Modern Day Factotum (1 Viewer)

HenryChinaski

HenryChinaski

Founding member
Hey guys, this isn't just any kind of thread. This is one for inspiration.
Let me think of how to put this.
I've started a new job...
and to be quite honest, I feel a lot like a factotum. I've had loads of jobs all my life but man, one begins to feel the strain. It seems as though your life is stripped from you. I work and work and work, and never seem to have time for anything else. 12 hour shifts can take their tolls on people. What do you do? Grin and bear it? Stick it out for another 12 hours or what? i get up at four in the morning and get off at around five thirty in the evening. this just seems like too much. Maybe I sound like a pussy, and you know what, I don't care. I don't want to be stuck in this sort of life anymore. I know one needs money to live, but I think i'd be better off poor. Maybe I'm wrong and in fact, I know I am but GODDAMNIT, I don't want this. I'd rather not have money.

I'd rather live on the edges of nowhere than do anything at all.

any ideas? experiences?
someone must know what it's like.


jesus...
 
Hang in there, look for something better, and hope that your luck will change.

I've had dozens of the worst, low-paying jobs...working as a traveling salesman, selling shitty cleaning fluid door-to-door in the suburbs...wiping the asses of the elderly in an old-folks home at midnight...roofing houses at the height of summer...and so many more I don't want to remember if I can help it.


The last job I had almost broke me. Maybe it was all the years of shitty jobs and the resultant frayed nerves, or maybe it was just the fact that I had to spend my weekends, for 14 hour days, being at the beck and call of LAWYERS. In any case, I was in hell. I felt like I wanted to puke every time I took the elevator up onto the tenth floor of that downtown L.A. skyscraper, my own personal purgatory.


After two years of silent suffering, my luck changed. SOMEHOW, SOMEWAY, I lucked into a job that's likable. It felt like I was floating in sunshine, walking off that old job. I'd finally caught a break.


My advice: keep looking, and figure out a way to QUIT before the job kills you. Stress will kill you faster than the AIDS virus, I'm sure of it.



That's all I've got
 
R Z,You said it! A pussy doesn't make it through the first day.
I've had too many jobs and I am finding it harder and harder as I get older. You have to keep going they keep sucking your blood. They keep sucking your life out of you. You smile at them, you show up for work everyday and they throw you pocket change. You might as well be on a freeway off ramp with a sign.
Can you spare some change for a beer it doesn't make much difference.


I could go on with this but it belongs in the Henry Chinaski inspired writing thread. Man all these rules!
HC you are not a pussy.
 
have you ever looked into being a valet? it pays pretty well and the tips are good. and it's pretty laid back(where i was anyways) and as long as the weather doesn't shit on you it's cake. and the hours don't kill you like most other jobs. we made $10 an hour, and when it's busy we made anywhere from $13 to $20 an hour. of course you don't want to make it your career but it gets the rent and is easy on the soul. of course you gotta deal with the occasional asshole, but that's life, right? this may or may not help but check it out if your job continues to murder your hours. my friend recommended it to me and i can't thank him enough......
 
HC, i know how you feel. i've had customer service jobs for 13yrs, and i've reached the point where i have zero tolerance for assholes and the miserable pay. i pottered along because i didn't know what else to do, had no other skills, had dropped out of college. i eventually went back to school, still not knowing what i wanted to do, except that i liked books and reading, and maybe doing a lit degree would be something. still don't know if that degree is worth the paper it's written on, but a few months ago i finally realised what i wanted to do - print, make books - and the relief was astounding. i also realised i'd probably be poor for the rest of my life (unless jordan becomes a CEO of some big powerful company), but at least i'd be happy and doing something that i felt was worthwhile.

the sad truth is that living a decent life tends to cost money - books, music, art, good food, visiting friends, all the rest of it - but then we sell our souls to our jobs to get the money for these things and end up with no time or energy to enjoy them.

there's no easy answer to your situation. you need to find a job that doesn't break you, but they're not so easy to come by. all i the advice i can offer is: keep looking and don't give up. i'd given up on ever finding something in life that made me truly happy, and then it seemed like one day i just stumbled upon it, and it all made sense to me.
 
Have you ever worked in kitchens? im 20 years old and before I moved to a different town I worked in kitchens for 4 years. The pay is usually dismal but they are a bunch of beer drinking, weed smoking bunch of good guys. A true pirate crew. Nothing but fun. High stress and great times, but the comradery is worth it, I never felt like I was selling my soul when I was cooking. Of course I moved towns and now I'm a coal miner and the money is great, but think about it, Kitchens are great fun.
 
Ryan; Cheer up! You've got the world by the balls. Give it a big tug and show the world what you're all about.

I sound like a greeting card. There you go start "Chinaski Greeting Card Co." :o
 
Rubyred said:
the sad truth is that living a decent life tends to cost money - books, music, art, good food, visiting friends, all the rest of it - but then we sell our souls to our jobs to get the money for these things and end up with no time or energy to enjoy them.
Click to expand...

Nail on the head !

Mr. Charles Bukowski
Click to expand...

uuups here is the Quote from Mr. Charles Bukowski from the story " The gut Wringing Machine "

" I would like to work 7 days a week if possible , and 2 jobs if possible. "
" Why ? "
" Money, Sir. Money for color tv, new autos, down payment on a home, 2 dogs, an electric shave, life insurance for my children if i have children and automatic doors on the garage and fine clothes and 45 dollar shoes and cameras..."
" All right. Stop. Now when are you going to use this stuff " ?
" I don`t understand , Sir "
" I mean, when you are working night and day and overtime, when are are you goeing to enjoy all these luxuries? "
" Oh there`ll be a day, there`ll be a day, Sir ! "

@ HC you are not a pussy you have balls dude!
 
Variety is the key, as others have already said in this thread. I like many before me have no real clue what career path I want to walk along so I like to sample as many different working environments as possible. I've been a car salesman, a shop worker, an admin clerk, worked in a DIY Store, a factory that made paint tins, a call centre and even dossed around as a doley. Plus I've done the student life as well

Shit, I'm only 24 and feel burned out by the 9-5, god knows what i'll be like when I hit 30
 
Petey said:
uuups here is the Quote from Mr. Charles Bukowski from the story " The gut Wringing Machine "

" I would like to work 7 days a week if possible , and 2 jobs if possible. "
" Why ? "
" Money, Sir. Money for color tv, new autos, down payment on a home, 2 dogs, an electric shave, life insurance for my children if i have children and automatic doors on the garage and fine clothes and 45 dollar shoes and cameras..."
" All right. Stop. Now when are you going to use this stuff " ?
" I don`t understand , Sir "
" I mean, when you are working night and day and overtime, when are are you goeing to enjoy all these luxuries? "
" Oh there`ll be a day, there`ll be a day, Sir ! "

@ HC you are not a pussy you have balls dude!
Click to expand...

Great quote! The Gut-Wringing Machine is one of my favourite stories! Never visit the Satisfactory Help Agency. If you have heroes like Cleaver, Dillinger, Che and Castro, you'll end up having heroes like Bob Hope, Nixon, Sinatra and the CIA. Bagley and Danforth will see to that!

Whatever you do, HC, stay away from the Satisfactory Help Agency! :D
 
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Hey man listen to everybody, just a fer instance I was listening to Frank Sinatra today while I was painting my fence. You know I am a Frank Zappa fan. It twists you and turns you but you are still there. Sure you're tired and maybe depressed but you are still there with more experience and a little different form of happiness. I make it a point to give those guys on the street with signs some money, especially if they say they need to get a beer.
But you probably already know all that and might be just fuckin' with us.
 
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HenryChinaski, my brother, I have worked shitty jobs, I started as a printer when I was 17 years old and left home for what I thought was something better, but now 30 years later I can tell you that nothing is ever "better." We have a lot of weird ideas built up about what is good and what is success, and they are all meaningless.

I took a few years away from "regular" work to be a working musician, and I made only a subsistence wage doing that (and it was only a subsistence wage because I lived in a loft above the band's rehearsal studio - I could have never paid rent on what I made). Traveling and being free and playing music is all very well and good and romantic, but unless you make a significant amount of money doing it (enough for your own room every night and comfortable travel), you may as well be punching a time clock.

But...

A year or so after I quit playing professionally I was sitting under a Jasmine tree in Pacific Palisades with my ex-band leader - on my lunch hour - and I said to him, "Man, I have a pocket full of money and I would trade it all for my freedom." He said, "Nah, mon, is not like that. You 'ave a path and I 'ave a path and there ain't a ting we can do about that, Rasta. Is all predetermined, and my path is no different than your path. The world need all kinds of people, seen?"

So, yeah, the world needed printers and there I was (again). For me anyway, there is no either/or. You do what you have to do and squeeze whatever else you can out of this. I took a couple of years off (involuntarily) in 2000 - 2003, but I have been working ever since, and you just have to look at it like part of the game. Or if you're metaphysically inclined, part of your destiny. If you want to be creative, you can still work a job and be creative. You just have to throw yourself into shit and not be worried about the outcome (or things like sleep or money).

Full disclosure: I make more money now than I've ever made in my life, but a week ago I was asking Carol, "Hey, do you have any cash to move into the checking account? I think we're coming up short this month..." because no matter how "well" you do, man, it never ends.

Like Prince sang; "What's the matter with your life?/Is your poverty bringing you down?/Is the mailman jerking you round?/Did he put your million dollar check/In someone else's box?"

It doesn't matter what you have, it's what you do with it. That million dollar check is not going to fix anything.

But I hear you, man. I worked seven straight years in one small space in front of one printing press. If you think you know boredom and hopelessness, try that. ;)
 
Rubyred said:
the sad truth is that living a decent life tends to cost money - books, music, art, good food, visiting friends, all the rest of it - but then we sell our souls to our jobs to get the money for these things and end up with no time or energy to enjoy them.
Click to expand...

So true Rubyread.
I came across the poem "safe" from Pleasures of the D (p.306 also in Bone Palace Ballet p.313) shortly after browsing this thread. Seemed to sum it up pretty good.

I guess maybe the workers of the world still need to unite...:rolleyes:
 
actually, mjp makes a couple of points i also wanted to mention: there are a million and one awful jobs in the world but someone has to do them, and sometimes that someone is YOU. i'm not sure how true this is, but i remember a long time ago when i was studying japanese in high school, my teacher told me that people who do the 'scum' jobs - cleaners and garbage collectors etc. - are relatively happy in their work because their culture is one that places importance on everyone's position in society. they understand that the world needs checkout operators just as much as it needs artists and doctors. we shouldn't ever forget that.

and there is never enough money. you always think, 'if only i made another $50 a week..' and then you get a raise or a better job and you start making that extra $50, and it doesn't feel any different. the more you make the more you spend, and you won't even notice it. by the end of this week i will have worked - between my two shitty jobs - around 57 hours, all on my feet. luckily that's not quite the norm. and it's all because i need to save the cash to move countries, and i can only make decent money by working long hours.
 
HenryChinaski said:
12 hour shifts can take their tolls on people. What do you do? Grin and bear it? Stick it out for another 12 hours or what? i get up at four in the morning and get off at around five thirty in the evening.

I don't want to be stuck in this sort of life anymore. I know one needs money to live, but I think i'd be better off poor. Maybe I'm wrong and in fact, I know I am but GODDAMNIT, I don't want this. I'd rather not have money.

I'd rather live on the edges of nowhere than do anything at all.

any ideas? experiences?
someone must know what it's like.


jesus...
Click to expand...

One year I had 32 w-2 forms.

Last year I was driving an 18 wheeler. I was
everywhere in the country for fifteen minutes.

I saw a driver wearing a shirt:

Drive
Sleep
Drive Sleep
Drive Sleep Drive
Sleep

that was about it.

Truck Drivers make surprisingly good money.
I mean like eighty thousand a year good.

So, about two years ago I was living on the street.
I slept on a bridge, ate at homeless shelters... it
wasn't the first time. I have 27 years experience
with that world.

Chinaski, old buddy, old friend, old pal... yeah.
I can relate.

The way I worked it out is like this:

My job is to stay alive, and to laugh my balls off
at every opportunity.

That's my job: To have fun, and not die.
Everything else is a hobby.

Because I wanted to live back in the little Hotel
in Santa Cruz that I love so much, I gave up the
eighty thousand a year.
sign0077.gif
Bye -Bye.

Is that right for everyone? Is it right for you? No.
My experience is not to be taken literally. It's more
like you said:

This is one for inspiration.
Click to expand...

I hang with a few friends.
I have a part-time job.
I remember to eat.
I call my folks.
I pay rent.
I write.
I live, and I laugh my balls off at every opportunity.

If there is something I need, want, gott'a have
I decide if it's worth trading my life for it.
If it is - fine. Because that's what money is in the
final analysis:

I have traded the hours of my life for... this.

jumping0051.gif


- -
Okay,
Father Luke
 
try quitting. try to stay asleep. it doesnt work. it has you by the balls. sorry man, but im not sorry. weve all had shitty jobs. you dont sound like a pussy. hell maybe you do. we're all stuck in the stew.
 
Well, why not throw my log on to the pyre...

I'll be starting the process soon again for the umpteenth fucking time, and sure as shit, ain't looking forward to it.

What advice...?

In the late seventies, I worked for a time at a cemetery. Every day, the funerals would roll in, and we'd take care of business when the show was over. As such, we got to know the funeral-meisters pretty well. Amongst the Super Bowl bets, dirty jokes and grim tales of death and it's foul details, I was approached by one of the black-clad gents and propostioned for a job.

Seems his son didn't want any part of the business, wanted to attend art school or some kind of foolishness, he was looking for a fellow who could don a suit, and get his license to prepare the recently departed.

forty-five grand a year (in 1978)

But hell, I was too busy at George's Tavern, keeping the spirit of Buk alive, my mornings spent dancing with a jack-hammer and pick, my skull screaming from the previous nights efforts, as I dug another hole.

Mortuary Science, it's the future here in these United Snakes.
 
About 20 years ago I was ready to move into a good paying job where I worked but I wanted to go to music school and knew if I stayed much longer where I was the knife would be seeking out the veins.

I started working part time and finding how little money I really needed to get by and even started saving money-something I couldn't do at the full time 'cause I was spending all my money to try to wipe out the misery.

I got out of the 9 to 5 for 13 years, but it didn't last.

Don't sell your time short-theirs exceptions of course but no one should work more than 40.

My time was more valuable to me then their money or the crappy things it could buy.
 
ahahahah thanks guys. i think this thread was a bad idea. I come here to escape work and here we are talking about it. fuck it. still got the job. saving money. tired of the east coast. coming to california.
 
HC,
I paint at the back of a shit junk store,
make an average of $50.00 a day,
selling everything from Mohawk snow shoes to war medals,
reading Bukowski whenever I please

Last week got a job working 2 days a week, in a high shcool
teaching teens about 3 hours a day for $175.00 a day.
see , now the $50.00 is starting to look very good,
Anyone would like a pair of 4 blades ice skates,
or a toledo torch from 1940.
There you go, has nothing to do with money,
Hang in there till you find a job that does not kill you.
 
I worked as a waiter enough for three lifes and hated every single second of it. As a cook too. Same thing. I worked in a factory producing, umm, how do you call it, shower-cubicles? - two summers long and it was dull and boring and there was a sense of desperation of course, but the people were okay, mostly quiet and calm, not as vicious and completely mad as my fellow waiters.

In between I was in a travel-agency, cleaned rooms in a hotel, counted cars for the city, proof-read manuscripts ... etc., etc. I also was a kind of driver for handicapped children one year long and that was the hardest job of my life and also the only one, I ever loved. It made me a different person in many ways.
 
HenryChinaski said:
ahahahah thanks guys. i think this thread was a bad idea. I come here to escape work and here we are talking about it. fuck it. still got the job. saving money. tired of the east coast. coming to california.
Click to expand...

Good idea, moved outside of Sacramento last October from Boston leaving a bad job behind. Life's easier out here.

Lots of folks on the board are in Calif. including our beloved moderator, of course. Where you moving from and where you going to?
 
A decent job is, doing anything you love to do. Of course you must be wearing comfortable clothes. -except for the lifeguard at the nudist colony and that would have to be the nudist colony with the good looking in shape nudists.;)
 
we need crappy jobs so we can look forward to leaving them,
it keeps our passion for better things alive.

people who have everything are dead.
 
Ponder said:
What's a decent job? (Serious question, really.)
Click to expand...

well, I did have 'jobs', that I would call decent: Jobs that were fun and all. Usually these are of the kind that doesn't pay. (photographing album covers for the local punk-rock-band and such.)

but what I meant was, I never had a job that my parents would call 'decent'.
You know, proper, reliable, adequate for my biiiig education, enabling one to feed a family one day, or buy your own car...
I always refused this kind of job. Never did the 9-5.
The result: no money, no security, no comfort, a bad liver, bad stomach, depression. BUT: all the freedom I want, to hang around internet forums.
 
My family used to play:

Father Luke Trivial Pursuit - the employment edition

and spend all night
laughing about all the crazy jobs I'd held
 
Here's my list, soon to be drawfed by Father Luke and his 32 jobs in one year. This all took place in 20 years.

Fast Food
Book Store Employee and asst manager
Record Store Manager
Bellman
Carpet Cleaner
Phone operator
Reservations agent
Collections Agent
Credit Manager
Controller
Tax Accountant
Construction Sales
 
I started to make a list, I worte it all down and had to stop. It is pretty boring and quite pathetic that I have had so many jobs. It is such a broad spectrum that I am a "jack of all trades and master of none".
I worked retail, wholesale, factory assembley and even flew on B-52s. Now I sell RVs.

Bill did you notice there is no apostrophe on B-52. Thank you;)
 
Gerard K H Love said:
I started to make a list, I worte it all down and had to stop. It is pretty boring and quite pathetic that I have had so many jobs. It is such a broad spectrum that I am a "jack of all trades and master of none".
I worked retail, wholesale, factory assembley and even flew on B-52s. Now I sell RVs.

Bill did you notice there is no apostrophe on B-52. Thank you;)
Click to expand...

Was there ever any Dr. Strangelove references/scenarios aboard?
 
We had a big Texan as our radar navigator- he was in charge of targeting and ultimately dropping the bombs or missles. That was as close to Slim Pickens as we got.
Debriefing was drinking mass quantities of beer.
 
one of my best moments

Last year I went and decided to go and pick cherries in a good old country town down south, one day I was picking cherries and could feel a serious case of the runs coming on from eating too many cherries in the morning. Holding my arse cheeks together with both hands and with stiff legs I began taking extremely small steps to my car to find the nearest dunny. I prostrated myself into the car and drove down the hill and found the old tin shitter at the bottom, opened the door and relieved myself in the hole. After a good look down I began to search for some paper to wipe my arse with but no luck, I had a look outside to see if anyone was looking and then dashed to the car and opened the boot to see if there was anything in there that would help. What I found was golden, the only copy I had left of my resume. I pulled it out after thinking about it for a second and went back to the box and wiped my arse with it, I couldn't believe how smooth it was, what a feeling! Only problem is, now I'm looking for a job and can't remember what I've done.
 
...and wiped your arse! Maybe you could get a job as a toiletpaper tester in a toiletpaper factory...:D
 

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