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JR gets a job
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 559
Since the smoke, business drops off a cliff. JR is quick to exploit this, tacking another day off onto his two already, then showing up for the late shift Thursday, Leaving early on Friday and taking another extended 5 days off after.
It's his child's birthday after all.
He has 4 children, all of them born in the summer.
So he's around and about the restaurant, kids in tow, living his best work-free summer life.
He's very clearly on salary.
Everyone else can pick up the slack.
He's got a job interview, and his parents are excited, a "manager" for a courier company, pays $70, 000 per year if he gets it. They really want him to get the job.
He's excited about it, looking forward to the interview, but you know, you know...
This kid, he's never worked for anyone other than his parents. Or once, when he was a teen, but that's a short story. Since then, 14 years he's spent dodging work at the restaurant. Lists of things to do, updates to the till, that have been "on the list" for years now without doing.
a single thing about them.
He's a busy guy.
SO now, a job interview, for a job that pays him less in a full year than he'd earn in 4 months of the summer, if he'd show up.
If he'd show up.
Why show up? Clearly the salary is enough to pay his bills, he's 33, lives in his parents house with his wife and 4 kids, his wife, who doesn't work but nonetheless collects a cheque from the restaurant and EI every winter, as well as him.
Rumor is she wants to leave him, she's come to whatever few senses she has, but can't, not with 4 kids and a salary from a job she's never showed up to...
I've never met anyone more unprepared for the real world, and just shake my head and laugh, I mean, 70K is not a lot for a man with a stay-at-home wife and 4 kids, but doubtless he'll be kept on the payroll at the restaurant...
And I'm more than a little annoyed, not least at the fact that I'm working 10 hour days to enable his "staycation", that watching this gong-show of entitlement, this pretense of "get a job" and good citizenry, I mean, it's too much, and SR (JR's Dad), is done speaking with me, he knows, he knows, and his mother has a knack for turning the conversation onto other topics as soon as you humourously suggest that "40 hours a week? Birthdays off?", I mean, he's never worked forty hours in a single week his entire life and if ever he came close his bitchiness would be unbearable, let alone 40 hours a week for an entire year, but I imagine him showing up to the interview, references from both his mommy and his daddy in hand, smiling his syrupy saccharine smile, going through the motions, and then...
I've never wanted someone to get a job so badly in my life...
And you know, you think, well, this shit will never fly and then I recall the bosses' nephew from the old Italian place in Calgary, and how quickly he's risen through the ranks at CP rail, and you know, nothing's impossible...
The dream of Armageddon & Garage Sales
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 871
Going to work reminds me of that dream I used to have of the Nuclear Armageddon, the time I was in London and I got word via the radio that the missiles had been launched, 20 minutes until they annihilated London, time to evacuate, seek cover, get out of London, and as I'm making my way up Kilyon road everyone is selling their shit, antiques, joking "you can't take it with you" and I'm torn, there's bargains to be had for sure, maybe you can take some of it with you, but I really should be trying to get out of town...the same feeling when I'm going to work, the smoke, the air, there's no fires near to us but the world now is on fire and this work, this "business as usual", there's nothing usual about it...we're all being distracted in the last days of the Holocene, there's secret climate change models and forecasts they don't dare to publish, Yellowknife, once the arctic begins burning up there's an incalculable amount of gases, methane to be released, and shit is going to start getting serious real soon.
Not that it isn't serious already, but shrug your shoulders and carry on...
Man in a Gas Mask
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
- Hits: 697
At the liquor store, the pea soup night of smoke makes for a surreal evening, there's an old hippy, long beard, in a full on gas mask, 2 hoses running to a mask strapped to his face, holding a transistor radio blaring punk music, loudly, buying a bottle of the cheapest gin, not to laugh because if ever you needed a respirator, gas mask, full apocalypse regalia, now would be the time, but he is perfect, the haze visible even indoors, bottle of Gin in one hand, Radio in the other, he's the poster boy for the Armageddon.
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