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         xmlns:georss="http://www.georss.org/georss"><docs>This is a RSS file. Copy the URL into your aggregator of choice. If you don't know what this means and want to learn more, please see: <span>http://platial.typepad.com/news/2006/04/really_simple_t.html</span> for more info.</docs>
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<title>Places Tagged 20 On Platial.com</title>
<description>Places tagged 20 on Platial.com</description>
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<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/1102571">
<link>http://platial.com/post/1102571</link>
<title>Sheraton Mustika Yogyakarta Resort and Spa</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Tags: 20<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/1102571">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>-7.828201 110.372</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:starwood</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2007-03-22 15:16:23.507889+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/1102">
<link>http://platial.com/post/1102</link>
<title>pizza gigi</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Tags: crusted, thick, types, v=www.nowtoronto.com, 20, and, more, over<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/1102">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>43.661598 -79.408401</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sonnydoe</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2005-08-17 15:16:49+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/1230">
<link>http://platial.com/post/1230</link>
<title>cass corridor food co-op</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Tags: a, 20, an, buddy, buildings, dane, detroit, empty, everywhere, fix.tags, inspiration, it, just, like, loe, man, motivation, neo.running.man, nothing, or, people, post.cyber, really, serious, set, sore, sounds, story, values, way, with, and, harvest, v=localharvest.org, Live, high, low, all, in, to, used, film, living, my<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/1230">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>42.350498 -83.063698</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:sunnydoe</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2005-08-23 15:41:09+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58062">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58062</link>
<title>North County Soccer Park</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The first job I was fired from:

The Poway Indoor Soccer Park.  (Summer c.1985)  Fired for: opening all of the smelling salts and talking other kids into inhaling them.

I also stole food and candy, a soccer ball, and generally did not do anything I was told.  The owner was nice and just told me there was not enough work for me but I was smart enough to understand that I messed up.

I remember how the owner would get all red in the face while showing me and reshowing me how to sweep correctly.  I would just let him keep sweeping because he was doing all the work for me.

Everyone knows how to sweep but who the hell wants to sweep?<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58062">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>32.976915 -117.023361</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-04-09 14:12:13.859011+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58099">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58099</link>
<title>El Pescado Loco</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The Third Job I got fired from:

El Pescado Loco.  (Summer c.1991)

I got fired for stealing the owner's daughter's tips after I justified this because she would not tip me on any cash tips I received.  Because of this, I would take cash tips, tip myself out ten percent and then give her the tip.

One night, after 2 months of this method of "tipping myself," she accused me of stealing them, even though I had been all summer.

I also smoked pot everyday before work, and sometimes during work, in the customer bathroom with some burnt out rock and roll manager who drove a teal camaro, wore a multi colored tie dye bandana, and called everyone "buddy."

I also stole my friend Scott cases of beer and made him all kinds of free food.

I washed dishes with this really cool kid with a gigantic head from Chihuahua Mexico that didn't speak a word of English but hated it there as much as I did.  I taught him how to smuggle bottles of Corona inside of 44oz. Cups full of ice.  I would bring him back Coronas and he would keep them wedged into a ring of ice in the cup drinking the beer through a plastic straw.

We both washed dishes super slow and there was always a ridiculous backlog.  The manager would flip out all the time and come back to "bust ass" by doing all of the dishes and giving us other things to do.  I would purposely lag to get him to come back and do all of my dishes for me.  "Bust ass."

This place was next to my neighborhood in Garden Road.  Every place that has ever there goes out of business in under a year.  The place there before El Pescado Loco was The Blue Dolphin Cove, and before that was some BBQ place run by this ex pro football star on The Chargers.  He was some huge linebacker and he had his face all up on the sign with a silly ten gallon hat on.  There have been two places there since El Pescado Loco. Most recently, it was this Italian restaurant where all the big fat fake mafia bosses hang out and drink espressos all day.  Currently, it is a Thai restaurant.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58099">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>32.956475 -117.027741</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-22 16:30:53.070355+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58124">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58124</link>
<title>Dairy Queen</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The fourth job I was fired from:

Dairy Queen.  (winter c.1991)

I was fired for telling the manager to go fuck herself after she yelled at me to clean the chocolate soft serve pump faster, which had just blown up and spewed chocolate all over, flooding the whole cashier's area.

I remember first of all that this place was wrong right away because all my friends rode skateboards out in front and when they found out I had a job there they would ride by and moon me all day.

Also my family would come in to see me at work and that was more embarrassing than my friends riding by shaking their asses at me for my whole shift.

The day that I got fired, my second day there, I walked in and the manager rushed me to the time clock to punch in while explaining to me the dire situation at hand.  Some "stupid fucking asshole" (possibly me) had left the soft serve pump on all night, so the thing made ice cream until it blew spewing chocolate all over the floor.  There was at least three inches of chocolate sludge covering the whole floor of the cashier's area and threatening the front facade of the storefront where everyone who didn't want chocolate soft serve was none the wiser.  Being the hardworking IQ employee I had been shaped to be in my one day of training beforehand, I set out to clean away all the chocolate sludge from the cashiers feet.  Unfortunately my method was not respected.  The managers did not think that taking the whole days allotment of towels and creating a complex dam system was the proper solution.  The manager got in my face and screamed, "If you go back there one more time for one of my towels you're fired!"  As she was yelling I noticed that all the ice cream lickers and employees had stopped to watch me be berated by this lady who had lost control.  I looked down at the soft serve pump still sputtering loads of chocolate onto her white shoes.  When she was done I told her that if she didn't like the way I was cleaning up the mess that she could clean the goddamned mess herself.  She told me that insubordination would not be tolerated at any Ice Queen.  I told her she could go fuck herself.  I threw my apron and hat right into the sludge and walked out.

They were pretty surprised the next day when I came back demanding my paycheck and telling them that it was the law that they pay me immediately.  I think that they were only a few years older than me and so they just complied because they didn't want any more trouble from me.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58124">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>32.954148 -117.057393</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-04-10 00:40:56.298272+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58142">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58142</link>
<title>Little Cesar's</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The fifth Job I was fired from.

Little Ceaser's.  (Summer c.1991)

I was fired for tearing up a bad check a friend wrote 2 years earlier (fired on the spot).

This summer was weird because I had a girlfriend that was in college.  She had a condo up in Scripps ranch with some other girls at her university and all the boyfriends were always over.  My friend J.D. loaned me his Vespa P200 so I could just ride up there and back.

My parents flipped out at me for some reason right after school was out, most likely because I was pulling straight D's in high school and that I had just gotten in a jet ski accident resulting in a lawsuit that was going to cost 150,000.  They told me if I didn't want to live by their rules I could move out, so I did.

I spent the whole summer working nights with this Morrisey Kid Dan at Little Ceaser's.  All he did was work and listen to Morrisey and the Smiths.  He wanted very badly to be cool.  He thought my friends were cool but they weren't.  We were all rejects and wasteoids.  Most of them, 15 years later, are dead or in prison.  Nevertheless, he copied them, their mannerisms, their drinking problems and thought I was a great source of information on them, which could make him cool.  But it didn't, it just made him a target and a doormat.

Dan was a manager, fresh out of High School, and he did everything by the book because instead of going to college he was going to manage Little Ceaser's as a career.

Within one month I got him to drink on the job, let all my "cool" friends come in for free pizza, close early, fuck with asshole customer's food, record crank calls on the answering machine and take turns taking hour long smoking breaks.

The place was totally dead anyways so, after I got him out of the manager mindset, we just went nuts.  He would get pretty drunk every night and I would smoke weed in the walk in freezer while punching the dough like Rocky.

The problems started when my friend Stacey's parents went out of town and she threw a party.  I let my friends pick up 25 pizzas and a hundred of those breadsticks things.  The only problem was that the regional manager came in during the middle of me cooking all this shit, smoking, sitting on the countertop while Dan was over at the liquor store trading pizza for beer.  I told her that this order for 25 pizzas and a hundred of those breadstick things was a crank call.  She yelled at me for smoking, for sitting on the countertops and for letting someone trick me like that and then she yelled at Dan for not being there behind closed office doors.

She came back out of the office and told us to throw all the pizzas out leaving to the Ramona store all pissed off.

Dan totally snapped and was sure he was going to get fired because he came back in with a twelve pack of BUD.

The same night, my friend Hal came to pick up the pizza and told me that he had bounced a check there a year ago.  I looked for the check and tore it up in front of him without thinking twice about the whole situation.

The next time I came into work Dan looked at me with a really sad expression while solemnly layering a pizza with the exact measurement of pepperonis.  I went to clock in and that is when the manager asked me point blank, "did you tear up a check from the bounced check file?"  I said no but they knew it was me.  They told me to not bother clocking in.  I demanded my paycheck.  I cashed the check and went back to Stacey's and ate some leftover pizza.

I still have no clue how they fingered me so quick.  I think they put the pressure on Dan to tell them why he was fucking up and he just let loose all the crazy out of control shit I had been doing to save himself.  I could see him crying, "It wasn't me, James made me do it!  He is the bad guy!  I saw him tear up a bad check even!  He smokes weed in the walk in!  Please don't fire me, please."  And so on and so on.

Maybe Dan still works for Little Cesar's<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58142">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>32.955979 -117.04253</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-22 16:16:14.982388+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58149">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58149</link>
<title>Casa de las Campanas</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The sixth job I was fired from:

Casa De Las Campanas.  (Winter c.1992)

It was just time, after a long reign of chaos, they told me I could either quit or be fired.  I drew a drawing of a nuclear bomb going off on the company stationery drawing of the building, it simply said, "Nuke the old, I quit.  Love, James."  I hung it up for everyone to see.

I had openly smoked cigarettes and weed in the halls while delivering room service trays, messed with the recipes in numerous creative ways while working as a cook, had sex on the job, drank on the job, popped pills on the job and smoked weed inside the residents game room while drinking their hard alcohol and eating from their ice cream sundae bar when I was supposed to be serving them food.

This was the apex of me being an out of control teenager before I outwardly cleaned up my act after graduating high school.  This job represented me at my worst.

I started a "drawing cartoons on the service trays" craze, depicting the mean old people and the asshole managers.  They ended up having a meeting to figure out who it was that was doing all of the derogatory cartoons.

This job was going to be a disaster from the beginning.  The guy who hired me was Richard a giant gay man who, in the interview, told me that he had sex with Huey Lewis AND The News.  We smoked weed together in his trailer at the trailer park he lived in even before I got officially hired there.  Once I was in, I smoked weed with a Junior Supervisor before he got caught smoking weed in one of the residents rooms out on their patio, which overlooked the local lake.  After he got fired I got a promotion to room service supervisor.  All this meant was that I wore a different colored bowtie and had way too much freedom.

I got more and more out of control and it all culminated when they started firing all the fuck ups and hiring all these new highly motivated manager types.

The first to go was Richard.  They accused him of sexually harassing some of the dishwashers who couldn't even speak English.  They basically fired him because he was very outwardly gay.  I was with him the day in question and no such incident occurred.

Next, they fired some of the gangsters that worked there as a legit job while they were stealing cars and everything else on the side, and after that they fired me (technically they told me I would be fired if I didn't quit).  I just gave in and quit because they should have fired me when My ex-girlfriend Heather found out I was dating someone else who worked there a week after our break up so she threw a tray with three glasses of V-8 two Chablis wines, and four glasses of burgundy at me.  Luckily for me I ducked and it all slammed on the wall, which left a nice permanent splat spraying glass into the salad prep area and the ice cream bin, which then had to be emptied and all the food exposed to the broken glass had to be discarded.  She got fired for the outburst and I got written up.

I also got written up for being late, smoking on an unsanctioned smoke break in a non smoking area, leaving without being "checked out," talking back to managers, talking back to the residents, talking back to security, swimming in the residents pool with my uniform on at 11:30 pm, fighting with food in the dining hall after work with the whole staff, changing the menu specials board to say "beef strokinoff" rather than "beef stroganoff" (which subsequently no one even noticed besides the manager who knew it was me and wrote me up for the incident), and for my friend Adam doing burn outs in the parking lot in his camaro, "so that you knew I was here" as he explained later.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58149">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.052015 -117.076172</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-22 16:28:05.741689+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58152">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58152</link>
<title>Behind The Post Office</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The Seventh place I was fired from:

Behind the post office.  (Winter c.1992)

I just got laid off because business was slow, never stole, never messed with anything, never hated the job.  I kept working weekends well into 1994.  If this job was still there I would work it for minimum wage.

Mike Pringle and his brother Steve should write the manual on how to treat employees.

This is the only job I really miss.

I learned about Nag Champa at this job and a million other things about art and music from the owner Mike and all of the really cool people who hung out there.

I would work for Mike again even if it were cleaning toilets in a rest stop in the middle of nowhere off I-5.  I got to meet all these awesome graf. Artists and underground rap people.

The place was a hangout for rappers, DJs and graf. Artists in SD.  I was just a nerd working the counter.

This is my description from a guest appearance on hundredflowers profile before I signed up on Platial:

[This now defunct store in Downtown San Diego still has a branch located in San Francisco but in the early 90s it was a cultural space to graffiti artists, collectors of Kicks and Acid Jazz Heads. It was not uncommon for Twist to do a mural on the exterior while DJ Greyboy spun records inside. Early instore appearances by Wu Tang pre-enter the 36 chambers release, early bizarre ride Pharcyde and Del pre-no need for alarm were just a few of the people that graced the store before they reached superstardom. Sundays were especially chill here. I will always miss this place. Owner Michael Pringle also did Greed clothing and 432f tradeshow.]<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58152">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>32.713467 -117.157287</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-04-10 00:46:11.163853+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/62941">
<link>http://platial.com/post/62941</link>
<title>Carver's Steaks and Chops</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The sixteenth job I was fired from.

Chopper’s Steaks and Chops.  (spring c. 1999)

Fucked with Steve, the new manager from Arizona until it was known I was never welcome back.

(includes the now famed, “just say okay” to whatever the manager says and don’t ever do it line learned from the dishwashers and prep cooks).

I Pissed in the middle of the dining room, got other people to piss on stuff in the dining room.

Every day for months, I would spit on the customer bathroom mirror over and over because the manager knew it was an employee and it made him try to use his brain [which was funny to watch].  I don't even spit, ever, but it was amazing to watch this guy have all these theories on who it was and why they were "fucking" with him (and specifically him).

I tore down corporate slogans and posters, changed the corporate slogans on purpose, refused to memorize the corporate slogans and fucked with the “86” board by writing “86 Steve, the new manager from Arizona”.

I broke stuff on purpose, got other people to break stuff, telling them it was a positive release to their frustration.

I vandalized the bathroom, sampled customer’s food before giving it to them, gave away huge amounts of free food, smoked inside, slurred the bar band and yelled “Play free bird” every night until I got caught.

I took smoke breaks anytime anyone else took a smoke break and always left early without telling anyone.

I started fights with and between employees that I didn’t like and then made them look stupid by having an air tight story that made them look like the bad person.

finally, I just upped my horrible behavior until they asked me to leave, which was coincidently one month before I moved to LA to go to UCLA anyways.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/62941">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.020345 -117.074461</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-29 12:25:45.895254+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/63120">
<link>http://platial.com/post/63120</link>
<title>Barnes and Noble Booksellers</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The twentieth job I was (kinda) fired from.

Barnes and Noble (c. summer 2002)


I got this job based on the fact that I was attractive to the guy interviewing me and he thought I was gay.  This was disclosed to me later when we had become friends.

Also, I had read way more than anyone else that they were interviewing...and I had read more than all the people who were the interviewers...and I had worked in an actual library.  

I got this job because I needed one but I knew I would never take the job seriously and that I would fuck with this company as much as possible.

I instantly figured out all of their security procedures and told them to anyone who asked me where I worked after I had told them to come in and steal all they could.

I even told people that if they came in while I was working I would personally walk them around the store and out the front door with free books.

I got employees pissed about the corporation and urged them to vandalize the building, give away free stuff, to not work at all and to purposefully fuck with the sales goals.

I continually broke, destroyed and stole all the forms and clipboards where the management kept track of these goals and the employees performance.

Other than that, I barely worked at all.

Some days, if the one guy who cared wasn’t working, I wouldn’t do one work related thing.  Some days, if the one guy who cared wasn’t working, I would leave at lunch without clocking out.  The next day I would come in and they would ask me about when I left and I would tell them I just forgot to clock in and out.

I spent whole shifts reading on the chairs and couches with tea , also stolen from the Starbuck’s café inside the store.

I got a manager to start leaving scraps of meat from his lunch in the stacks of books randomly.  I got another manager to steal boxes of food from the café and books to sell before their street date.  I got a supervisor to quit and go back to school.

Finally, my letter of resignation made the general manager ask for psychological services through the corporation and he finally quit after making photo copies of my letter and leaving it all over the building.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/63120">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.039814 -118.4286</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-29 12:30:10.421088+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/63118">
<link>http://platial.com/post/63118</link>
<title>UCLA Arts Library</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The nineteenth job I was (kinda) fired from.

The UCLA Arts Library.  (summer c. 2001)

This was my crowning achievement and my biggest failure.

I pushed it further at this job than at any other job.  I never got to work under fifteen minuets late, some days I would come in an hour late.

I barely worked.  My fucking around to work ration was 1:10… for every 1 work thing I did I would check my email, surf the web, talk to the cool librarian Alan, or my cool boss Dawn, get food, drink tea in the 8th floor gallery, go to the Wright gallery and just aimlessly walk around campus.

I also reprogrammed the computers so that if you search certain catch phrases that I think are funny you will get all of these unrelated serials and monographs.  I also changed the search engine results so that if you search for something I think is lame you get unrelated links.

I figured out how to clock in and out from my home computer with admin. passwords.

I never did my job right on purpose, so that I could have more time to read books.  If there was 10 steps to a job I would do whatever the bare minimum was, and then I could read books all day.

I spent a whole summer working like this on a big grant that was basically set for me to sit in the cage and catalogue artists books.  for any competent person, this task could be broken up into a couple of serious hours of work in one 8 hour work day.

I would also go into the stacks and read for hours.

The reason why this was such a failure is that the boss knew all of this and she never fired me because I was still getting all my work done.  This made me feel horrible because I was such a shitty employee and I just hid and read all of the time but I felt guilty because it was some sort of student job dichotomy where you could get away with murder as long as you got your work done.

There was a whole quarter where I wouldn’t talk to anyone and I took every Friday off even though I was scheduled to work.

I don’t know, I just feel that the people there put up with me being some eccentric asshole and that I owe something to them because the boss was so nice and I am such a piece of shit.

At almost all of the other 20 jobs they fired me, or told me I had to quit but every time they found a drawing on a wall or a defaced magazine, or graffiti in the bathroom… … … they would just tell me I was a weirdo and left it at that.

Shit, I should have fired myself.  Instead I just feel really bad that they all thought I was a really good artist or something.  I don’t think that.  I think I am a huge fraud.  They even threw me a huge going away party when I had to leave because I graduated.  I actually started to cry becuse they were all really nice to me and I was just an asshole.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/63118">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.075821 -118.44098</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-29 12:29:03.670434+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58574">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58574</link>
<title>Etoile Motorsports</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        *NOTE:  Some of these are too intense to give an exact name for because they are not horrible corporations.  Because of this, some of the places will have edited locations and names.*

The twelfth job I was (kinda) fired from.


 Some racing wheel company  (fall c. 1995)

I was generally unreliable, complained for more money constantly, and caused chaos.

I pissed with Justin all over the exterior of the company van on a road trip to a tradeshow.  We also, sneezed, spit, and threw trash and food all over the inside of the van.  On this trip, Justin also photographed me jumping the van off loading dock embankments like in the movies only more damaging.

I also let Justin have sex in the van with tens of thousands of dollars of custom racing wheels inside while parked in a particularly bad neighborhood of Richmond, CA outside of a punk rock flop house when I was supposed to be sleeping in a hotel next to the actual concention.

I was friends with the owner's daughters so they gave me a job but I found out right away that they treated their employees like shit and I was no exception.

It all came to an end when the company took me to a car tradeshow with my best friend Justin.  They didn't even give us enough cash to get a hotel room and told us to sleep in the van.  This led to us eventually getting pissed when the bosses were living it up in grand style with their whole family.  Things got so bad, we ended up totally vandalizing everything in sight with the climax of running away from the tradeshow one night to drive 100 miles away to let Justin have sex with his girlfriend amongst the chrome covered rims in the heart of the ghetto in Richmond, CA.

I used to have to drive to L.A. all the time from S.D. to pick stuff up in Compton for them and I would use their credit card to eat at really nice restaurants and take anyone with me who would come.

I tried to corrupt the other guy who worked there but he was really dedicated because he had a wife and kid.  He would get really nervous when I would screw around and yell at me if I was too out of line.  It was sad because they totally ruled his life which sucked all around because his wife was a jerk to him too and his kid was a snotty little brat who the mom always bragged was so smart but she was really just a normal kid but snottier.

The whole place ended up making me sad because it was all so stupid and all for nothing so I quit when they realized how worthless and depraved I had become and cut my hours as a result.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58574">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.125117 -117.259912</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-28 21:30:20.598423+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58081">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58081</link>
<title>The Remington Club</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The second job I was fired from:

The Remington Club.  (Winter c.1990)

Every day the employees pushed a gigantic ice bin around the whole restaurant followed by a gigantic vat of water to fill all of the glasses before the drooling masses of crones sat down to gum their food.

I got fired on my birthday for messing with the ice bin, I rode on top of it like a surfboard, while friends Mike Mike, Jason, Ryan, Chris and Tom pushed me singing happy birthday.

I ended up falling off spilling sixty gallons of ice like a giant tidal wave across the dining room’s main section, destroying a table, carpeting and dishware, causing the dining room to open a half hour late.  After the boss, who thought we were friends just because we were both Jews, got done yelling at me I demanded to be given my paycheck immediately.  I left in my uniform and walked to a bank to cash it.  I then went to the skate shop up the street with the money and bought my self a new complete skateboard set up, and new hat, shirt, underwear, pants, socks and shoes to celebrate my failure and my birthday simultaneously.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58081">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.02041 -117.071293</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2007-06-29 16:18:33.354692+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58487">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58487</link>
<title>The Gap</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The ninth job I was fired from.

The Gap.  (Winter c.1994)

The whole motive for getting a job here was just to mess with this horrible slave owning world-dominating-style-homogenizing corporation.

I finally got fired for telling the evil obese cheerleader managers that I would show up early with Donuts before a big corporate visit, and didn't.  The manager actually yelled, "You knew we had a corporate visit today, and you know how important they are!  You have to take responsibility for your actions and you will never work for the Gap again!" in her whiney perturbed ex cheerleader turned 300 pound lunker raspy frat party girl voice onto my answering machine while my friends and I were out skateboarding a few hours after I was supposed to show up.

I also got my friend Adam hired only so he could steal jeans and sell them at second hand stores.  He would throw them away in the dumpster and pick them up after work.  He told me that he saw it on the Gap's "no stealing" training video and that there was no way that they would suspect someone of using a method taught to them by their own "no stealing" video.  He finally did get caught but only after making enough money to buy a really fancy car alarm, a show quality stereo for his car, some super fancy talking radar detector, a custom tint job on the windows, full racing suspension, 17" imported Japanese racing rims, HKS exhaust, AEM cold air intake, a custom Fuba antenna, color matching with shaved moldings, special headlights and he even bought some pimped out tropical style black lacquer salt water fish tank and bed set for his room, so by the time they fired him he didn't care anyway. 

At one point I was put in charge of the changing rooms and instantly called everyone I knew, even people I didn't really like that much, to bring their friends and come take as much stuff as they wanted for free while I was working.

I took all of the manager's training manuals and sold them to my friend who wanted them for reseach he was doing towards a business degree.

The managers would search you as you left so it just made this task more fun.  One time the manager asked me what the folder was for and I said school even though I am positive she knew it was one of her training manuals.  A few weeks after I took all of the folders and videos, she asked me if I had seen them and I told her I had no idea what they were or where they kept them in the first place.  I saw her go and ask someone else after that so I knew they had no idea who did it.

I also corrupted another manager at this store by talking him into buying cigarettes with money out of the register and smoking them even though his girlfriend made him promise on their relationship to quit forever.  I later talked him into taking lunch on company money and company time for two hours at a fancy Mexican restaurant with multiple margaritas when we had to drive some stuff up to another store in L.A. even though they gave us a 100 dollar bill said to bring back all change and receipts for all the stuff we bought.  We didn't bring back change or receipts but we ate three meals, shopped at two different 99 cent stores, bought all the candy we could ever want at a candy store in the L.A. mall and drank a bunch of margaritas in under 8 hours.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58487">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.071261 -117.066107</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-04-10 00:25:52.779076+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58696">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58696</link>
<title>RB Inn</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The thirteenth job I was fired from.

 The Rancho Bernardo Inn.  (winter c. 1995)

I Wrote "Fuck the republicans" and a nasty political drawing of Bush on a guest check and left it on the bar in the restaurant during the republican national convention while the delegates were staying there.

I also, pissed on various carpets around the property and in various fake plants, stole a fine china set for a busser who was moving his family up from Mexico and had nothing and looked through people's luggage and openly made fun of their stuff to disapproving staff that unfortunately happened to have to work with me to their dismay.

I popped wheelies in the room service golf carts and taught others how to do this, drove the room service golf carts onto the greens and pulled 360 degree slides ruining portions of the greens and all the fairways, which ended up having huge black arching skid marks on them the next morning.  I drove the golf carts down hills and pulled e-brake slides almost flipping the carts.  I also crashed into various things on purpose including the security gate in the front which I totally demolished, and finally took out a fence, and a tree after drinking on the job in the rain and told them the brakes stopped working.

While working valet I accidentally drove a BMW M3 into a fence and took a Porsche 911 twin turbo out for a test drive.  Upone my triumphant return from the test drive, I was told that I would be fired if this was ever attempted again.

I routinely fought with the weird wannabe cop security guards and generally caused trouble by breaking stuff, stealing and not doing any real work until I was told I could "quit" and retain my right to a recommendation.

I ended up being traded to all these different departments.  I worked in The Veranda, Room Service, Valet, Convention Services, Events Services and in El Bizcocho, the super fancy French fine dining restaurant there.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58696">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.029526 -117.067792</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-28 21:32:36.939283+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/62936">
<link>http://platial.com/post/62936</link>
<title>The Museum Company</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The fifteenth job I was fired from.

The Museum Company.  (fall c. 1998)

I generally fucked with all of the mean old ladies who couldn’t understand me, and fueled the fire to their silly quarrels by telling them all what the others were saying behind their backs without choosing any sides.

I also fucked with the merchandise displays so it looked funny and rendered it un-sellable justifying it by saying that this is what all of the window displays in Beverly Hills and New York look like and that they just didn’t understand “installation art."

I consumed other people’s food, drinks, and candy.

I napped and studied in back when only working with one person because they were not allowed to come in back unless they called the back room to tell me first.

I made long distance calls.

I stole a bunch of stupid random shit and gave them away as presents.

I listened to excessively obnoxious-to-old-lady free jazz (from John Zorn to the Chicago underground Trio) on the sales floor and told them that they just didn’t understand what was good anymore.

I wasn't technically fired from this job and it made me feel horrible about myself because in the end, they were all really nice and caring towards me, while I was the piece of shit.  This job symbolized a departure from being totally out of control for the sake of being out of control, to being more critical of what I was doing and how it affected others.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/62936">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.06838 -117.065434</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-29 12:24:41.025857+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/62949">
<link>http://platial.com/post/62949</link>
<title>Northern Lights Coffee House</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The seventeenth job I was fired from.

Northern Lights Coffeehouse.  (summer c. 2000)

I visibly slacked, I stole food, I trained people wrong on purpose, I called in sick excessively and I clocked in and left to go to class for full shifts.

The best thing about this job was that I stole huge amounts of food so I never had to go grocery shopping.  Every day, I drank fresh squeezed orange juice out of the carton.

I played crazy “unlistenable” experimental music when all the customers were trying to study.

Every day, I gave stuff away to people I didn’t even know.

Eventually, my reputation was ruined and I was cut to two three hour shifts and one two hour shift per week.

I pissed in the walk in freezer and watched its daily progression into a yellow block of ice.

I felt bad when aforementioned ice was defrosted by the only half cool manager.  This new manager came and I had to chill out because he was too cool to mess with.  This was after my post-museum company revelation that I was, more or less, a horrible person, so I just worked way less but was still equally unreliable.

Finally, after a night of excessive drinking, I woke up at 5am to puke all over myself in the shower while getting ready to open the café.  I called in sick but they told me to never come back so I fell back into bed.

Later that day I called a friend for help because I was so hung over I thought I was going to die.  Luckily she brought over a loaf of bread and a gallon of Gatorade.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/62949">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.073991 -118.443732</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-29 12:26:36.726692+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/62971">
<link>http://platial.com/post/62971</link>
<title>Restaurant Jozu</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The eighteenth job I was fired from.

Restaurant Jozu.  (winter c. 2001)

These people never had a chance of understanding me or where I was at in life because they were all L.A. yuppie or wannabe L.A. actor yuppie fuck heads.

They also had fake plants in the bathroom, bad mistake, they became my piss receptacles every time the midget manager Carlos would yell at me in broken Santa Monica bro slang mixed with Spanglish, or anytime Tisha, the whorey 30 year old overweight psycho told me to work faster.  She would incessantly complain that she couldn’t ever get laid to me after yelling at me like I was supposed to do something to help her with her hideousness.

I took smoke breaks in the customer bathroom, I stole tons food and candles so I didn’t have to go to the store just because they told me that it was impossible to steal from them because we were being constantly monitored.

I broke things on purpose.

I told the managers I would do things and then didn’t on purpose.

I broke and stole expensive items on purpose, and generally pretended to work for two months without ever really working (I actually never got my uniform dirty with food).

By the end I was totally alienated from everyone except for these two other employees who told me that I was an inspiration to them.  But every other 30ish employee with no education, no talent, and no lives hated me especially because I told them that trying to be an actor in L.A. was a waste of time and that all the people who were here to make it big were really just going to end up as permanent servers.  I wished them all luck with their acting careers and auditions anyways.

The only other person who liked me there was the old Japanese chef because he hated all the stupid people there as much as I did.  He only respected me because I refused to bow to him and because I was openly rude to all the "actors."

He would make all the employees bow to him and they all would.  When he told me to bow to him, I told him to give me a reason to.  He told me that I should bow to him because he was the senior chef.  I told him to bow to me because I was a food runner.

Somehow he understood what I meant and we became smoking partners.  I used to get to work, eat food I wasn’t supposed to eat, drink tea I wasn’t supposed to drink, take cigarette breaks I wasn’t supposed to take, and then when the other people got there they would do all the sidework I was supposed to have done and complain to the managers that I didn’t do anything for the hour I was there before them.

Because all of the tips were pooled I would sit in back all night and act like I was polishing silverware so I could smoke more but never do any work.

I was really depressed at this time so in true cliché fashion I would just sit outside and stare at the ground smoking until someone would yell at me.

It is funny that this went on for two full months before they figured out I wasn’t ever going to actually work.  One night Trish called me in during finals and I refused to come.  She told me that a bus boy walked out and she wanted me to fill in for him.  I told her I was not going to throw away a UCLA education to work at some yuppie shithole so she fired me.

Five minuets later another manager called me back to beg me not to quit.  I told him to fuck off, hung up on him and came in the next day during the busiest time of the night dressed like shit to demand my paycheck.

This was probably the worst place I have ever worked.  The clientele was completely comprisedd of rich kids with their parents Credit Cards that did not know how to tip and hollywood fakers trying to make you think they were the real deal.  However, anyone who was anyone would never eat at a trendy dive shithole like this "American Japanese Fusion" restaurant.  The food was shit.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/62971">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.083463 -118.372616</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-29 12:28:36.917667+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/96234">
<link>http://platial.com/post/96234</link>
<title>1512 Leland</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Tags: 20, 16, 62 units, 1512, 24 leland<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/96234">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>40.838193 -73.864666</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jmoelis</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-06-27 07:56:23.53568+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/1624231">
<link>http://platial.com/post/1624231</link>
<title>Nina, Moscow/Russia!!!! =] </title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Tags: 20<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/1624231">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>55.67053 37.54305</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:ninelbep</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2007-06-01 03:04:40.031713+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58533">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58533</link>
<title>souplantation</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The tenth job I was fired from.

Souplantation.  (beginning of summer c. 1995)

I got fired after I called the manager 5 minuets before I was supposed to work and told him my car wouldn't start but that I thought I could get it running, and to not start without me, pushed the snooze button, waited 15 minuets, called back, telling the same manager, who had subsequently yelled at me the day before while turning all red and spitting in my face, that I got my car started, not to start baking without me, and that I would be there in 15 minuets, and be ready to open on time no problem. I never came in (rumor had it they couldn't open the soups or baked goods for 1 hr because of this on a Sunday, the busiest day, remember it's called souplantation).

I still went in the Monday after and demanded my paycheck. I told them that if they were going to fire me that they had to give it to me by law and they did right there.  They gave me a hand written check on the spot.  I think it was just to get me out of the restaurant forever though.

I lied to get the job in the first place and I am sure they knew it.  I told them I had a bunch of experience cooking at all these restaurants that had unfortunately closed down.  They were stupid or desperate enough to hire me as a cook with prep cooks under me.  I told the prep cooks that they knew what to do and that as long as everything got done how it was supposed to I didn't care what the hell they did.  I am pretty sure they did what they were supposed to do because I never got yelled at about them, they just thought I was funny as hell and would help me out because I was the only one in there that didn't treat them like shit.

the problem was, I got yelled at for everything else besides my prep cooks.

When they claim a muffin is born there every minute in their stupid commercials they mean it.  I was supposed to cook like some kind of madman and I had no idea how to cook anything but Mac and Chee so I just grabbed the recipes and went for it.  Everything turned out okay but it was more or less a total disaster everyday with shit constantly running out and burning or coming out undercooked or stuff was at the wrong temperature or some shit like that.

It all culminated when they gave me a really bad 3-month review and told me that a manager, this weird psychopathic Joe, was assigned to get me in shape.  He was some really serious skinny kid a few years older than me who, instead of going to college, wanted to manage souplantaions forever because he could pay off his mustang 5.0 with chrome rims and a big stereo that way.

Joe would scream at me all the time and like a Zen master, I would just say okay and not do whatever it was he told me to do.  I finally snapped and decided to never show up again on the busiest day of the week.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58533">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>33.02611 -117.074916</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-22 16:08:39.862687+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/58163">
<link>http://platial.com/post/58163</link>
<title>House of Fabrics</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        The eighth job I was fired from:

House Of Fabrics.  (Spring c.1993)

I got fired for vandalizing the breakroom, spilling a half gallon container of salt onto the floor and leaving it there to blame it on Justin, stealing from the vending machines, having "sleeping on the job" contests with Joe and Justin, having stealing "shrinkage" contests with Joe and Justin, having "messing up the store on purpose" contests with Joe and Justin, tagging everything in the store with my last name, messing with the old ladies until they told on us, and all around insanity.

(Justin and I were asked to leave together and immediately).

I used to walk around this place and just break stuff so that I could tell my friends to look at what I broke.

My best friend Justin started masturbating with various swatches of fine bridal silk in various places around the store.  Soon the bathrooms lead way to the break room, and then it got out to the bridal section behind the mannequins and over to the home decoration area and even in the crafts area right near the register.  The only place he did not do it was in the Singer sewing machine area because it was too high window exposure but if he worked there for a month longer I think he would have done it.

We also stole everything from pink stuffed potpourri bunnies to full rolls of fine silk to stainless steal $100 scissors and gave them away to our moms and random girls at parties.

The whole company was on a pay freeze because the corporation was going down so we took it upon ourselves to compensate ourselves in the only way high school rejects knew how to, by messing with everything.

One day my other best friend, Joe, slept his whole shift on a bed he made out of batting, then I slept my whole shift in the doubly vented doubly air conditioned sewing machine room (there was only one key to it).  This spawned a whole "sleeping on the job contest" where we even tried to sleep overtime past our shifts.

When it got to the point where I was actually spray painting all over the store with the craft area spray paints it was long over time for them to fire us on the spot.  I think that Justin regretted going along with me on this.

I ended up getting him fired from his next job at Target too because he let me walk with a FULL cart of shit for my new apartment, FULL.

Joe however, worked there stoned for three more years (without a raise but with many promotions to gain more responsibility).  Then Joe got a job at Round Table Pizza where he worked there stoned for four more years selling weed to underaged kids.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, ezine<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/58163">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>32.951484 -117.064775</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-22 16:10:29.650159+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/802951">
<link>http://platial.com/post/802951</link>
<title>Orange 20 Bikes</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        Two awesome bike kitchen mechanics have started a new project right across the street.  It's a bike shop for the urban biker.  The kind of bikes that will get you going all-city in style.  Bags, helmets, and whatever else you'd need there too.

Great guys who actually ride their bikes everywhere so everything in the store is tested.  One of the two guys is a mechanic at Bike magazine so you can rest assured that they carry good stuff.<br/>Tags: orange, bicycle, 20, store, bike, shop, los angeles, mechanic<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/802951">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
        ]]>
        </description>
<georss:point>34.083942 -118.294987</georss:point>
<dc:creator>platialUser:hundredflowers</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-11-03 10:21:02.165837+00:00</dc:date>
</item>
<item rdf:about="http://platial.com/post/874241">
<link>http://platial.com/post/874241</link>
<title>Trader Joe's Rancho Palos Verdes</title>
<description>
        <![CDATA[
        (the eleventh job I was kinda fired from).

c.1995

When I was in my senior year in high school, I was interning at Plan B skateboards under the supervision of Mike Ternasky, Carl Hyndman and Dave Andrecht.  Upon graduating they hired me on full time.  Growing up in San Diego, this was it for me.  I was ready to work here diligently for the rest of my life.  I was now getting free product, including full clothing and I had complete art supplies at my fingertips 24 hours a day, 7 days a week—not to mention a ramp to skate in our office.  When I say full art supplies, I mean it too—from a darkroom, to paints, pens and etc… to full on video editing equipment and cameras galore.  I also got to be around the best pro skateboarders in the industry all day every day and it was my job to film them, photograph them and to create logos and artwork for them.

This was my dream job and I spent every day I worked there happy and content.  After being there for a little while, I was promoted and promoted again.  My last promotion was to become one of the head video photographers and to take on more team management tasks.

The first big management thing I did was to have all the riders fly in from their home cities to one hub and to then arrive as a team in Vancouver for the 1994 Vancouver Skateboarding Championships.  It went over fairly well and when Mike Ternasky (M.T.) came home from the trip we were supposed to have a meeting that Monday about a pay raise and more responsibilities.

I was really excited about it to the point that I got to work an hour early to prepare to commit myself to M.T. for however long he was willing to work with a loser kid like me.  This is a guy who took me from a mediocre high school art kid with no chance of going to college or getting a good job, to interning for him folding clothes and shipping product under skateboarding legend Dave Andrecht, to assistant art directing under super talented Carl Hyndman, to being a video photographer for one of the most legendary skateboard filmmakers in the history of skateboarding to date—M.T. himself.

However, on the way to work, and our subsequent meeting, M.T. was hit by an 80-year-old woman looking over her shoulder while running a red light.  It was on a blind corner.  The woman was speeding.  Mike never saw her.  He left behind a 7-month pregnant wife and a whole crew of people that would have done anything for him.  He was the most important person ever in my life.  He was the only person who truly believed in me.  And he was someone who I had idolized since I met him during the H-Street days at the H-Street house near school W (in my skatelandias map).

Immediately after he died, his wife Mary, asked me to help fly in and pick up the massive amount of people that came to his funeral and to console Mary.  I kept it together the best I could between having parents who didn’t care or understand and a girlfriend who thought that Mike’s death was taking away from my time with her.  However, after the funeral, I just lost it.  I stopped working altogether and soon, I just returned all my equipment to Plan B.  It seemed like the company would not go on and I had completely lost my will to live.

Nevertheless, I still had to make rent, so to make ends meet, I got a job first at souplantation (job #10), which was subsequently a disaster.  Between my family not supporting me and having a horrible girlfriend, I just couldn’t keep it together any longer.  I was getting really deep into street racing at the time and I had some friends in L.A. who lived in San Pedro right near the Brotherhood Raceway on Terminal Island and another group of friends in L.A.’s Koreatown.

My friends in Pedro had recently been in a crash that killed another one of my friends only days after M.T. died—Chris Amon.  Chris was racing a girl who ran him into a pole when he lost to her.  She cut him off while giving him the finger.  Chris’ body crushed my friend Jon and his girlfriend Vanessa’s legs in the back seat.  They were in Pedro trying to walk again and felt that I would be in a good place if I came up to be with them while they were rehabilitating themselves.

I was a real mess when I got up there but living with these friends helped realize that life was not over and that I could go on.  We took long walks through Del Amo mall, we went to the track and raced our cars and I took on two jobs to pull my weight.  I was working at the Carson Swap Meet selling children’s clothes while my friend Min sold chipped phones out of the back and I got a job at Trader Joe’s.

At Trader Joe’s I worked with an assortment of rejects like me.  We all kind of made each other feel better and we talked constantly about moving on from where we were at in life.  I worked with a stone butch dyke saving money to move to SF with her girlfriend where she planned on transitioning.  I worked with a tattoo covered cholo who had gotten shot in the gut and lost some internal organs.  He walked with a limp from another bullet he took in the thigh when he was in high school.  He was taking classes at the local JC and wanted to get a degree in criminal justice.  His brother was gunned down under a mile from the Trader Joe’s while we were working.  He was playing ball and waiting for my co-worker to get off work.  He got in an argument over a bet placed on the game.  The other people left and came back shooting.  I worked with a goth girl left over from the goth/rave Jane’s Addiction L.A. world that had crumbled.  She was unhappy with her boyfriend and would steal his smokes for me.  He smoked Kools.  We would take breaks together and she would plan her break up with him every day, and every day after, she would come back with a fresh pack of his Kools to offer me for my listening skills.

Pretty soon after staring there, the manager, who in essence was a really nice guy, realized that I was messed up and that he made a mistake hiring me.  The sad thing is, I was actually trying hard to do well but I was so depressed and so poor at the same time, that I couldn’t do a good job.

At first, I literally had to steal food from there to eat.  I let my roommates come in and load up a cart.  I would then only charge them for a few things and let them go.  I would eat out of the food on the floor and take food on breaks with me that was un-purchased.

Soon after that, I started having a smoke when I brought in carts, then two smokes, finally it was taking me close to an hour to bring in the carts.  When questioned, I told the managers that I had a bad back and that I could not push more than one cart at a time.

My register was off everyday.  I never took a cent out of the register, I tried my hardest but it was off every day.  They took me off the register.  I started stocking.  I was too slow at stocking.  They put me in the freezer and would only let me out to do register for an hour or two when the other people went to lunch or on break.

I smoked in the freezer, ate food in the freezer, put away about a gallon of orange juice on average a day in the freezer.  The fans made it so no one could smell the smoke.  The freezing temperatures made it so no one checked on me.  I was happy in the freezer.  I was alone in the freezer.  I could sit around in the freezer.  I could work at my own pace in the freezer.

When I would get called in to do the register, I would try to do a good job but not too good because I didn’t want that job all over again, so I worked slow.  8 hours at a register does not work for me.  I cannot do it no matter how good I try to be.  Unfortunately, I could not even do an hour at the register perfectly.  At the time, Trader Joe’s had these old style registers that didn’t do any math for you.  I was really bad at math back then.  I never even did pre-algebra in high school.  I would be 5 cents off one day.  I would be 20 cents off another day.  Each time it would kill me to be off.  The manager would reprimand me and I would genuinely feel bad.  The manager would send me back into the freezer and I would put on the freezer gear and go back into my well-stocked snow cave and think, “fuck everything” or “no one understands me.”  I was sure I was the first person to feel this way and that besides Bukowski, everyone else in Pedro couldn’t feel what I feel when I say I am in pain.

This went on for about 3 months.  I would get there at opening, stock the isles.  Then, later on I would stock the freezer, take in some carts, cover registers for people’s breaks, take my patented 30 minute 15 minute breaks and hour long 30 minute lunches.  Finally, I would get reprimanded for all my daily failures.  I got used to this routine.  The managers got used to this routine.  No hard feelings.

Right at the end of summer, one of the managers asked to see me outside.  I figured I was up for one of my daily reprimands and thought nothing of it.  I was still numb from M.T. dying.  I still didn’t have what it took to go on but I was going on day by day with nothing really pushing me forward other than the need to pay rent and eat.  The manager was the nice one.  He was a good guy.  I liked him as far as managers went.  I never really broke anything or did anything too messed up because I liked him so much.  At this point, my only crime was grazing off of the food and letting my friends walk off with some free food.  The manager told me that in the hour I was working the register that it was under $500.  He sent me home on suspension.

I was devastated.  I have never stolen money from anyone.  I am totally guilty of screwing around, breaking things, eating the food on a job, taking long breaks and other stuff but I never steal money out of the register.  I don’t know why.  People have Pmed me to tell me I am an asshole for all the things I do on jobs.  Other people have Pmed me to tell me I am a genius for the things I do on jobs.  Regardless, there is a line I do not cross.  I never outright steal out of the register.

When I got home, I got more and more depressed.  I thought about Mike.  I thought about my parents.  I thought about my 23-year-old ex-girlfriend who was now dating some 15-year-old boy with a kid already.  I thought about working at the Carson Swap Meet selling children’s clothes as a front for all this wannabe gangster shit.  I thought about racing my stupid car.  Finally, I started thinking about some kind of future but I couldn’t see one.  I felt all weird and crazy.  My roommates were out of town.  I had to get out of the apartment, so I drove up to my friend’s place in Koreatown.

When I got up there, my friends knew I was upset and they decided to take me on a special date.  They took me to play pool.  They gave me a chipped cell phone, so I could call my best friend Justin.  They bought me dinner at Sizzler because to them, Sizzler was fancy healthy food and they thought it would make me feel better.  Even though I couldn’t eat anything at Sizzler, it did make me feel better.  We saw a movie at City Walk.

Nevertheless, when they all went to sleep I hit bottom.  I looked out the window.  It was pretty soon after the riots and L.A. wasn’t looking so hot.  Koreatown was still pretty burned out and there was absolutely no shortage of empty apartments.  My friends had a 1-bedroom corner top floor apartment in the Du Berry near 5th and Vermont.  I looked down in the alley and thought about jumping off.  There was a homeless guy shooting heroin sitting on an old discarded mattress below me.  I watched him shoot up and then lay back on the mattress, the needle still bobbing in his forearm.  I thought about how I would probably land on him, or near him.  I thought about all the other homeless dudes down there finding me splatted on top of this guy with a needle still in his arm and I thought about them checking my pockets and stealing my Adidas and my only good outfit.  I went back to the couch and played some streetfighter.

The following Monday, the manager at Trader Joe’s called me up in the morning and asked me to come in around noon.  When I got there, he told me I would be paid for the whole day and all the days I had missed.  He told me that another manager had taken the $500 out of my register right after I was done using it, did a drop, forgot to record it and went on a 4 day vacation.  The other manager came out and apologized.  They told me that besides the $500, I was only 3 cents off.  The general manager asked me to come back to work the next day.  I told them I couldn’t.  I said that it was wrong the way they treated me like I had stolen money from the register and that I couldn’t work there if that was standard procedure.  They still felt bad and paid me another full week.<br/>Tags: how, from, 20, and, i, jobs, got, fired, them, 20 jobs<br /><br /><a href="http://platial.com/post/874241">Map this on Platial</a><br /> 
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<dc:creator>platialUser:jamesinger</dc:creator>
<dc:date>2006-12-22 16:05:01.622651+00:00</dc:date>
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