Author Archives: Rob G.

I’d better update the resume

Every once in a while I’ll get this urge, something like, you what Rob? You’ve got to turn it all around. What are you doing here, waiting tables, writing nonsense on this blog? You’re losing it, man, you’ve still got time to make something of yourself, of your life. You’ve just got to get out there, you’ve got to get hungry. Are you hungry Rob? You better start looking, come on man, making some opportunities. You better update the old resume.

And then I get a physical reaction in my stomach, shit, my resume. Where is my resume? I look in the documents folder, scroll down to R. There are a few files, resume.docx, resume(1).docx, down the line, all multiple files that I’ve saved with the same title. Every time I do it, I’m not really changing anything, a date here, some made-up achievement over there, I click save and my computer tells me, “Rob, a file named resume already exists. Do you want me to save this anyway?” and I’m like, “Yes, computer, just save it, just save all of them, just push them under the rug, OK, stop judging me computer, I know, all right, I’m well aware of how many resume files I have, that they’re all basically identical, minor variations of the same baloney document.”

What am I doing in the documents folder anyway? It’s much easier to just head to my email outbox, just find the last time I’ve sent out a resume, that’s got to be the most updated version. March? Really? Yikes. I guess I’d better take a look and see what I’ve got to work with.

OK, everything seems … basically the same really. I’ve just to change all of the 2013s to 2014s and … and what? This is terrible. This is just a really, really bad resume. I can feel whatever it was that motivated me to find this resume in the first place start to die down a little. Like, maybe I’m not doing so bad, sure, I’m getting a little sick of the same-old, same-old, but it’s not that bad, not really, not worth going through all of this … this resume stuff.

Because man, college was a long time ago. And yeah, the Peace Corps, that was something substantial, that a pretty big shot of adrenaline to the heart of my resume. At least, it was back in 2011 when I got back. I think it’s started to look a little dated again. I can already see the interview in my head, “So Rob, what have you been up to for the past two and a half years?”

Ha. That’s funny. This resume would never lead to an actual interview. Even if I did manage to spruce it up. What would I do with it? I’d send it out. Where would I send it to? To a bunch of random email addresses that I found on the Internet. I’m sure that ten thousand other people aren’t doing the same exact thing. I’m sure that whatever’s inside of my resume will be just the thing that gets my name out there, prompts someone in charge of hiring to reach out and get in touch with me.

And for real, where am I going to send this thing to? What am I looking to do exactly? I browse all of the listings on craigslist and I’m left with even more questions. What are all of these companies searching for in an employee? You know, besides being a motivated, eager, self-starting go-getter who works great both independently and as part of a team.

Why is five years experience “a must” for a job that starts at less than thirty thousand a year? Why is everything on this job listing either “a must” or “a plus?” Ability to finish projects is a must! Knowledge of Microsoft Office is a must! Being open to work through the weekends is a plus!

I can’t even look anymore. You know, I guess my job isn’t that bad right now. Sure, I don’t want to do it forever, but man, I can’t make sense of craigslist anymore, everything’s blending together, all of these duties and responsibilities, nothing’s really explained, why do so many hiring managers write out their job postings IN ALL CAPS!!!!!! WHAT KIND OF PERSON WOULD I BE WORKING FOR THAT SEEKS EMPLOYMENT ON THE INTERNET WRITING LIKE THIS?????

And here I am, I’m just making fun of everything, I don’t have a current resume, I don’t think I’d be able to put one together, not really, not with out blatantly making stuff up, even more than the stuff that’s already on there. No, my job’s not that terrible. I have a pretty flexible schedule. I go to work and I’m running on autopilot.

Maybe I’ll go to grad school. That could beef up the resume. That could be something. Maybe I could make up that I already went to grad school and put that on my resume. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to ask to see my diploma, right?

I went shopping for a new pair of pants

I needed a pair of pants, so I went to this men’s clothing store a few subway stops away from my place. It was pretty early, so there weren’t too many shoppers. As soon as I walked in, this woman standing by the entrance was like, “Hello! Welcome to the store! Do you need any help?”

And I don’t want to belittle retail employees, I mean, I work in the service industry, although restaurant work is a totally different beast than working in a clothing store, I guess we’re like cousins. I get it, is what I’m trying to say. I get how I’m immediately annoyed that this person is all up in my face, but I also get that she has to do that, there’s probably a rule book somewhere, and it’s probably written in fourteen point type, “When a customer walks into the store, you a required to greet them – warmly – within thirty seconds, followed by an offer of assistance.”

Still, I knew what I was there for, a pair of pants. No, I don’t go shopping enough to know exactly where the pants are in this particular store, but I’ve gone clothes shopping enough at places similar to this that I’m pretty sure there’s a wall somewhere, all of the pants are folded in little cubbies built in to the wall, and the labels should all have the sizes displayed, one after the other, no help really required.

I mean, wouldn’t it have been helpful to have this woman point me in the direction of the wall? Sure, I could have used some assistance, a, “Right that way, over to the left behind the big mirror.” But it’s never just a little bit of help. This might sound a little cold, but if I don’t come off as immediately standoffish, my saying yes to help might be misunderstood as an invitation for this person to play amateur personal shopper.

That’s the last thing anybody wants, a bored employee following them around, she’s trying to remember the store’s official rulebook, “If customer says yes to help, proceed to follow him around the store. Make suggestions for articles of clothing that he’d never consider wearing, ask him if he needs any help finding a size, even though all of the sizes are very clearly labeled. If everything on the rack is medium, why don’t you offer to look ‘in the back’ for any other sizes, even though there are never any other sizes, just hang out, give him time to browse some of the store’s other contemporary men’s collections.”

Yeah, I doubt it’s that specific, but really, I didn’t want anything else, just a pair of pants, a quick try-on in the fitting room, and hopefully I’d be out of there as quickly as possible. “No thanks, I’m great,” I told the woman. She responded, “OK! Thanks! My name is Sandra if you need anything!”

Whatever, thanks Sandra. Judged purely on finding the pants, my mission was as successful as I could have wanted. The pants wall was right in the back. The fitting area was right next to the pants wall, and there weren’t any other employees there at the moment, none of that, “Let me set up a fitting room for you,” clothing store filler, just the room, the pants, they fit. Great.

Checkout. “Did you find everything you were looking for today?” I’d been in the store maybe five minutes, and I was standing at the register holding out the pants and my credit card. “Yes, I found everything I was looking for.”

“And did anybody help you with your purchases today?” I looked back at Sandra, she wasn’t too close, but she was close enough that she could have probably heard what we were saying. I mean, the place was empty. I thought going early would have been great to beat the crowd, but I hadn’t taken into consideration the fact that there’d be all of these employees with no customers to serve. Did Sandra work on commission? If I said nobody, which was true, would Sandra feel stiffed, akin to a waiter not getting a tip? I mean, why would she say her name with such emphasis if not for me to repeat it at the register?

“Sandra,” I said, “Sandra helped me out.”

“Sandra?” the cashier said, loudly, “Is this true? Did you help this guy out?”

“What? No. I hardly talked to him.” Then she looked toward me. “Why would you say that? I barely talked to you at all.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “look, I work in customer service, I thought maybe you get like a cut or something.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, but no thanks, because if the boss hears about me getting referrals without having done any actual help, you know what’s going to happen? She’s going to think I’m sending in people to just say my name. I’ll get fired.”

And I wanted to be like, well why’d you scream out your name? Isn’t that a little bit of a mixed message? And now, what, I’m supposed to back off?

But again, I felt myself getting way too invested in the situation, much more involved than I’d planned on being when I walked in this store. “Do you want to sign up for a store credit card?” The cashier was back in retail mode.

“No, just, no credit card, no gift receipt, and just make sure you get the anti-theft thing. The white thing … what do you call it?”

“Christ, no need for an attitude.”

And that was it. I was on my way out the door, I’m sure I heard Sandra say behind my back, “God, what a dick.”

This is not the Super Bowl I predicted back in November

I made a big deal about predicting the winner of the 2014 Super Bowl way back when the New York Giants were 0 – 6. There was this whole blog post about how they were going to come back, make a run for the playoffs, and somehow win. And for a while anyway, it looked like I was right. Week after week, the G-Men racked up the wins, and sure, it was against mostly bad teams, but whatever, I looked like Nostradamus. I kept posting stuff on Facebook like, “I called it! It’s happening!” But then, toward the end of November, despite a ridiculous two-point conversion late in the fourth quarter, the Giants failed to stop the Cowboys from marching across the whole field to score a season-ending three-point goal.

It was humiliating. First of all, I don’t really know anything about football. And every time I talk about football, if the conversation gets past the three or four very current football talking points that I have memorized from a few carefully followed Twitter feeds, this fact becomes painfully obvious.

I’m trying as hard as I can to keep up. You know, besides actually watching entire football games, I’m really making a solid effort to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in the NFL. I joined a fantasy league. So yeah, I wanted to win that, I mean, there was money on the line. But even with my fantasy team, I found that it was easy just to read fantasy blogs, to copy the strategies of real football fans, people who really watched football games.

And it worked, kind of. I made it to the playoffs. But then I got knocked out of the playoffs. Now there wasn’t anything left to really ground my interest in the rest of the season. If only the Giants had lived up to my prediction, I probably would have been paying more attention.

I’m kind of an accidental Giants fan anyway. Up until two years ago, I never even tried to be a football fan. I think I went to a few Super Bowl parties, but I remember it being like ever year, I wouldn’t know who was actually playing in the Super Bowl until a couple of days before the big game.

Two years ago I decided to really try to get in on the action. All of my brothers watch football, so do my friends. Nothing was worse than hanging out with a bunch of people when all of the sudden the conversation takes a turn toward football. Someone would say something and it would snowball into an all-out, hour-long NFL debate. And I’d stand there and try to look engaged, all while paying attention for any window where I might be able to steer the conversation toward a direction where I could contribute something more than standing there awkwardly and smiling.

I committed to watching the Sunday games, and I found myself with a pretty big dilemma. Which New York team would be my team? The Jets or the Giants? I decided that I’d give both teams the entire season to convince me. And as the 2011 season dragged on, I’d hem and haw, “I don’t know, I haven’t made a decision yet, I think I’ll need another week.” Even after the Jets got eliminated, I’d say stuff like, “Well, I’ve seen how the Jets react to losing. I want to see if the Giants are sore losers.” Bullshit like that.

In fact, I never really planned on picking a team, I wanted to extend the theatrics year after year, forever playing the role of an annoying neutral sort-of spectator, but that year the Giants won the Super Bowl, so it was kind of like, all right, if I didn’t pick the Giants, well, I’d just be a dick. I could picture Eli Manning being like, “Dude, you gave us each a season to prove it to you, and we won the Super Bowl! Come on man!” So yeah, color me blue, I’m an accidental Giants fan. Which is cool, I mean, it actually makes some sense this way, almost like I was destined to be a Giants fan.

Anyway, this year kind of sucked for the G-Men. Although, Eli Manning’s brother Peyton is in the Super Bowl. What if something happened to the Broncos? Like, the entire team? I don’t want to say plane crash, because that’s really morbid, I don’t wish them lasting harm. But maybe like a really bad flu. The whole team gets it, they’re in no condition to play. Could the Broncos sign Eli and the rest of the Giants to temporary Broncos contracts?

If this happened, and then they won the Super Bowl, would my prediction still count? No, that’s crazy. Is it crazy? Yeah, it’s crazy. I’ll just have to be content in the belief that, somewhere out there in a parallel universe, the Giants are getting ready for the big game. Despite a terrible start to the season, they rallied, they did it.

“And this one guy called it, he wrote about it on his blog when they were 0 – 6.” That’s what all the sports anchors would say. Somewhere in the multiverse, I have to be famous for the prediction. Because, man, that would have been awesome.

Don’t put it back

I never go to bookstores. I never read books. I mean, I read, just not books, not physical books. It’s always either on my Kindle, or something on my phone. But, and I don’t even know why I was here, I think I had an hour or so to kill before my wife finished class, but I found myself downtown at this really cramped bookstore.

“Can I help you with anything?” that was the lady behind the desk, which, it wasn’t even a desk, really, it was just another stack of books, only it didn’t go all the way up to the ceiling, so it looked like a desk. Nothing looked like anything. Every inch of wall space, it was just books. And there were milk crates on the floor overflowing with more books. It’s like, I could imagine people moving, changing apartments, they’ve cleaned out their closets, they have this really weird collection of old textbooks and random paperbacks.

“See if you can sell it to the bookstore,” someone might say, and of course they’re not going to pay anything for it, I mean, if I owned a small bookstore, I mean really small, I mean this place, I was getting uncomfortable just standing inside, but if it was my shop, and some guys brought a crate of books, I’d just motion to the wall, “Leave them over there boys.” And they’d be like, “Well, is this stuff worth anything?” And I’d just repeat, “Over there, by the other milk crates.”

It’s like, could there be something valuable buried under all of those unused cookbooks and twenty-fifth edition Lord of the Rings trilogies? Maybe. Probably not. So when the lady asked me if I needed any help, I almost wanted to throw it right back at her, I wanted to be like, “Me? Do I need any help? Looks like you’re the one who needs some help, organizing these books, getting rid of that really old book smell.”

Of course I wouldn’t say that, “Just browsing,” I told her. And I started browsing, in the fullest definition of the word. I couldn’t tell if the books in the bookcases were organized by author name or if there was some sort of a category in which everything was supposed to fall, but, I looked, I don’t think there was any system, it was just a bunch of books, wherever they fit, one book comes out, grab another from the milk crate, one that fits really tight.

I knew that my chances of finding something cool were pretty slim. There wasn’t really enough time to read the jacket covers of every book that I selected at random from the shelves. Mostly I was looking to kill some time, I nudged worn-out spines out from the collection and looked at the cover art. It’s interesting, most book covers, they fall into three categories: there are photographs, usually a memoir or a biography, there are cool artistic illustrations, these may or may not have something to do with whatever’s written inside.

And then there are the covers that don’t mess around, a solid color with the title printed in bold text. Don’t Put it Back caught my eye not because of what was on it, but rather what wasn’t. It was a plain blue jacket, the copy itself looked maybe thirty years old or so, and the title was written in a very simple yellow Helvetica.

It drew me in. I flipped through the yellowed pages, opened to somewhere just past the middle. I started reading at a paragraph on the center of the left page:

“Rob opened the book to a random spot and started reading. He still had twenty minutes or so until he was supposed to meet his wife, but that’s not a lot of time to be able to do anything, nothing meaningful, not really. Why was he in this old bookstore? He questioned his surroundings, but a background part of his mind calculated what it would feel like to be waiting somewhere else, outside, that would have been too cold, maybe for five minutes or so, but twenty, no, he would have started playing with his phone, gloves off, his fingers would be freezing. Starbucks? Coffee? Too crowded, he’d have to buy something. No, this was nice. Not nice, not exactly, but no pressure, he could just stand, look at stuff, maybe read something, he was always open to the long shot possibility that something might pop out, a good story. He’d buy it …”

This was crazy. This paragraph was describing exactly what I was doing at that very second, down to the thought process. It was uncanny. Like, my heart actually skipped a beat, like you notice someone staring at you from across a room, you think, is this for real? Is that person really staring at me? And you play it off like it’s not weird, like this is just another mundane moment, I can’t really compute such a dramatic turn of events.

I put the book back. I thought, was this a joke? Like some sort of a hidden camera thing? They have shows like that, they’ll put unsuspecting people in weird situations and film the reactions. That kind of made sense. Were all of the books like this? All of the paragraphs identical? I started picking out other random books.

There was a fiction collection, some nonfiction Civil War book, something with a painting of a seashell on the cover. I looked through all of them. Nothing. Regular words. I had to see the other book. Did it call me by name, Rob, or was that my imagination? What was the rest of the book about? But I couldn’t find it. It was right here but now I couldn’t find where I had slid it back.

“Excuse me,” I think I startled the lady behind the book desk. “I was just reading this book, it was blue, I think it was called Don’t Put it Back. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Well let’s see,” she stepped into the aisle and started looking at the titles printed on the spines. “Do you know the author? Maybe I could look it up online.”

This wasn’t going to be any help. “No,” I said, “It was right here, I was just reading it.”

She could tell I was getting impatient. She said, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t of put it back,” adding extra emphasis on the last three words, like, haha, that was funny right?

It wasn’t funny. I needed to know what was in that book. But my wife called. She told me she was ready. I tried telling her what was going on but she was all, “Yeah, yeah, I’m freezing, let’s go.” And I had to go.

I don’t even remember where that bookstore was. I was just wandering around. I made an attempt to go back a few days later and I swear, I couldn’t find it. It was crazy. Was that like the universe giving me a chance at some sort of important wisdom, something right there on the cover, Rob, don’t put this book back. And I’m just like, hold on, this is crazy. And I put it back.

I put it right back.

Bill, I had a space dream, and you were in it

Dear Bill Simmons:

I had this dream last week where NASA offered you the chance to hop on a rocket ship and captain a deep space mission. “Bill,” they said, “We want you to spread sports across the cosmos. Get out there, find some alien life, and teach them all about basketball and football and hockey. Show them about sportsmanship and being a team player and the importance of picking a good mascot to represent their species. If there’s anybody that can not only show the aliens what Earth sports are all about, but can also get them actually interested, it’s you.”

And you were like, “I’ll do it.” And everyone smiled, but you continued, “On one condition. I pick the crew.” And they were a little skeptical, I mean, what do you really know about staffing a spaceship? But eventually they realized that it was the only way they’d get you on board, and so they agreed, “All right Bill, we hope you know what you’re doing.”

You did know what you were doing. You picked me to join you as your first officer. I was sitting here on my computer, dicking around, killing some time before I had to go to work, when I got this call on my cell phone from an unknown number. It was you.

“Hey Rob, Bill Simmons here. I’ve been reading your letters to me every week on your web site asking me for a job. Well, here it is, your lucky day!” And at first I was really excited, like, yes, finally, I’m going to get to work at Grantland, me, a full-time writer at one of the best sports and pop culture web sites on the Internet. My imagination went crazy, I started picturing what kind of posters I’d use to decorate my office, or how I’d casually drop by your office around three-thirty to ask if you wanted anything while I went out to Starbucks.

It was a shock when you told me it wasn’t exactly the offer that I’d been dreaming about, but of course I still accepted without hesitation. Because seriously Bill, I’d do anything to work with you. I’d leave all of my family and friends here on Earth as we set out on a one-way trip to explore the galaxy. That’s the kind of dedication I’d bring to your team, in both my fantasy dream world and in real life.

Yeah, the dream kind of went in a weird direction after I said yes to the mission. Like most dreams go, there were huge gaps in the narrative, weird tangential events that didn’t really make much sense in terms of context or continuity. For example, all of the sudden we were both deep in space, and you told me that the months of isolation were starting to get to you, that routine spaceship maintenance work wasn’t as satisfying as you thought it might be.

But I was like, “Bill, why didn’t you say something earlier? I brought a chess set. We could learn to play, together.” And yeah, you lit up at the idea of a new hobby, something to really challenge your atrophying mental faculties. But we discovered pretty quickly that playing chess in zero-g isn’t really possible pastime. Maybe if I had thought it out a little better, like if I brought some Velcro, something to keep the pieces from flying off the board. But no, I didn’t have anything, and so we both gave up after a few minutes of futilely trying just to keep everything still on the constantly floating surface.

And then pretty soon after that, we weren’t in space anymore, we were at a McDonald’s. It didn’t make sense at all, but neither of us questioned our new surroundings. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, you didn’t even remember being in space at all. And when I was like, “Bill, don’t you remember? The spaceship? The chess set?” you were like, “My name’s not Bill, it’s Fred. And can you hurry up a little with my order?”

It was then that I looked down, and I was actually behind the counter, I was wearing a McDonald’s uniform, and my name tag didn’t say “Rob,” it said, “Jean.” Which, yeah, that doesn’t really make much sense. The rest of the dream went on for like another minute or so, in dream minutes anyway, who knows how long it was in real life. Everything got fuzzier and fuzzier until I woke up, it was ten-thirty, I was late for work. But I still thought, I’ve got to write this down. I’ve got to tell Bill.

And now that I’ve written it all out, I’m actually kind of sorry, because for real, I know how boring dream stories are. Whenever anybody starts telling me, “Rob, listen to this dream I had …” I automatically shut down, because regardless of how interesting the dream may have been in the dream, it’s never even remotely worth retelling once you wake up. And so I don’t know why I thought this one was going to be different, because it wasn’t, and again, I apologize.

All I can say is, when you hire me to work at Grantland, I’ll never talk about my dreams. Unless you order me to. Then I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever you say. That’s the kind of employee I am. Unless you order me to stop following your orders, because I’m not that clever, I won’t really know how to respond to one of those logical paradoxes.

Anyway, I hope you have a great weekend. And I hope that whichever team you predicted to win the Super Bowl wins. And I’ll tell everybody, “See? It’s just like Bill Simmons said would happen. That guy is the best.” Me? I predicted the Giants would win, way back when they were 0 – 6. Things were looking pretty good for a while, until Dallas scored that field goal. I hate the Cowboys.

Your friend,

Rob G.