Fucking Fuck Yeah Misanthropy

(Written at ~4am in the morning.)

This is an account of how money weaved its way in and out of my life since I’ve been old-enough to legally hold a paid job. Legal has much less to do with my pay in this account than most peoples’ pay normally would – not to say I’ve been a criminal. I definitely have, but I wouldn’t say that.

At eighteen, I begrudgingly sought employment in retail. Vans skates, shoes, clothes. It was a mall in Orange County, we did well. I lasted three weeks. My first paycheck was for around $80… I remember feeling accomplished, yeah, but more, “That’s it?” It was three days a week, four hour shifts, with a half-hour break. Minimum-wage was just over $7. I resented having to start at the bottom. I’d use my employee discount to buy stuff for friends, sell it at a little markup. My first Saturday morning shift, when we were supposed to meet in the store to do inventory and set sales goals, do a gaudy team cheer, I called out sick and went to Vegas with my cousin. I blew my first check, and then some, on some strippers we had come up to the room. When I got back in town, I worked another two days, then got fired after taking an extra fifteen minutes on my break to buy my Dad lunch. Honestly, it might have been less about the negligible extra break time than calling my supervisor, “A manly dyke.”

I spent a few months unemployed, then applied everywhere in that same mall. I worked two paid training shifts at Hollister, spent my entire check on a tattoo. This was a time when I was desperately grabbing at any girl that would have me, and I needed money for dates. For three months there, I worked at Papa John’s, first as delivery (including an incident where I delivered to a former classmate), then making pies; it was my first experience in working with food, and I got into it. I made friends, or more-accurately the acquaintanceship, of my coworkers and the franchise owner-slash-General Manager. I hustled, I was always looking for more money.

Later in the year, I built up the nerve to ask my Dad for help finding a good job, and he connected me with an internship I really had no business in being in. I worked under a family friend at Ingersoll Rand; by “worked,” I mean I would nap in my car, and some days only show up to clock-in then leave altogether (the system clocked me out automatically after eight hours). It was $15 an hour, eight hours a day, three days a week; it was an embarrassment of riches. I “quit,” though I’d long-since stopped showing up, and moved to Santa Barbara.

I worked at another pizza place in Isla Vista. The food was God-damn-phenomenal; I lived off Italian takeout I still dream about. I put a paycheck and a couple-hundreds’ worth of savings on a used car and committed myself to months of automatic payments before being fired the next week for giving a slice of pizza away to a homeless man. Really.

I reconnected with a friend from Jr. High who was making a living breaking-into garages and cars, then selling whatever he found over Craigslist. Since I had a car, conveniently without plates, I became the wheel man and took a cut whenever we went out. In Santa Barbara I’d steal alone – leaving my car running at the end of a block around 4am, walking down each line of line of parked cars and checking handles, if an alarm went off I’d run back and drive off. Most nights we found a wallet, using the cards to fill up on gas and junk food, and an iPod, which we’d sell online. On rare occasions we’d find a laptop, a Palm Pilot, something worth holding each other to suspicion. We raised enough contention among the group that we just stopped doing it as a group completely. One of us had committed bank fraud in the past, and that became an avenue for a while…

I moved back home, and found myself in female company without needing to spend a lot of money. I lived off a credit card, sold possessions to make my car payments. Once in a while I’d find a deal on camera lenses through Craigslist, and sell it at a markup over eBay. The people I used to steal with went to jail. I took it as a wakeup call and spent three months hitting the pavement looking for a job. The time wasted felt like karma for everything I’d taken. Eventually, I was offered an Assistant Manager position at a café. I can’t remember if it was $11 an hour or $10, but at 40 hours a week it was finally enough to move out on. When the company opened their second store, right around the time I turned 21, I managed that one. After six months, I ended up having a conflict with my boss and left.

By this time, I’d been working for 3 years. I felt like I’d paid all the dues I’d needed to pay, and like I had all the experience I needed to start my own business – the only problem was the funding. I got a job managing a café, and a second job managing a bar. I was making about $5,000 a month before taxes, and every dollar of it that wasn’t spent on rent went into funding my event production business. After I broke even on my third event, I settled into just working nights at the bar. At the end of the year, the owner of the bar began paying me completely in cash – a 15% raise, in the tax bracket I was in. June, to the day of my one-year anniversary of starting work at the bar, I was told they were closing the place and laid off.

I entered the wonderful world of unemployment, wherein I began earning $1,760 a month for doing fucking nothing. One year later – still: checks came on time, never bounced. Sometimes I’d go down to the casino and play poker. I eventually found a consulting gig that paid me in cash, and neglected to report my earnings. This continued until I moved to New York, where I continued to cash my government checks for being, ostensibly, an unemployed resident of California. I made enough money doing photography gigs that I paid rent on an East Village apartment.

When I moved back home again, I continued receiving unemployment checks. I’d flip cameras and lenses whenever I found a deal. I went out every night. I gambled when I could. At the end of the year, I found another gig consulting on a new restaurant. When that ended, I found the position I’m currently in. The pay I earn, cash, is equivalent to a job paying $65,000 a year before taxes. I continue to be sent more than $1,000 a month from the CA Unemployment Fund, which I use to pay for a lifestyle I shouldn’t really be able to afford. I still produce events for clients, friends. My name has grown in the restaurant consulting circles, and I command $5,000 a month cash retainer plus expenses whenever I work on a project. Every so often I go around to thrift stores, look online, for things I can sell again at a profit. I started roasting and selling my own coffee recently. I even thought about growing and selling weed for a while. I continue to do anything for more.