Work

When I finally made it home from my 10 festi-field trip safe, sound and itchy, I couldn’t think about doing anything but showering and sleep for a few hours before going in for my big girl job. With a head, full of festival “after-effects”, I was thanking my lucky stars that this “job” only requires a high school equivalent and/or the mental capacities of a trained monkey. Plus this whole job thing is something I haven’t had in almost 8 months! Teaching yoga and Zumba in Costa Rica doesn’t count. I start my training for my 4 week, $10 an hour, seasonal stint at Proflowers, and let me tell you…it’s pretty intense! There are all sorts of rules and shit. I find out they have a gym, showers, giant refrigerators, a 24 hour, secure parking lot, and they’re going to feed us breakfast, lunch and dinner for a week. Fuck ya bitches! I’m moving in! My cat can play in the parking lot, eating me out of house and home and grow big and strong to defend me against snakes and coyotes on the canyon that the job is on. But seriously, the cat eats everything, coyotes got nothing on Gatita.

When I finally started working, it was the most dreaded, unrewarding, mundane job I”ve ever had, in my life…ever. 80% of my fellow co-workers are morbidly obese. Thanks to the vending machine snacks and buffet meals 3 times a day, everyone is 300lbs+ and growing. I guess they didn’t get the memo about the gym. It’s really and truly sad and disgusting sight to be honest. To be handed a free cupcake by a 400lb man with saggy titties, has a very “filling” effect on you. Very inspirational to help me loose that extra 15lbs I gained of rice and beans in Costa Rica. The job itself sucks too. Here we are, trying to make Mother’s Day special and send them a pretty bouquet of flowers, then after a very pleasant 5-10 minute conversation of them choosing the flowers, the card and vase,  they get to the bottom line. The price; and because the shipping and handling is almost doubled the cost of the flowers, guess who gets yelled at and accused of false advertising? This girl. Me. Over and over and over again. The week after Mother’s Day is even worse. This is all of the people that want their money back when the bouquet came back wilted and brown and dead and smelly. Happy Mother’s day mom!!! Here’s some dead flowers J Sure I excel as professional customer service over the phone and listen to people from all over the country bitch and moan, about this, that and the other. I empathize, sympathize and then roll my eyes and take the next caller. At the end of the day, after 8 hours of being yelled at, you just want to crawl into a hole and cry, or get really high or drunk…or eat a big fat cupcake.

 I count down the days till my last day of that wretched job. And truly, only 3 good things came out of my ProFlowers experience. I got some money to pay for some much needed repairs on the RV, I got to workout at a real gym, with weights and showers and stuff, and I met Jessika. Jessika is a fellow vagabond kid like me, who saw me in my RV one day and inquired within. She was so impressed with my open-road life, she took me out to a fancy dinner at whole foods to pick my brain and decided to give her place a 2 weeks vacating notice and do the same thing… but in her Subaru station wagon. Poor thing had all these plans of going to school in San Francisco and just living in that for a while…but it broke down half way up when she got there and didn’t get to fulfill her car-living dream. But don’t worry, she’s fine, she’s plenty cool and smart to get by, but later, when I refer again to the homeless girl who lived in my RV…this is who I will be referring to.