"Micro-Managing Bosses and Shitty Jobs"

There are a lot of things that irritate me, as you probably picked up on, but few things piss me off more then Micro-Managing bosses. And they only seem to get hired at jobs that are miserable by sheer design. The worst examples of these types of walking sphincters are the ones that can only be found at that most American of institutions: The Shitty Job. While working at the 7-11 in Castaic, California in mid 1999, I was indoctrinated into the world of the miserable minimum wage hell that is being a convenience store night clerk. On several occasions I would be taking a five-minute sit down after one of the major rushes that would happen there (which often lasted over an hour at a time), and the assistant manager, a middle-aged blonde lady named Stephanie would walk in and ask me why I was sitting down instead of doing something.

My response was simple, “Why don’t you go in the back office and pretend to be doing the job that you are undoubtedly getting paid much more than I am to do and shut the hell up.” Her response was one of stunned silence, and she would go back and complain to the Franchisee that owned the place about me. Now, in most jobs I would have been fired for that, but the owners of the store were pretty cool about it, since they knew that that pain in the ass was always on my case for no reason. I personally think that she wanted what I believe can only be described in the immortal words of the true poet laureate of our generation, 50 Cent in calling it “The Magic Stick”. But I’ve been wrong before, so let’s not fly off the handle on that until we compile some more research.

The second and most memorable of my experiences with the Bill Lumberg-esque style of management came a year and a half into my time at the Cost Plus in Santa Cruz, California. Her name was Rene, and we came up with at least twelve insulting nicknames for her and amongst the myriad names that we called her, here are my favorites: Scary Mary, Witchy-poo, Bean Counter, and the Infamous Birdlady. The Birdlady was a name that I came up with due to the irritating pitch of her voice that was somewhere between Fran Drescher and a frickin’ dog whistle. She also had a tendency to dart her head around a lot when she talked, so that made the nickname even funnier.

Whenever my friend Raw and I were pulling pallets out of the warehouse to be staged by the rest of the crew, she would always tell us what to do, while we were already in the process of doing it. Here’s a sample of what she would say, “Raaaawwww, Toooodddd! Pullthepapasanpillows! Pullthepapasanpillows!” And while fighting to urge to drop a pallet of wine on her to see if her feet would curl up like the wicked witch in “The Wizard of Oz”, we would have to tell her to get the hell out of the warehouse and let us do our jobs. That specific trait is the defining characteristic of the Micro-Managing Boss: The seeming inability to use their eyes to find out what’s going on right in front of them.

And also, an important thing to note is that a “Shitty Job” is a subjective definition that describes a job wherein you only work there for the money, and you only stay there because of the money. Think of it as if you were applying to colleges, and your list was: Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Stinky’s Hair and Skin Cosmetology Academy of Southern New Jersey. I’m willing to bet that if you could get into the first three, you would, but if you had no choice, Stinky’s H&S (Go, Fightin’ Cuticles!!!) would have to do for the time being, since that’s what a Shitty Job is like. But typically the biggest problem with a Shitty Job is that they pay you just enough that you can’t afford to quit, being that you teeter on the edge of abject poverty and homelessness between paychecks.

And as I wrap up this little segment, I have one final question: Why is it that the less you’re paid, the harder you have to work?

"What Happened To You, Dennis?!"

When did Dennis Miller become such a Conservative Douche-Bag? I must have missed something, being that I’ve been living in a fog of common sense for the last couple of years, but the Dennis that I knew and respected was one of the most intelligent and eloquent comics in this country… so what happened? In his last HBO special, “The Raw Feed” he constantly sung the praises of a President that, in 2000 he had lambasted for his lack of intelligence and credibility as far as a being a Presidential Candidate was concerned. Here’s a sample, (from “I Rant, Therefore I Am”) “We live in a world where the scion of a rich, failed President can run against a man that spent 7 years in a Vietnamese Prison Camp and still win the Nomination… ah, fuck it. Where’s my Propeller Hat?”

Then September 11th happened, and an invisible line was drawn across the political spectrum in this country, the “You’re with us or you’re our enemy” crowd that blindly pledged allegiance to the President being on one side, and the “Sorry, but we can think for ourselves, thank you very much” crowd that was called “Anti-American” for having our own opinions on the reasons behind the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on the other. Dennis chose his side after those events, and guess which side he picked… gee, I wonder? Three years later, in “The Raw Feed”, Dennis said that he likes Bush 2, Electric Boogaloo because, “He’s not Bill Clinton.” As a comic, I go out of my way to say that I don’t endorse anybody, since I know that nearly all (99.9999992%) of politicians are corrupt, and endorsing a corrupt system would say that I myself am corrupt.

Most people that know me know that I’m a Progressive (that’s “Liberal” to some) but I’m generally willing to give most people a chance to prove themselves as far as being a reliable human being is concerned, but for a comic like Dennis, who went after every President we had, from the Nixon Administration to Bush II: The Sequel (at first), he never endorsed any of them, instead he opted to make fun of their failings and shortcomings… nothing wrong with that. Talk all you want about Clinton, but at least he could pronounce “Didn’t” like how it’s spelled, unlike Dubya, who pronounces it, “Dudn’t” and apparently doesn’t understand that he is one of the worst Presidents in the recent history of this failing pseudo-Democracy. But, this isn’t really about President Bush, it’s about Dennis.

Oh, what a difference an invite to hang out with the President at the White House and getting a couple of rides on Air Force One makes. Dennis went from “Dennis Miller Live” on HBO to his thankfully short-lived “Talk” show on CNBC… which he used as a platform to talk up the virtues of our Special-Ed President and his cronies in the Administration. He often peppered his conversations with a variety of guests with old lines from his monologues on HBO and his “Rants” book series, and his lack of originality, as well as his self-plagiarism, frustrated me, as I watched the slow descent of one of my favorite comics transforming into a mouth-piece for a self-serving, vapid regime. It would be like seeing Richard Pryor, George Carlin or Lenny Bruce walk up on stage and say that McCarthyism was just what this country needed, and that segregation was great for the Black population.

Comics, in my mind, are meant to come out on stage and tell it like it is, and not be P.R. men or women for anyone. Stand-Ups are supposed to be the voice of rebellion; pointing out when something is fucked up, and not lying to themselves and the audience because of political ideology. What has happened to Dennis is what happens to many firebrands in any field of Entertainment… he sold out for the sake of money; like the old phrase goes, “There’s not such thing as a 50-year-old ‘Rebel’ Millionaire”. He knew that he would make more bookings in the heartland by putting a Conservative spin on his established style of multi-syllabic rants and tirades aimed at specific people or topics. In High School, many of my friends didn’t like Dennis, being that his sense of humor was very smug, but what they really didn’t like was how erudite his perspective of the world was… in other words, he was smarter than us, and he let us know through his mastery of the language.

That was the Dennis that I admired, but that Dennis may be dead and gone… he has a new HBO Special on January 19th and I’ll watch it to see if the Dennis that most of us had come to know and respect has returned back to the fold, or stayed with the conformists. I still listen to the Audio Books on Tape that Dennis made in the past, since they’re still as funny as they were on the day that I bought them, but in the back of my mind, there is always the specter of who Dennis is now, versus who he was back then… and it creeps me out.