Rivethead - Ben Hamper [40]
However, being laid off from General Motors wasn't the worst thing a shoprat could run up against. On the plus side, you obviously weren't required to work. That in itself was a remarkable new pleasure. No longer did you have to bend or lift or stoop or strain or pick at the burn scabs on your skull. No more clipboard kaisers playin’ rent-a-God. No more smoke and soot and fumes and sonic puree. No more minute hands circling like vultures over dead prey. No more propaganda and cafeteria poison and post-shift demolition derbies.
As for the downside, you no longer had real job security. That was not good. No longer could you just nuzzle up to your birthright. No more hefty wages for idiot labor. No more…um…let me think a minute. There must have been something else. Hmmmm. Oh yeah, no more stupid shit to commit to memory just in case some curious publishing firm decided to risk handing you a book contract. I guess that about covers it.
So, as you can see, being laid off wasn't such a terrible dilemma. The good far outweighed the bad. There was no reason to get…hey…HOLD IT! Jesus, where's my brain? I totally blanked on the biggest, baddest, meanest minus of ‘em all: THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINE! Just the sound of that phrase makes me wanna fling lunch.
A little history of my life's main phobia is in order here. I'm prone to being the nervous sort when required to stand in line. For me, the ultimate tension in life is to be stuck in a supermarket jampile waiting to buy my goods while surrounded by throngs of housewives sifting through the Midnight Star for grainy pics of Tom Selleck's buttocks. Help!
Many is the time I felt I was going to go stark raving shit-brained wacko. I wince at this vision of a twitching lunatic someday pole-vaulting the counter, smashing through the store-front glass, and streaking off into the horizon with a horde of suburbanite ghouls nipping at his Air Hampers with ferocious demands to “HAVE A NICE DAY!” Make it stop! No more dimwit skull sessions about Sparky Anderson and the weather. No more lilting mutilations of Jim Croce's “Time in a Bottle.” No more insanity, grief, terror, disgrace and coward's luck.
I've heard that in some states the unemployed simply receive their checks via the mail. Not so in Michigan. Never mind all the time and money they could save with this solution. Never mind all the mayhem and chaos they could prevent with just a stamp and an envelope. Nope, that would make too much sense. It would also deprive them of their sick fascination of seeing you shake, quake and quiver as they dragged their dead asses around in circles.
Realizing this, my old advice to all you panicky types out there is to do EVERYTHING within your power to hang on to your job. Heap your employer with phony plaudits, offer to baby-sit his kids, gulp amphetamines and perform the work load of ten mules. If you have to, get down and smooch his dusty wingtips anew with sheen. In your spare time go to church, pray to Allah, pray to Buddha, plead with Zeus, beg of Jah, implore the graces of whatever deity landed the ‘69 Mets a pennant to keep your nervous butt in the fold and out of places like the Michigan Employment Security Commission (MESC) logjam of human languish. No, this is not the spot to be if you get clammy in a crowd.
First off, the MESC has no windows. Once you pop through the doors, it's like entering a holding tank for sodden sumo wrestlers. You're required to check in at the front desk where a little old lady will put a red check next to your appointment time and ask you if you have any paperwork to turn in. Always, absolutely always, answer no or you will be detained for a period long enough to qualify for having your face reprinted on the side of a milk carton. Paperwork makes these people freeze on contact. If you have paperwork to hand in, wait until you've