On April 1, 1987 I officially joined the elite never-say-die
American work force. I’ll never forget walking to “work” that first morning, in
the snow because I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and thinking how cool it would
be to get a check for $85 dollars EVERY week!
Sixteen-year-old Brad was hired to be a telemarketer
(BOOOOOO!) for Kayak Pools – a rusty white trash oasis right in your own back
yard! Every Monday-Thursday from 6-10pm and 12-4p on Saturdays, I sat in a
little cubical annoying people for $4.25 an hour!
Basically, if you went to any amusement park in the 80’s
there was probably a Kayak pool set up somewhere near the entrance and some
little piece-of-ass got dad to fill out an “interest” card in exchange for a
free pair of flips flops or some other piece of crap and an endless stream of
phone calls. I called hundreds of those a-holes.
Surprisingly, I was good at my job and I’d get more “sets”
then most people in my group. A set is when one of those a-holes actually
agreed to allow another a-hole to come to their house at a set time and give
them a high pressure douchey sales pitch to buy their own eye sore filled with
water.
Outside of all the cash I was raking in and my stellar job
performance I met an 18-year-old chick with a car! It was an old school VW bug that
I crashed twice! Once I backed it into her house and the other time I side
swiped a pole! More importantly, we lost our virginities to each other and she
gave me the best present a boy could ever get - my first blow job! I believe on
the job those are called “perks!” Coincidentally the blow job took place in a
pool! It really was all coming together quite nicely.
Real quick sidebar here. This is a list of all the places I
banged my 18-year-old girlfriend that summer. On a bridge that was still under
construction, behind Chuck E. Cheese, my mom’s bed, her mom’s bed, my bed, her
bed, several pools, lake Erie (We really liked wet coitus apparently.), Canada,
two football fields, and the Blue Bird Motel. One time I banged her while I was wearing her one piece bathing suit… her idea.
Just one more really quick sidebar. Our song was… “Head To Toe”
by Lisa Lisa And Cult Jam. Also her idea.
But it wasn’t all blowjobs and hot teen sex in exotic
locations. Powers were conspiring against me! By the time August rolled around
relationships were straining. My girlfriend and my boss were growing weary of
Brad Maybe.
Eighteen-year-old girlfriend was leaving for college in
Boston soon and she pretty much had had enough of my teenage bullshit! We got
into some dumb argument, didn’t talk for a week and then she was gone. We never
said goodbye and we would never see or speak to each other ever again. As I’m
writing this now, I really think that’s fucked up. I’d Google her to find out
what she’s up to, but I don’t have any luck with that.
Therista Barcel, my boss, was an attractive African-American
woman in her 30s. She had long dark hair, an impressive figure that often stuck
to the beautiful little sleeveless Summer dresses she wore to work every day, was
an intolerable bitch, and she had a couple of huge hairy lady armpits. Sometimes
people will say they get lost in a person’s eyes. I got lost in Therista
Barcel’s armpits for four hours a day.
My relationship with Therista was stormy at best. She didn’t
like me right off the bat and one fateful day in the break room would seal my
fate with her. I spent one of our 15-minute breaks, in front of a little
audience, trying to name Therista’s armpits. I don’t remember many of the names
I came up in my brainstorming session, but I killed the entire break! And at
the end of the break we all agreed from this day forth Therista’s armpits would
be known as Mr. T and The Pit Slop. At the time, giving names to your boss’
armpits didn’t seem like something that would have any kind of negative
repercussions down the road.
A couple weeks later as we were all busy making our annoying
phone calls one of the big managers came into our area to make an announcement.
When he inadvertently used the expression “pit stop,” he got a huge laugh from
the group and raised the eyebrows of one Therista Barcel. It didn’t take long
for Therista to get the information she sought and pretty soon she knew why Mr.
T impressions had become a big hit around the office lately. “I pity the fool
who doesn’t know Secret is strong enough for a man, but made for a woman!”
At the end of my shift the following Saturday I was summoned
to the back office and fired! They said I lied about the number of calls I made
that day. It was a bullshit claim that couldn’t be proved either way and left
me with no options to dispute my termination. I was basically fired for naming
a woman’s hairy armpits. And I can live with that.
This experience better prepared me for the string of jobs
that I would get and ultimately get fired from over the next several years. I
was fired from my next job for not wearing socks.
I dunno. Maybe.
