Gotta Go To Work, Gotta Go To Work, Gotta Have A Job

November 9, 2023

I got a part-time job recently. When I applied for the job, I wasn’t sure what sort of job it was. When I got hired, I still wasn’t entirely sure what it was I’d be doing. I’ve been doing this job for two months now. I would like to tell you three things about my job:

• 1) Everyone I tell about my job has the same reaction: “I never thought that was a job.”
• 2) I leave for work in the morning at whatever time I please, and come home when I am done.
• 3) I spend maybe 20% of my time “on the clock” driving around from place to place.

Getting paid an hourly wage to drive somewhere is one of life’s greatest pleasures. There is no one waiting for me where I’m going, and nothing time-sensitive to deliver. I need to be somewhere to do the next part of my job, so I drive there.

When I used to work at a produce store, I would sometimes arrive with a box of apples on my cart and find a customer in my way, selecting the nicest apples they could find. Often, they would turn to me and apologize, and I would say, “Hey, take your time. I’m on the clock.” Usually, they would start rushing anyway, but I meant it. If I’m on the clock, I don’t care how long it takes. You’re the one who’s in a rush. But people always assume that if you’re working somewhere, you’re eager to get whatever you’re done done! Man, that’s just never the case.

Of all the things I want to say to people and have them understand, “I’m not in a rush” is probably number two. Number one is I want to tell squirrels and birds that they don’t have to be afraid, and can keep doing what they’re doing as I walk by instead of scuttling into the forest.

When I’m driving on the clock, I let people into my lane. I often yell (to myself) “Hey, come on in!” and emphatically gesture toward the front of my car. When someone is turning left into a side road, I sit stoically. One time I was so stoic that I crossed my arms, and I think the guy turning thought I was angry, because when he finally found a gap to turn left, he did a funny little wave out the window, like he was singing “Baby Beluga in the deep blue sea...”

I have a rule when I drive in the city, which is that I don’t turn left unless I have both a lane and a light (as in, a left-turn lane and a left-turn signal.) I can’t stand turning left, especially when a big truck is also turning left from the opposite lane, and you can’t see if cars or approaching or not. Whenever that happens, there’s always some guy behind you honking. Sometimes I wonder if they can see better from their angle, but most often they probably can’t see anything and are just being a jerk. Look, I tried turning left once when there was a big truck in front of me, and I almost died! Not doing that again any time soon!

Thankfully, I am mostly driving around major roads, so I often have a lane and a light. Sometimes, though, I’ll just turn right three times. I call that “going postal.” (I read once that postal workers in certain major cities are encouraged to do this; I have no idea if that’s actually true.) I love turning right. You’re not out there in the middle of the road, and you don’t have that weird pressure of also looking to see if the light is turning orange.

Sometimes I go through an orange light, either while turning left or otherwise, and I think, “I was a little bit late there,” and then I see two cars come through behind me. And I say to them, “Woah, that’s crazy! You guys are being crazy back there!”

When I see someone drive idiotically because they’re in a rush, I like to look into their window at them and say, “Where does someone like YOU have to be so urgently?” It doesn’t actually matter what they look like; I just find it funnier to have an image of them in my head as I say it.

The nice thing about being in your car and getting paid is that you can listen to rock music and yell. Sometimes, I yell the lyrics of the song, sometimes I yell at other drivers, sometimes I practice impressions — I made a major breakthrough on my Super Mario “oomph” sound recently — but most of the time I just yell about whatever’s on my mind. Sometimes I yell about what’s on my mind while doing an impression. They call that “feeding two birds with one hand.”

Look, I’ve accepted that I’ve got nowhere to be. Whenever I’m out and about, I’m out and about. I’ll be out for as long as it takes me to be about, and then I’ll go home. What’s the rush? What does a man like me care about time? I remember at my old job, where they made me show up on time (although I didn’t) and leave on time (which I did), I’d say to myself, “What does a man like me care about time?” and truly thought I meant it, but the truth was that I had to watch the clock half the day because there was really nothing going on and I would’ve rather been home. Now, I can say it truthfully and honestly: What does a man like me care about time?

Anyway, I hope these guys keep paying me. Or I just might go ahead and quit!