Chapter 6 in the 10 chapter book i had to write last semester.

Greco carpet cleaning is hell on earth. I am convinced of this. I’m not entirely sure why. I’ll never have a job as ridiculous as that one. I’ll never have a job with as many friends as I did with that one. But it was hell, nonetheless.
My friend Drew got me the job. He had been working there for a while, and always would talk about how boring it was. I don’t remember exactly how I went about it, but I ended up working there. I would eventually be fired as well. But for three months, I found myself at Greco Carpet Cleaning three nights a week.
Telemarketing. That’s what I was supposed to do. My job was to basically lie to, plead with, and coax people into getting their carpets cleaned by one of our “truck mounted 100-horsepowered steam cleaners”. Of course, by the time you get to the point where someone may be interested in getting the job done, you’re speaking so fast that the line comes out as a “horse-mounted truck-powered steam cleaner.”
Telemarketing. They actually said to me “you’re the enemy now” when I was hired. No one likes a telemarketer… especially a 17 year old one who doesn’t care if he puts his company out of business.
Prank calls. That’s basically what it boiled down to. Supervision was very lax. Whatever we wanted to say to the customers, we did. The only thing we gave up was our bonuses, which we usually didn’t get paid anyway. You see, it wasn’t me and my friends providing all the insanity at Greco. It was the company themselves. Mr. Greco, the boss, and Kathy, the telemarketing supervisor, were both way too stupid to be running any sort of operation. Charlene, or Char for short, another telemarketing supervisor under Kathy, was absolutely insane.
Ironically, the Greco offices had some of the filthiest carpets I had ever seen. Everything there was brown with either filth, or wood paneling. All the walls had fake wood paneling, which made Greco look like it was something out of the 1970s. It smelled like coffee, and extreme heat. Heat certainly has a smell. Everything in that building was cooking, and all the smells were made more prominent as a result. It didn’t matter whether it was 10 degrees or 100 degrees out. The heat was always cranking in Greco.
Deusterdick. “Hello, is this… hehe… Mr… ha… Deusterdick??” How are you supposed to take the job seriously when you’re calling people like Mr. Deusterdick.
It didn’t matter, even if we did take the job seriously, Charlene would still rail us for not working hard enough.
“Get back on the goddamn phone and do some work!” She shrieks all the time. I was taking a sip of my coffee at the moment she said this. I had also just hung up my phone less than three seconds ago, in order to look up the next number.
“Let me tell you, the ‘K’ file is hot today!” The “K” file may have been hot when you called it three times this afternoon, Charlene, but now it’s just a bunch of irate people who have already been called a few times today.
She didn’t have the least bit of common sense. No authority figure at that job did, which is why Greco Carpet Cleaning was slowly but surely going out of business. In order to bring up sales, they’d make asinine ways to give us bonuses.
“Tonight, we’re doing teams.” They would say. Then they’d pair us up, and the team who made the most sales would get a bonus. However, once the winning team started getting less than three sales a night, things changed…
“Okay, since the numbers are down, and there haven’t been as many sales as there were the previous week, we’re getting rid of teams.” Right. That makes sense. Because sales aren’t high enough, let’s get rid of the incentive to make sales. That’ll bring those number right back up.
Charlene looked like a skeleton. She was one of those people who smoked three or four packs of cigarettes a day for 40 years… and she didn’t do it in a cool way either. As a result, her face was the perfect balance between a sharpei and a skeleton, if that is possible. There wasn’t quite enough fat for wrinkles, yet the little bit of extra skin she had simply formed deeply-imbedded lines all throughout her face. Skinny like a skeleton yet wrinkled like a sharpei. We would argue whether she looked more like a ghost pirate, or an old catcher’s mitt.
No one knew her last name, nor did they know where she lived. Charlene was an enigma, whom we only knew a few facts about:
She did her laundry at Greco.
During the summer, she would come back to Greco to watch “Fear Factor” in the back room.
Although she didn’t own a TV, she did own a DVD player.
She had no home phone, nor did she have a computer or radio.
Also, She worked at a library during the day, but she wasn’t a “goddamned librarian.”
She would do nothing at Greco. She would go in the back and do her laundry for the two and a half hours that we were there. If she got the idea that we were dicking around, she’d simply holler down the hallway that she’d “punch us all out”, and then resume her laundry.
“Charlene, can I have some gum?” One of my friends asked once. She asked the question innocently enough, actually wanting a piece of gum. Her inquiry was met with silence. A stare. Charlene stared for about thirty seconds, her face twisted into a horrible frown.
…
…
…
“IF YOU DON’T HAVE ANY GUM, WHAT MAKES YOU THINK ANYONE ELSE HERE WOULD!!??”
What the hell. That’s logic for you. I think we all flat-out laughed in her face when she said this one. She deserved it as well.
My last day at Greco, as I was walking out my hand went through one of the glass windows of the front door. My hand was bleeding pretty profusely, and I had a big piece of glass sticking out of my wrist. Charlene, however, was mad at me because I didn’t make enough sales that night. As a result, she wouldn’t get me a bandage or let me wash out the cut… she just stood in the door saying “If it hurts so much, why don’t you just go home?”
In the end, she gave me two paper towels and a rubber band, and left me to drive myself home. Then she fired me.

posted by RJ at 5:22 PM

people i have known.

silva - his name was silva, and thats about all the background i can give. he was really ethnic (maybe hispanic? i dont know) and he worked at the birdseed factory with me. the only thing he ever said was "Is good, eh?". if he just wrapped up some birdseed he'd go "Is good, eh?". one day i saw that they had some pigeons caged in the back of the warehouse, because they had gotten inside. I was looking at them and silva said "Is good, eh?" then he pointed at the bird and said "Is good, eh?" then he held his hands near his crotch and pantomimed humping the bird. "Is good, eh?". no, that wasn't good.

joe fowler senior - joe fowler jr. was probably more entertaining, but not by much. joe fowler sr. had a white beard that took up most of his face. he also had pointed teeth and ears, therefore, we called him wolfman jack. one day we were driving through five-points and he said "What the fuck is up with these fucking new traffic lights?? Five points used to flow so fucking nice now its fucking backed up all the way to the fucking highway because those pigfuckers that work for the city had to put in twenty-five goddammned fucking traffic lights to slow my ass down."

jackie burowski - jackie was a thug. she sat behind me in some classes in school. i hated her and she hated me more. she could have easily beat me up though. she works at the rustic mill. i went there once and i was afraid to order cause she was my waitress, so i had christine order for me. when the food came out, she brought me food ANYWAY. i told her i didnt order it and she just said "well, are you gonna eat it?" and stared at me. she fucking tried to poison me. i didn't eat the food. last year in school we took tests to find out who we were "compatible" with. the test showed that me and jackie burowski were in fact the same person, apparently.

guy on line to get rob zombie's autograph - sean wanted to meet rob zombie really bad. so we waited on line, and i was there with him. we were third on line, and we were 3 hours early. i dont know how early the two dudes in front of us came, but the guy kept turning and telling us how "rob zombie is so cool" but he liked white zombie better. I told him I listened to rush and ELO (to catch him off guard), and it worked to well, because he stared at me for two minutes before turning around and saying he liked "heavier stuff". i feel bad making fun of him because he was obviously a mess. rob zombie signed my psychology book.

guy at TT the bears - i saw him watching some local band called auto interiors. he has his knees against the stage he was standing so close. nobody else was watching the band at all, even from a distance. he was nodding his head trying to keep the beat (he couldnt) and he moved his hand a lot. the next act came onstage, and the next, and the next, and they all made some comment about him but he didnt react at all, he just kept staring blankly. i saw him a few weeks ago at TT the bears again, and he had a Yanni denim jacket on and he was doing the same thing to the four other bands. keep on trucking, tt the bears guy.

wes - wes lives in boston. i went to boston and wes was doing something to jorge's door. jorge said "DONT YOU FUCK WITH MY DOOR AGAIN!" and wes left. when I asked what happened, jorge said wes hooked a mousetrap up to his door and it slammed him in the face or something. last i heard, wes had burned his face off.

sting - i have not met sting.
posted by RJ at 4:46 PM

Skeleton warriors in new white stripes video. On that note:

Rattle me rattle me rattle me bones
it's a frightning glow...
BUT DON'T RATTLE ME BONES!

spin the wheel for the treasure to take.
CAREFUL MY FRIEND'S OR I'LL RATTLE AND SHAKE.

you motherfuckers remember that. admit it.

-rj
posted by RJ at 5:33 PM