turned into a $10 an hour fundraising job. It was for the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Annual “Lock Up” Program, you know, Jerry’s kids, except no Jerry Lewis, and no telethon, just me on the outbound end of a phone calling up executives and business owners and putting them under arrest “for having a big heart.” A friend of mine did this a couple of years ago, back before the whole world went broke, back when it actually made sense. The MDA puts these “business leaders” under arrest and they have to reach out to their network to raise their bail money.

The temp recruiter, Angie, coached me on how to conduct myself during the interview. I have to be high energy, and positive. Fortunately, I have been trained by Boss J, Mr. Pahn, and Stella Adler’s key disciples, so I know I can probably handle it.

The next day I booked another interview with another temp agency. They wanted me to take a typing test. I had never taken a typing test, or typing. I can type fast because I write fast, but this test was about typing something from a page. Luckily, I have pretty close to a photographic memory, so I just memorized as much as I could and just typed it, all the while hearing my father’s voice in my head.

When I was in high school, he constantly told me that I would never amount to nothing if I did not take a typing class. I was busy taking other classes that I thought would increase my chances of getting a scholarships to colleges far away from them, and I did succeed in that. But I wondered, as I typed, had he gotten the last laugh afterall. Had I in fact, after all of that education, amounted to nothing? Isn’t that one explanation of why someone with my education and corporate background was now taking a typing test at the age of 36 in the ass of nowhere Cerritos?

Ding! Time’s up! Time for me to take me seat at the boardroom with the recruiter, who would reveal my typing speed to me.

“43 words per minute. Not bad. A little above average.”

“Wow!,” I said, “My father used to always tell me I would never amount to anything if I didn’t take typing, but I guess he was wrong!”

As soon as the words came out of my mouth and silently started flagellating myself. “Goddammit, why did you do this yet again, why did you say something negative? You cannot say negative shit in a sales environment, you have to be positive and upbeat at ALL times.” My mind drifted back to my first meeting with Boss J. We were watching a Saturday Night Live rerun with Michael Jordan as a guest star. He wondered aloud how much the Championship rings were worth or insured for, and then a piece of verbal diarhea exploded from my mouth. I felt compelled to share the negative bit of trivia, that when Michael Jordan’s father was murdered, he was wearing a Championship ring. I beat myself up in the same way as soon as it came out of my mouth, but tried to play it off, like I don’t know how this negative thought got in here and came out my mouth; ponies, butterflies, daisies.

Anyway, the recruiter unveiled the wonderful new opportunity for me, that paid as much as $12 an hour. It was fundraising for the MDA. “Do you know how to be a phone actress?,” she asked.

“Oh honey, you have no idea,” I said with my inside voice.

“You have to be up and one from the minute you walk in the door at the MDA. When they ask questions, your hand has to be the first in the air. If you don’t make your quotas, they let you go.”

“What are the bonuses for achieving quotas?” I asked.

“The bonus is you get to keep your job.”