Grumpy Boss

Emma in Wonderland!

I knew how Alice felt in Wonderland. Sure, I’d been to the office before to meet Gail a few times for lunch, but this was different. I wasn’t taking a break from job hunting or life by wandering around the city; I had an audition. Sure, it wasn’t my first one, far from it.

I’d applied to be a waitress, dancer, cleaner and receptionist; in a coffee shop, in a bar, in a night club and a different set of offices. Now, that cleaner interview got to me. They said I didn’t have enough experience; I wasn’t going for the supervisor or even the experienced cleaner job. I was going for the junior cleaner position. I told them that I cleaned the toilet even when I was in high school, because one too many times, I went into the bathroom and heard girls enter and leave without cleaning their hands. Now, if they couldn’t even be bothered to wash their hands, then there was no way that they were cleaning up the mess that they left inside the toilet bowl.

Maybe that was too much information, but I was trying to act keen. As if cleaning toilets was what I lived for and I couldn’t get enough of it, from such an early age. As if it was my dream to leave Minnesota for the Big Apple to clean toilets.

Pathetic.

It didn’t work, because she turned around and said that I didn’t have enough professional experience.

I argued that cleaning the inside of a toilet in a public place was no different from inside the home and I even went on to explain the amount of s**t that high school girls leave in a toilet and the different types of home-made substances that were good at getting rid of them. Yet they told me that I still didn’t have professional experience. To make matters worse, she went on to say that I lacked order and wouldn’t do well in a junior position. Her argument was the fact that I should have called the janitor to investigate the problem, and if they agreed for me to clean it, then I should have done it. I shouldn’t have done it myself, because I felt that it was my right to do so. I wasn’t a cleaner back then and if the janitor had told me to do it, then I could have got a reference from him and used that as being professional experience. Sure, like I was thinking about being a professional cleaner when I was fifteen!

I told her that she was stupid and didn’t know how to clean the inside of a toilet and that’s why she didn’t see the difference between doing it for one’s hygiene and doing it professionally. Which didn’t help me at all to land the job. Nor did it help when I next said that I needed the job like a drug addict needs drugs.

I’d offended her and used the wrong analogy but it was the only one that I could think of at the time. And that lady had connections. A few too many. I didn’t get any cleaning interviews ever again.

The next few days, I used the last of my change to go around the diners and order coffee while I pretended that I was out looking for a new job. I had to take a break, it was a sick joke - I needed a break from job hunting, being unemployed was supposed to be a break in itself, but it was so depressing. Sometimes I felt that looking for work was harder work than being in work. Not that I would ever know and that was what made it even worse. I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into.

I’d been sitting there one morning, feeling sorry for myself as I sipped at a swiftly disappearing cup of coffee, when the two women behind me started to chatter. It wasn’t the loud way they talked that caught my attention, it was what they were talking about. They were discussing their job at a strip club. And how things went wrong the night before, and how they’d only made $500.

Yep, you guessed it.

I started to set my heights on something bigger, like getting a job in a strip club. I knew that it wasn’t as easy as it looked and that there was more to it than casting seductive glances around and gyrating as men flung money at you, but I thought I could learn how to do it. I knew how to dance. That was step one.

I danced in the shower.

In front of the TV.

So, I’d marched off and started to visit the strip clubs.

A shiver had run down my spine, as I thought about my last interview, and the way the cleaning woman sneered at me. I didn’t want to hear those dreaded words yet again. I had no experience. It was enough to make me want to scream. again! I knew that I should make myself out to have experience. Professional experience. Those women were making more money per night than Gail did in a week. I knew that I had to raid one of her dresses, ironically the same one that I was wearing right now, and I told her about the girls in the diner.

She said it was a stupid idea.

I told her that she wouldn’t be knocking the job when I come home with the big bucks. My ego had been deflated, but I felt as if that was my get out ticket and it sounded like fun. Well the girls in the coffee shop sounded happy talking about their job which was more than Gail did on a regular basis.

I thought, how different could it be from dancing in a club? I got to the strip club and realized that it was no different from the local club. Just instead of a disco ball, there was a pole.

I forgot all about the stripping part and just focused on the essentials — the money. The dancing part would happen naturally, but I soon found out that I lacked experience in that department too. The only thing I was offered was the exotic private dancing room. I was going to take it until I realized that the only reason I got the so-called promotion was that I made the mistake of letting them know that I was a virgin.

Alright, alright I know that wasn’t exactly true. I’d slept with a guy, but I didn’t know when he was in, let alone when he was out again, so technically I still felt like a virgin and the owner could have been a pimp for all I know. He told me that he could get big bucks for having a virgin in the room, and the way he said it gave me the heebie-jeebies.

It didn’t take much to figure out what he was talking about. I got out of there quicker than I entered and I went home. When Gail asked me what had happened, I told her that she should never ask.

Thankfully, she took one look at my face and never brought it up again.

Now, I was in that same dress, and on my way to another interview. Would I hear the same words again? Not enough experience. f**k, I really need a job!

“You coming out of the bathroom or what?”

Damn! I’d been in here for too long getting ready and thinking about all my past mistakes. I really needed to sort out my concentration levels. I took a deep breath as I thought about all the problems in the past and focused on the present, one that involved getting the job. It was only for one night and I didn’t have to think about if I’d really lose my virginity, let alone take off my clothes or clean s**t. Things could just be going in the right direction for once…nothing could go wrong, right? Because, there was too much to gain and I didn’t have to get dirty or sweaty to gain it.