Jobs Don't Rip You Off

Every job has a way of keeping track of hours worked.  I’ve had over 50 jobs in my life.  In the old days you wrote your hours down on a sheet of paper called a time sheet.  Recently I had a job where your time was tracked by logging into your phone.  Using different codes you could be working, enjoying your lunch break, even going to the bathroom!  At my latest job, hours are tracked on the cash register.  When I clock out at the end of the day I get a receipt.
“This is kinda cool,” I said to my manager.  “Getting a receipt at the end of the day.  I’m gonna keep this for my records.  I don’t even have records.  Do you have records?” I ask him.
“I used to keep those,” he says.  “I didn’t trust T__.”
“Ha hah,” I say.  That was the end of the conversation.
That brief exchanged made me realize: “Jobs just don’t rip you off.”  That’s been my experience.  I’ve been over paid far more times than I’ve been underpaid.   You may not be able to trust that your job is secure, but you can trust that they will pay you for as long as you work there.

Complete 2011 Reading List

 BTW, here is the long awaited, yeah right, reading list of 2011. It will also include some excuses as well as the books:

Blood's a Rover – James Ellroy

Wizard's First Rule – Terry Goodkind

Carrion Comfort – Dan Simmons

In The First Circle – Solzhenitsyn

Tell All – Chuck Palliniuk

Spring Snow – Yukio Mishima

The 49th Parallel – John Dos Passos

Zombie – Joyce Carol Oats

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – Ken Kesey

Man's Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl

The Plot Against America – Philip Roth

Running Wild – JG Ballard

1919 -- John Dos Passos

It' Can't Happen Here – Sinclair Lewis

Daybreak Zero – John Barnes

Zero History – William Gibson

Reamde – Neal Stephenson

Directive 51 – John Barnes

The Tarnsman of Gor – John Norman

Overlapped into 2012:

Stolen Valor – B. G. Burkett

The Dreaming Void – Peter F. Hamilton

Shorty

He was a little guy who used to live next door to me. He always sat on a car battery in the hallway. His age was hard to guess – he never went anywhere and therefore never carried any of the paraphernalia which might associate him with work or school. He had a magnificent set of teeth. He displayed them in a constant grin, almost a death grin. If you wondered what he had to smile about it was the heroin sloshing through his veins. His mom kept him locked out of the house most of the time. That's why he was in the hall. When he wanted in he would bang on the door for hours, yelling, “Open the door, Man.” Sometimes his mother would. One of those times, he broke her jaw. On another he kidnapped a runaway girl and held her hostage for a day or so. He was apprehended and sent to prison. His mother moved away. When he returned from prison he didn't have any teeth. The beautiful smile was gone. Not a tooth was left in his head. His mother was also gone. He would still sit on his car battery in the hallway, but he no longer banged on the door shouting, “Open the door, man.” Once he strode up and down the middle of the street on Ninth Avenue shouting, “I'll slice you up.” He was waving a box cutter or something that looked like one from a third story window. He was last spotted at Columbus Circle smoking a cigarette. What the hell is he still holding on to?

Commerce Bank -- I mean TD Bank

I deposited my most recent paycheck at the TD Bank on the corner of Bowery and Canal street, Chinatown.  Sometimes I deposit it at the one on Seventh Avenue near Macy’s.  There are TD branches all over Manhattan, which is cool, since I never know where I’ll be throughout the day.  I’ve been to many TD branches.  They all have lollipops.  There’s almost always a cop in there, since I guess TD doesn’t like the aesthetics of bulletproof glass.  The branch on the corner of Bowery and Canal was the same as all the rest except for one detail.  All the tellers and customer service people were Asian, probably Chinese.


I got to thinking.  The homogeneous staff  matched the dominant population of the neighborhood.  In every other branch I’ve used the staff is made up of many different ethnicities.  So why all Chinese in Chinatown?  Or I wondered if I went to Harlem, a traditionally Black neighborhood, would all the tellers be black?  I wondered if there was a White neighborhood in New York and, if there was, would the TD staff there be all white.  I thought maybe I should go to every TD bank in New York and see for myself.  I wondered why it bothered me.


But then it hit me.  The staff was probably hired because they all had a very important skill: the ability to speak Chinese.  Who speaks Chinese better than Chinese people?  In a neighborhood which is, or at least seems, 99% Chinese, TD had the appropriate staff for their location.


Looks like TD made the right decision.

A Very Short Story

One Dead Guy

So one guy comes home.  The shower's running.  The one guy figures his roommate is taking a shower.  The shower keeps running.  And it keeps running.  So after a while the guy knocks on the door.  He tries this a few times, figuring that the guy in the shower can't hear him.  He wonders if his roommate isn't there, that he left, and left the shower running.  He goes in.  His roommate is there.  He's lying in the tub.  The first guy doesn't even need to check.  The roommate's dead.  Probably slipped and fell – maybe od'd.  He's dead.


The end.

Poem.

Untitled Poem from 20 or 25 Years Ago

I am a sensitive poet

I think of cruelty

     of knives, daggers, rapiers,

     whips, pistols, rifles, hatchets,

    ICBMs.

Sometimes I fall down or a meteor

     strikes my head

     (Craters don’t form)

There are lots of pretty young girls

lying in the grass --

     the dementia of fish

I think of the shark

look at my prey

     think of sharp teeth

     tearing, rending,

          with gravy

The red juice of the t-bone drips

from my mouth

     Droplets are forming everywhere

     on fixed bayonets

     with love.

I whistle a tune

I whistle a tune till my head hurts

     from the jaw muscles up

I hear hell

It’s hot out and something is going to happen.

     God bless you.