The Jamaican Who Hated Crackers

I was jobless when I first moved to New York City. No job in NYC equals drunken nights with the homeless, garlic pizza at 2am, sudden fits of rage and crying and a 20 lb weight gain. After 2 months of that shit, I had to gain some of my dignity back. So, I took the first job that was offered to me.

I was the "Sales Assistant" to one of the major revenue generators at a Financial Services company. She hated me. Well, to be fair, she liked me for the first week....she even took me to lunch. What a treat. Seriously. Before me, she had gone through 11 assistants in 1 year. I thought that I was up to the challenge. I mean, I'm likable, or whatever.

I sat outside of her office and would have to listen to her phone conversations from 8:30am - 5:30pm. Most of the phone calls had to do with hedge fund products, but some, the personal, had to do with how much she hated crackers. She was Jamaican and she despised the blue eyed devil. I'm totally cool with hating the man, or whomever you have to hate. But, I just happen to be milk toast. She never made a point to whisper her hate. She made sure that I could feel in my bones her distaste for whiteys. Okay, point taken lady-friend.

I quit the job after 1 year (I have rejection issues). I never confronted her about it....mostly because I had not grown my NYC sac yet. But, I have a pair now and have sent this to her in an email.

One Love!

Mr. Shit-Sandwich

I worked for an dirty old man in an insurance office a couple of years ago. By dirty, I mean he wore the same clothes everyday, had dandruff stuck to his forehead, eyebrows and eyelashes and the nastiest breath of any human dead or alive. I'm small in stature, so I have the privilege of smelling a lot of breath. Lucky me.

I was employed by Mr. Shit-Sandwich for approximately 5 months (he fired me because I corrected his grammar in a letter that he had written). My desk was right outside of his office, and everyday around 3pm his nasty ass breath would waft out into my work area. Some days it would hang like a fog over the entire back hallway where we sat. If I could describe the smell, I would say it was a combination of horseshit and rust. I tried to be sympathetic to "his stomach issues" or "rotten teeth" or whatever was the cause of his shit breath, but it got to the point where I could no longer be polite about it. I would yell things like, "Wow! Did a sewer line bust? What the fuck?" or "You should bottle that shit and use it on the enemy!"

The firing came as a blessing. And as luck would have it, he fired me over the phone. Thank god! I spent the next six months unemployed in cold ass New York City, listening to Snow Patrol and crying every day. Sweet - give it up for self worth defined by a shit job!! I'm American!