Am I even allowed here? Am I fired? Do I get the call, which would end with laughter? The call that I won’t be failing up after all?
My relationship with this gig has been loose. Every shift I sign out of could be my last. The job punctures my brain. Every day a jackhammer. Most would not describe it as such. To most people this job is easy. It is never lost on me that in this realm of low-wage entry-level drudgery far more taxing jobs exist. Those are the jobs no one asks for but someone has to do. The Mop Boy at Show World. The social media interns who screen images reported as objectionable. The State Department stiffs who get to analyze every frame of Isis beheading videos to verify their authenticity.
By those standards this is an easy job. Nobody is going to hurt you over the phone, unless you let them, which I unfortunately do. They don’t hurt me personally. It’s not the garden variety angry fucks whose mission is to get every rep here fired. Those people are depressing but forgettable.
Oh never mind. Steak egg and cheese biscuit. Someone here is complaining about a McDonald’s breakfast biscuit that was hard as a brick.
I shat twice this AM. That’s unusual. I was mightily full of shit, it seemed. I walked over the Ed Koch/Queensboro yesterday, probably for the first time this year. It felt different. Things have changed. Queensbridge’s roofs are covered with solar panels. I used to see people filming on those roofs, will that be possible now? There is still no indication that the pedestrian path will ever be moved to the south side of the bridge. It would be a significant change for me if, as in past lives, I walked the bridge regularly. I would like use the subway station underpass to avoid crossing the 40 lanes of traffic. I exaggerate for comedic effect but you know there very well could be 40 lanes of traffic between QPN and QPS.
I saw that the Q4 hotel still has a vestige of the payphone they installed when the place opened. It might not have been called the Q4 at first but that’s waht it is now. They have a communications room with a desktop PC and some other accoutrements. Originally this room included a payphone, which was a curious addition at the time, when payphones were disappearing fast. Curious but appropriate for travelers.
That hotel may not realize it but the light show they put on at night is left over from a cheesy-ass night club that used to inhabit that space.
I need to quit this job. This job needs to quit me. I wanted this to be a 6-month gig but, as I should have expected, I fell in love with it. I’ve burned out, though. The love has turned to monotony, and the work experience has amounted to nothing marketable. Resumes sent out are ignored the same as when I had no “real” job. I may have enough PTO and other perks to take the rest of the year off.
