A Day In The Fuckin' Life

A Day In The Fuckin' Life

06.15.05 (7:13 pm)   [edit]
6:05AM Wake up, 40 minutes ahead of the alarm. Lay there and think about how it's going to be a great day, because I'm going to call the apartment and see about moving in tonight instead of Friday. Ahhh, a sweet day it will be...

What a fucking MORON I am.

6:45AM Finally get myself moving and ready for work, where I look forward to finishing the ridiculous job (auto parts store) from the day before, where some idiot set up a display completely wrong and I had to put it back in the right order, only to discover when I was mostly done that *I* had fucked up and not noticed that the display was missing a SHELF, which kinda throws a wrench in things, especially when you have to take down all the shit you just spent three hours doing and move fucking shelves around to make room for the new one. I spent ten minutes hiding in the bathroom praying to the Shit Fairy to deliver me from the massive attack of bipolar emotional insanity that came down on my head like 6000 pounds of auto paint. But at 6:45 this moring, I was actually looking forward to the day. What a fucking MORON I am.

7:50AM Pull into work blasting Black Sabbath's Sabotage. SUCK ME!

8:00AM Start fighting with shelves of paint.

10:15AM Call the apartment. Everything's set, I can move in tonight. All I gotta do is pick up my check at the temp agenecy, cash it, and get down there to pick up the keys. Oh, if it were actually so...

11:00AM Finish a three hour job after seven total hours of work. Massively impressed with myself, I stand there and LOOK at the paint display for five minutes before remembering that yeah, there's other jobs here too.

11:45AM Leave for lunch. Eat shit at Taco Bell, drive to the temp agency to pick up the check.

11:55AM Get in line for my check

11:58AM Only to find out there IS no check. It's not there. After King Asshole (my new name for the boss) looks into it, he finds out that my check is at the Cincinnati office. He might have it overnighted in for tomorrow, but it might not be until Friday. I explain that I'm moving into my apartment TONIGHT, the woman is even changing the lease around - probably as we speak - and I'm supposed to be there in about five hours. King Asshole gives me some lame reassurance and I leave.

12:05PM King Asshole calls me on the cell. It will be Friday, he can drop it off at the job site (the auto parts gig ends today, I start a new one tomorrow) and he tells me the amount of the check. I'm so rattled that the amount he gives me only manages to swirl around inside my head like a bad fart. I ask permission to leave the auto parts gig early. I need to come up with at least $300 in five hours. I've already called the apartment back and nobody answered.

12:10PM I get back to the auto parts store and let them know what happened. They are totally cool, and I wish I was still working for them, especially given the horrific hours I'll be starting tomorrow. Of course, overtime will be good since I now have NO MONEY.

12:20PM I stop at Jiffy Lube and get the fifth oil change I've had in three months.

12:45PM I drop the time sheet from the auto parts place back at the temp agency. King Asshole shows about as much human kindness as Nixon at an acid party. I start putting two and two together on the check amount he'd told me. Uh, can you look into this? It sounds wrong. He claims it's right, then we go back into the office. I figure I'm at least $60 short and I haven't even SEEN this fucking check. He pulls it up on the computer. "You got paid for 24 hours. 16 at the auto parts store, 8 at the fan factory." Uh, I didn't work 8 at the fan factory. I worked 16. Remember? You called me right after I left the second day to say they stopped the assingment, and never gave me a coherent reason for that? Then I didn't work Wednesday but you had the auto parts gig for me Thursday? Uh, I worked 16 hours. "I'll look into it." Good. Because I need to leave now before my brain eats itself.

1:00PM Call the apartment. Nobody there. Call my mother. Nobody there. Call to Jesus. Nobody there.

1:05PM Driving down I-465, I ask Jesus to send down a flood of alcohol to rain upon my personage.

1:06PM I ask again.

1:07PM I ask again, more politely this time, with special mention of how cool it was that he got toasted for my sins, which are, of course, legion.

1:08PM Seeing no clouds of rum in the sky, I tell Jesus to go hang a cross, I'll get the fucking booze myself. Cheap bastard.

1:20PM I do just that.

1:30PM Mother still not home. Apartment still no answering. I drive to an ATM

1:45PM I try to pull money from the ATM. Nothing. I try again. Nothing. I drive to another ATM. Nothing. It's getting dark now, and I really need that rum, but I still have driving to do.

2:00PM Go back to my friend's house where I've been staying. The door is locked. Call Mom and the apartment again. No answer. Drive some more.

2:30PM Start driving north, take a wrong turn and start driving south. Unable to think. Want rum and Twizzlers in a bad way. Sugar, I need sugar. Like a junkie needs smack. I try basic math in my head and it takes 4 times longer to do it as it should, mabye 5. Maybe 47, I can't add. I'm shaking at this point.

2:45PM Finally get the apartment. She'll wait until Friday, and of course, that's when it was supposed to be anyway. I ask why the rent for the next couple weeks is about $100 more than I thought it should be. She says there's a move-in charge. Funny, I didn't know about that even though we've been talking for over two weeks. I'd say something, but my deposit was so little that I figure what the fuck. At this point, I wonder how long it will be before I'm sucking cock to pay rent.

2:50PM Call King Asshole. The extra 8 hours is taken care of, he'll have the check to me on Friday. He says "I told you I'd take care of you." Yeah, and you also told me you'd have me a job in no time but took a week and a half. You also told me you'd be out golfing on Memorial Day in such a way as to suggest that no degenerate temp is worthy of your time. Fuck you in the ass, you annoying prick.

2:55PM Do a run-down in my head of everything that's gone wrong in the past couple weeks with the temp agency. I show up and do paperwork, only to be sent to a different office, for no apparant reason. I sit at the other office for THREE HOURS waiting to be paid some attention to while the girl is on the phone giving all the jobs away. Excuse me miss, you really are the cutest Latino girl I've seen in my life, but I'm a white guy in need of a job. I realize that it's quite easy to mistake a fat guy with hair all over the place for a WALL, but could you give me some time?

Then I spend over a week calling these fuckers four times a day waiting for work. It gets desparate. Finally, after a horrific day in which I nearly drove into a brick wall, I find out I have a job.

That job lasts two days, though it was supposed to be "long-term". I'm called right after leaving and told they're stopping the assignment. A clear reason is never given. I don't know when I'm working next. The next day I end up doing genealogy, but at least the auto parts gig comes in. It was supposed to be two days and ended up being five, but not until after I get another long-term job promised, then have the day moved back, and I don't know WHEN I'm working or not. It's totally day-to-day.

Then all this other shit. This agency is based in Cincinnati, and the offices down there NEVER exhibited this level of incompetence or lack of concern for an employee. I figure King Asshole needs to die.

3:10PM Heading north (having missed the first exit I was going to get off on) I begin screaming my head off. Old anger resurfaces next to the new, and for ten minutes, I'm completely insane, but I somehow keep it on the road.

3:20PM Leaving the Noblesville area, my head clears. I remember how I felt a few nights ago at the Keneally concert. I start laughing uncontrollably, and nearly drive off the road and into the White River from the extreme level of psychotic glee in my little black heart.

3:25PM Remember just how bipolar I really am.

3:30PM Mom still isn't home.

4:10PM Arrive in Marion. Nobody home. I come in and get a drink, fuck off on the computer for a few minutes. Call Grandma, who hasn't heard from Mom in three days. Begin to worry, because Mom has just found out she has carpal tunnel syndrome, and needs surgery. A couple nights ago she could barely hold the phone. Hmmm. Where IS she?

4:50PM Drive out to where Dad works, figuring nothing is really wrong, but wondering. Besides, I may need him in two days when King Asshole decides to go to the golf course rather than show up with my check.

5:05PM Very cute girl tells me Dad JUST left for dinner. I drive back home, he's not there. Well, fuck.

5:30PM After driving through Marion remembering just how shitty a place it is to find a truly good restaraunt that I'd want to eat at right now, I end up at Applebee's. I order fish and chips, a big Amber Bock, and sit with my copy of The Great Shark Hunt, reading about Hunter and Ralph Steadman trying to paint "Fuck The Pope" on the side of a boat at the America's Cup. Try really hard not to fall apart laughing in front of other paying customers.

5:50PM Call Mom. she's home. Fine. Been out doing errands all day, her hands hurt, but she's fine. I'll be home in half an hour.

6:05PM The waitress informs me that my credit card is declined. Oh fuck. I pay cash. What little I have.

6:15PM In a parking lot by the mall, I break the damn electronic bottle top off my Bacardi on the rear bumper of a Hertz truck (fucking Indiana stores) and have some. I smoke a Newport and blast some Eric Johnson.

6:45PM Arrive home. Call the credit card agency. Find out that the reason my card got shut down (I'd last used it to buy gas five hours ago) was because I asked for too much cash the first time (I'd forgotten or hadn't read this part) then had tried 8 more times to get cash. Well, yeah. I had. Seems kinda stupid now, but I was kinda psychotic at that point. After asking me some questions only me or my shrink would know (I'm impressed with their security measures) he got it sorted out, and now I have a credit card again. Come to think of it, this might not be a good thing...

8:07PM I'm done now. God DAMN it's been a weird day. I'm about to drive back to Indy to get up at 5:45AM for the new job tomorrow.

Yours In Christ,
Dougie