Yearly Archives: 2012

I’m still eating Halloween candy. Somebody help me, please.

This year for Halloween I bought a bunch of candy in case any trick-or-treaters came by. But not even one showed up. So now I’m stuck with all of these bags of candy, which I tried to resist at first, but by now I’ve given in, and I’m just constantly eating candy, waiting for it to run out so that my brain stops bothering me every ten seconds, whispering stuff in my ear like, “Hey Rob, so, uh … how about some more candy?” And it’s such a strong craving I’ll taste it in my mouth, I’ll want it so badly, and I’ll cave to the temptation almost immediately.

I haven’t eaten this much candy in a while. In fact, I don’t think I’ve eaten any candy in a while. So I’m having like a mini candy renaissance. I pick out four big bags of fun sized treats. They looked pretty harmless when they were still packaged behind all of that clear plastic. I wasn’t yet feeling any appeal. But then I decided, what the hell, it’s just going to sit there. I might as well have one piece of candy, two tops.

And then I opened that first bag. It was a variety pack, a mix of Milky Ways, Twix, Snickers, and Three Musketeers. As soon as I split open the plastic I was overcome with the actual sensation of being a little kid again. I was instantly transported back to my childhood, canvassing the neighborhood on Halloween for candy, and saving that candy for weeks. It was that scent of assorted chocolates and candy bars. It was the smell of Halloween.

I hadn’t even popped anything in my mouth yet and I was already feeling way more excited than I had anticipated. Any ideas about having just one or two were replaced by having to try out at least one of each variety. I picked out a Milky Way and ate it. I’m telling you, that one bite completely altered the trajectory of my whole day. I was flooded with energy. It tasted so good, even better than I remember it tasting when I was a little kid. It was too much, I started making fists and jumping up and down really quickly. I didn’t want it to stop, so I went straight for the Twix. It was the same reaction. No wait, it was even better. The effect was amplified. I turned around in a couple of circles, the energy was overwhelming. One after the other, each flavor tasted better than the last. And even better, and totally unexpected, Milky Way Dark, which I never liked as a little kid, it now tasted incredible, delicious.

I went through like fifteen pieces of candy in under a minute. And then I started feeling a little worried, because I knew somewhere in my mind that eating that much candy isn’t really the best thing to do for your body. I gave myself a minute to let my brain catch up to my taste buds. Sure enough, the euphoria was very fleeting, and once I started to get my feet to stop jumping up and down, I realized that my tongue felt a little raw. Worse, I was actually sort of full, in a weird gross way, and it especially sucked because I had just ordered some dinner, and I think I might have spoiled my appetite.

But yeah, over the course of a day or two I made quick work of that variety pack. And I told myself, just don’t open the other bags. Just keep it in check, keep it together Rob. I think I kept it in check for maybe a day. And then I opened up the Kit Kats. This was really disappointing actual, because, and I didn’t even realize it until after I had opened up the first Kit Kat, instead of using chocolate, they used orange dyed white chocolate, I guess for some sort of a Halloween theme. Gross. I tried to just close my eyes and pretend that it was the original, but unlike my experience with Milky Way Dark, a candy I hated as a child but now liked as an adult, unfortunately my sense of taste remained unmoved by white chocolate. It tastes like eggs or something. I can’t really describe it except to repeat again that it’s gross.

That’s still sitting there, untouched. I’ll probably have to just eventually throw it out at some point. I think I’m going to throw it out right now just so I don’t have to look at it anymore. But I’m halfway through a giant bag of Peanut M&Ms. There’s still an unopened sack of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I can’t take this anymore. Now it’s all becoming so compulsory. Every time I’m bored, every minute or so, I get up and eat a bag of M&Ms. My teeth are starting to hurt. I haven’t eaten an apple in like two weeks.

And you know what I think a big part of the problem is? Fun size. To what psychopath does a bag containing six M&Ms seem like a fun size? That’s not a fun size. A fun size is one of those party bags of M&Ms, where there’s no individual packs, just tons of loose M&Ms, like you fill up a whole bowl with them and put that bowl out at a party. That’s always the best, going to a party where there’s a giant bowl of unwrapped candy, because nobody ever goes for it. Nobody except me, I hit it really early in the night. After a while my fingers are all stained red and blue and it’s clear to everyone that I’ve made it my personal candy bowl. Still, I always get a stomachache from that much candy.

Fun size. Come on, it’s a trick. If they were packaged as regular sized packs of candy, I guarantee you I would only eat one. But because they are so little, so comically small, there’s no way I’m going to stop at just one. So I’ll just keep going, little by little, slowly getting into the double digits until next thing I know, I’ve just eaten a pound of M&Ms without even realizing the magnitude of what I’ve done. That’s not fun. Nothing that small is fun. Just call it small size. Or tease sized. Actually, you know what would be a really fun size? Like a swimming pool, an Olympic sized pool filled to the brim with Peanut M&Ms. And I’d climb up to the diving board and execute a perfect dive, face down, mouth open, just totally submerged in Peanut M&Ms. I could eat all of them, without stopping, I don’t have any doubt. That would be a really fun size.

I’m all for it

Here’s a tip. Whenever somebody uses the phrase, “I’m all for ____,” they’re not really all for it at all. They’re really all against it. One time I heard a commercial on the radio for an SUV. The narrator was some mom, and she said, “I’m all for the environment, but safety is my priority when buying a vehicle.” You have to get past the fact that, this lady isn’t who she says she is, she’s an actress. So it’s really the car company itself speaking directly to you, telling you that they’re all for the environment. But what they’re really trying to tell you is, “We don’t care at all about the environment. And you shouldn’t either. Buy our Canyonero.”

I’m all for healthy eating, but if food companies want to use trans-fats, who are we to say they can’t? I’m all for portion control, but I don’t want the government telling me what size soda I’m allowed to buy. I’m all for gun rights, I just don’t think that people should be allowed to buy semi-automatic firearms, stockpile hoards of ammunition, or carry concealed weapons. See what I did there? I don’t care about gun rights at all. What I was doing was stating my argument while at the same time countering any arguments that might say that I’m anti gun rights. Which is false. It’s just a clever trick of the English language.

But you can use this trick in a more abstract way. You can make a really broad general statement, like, “I’m all for personal liberty.” And then you can follow it up with a statement that has nothing to do with the first part, thereby invalidating whatever you’re talking about. I’m all for personal liberty, but I’m don’t think New York Jets fans should be allowed to wear any team merchandise in public. I’m arbitrarily slamming an entire sports franchise and its fan base while at the same time standing up for something vague and general, in this case personal liberty. Who is going to argue against personal liberty?

When you’re engaged in an argument, or you’re making an argument, you’re always supposed to maintain some sort of civility. It’s just nice. When I’m arguing, I like to say stuff like, “Well, I disagree,” instead of saying, “No, you’re wrong.” That way you can get your point of view across without alienating whoever you’re engaging with. “Well, I would argue that …”

So on the surface anyway, “I’m all for,” really should be a nice thing to add to a conversation, to a disagreement. And maybe it was when it was first used. But whenever I hear it being thrown around, it’s always in a way to trivialize whatever it is being argued against. Go back to my SUV example and the woman on the radio. “I’m all for the environment, but what I care about is safety.” What’s going on here? To me, what I’m hearing is, “The environment? That’s cute. OK, sure, we’re for the environment too. Having said that, it doesn’t matter. Safety.”

That’s another trick. Just say safety. Arguments for safety basically trump anything. Why don’t high schools or colleges sponsor ski trips anymore? Why is marijuana illegal? Why did we go to war in Iraq? Safety, safety, and safety. But the safety excuse isn’t even applied universally, because we still encourage kids to run at each other headfirst every single day at football practice, we still allow people to buy and consume unlimited quantities of alcohol, and there are still a ton of other despotic countries in the world that we aren’t invading and overthrowing. Look, I’m all for head injury awareness, but football is ingrained in our culture. There’s no way we’re ever going to change anything. Look, I’m all for the free market, but we cannot stop until the war on drugs is won. Look, I’m all for diplomacy, but listen up Saddam, you have twenty-four hours to get out of Iraq before our tanks start rolling in towards Baghdad.

And seriously, nobody really needs this detailed of an explanation, but I’m running out of things to say here. I had something to say, and yeah, it took me a little long to cut to the chase. Or, it didn’t really take that long, but I added a bunch of unnecessary words. I’ve never really figured out how to be concise. Something about ten words where one will suffice. But listen, if you’ve got any advice, how I can tighten all of this up, let me know. I’m all for some constructive criticism.

Call me Mr. Emergency. Seriously, call me that. Like the next time you see me.

I’m the guy you want to be with during an emergency. I’m ready for anything. I’ve got escape routes tattooed on my body. I’ve sewn spare batteries into every pair of socks that I own. I know, that sounds a little much, but I’ve got a system. In my thick, wool winter socks, I sew in one size D battery. And then for every other pair of socks that I own, I go down in battery size with relation to how much thinner the socks get. Like regular socks might have double-As, really thin running socks triple-As, and then for my wife’s ultra thin pantyhose and leggings, I’ve hidden away little watch batteries of various sizes.

You know how some people fill up the bathtub whenever a big storm rolls into town? I keep my bathtub filled all the time. You might think it gets in the way of taking a shower and staying clean, but it doesn’t. I submerged my whole body in the tub when we moved in and I filled the whole thing up to the brim. I used a straw so I could breath. After it was filled I got out and measured how much water was left in the tub, and I labeled it with a line around the perimeter. So I just always keep it to that level, this way while I’m waiting out any potential disasters, I can still take a bath without wasting any water. I mean, yeah I’m spending a ton of money on constantly keeping the water level up that high, but whatever, it’s totally worth it.

I just bought twenty-five packs of candles. I hollowed out the bottom of each candle and snuck inside little birthday candles. If I ever need an emergency birthday party, I’m set. If not, then I assume that once the big candles gets down to the little candles, they’ll just continue to burn like a regular candle. But another trick: I didn’t use regular birthday candles, I used those prank candles, the ones that relight after you’ve blown them out. That way if it’s really windy, I’ll be the only guy on the block with a functioning celebration. Also, I figure they might come in handy in case anybody needs an emergency joke.

I’ve got a backup generator for my backup generator. I even bought a separate computer and loaded a bunch of web sites and photos and videos on it. So when the power goes out for good, I can just crank up the generator, use my regular computer to wirelessly link up to the emergency computer, and there it is, emergency Internet. Yeah, it might not be as comprehensive or up to date as the regular Internet, but it beats playing chess or reading a book or having a conversation.

I’ve got it all. Emergency power, emergency entertainment, even emergency money. If the dollar ever collapses, I’ve printed up enough personalized currency to keep me in the black for at least a decade. Nobody else is going to have any. You know why? I bought an emergency money press, and so if people get wise to my idea and try to make their own money, they’re going to look up “money presses” on the Internet, and Google will tell them, “Calculating route to nearest money press,” and they’ll take out their phones and load up the directions and it’ll lead them right to my front door. And they’ll have to go through me. And sure, I’ll do business with you. But I only accept my personalized emergency money as payment. Sorry.

Flashlights? Please. I’ve designed our guest room’s furniture entirely out of flashlights. Canned food? Come on. I filled the basement entirely with cans, floor to ceiling. You’d literally have to eat your way out, which, in the event of an emergency, that’s exactly what I’d want to do. The only thing I think I’ve forgotten is emergency clothing.

Actually, the only thing I forgot is that I actually didn’t forget about the emergency clothing. I already took care of it. I got out the sewing kit and laid out all of my clothes inside out. Then I sewed another shirt or pants on the inside of every inside out pair. One, this saves so much space, because it looks like it’s only one shirt or one pair of pants. Two, once civilization has collapsed, after a year or two, everybody will look really haggard, all post-apocalyptic torn slacks and ripped blouses. And all I’ll have to do is flip my clothes inside out again to reveal a brand new unworn garment. People will be like, “Rob, how do manage to look so good throughout all of this societal unrest?” And I won’t tell anybody, because once they figure out how prepared I am for even the smallest of details, word will spread that I’m the emergency king, and people will think, what else has he thought of? Guest rooms filled with flashlights? Basements stocked with canned goods? Emergency Internet?”

And all of the personalized currency in the world can’t buy your way out of a mob of desperate people, all driven to storm your house and take whatever they can grab. Which is why I have an emergency self-destruct button. “It’s a fake!” some people will scream, to which I’ll reply, “Go ahead! Try me!” and even though most people will see it as the fake button it really is, there will always be that doubt in the back of everyone’s mind, telling them, well, he’s been this prepared for everything else. Maybe that button really does work.

And eventually they’ll all leave. And I’ll be put in charge of rebuilding, because I’d have shown tremendous wisdom in getting through emergencies and crises. And that old saying will be replaced by a new saying, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going, to line up in front of Rob’s house, to pledge allegiance, to beg for supplies, and see if there isn’t anything he might not need in return.” Yeah it’s a little long, but it’s practical, and as far as sayings go, in an emergency anyway, practicality always trumps catchiness.

Working hard or hardly working? Both.

I always hear variations of the same quote, something about if you love your job, you’ll never feel like you’ve worked a day in your life. So that’s my first clue as to how I know I don’t love my job, because I totally feel like I’m going to work every single time that I’m going to work. I guess I could go through my whole work history, but as of right now I’m working as a waiter, serving food and drinks and smiling and saying things like, “Coming right out, sir,” and “Hope you had a great time, folks.”

I’m not complaining, really. I’ve had enough terrible jobs where I’m at a point that I don’t hate what I’m doing, and so that’s definitely a good thing. And regardless of what the job is, I think work isn’t a question of labor; it’s really all about time. Considering the fact that most of us have to do something considered work, I’ve found that my personal satisfaction on a day-to-day basis stems from how much time I have that I can consider my own vs. how much of my time that I have to be someplace outside of my house doing things that I really, really don’t feel like doing, which is exactly what going to work is.

Because like I said it’s a matter of time. With my current job, I have some set hours, but it’s really such a loose structure. At my restaurant we have twelve waiters working per shift. With two shifts a day, that’s twenty-four spots. On a weekly basis, I’m only scheduled to work five of those spots. Mostly every other employee at this job is some sort of an entertainer, performer, or actor, so these people are constantly looking to swap shifts and make trades.

As a wannabe writer, this always works out in my favor. Seeing as how I do my writing on my time, I really don’t have to set aside any specific hours. So every week I can basically shape and mold my schedule as I see fit. It’s great because, and I’ve been doing this a lot lately, I can work three double shifts in a row and then have off for four days. It’s like taking those thirty-five hours that I once upon a time spent sitting in an office from nine to five, Monday through Friday, and just compressing them into a pill that I can choke down in one oversized swallow.

It’s no picnic, by the end of that last shift I feel like I’ve lost just enough of my humanity, like I’m almost capable of walking outside and mugging a complete stranger, but it’s totally, totally worth it to have four days off.

And this is what I’ve been trying to get at from the beginning of this essay. That whole quote about loving your job so much that it doesn’t feel like work. I feel like it’s a great idea, and if you’re able to make that a reality for your life, then that’s amazing. Consider yourself very fortunate, because that’s the dream, right? Personal and professional fulfillment. But it’s not practical on a large scale. If everybody had that, then there wouldn’t be any garbage men or bank tellers or people who go down in the sewers to do repairs or guys who have to scoop up elephant dung at the circus or waiters and waitresses to get you another Diet Coke.

I think that, for maximized happiness, on a global scale, it would be within everybody’s best interests to find some way where your work time is never greater than your free time. I think, as a society, as a species, that’s what we should be striving for. There are enough people on this planet to make it a reality. There’s no reason that companies should set thirty-five, forty hours a week as this arbitrary holy standard of productivity. Based on my own experiences in the office world, an absurd majority of this time is spent mindlessly cruising the Internet, clicking on some bullshit spreadsheet whenever a boss walks by, but the boss probably doesn’t even care, because she’s got a Scrabble game going on in her office, and she resents the fact her bosses make her get up every now and then to walk around and make sure everyone’s being productive.

And if you think my idea is stupid, just look to the New York City Department of Sanitation. Workers have a very important, very messy job to do, but they get it done, they hustle their asses off, and they pick up all of the trash on their routes. And if they finish before it’s quitting time, then, whatever, they’ve done their jobs, there isn’t any more trash to be picked up, so they get to go home and still clock in for a full day’s work. Oh yeah, plus they get some of the best benefits in the city. Oh yeah, plus they get full retirement after twenty years. And, oh yeah, there’s something like a four-year waiting list just to get one of those jobs.

I’m not saying we should all aspire to work less. We should all be working smarter, not harder. Nothing’s worse than doing your job fast and efficient, only to have some boss turn around and go, “Oh, don’t have anything to do? I’ll give you something to do,” and then giving you some sort of a busy-work, some meaningless drudgery that’ll make you think twice about doing your original work faster ever again. It hinders productivity. Employers should be hiring people for jobs, not time. Let me do my job as fast and efficiently as possible so I can get out and go home.

Changing jobs

I changed jobs a while ago. The restaurant I had been working at for a couple of years decided, amongst other poor decisions, to ignore the advice of the Department of Health. “I’m going to come back here sometime in the next few weeks,” the health inspector said, “and if I don’t like what I see …” then the restaurant’s C grading would stand. For anybody that doesn’t know, all New York City restaurants are given an annual rating of A, B, or C. So the restaurant changed nothing, the guy came back, was like, “are you kidding me?” gave them the C, and left. As punishment, the general manager came downstairs in a cocaine-fueled rage, fired the closest busboy, screamed out something like, “and there’s more where that came from!” to the rest of the staff and then disappeared.

So I figured, yeah, you know what? As much as I adored my indentured servitude, maybe a change of scenery would do me some good. But I wasn’t sure. I needed to make a list, some pros and cons. OK, so, pro: all you can eat ice cream. Believe me, I took advantage of that one. Pro: Only tourists came in, meaning no regulars, meaning if I didn’t feel like acting nice I didn’t have to, because even if they did complain, pro: the managers didn’t do anything except hide out in the office, and wouldn’t know how to deal with a pissed off guest anyway.

But the con side of the list brought everything into sharp relief. No benefits, no regular schedule, constant yellings and screamings from the psychotic GM … whatever, I don’t feel like reliving my lousy job by complaining. I do enough of that in real life.

So I went online and checked out some job listings. One restaurant immediately caught my eye because they offered benefits, something pretty rare in the service industry. I walked in, went through the interviews, and here I am, new job. My old job didn’t take it so well. Even though I gave a five-weeks notice, the general manager looked me square in the eye and told me I’d never work in the restaurant industry ever again. Seriously, what a nut job.

The only problem I had in switching, and it sounds like a minor detail, but there is always so much time spent waiting around while you’re filling out applications. It’s almost enough of a deterrent in itself to actually finding a new job. I walked in the door of the new restaurant. I had to introduce myself to a hostess and tell her I’m responding to the open call. She gives me an application and tells me to take a seat somewhere to fill it out. There are like two hundred other people filling out applications. First of all, I don’t get this application stuff, because it’s all right there on my resume. Why don’t you just take a copy of my resume? Everybody puts so much weight on the resume, but every single time I’ve interviewed somewhere, they always make me waste twenty or thirty minutes refilling out everything by hand on some generic application form.

Whatever. I filled it out. I handed it in. “Thanks a lot, somebody will be with you in a second.” And I hate to ask, but I know from past experiences that I have to, “Where should I wait?” because if I don’t ask, I’ll just kind of wander around aimlessly and try not to look like I’m too worried that I’m waiting in the incorrect area. And then the waiting starts. People are being selected at what seems like totally random to sit down and chat with somebody in a suit. I wonder why people who came after me are being interviewed first.

I tell myself, don’t think about it Rob. Get out of your head. Just act natural. But acting natural only works if you’re not thinking about it. And if I really wanted to act really natural, I’d be at home on my couch taking it easy. That’s a little too natural. So I always engage in an anxious type of weird self-coaching. Sit up straight. OK, not too straight. Stop furrowing your brow. Stuff runs through my mind like, where do I look? I want to look engaged with the world but not scatterbrained. I want to look focused on something without staring off into space. I don’t want to seem fidgety, but I don’t want to be like a statue.

Finally I got called. The manager gave me a brief interview, looked at my then-current former job and said something like, “Wow, you must love it there. That place is really busy. Why are you leaving?” and I have to make up some crazy sounding answer about wanting more flexibility or growth opportunities or something like that. Nobody wants an interviewee to start badmouthing their current job. You have to stay positive. So the manager tells me to hang tight while he gets some more papers for me to fill out. More waiting.

Maybe fifteen minutes later he comes back with a personality test. It was one of those “1 for strongly disagree, 5 for strongly agree” type of tests. Stuff like, “I just hate being bossed around by women,” and I’d mark a number one. My thing is, even if you’re the biggest sexist on the planet, can’t you see right through that question? Don’t you realize that any job is going to want you to say, “no problem?”

I fill out that test. Then came an intelligence test. Then they set up another interview. Then another one. Then a uniform check. I get through all of them. What I can’t believe is that I made it through the waiting in between each round. Just showing up at the restaurant, I’d immediately be directed to a seat to wait. Indefinitely. Then someone would come with something for me to sign. “I’ll be right back to take that from you.” Half an hour of more waiting.

I got to thinking that all of that waiting had to be a part of the interview process. They had to be looking specifically for people that could go for long periods of time while sitting still. Anybody who knows me knows that that’s not who I am. So I just had to fake it. I had to clench my fists as tight as I could while trying not to go for my phone every ten seconds to check if that email wasn’t maybe something more important than one of the twenty-five emails Barack Obama sent me asking for some more reelection campaign money.

I got the job. All is well. I just feel like a lot of what inhibits me from going for new jobs is stuff like spending hours waiting around doing absolutely nothing. I know it’s incredibly shortsighted to not want to go out there because you’re afraid of waiting. But can imagine how awful I would have felt if, after all of that sitting around, they just left me there? They wouldn’t even tell me I couldn’t work there, they’d just ignore me, keep me waiting, the restaurant getting busier and busier until finally, a hostess or a waitress would come up to me and be like, “Can we help you?” and I’d try to explain that I’m waiting for somebody to come back with some papers, but they’d never show up. The dinner rush would end and finally someone else would come by and be like, “We’re closing up. Locking the doors for the night. Let’s go.”

And none of that happened. But it all went through my mind as I was sitting there, wondering what was taking so long, hoping I didn’t misunderstand some social cue, worrying that I’d somehow been overlooked or forgotten about.