Job

As you all know, I have a tenuous relationship with my editor. When I started writing for him in the early 1990s, he promised that there would come a day when he could pay me for my writing. Seventeen years later, the only payment I have received for my hard work has been two beat-up issues of The Incredible Hulk comic book and a quart of Wild Turkey.

Needless to say, I need to keep a normal job to support my family. I have stooped quite low to make ends meet. In fact, I once worked as a janitor to help pay for my college tuition. There is nothing more humbling than cleaning toilets and emptying the "love" boxes in the ladies room stalls. You know what I'm talking about, girls.

So as it turns out, the job I was holding down for more than five years had gone from a rewarding, well-paid gig to an absolute shitfest. To top off all of the crap I was having to endure, my annual raise was 34 cents an hour. If you think that this tidy sum is an okay raise, let me put it in to perspective. My 18-year-old daughter got a 40-cent per hour raise from Sam's Club. FUCKING SAM'S CLUB is giving out better raises!

That was enough. I needed a new occupation. So I started kicking it around with my friends that I was currently looking for a new job. Without batting an eye, my friend Scott told me that he could hook me up with a job that he guaranteed would pay more that what I was doing right now.

"How much, Scott."

"I don't want to talk salary in front of other people, but it's better than what you've got."

"What would I be doing?"

"It's a great gig. You'll be a supervisor. Quit your job tomorrow and come work for me."

So I did. I quit my job and went to work for Scotty. He neglected to tell me that the "supervising" that I would be doing is driving around and watching the employees of his sanitation company sucking out the leavings from port-o-pottys at various construction sites and carnivals.

Have you ever experienced a sewage truck, or honey wagon as they are called in the industry, suck out a portable toilet? First, the one guy puts on rubber gloves that go up to his armpits and fishes out anything that might clog the old tube. This includes pop cans, beer bottles, solids, etc. Then the second chap sticks the old suction hose into the toilet's glory hole and turns on the suction. The noise it makes and the smell it creates is quite amazing.

Scott is now on the top of my enemy list.

1. Scott
2. The guy from the post office
3. My editor
4. Nick
5. Marjorie Johnson