Jaded Before Their Time

A modern day pee story.

   We smile and grind our teeth. It’s the human way of life.

    

I'm smiling right now, baring my teeth at all the people around me.

 

     I can’t help but to feel out of place in the city crowds. Been applying to jobs, but haven’t found employment yet. My bank account is down to its last ten dollars so I thought it was time to resort to Wal-Mart.

 

      The receptionist directed me to a customer service lobby in the back of the store, where I sat in a crowd of gangly highschoolers waiting for an interview. I was the only unshaven man there, the only underweight man there, the only man who wore boots, the only man with tears in my clothes. A woodsman in the land of the fat.

 

            Two hours passed my scheduled interview time I continued waiting in the lobby. The others came and went, but I remained in the lobby. I knew that I wasn't going to get the job. I knew it. But I refused to leave.

 

            Came a time when I was alone, the only one left in the lobby. Everyone else had come and gone, left the backroom and shook the managers hand and exited the building with smiles on their faces, avoiding eye contact with me.

 

            The manager left. Passed me by, was followed by an underling who informed me that his boss was needed elsewhere. He told me that if I wanted to be interviewed, I’d have to continue sitting and waiting. I smiled, told him between my teeth that it was okay.

 

      Watched the hands on the clock whizz ‘round, a boy in a dorky blue vest asked me if I needed any help. Smiled, revealing all my pearly white, cleaned-specially-for-this-occasion teeth. Told him I was fine.

 

      It was one:eighteen when the manager made his return. Looked a bit shocked to see me. It didn’t matter. I shook his sweaty hand. Time for my interview.

 

      He led me into a backroom and began shooting the customary questions at me, “What would you do if you had an argument with a manager?” “What department do you see yourself working in?” “What was your reason for leaving your previous job?”

 

      I repelled them with the customary bull.

 

      “I’d never argue with a manager! In fact, I’d take a bullet for a manager!” “I’d work in whatever department you want to put me in!” “Because, though I enjoyed working with my previous employer, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Wal-Mart was my one true calling.”

 

      He shook my hand again, sent me back to the waiting room. Fifteen minutes passed and a bigger boss came to pick up the interview.

 

      He told me that there was to be no smoking within the store, no slacking, that we were a customer service oriented building and he wouldn’t take kindly to any sort of disobedience. Told me that my job would involve moving heavy boxes around from 9:00PM to 1:00AM on weekdays. Pay was minimum wage with a slight increase after the first six months.

 

      I smiled. Let him know that it was fine.

 

      He smiled back and shook my hand. “See you soon!”

 

      See you soon.

 

      That meant I was hired.

 

      There was just one simple hurtle left: a pee-screen drug test.

 

      Flipped on the car radio on my way to the clinic. Tuned in to NPR. 

 

      “Under a free health care system, doctors wouldn’t be getting paid as much! They’d become jaded before their time!”

      -Anonymous NPR knob caller. 

 

      I turned off the radio, laughing.  

 

[Doctors are becoming jaded before their time. They’re supposed to get jaded after they’ve seen too much, but if doctors take a drop in pay, they’ll be jaded the second they see their first paycheck! Also, to pontificate further, I will say “he’s dead, Jim,” and so on and so forth, anything in brackets does not exist in literature and thus if you see this, you’re insane, and therefore all of this makes sense, etc, etc, etc, etc.] 

 

      I turned off my brain, laughing, and pulled up to the clinic. It was a piddly little place, hard to notice tucked away in the sprawling strip-mall. Filled with piddly little doctors, scrambling around, paid peanuts to examine pee, becoming jaded.

 

      Entering the building before me was a suburban adolescent youth and his mother. Kid wore loose fitting pants that fell down to his knees, baggy t-shirt, and an expensive new haircut. He was there for the same reason as me. Pre-wallyworld drug screening.

 

      The doctors called him back, told me to wait in the lobby.

 

      Thirty minutes, I waited. The kid came back disheveled. Sat across from me and pulled out a cell-phone.

 

      “Yo-yo! I’m at the clinic. B*****s won’t let me leave until I can fill a cup. Yee. B*****s.”

 

      He emphasized the word, to retain his gangster demeanor and cover up his damaged manly pride.

 

      He couldn’t go!

 

      I repressed the urge to laugh at the gangster’s shy bladder as I was called into the back room.

 

      Turns out I have a shy bladder, too.

 

      The woman told me that Wal-Mart store policy dictated that if I were unable to produce an adequate sample for them within three hours, without leaving the clinic, I’d be marked down as a druggie and ineligible for employment at any Wal-Mart stores for a full year.

 

      So I left. Decided I wasn’t desperate enough for a career as a Wallyworld peon to remain. The gangster was still sitting in the lobby, drinking a large cup of water as I made my exit.

 

      Moral of the story is clear: gangsters have shy bladders, too.

      

My teeth hurt.

Reviews

[Hedra Helix]

{ bestest ever) but you never saw this YO! you do not know im a fan}

[Nephil]

Haha, funny, I love the bracket insanity and the painful smiling. I nearly expected the narrator to freak and stick his thumb in the eyesock of somebody at Wal-Mart, grinning madly the whole time. {but I think a-boot that kind of thing alot... spooky} The pee-shy gangster was great.

It's also a very personal narrative in its style without stretching to the autobiographical point in which so much detail bores the reader. You say just enough to show the scene how it should be seen.

Good write.
-Lain/Ian/Nephil/Kamahl, Fist of Krosa

[FLAAAHHH! Bing bong! hoobla-hay! wicky wicky, batang! Fromnambular!]