Lost My Job—Alex Chilton
#365Songs: October 21st
Sunday’s Trump photo op as a fry cook at a PA-based McDonalds has to go down as one of the most ridiculous moments in American political history. For months now, Trump has claimed that there’s no record of Kamala’s claims of working at McDonalds during her younger years, a job she left well over 40 years ago. This, coming from a man who has never worked a day in his life for any organization that didn’t bear his family name — a fortune inherited, born to a legacy with a parachute that ceases to deflate, despite countless bankruptcies, indictments, and public humiliations.
I was fired from McDonalds in 1993, so I know a thing or two about that place, but we’ll get to that later.
Lost my job now I can stay out all night long
Fired me from my job, people
I’m gonna sleep all day long
Lost my job, guess I gotta go steal and rob
Did Kamala actually work at McDonalds? Of course she did, but there’s no real way of knowing. How do I know that? Because today, between meetings, I tried to verify my own employment at Bishop Road McDonald’s in Willoughby Hills, Ohio.
“Hey, hi. May I speak to a manager?”
“Hello, honey. This is Coco. I’m a manager. What can I do for you?”
“Oh hi, Coco. I’m calling to verify employment.”
“Of course. Who is this for?”
“Me. Michael Smith.”
“You? For yourself?”
“Yeah.”
Laughs. “When did you work here, honey?”
“1993, I think.”
“Honey, what are you asking?”
“Yeah, I worked there in 1993. Can you verify my employment?”
A laugh. “Honey, we don’t keep records that long. Why do you need it?”
“Oh, bummer. It’s for my resume.”
“…”
“Well, thanks Coco. I really appreciate your help.”
“Good luck, honey. You can always come back, ya know.”
“That means a lot. Thank you.”
Little does Coco know that I’m the guy who never even made Drive-Thru, the role reserved for Employee-of-the-Month-y types, the real go-getters. Or the front counter, where only those willing to grit it out and smile at the worst customers in Northeast Ohio get to work. Or the burger flippers and ketchup splashers, the fast-moving converter belt for those who can focus on a task for more than fifteen seconds (I had ADHD then, too, but didn’t know it). Nah, I, like Trump, worked the fryer, the role reserved for the misfits, the future frozen burger patty broomstick hockey champs, those whose shifts ended with grease-filled pores and stomachs filled with hot fries, the ‘one for you one for me’ types.
Well, I cried and pleaded and I rocked and moaned
Jump and shout, my boss still put me out
Lost my job, oh, oh, oh, my job is gone
Think I’ll stay on tomorrow and boogie all day long
I’ve had a lot of jobs. And by a lot I mean A LOT. This is meant to be a short essay about music (ha), so I’ll spare you and stick with the ones that fired me.
At 13, by my father who took over my paper route because all my neighbors complained that their morning news arrived at 3p every Sunday and over the fact that I consistently spent all the “pay-aheads” on candy and soda at the bowling alley.
Park Patrol at my hometown’s largest park when I was 14, where I sat in a lawn chair and was supposed to scan incoming cars for a city sticker but instead buried my head in books — I waved ’em all in, with or without sticker, too afraid of confrontation and lost a million miles away in whatever story I was reading.
Also at 14 as a busboy at a Jewish Deli for calling the Manager “nepotistic” (a word I learned in a book from my previous job) because he forced me to clean all the tables while the other busboy (his son) read in the corner (poor ethics).
At 14, as an under-the-table dishwasher at my favorite Italian restaurant, where I spent more time sneaking salads and bowls of pasta while dishes stacked up unwashed.
At 15 or 16, setting up banquets at a highway-side hotel, skirting tables and arranging notebooks, pens, water and glasses, little mints I hoarded and ate throughout my shift, ultimately fired for napping in a vacant room.
Summer before college, at 18, working security (badge and all) at my sister’s employer, an oil products company in my hometown, for getting caught smoking pot on the security camera I didn’t know existed even though it was my job to monitor said security camera
At 21, mid-college, at a mob-owned Italian restaurant for walking by the salad station and grabbing hand-fulls of black olives several times a shift (notice a pattern?) one too many times.
Also at 21 at a mini-golf go-kart batting cage park called Sports Ohio for smoking pot with a few co-workers (notice a pattern?) while the karts drove in circles for several minutes beyond the allotted time, forgotten, as those waiting in life grew more and more impatient. Oops.
At 23 for challenging a literary agent who made me read and stack-rank 10 book-length manuscripts only to inform me after the fact that he’d already decided to publish the worst of the stack to save his relationship with National Book Award winner Ha Jin (this one hurt), whose relative wrote the bloody awful thing (more nepotism).
Job right after at a Pittsburgh-based major bank with an office in Boston that hired me for my fiction writing degree because, after they dumped a 500-page RFP (it’s too boring to describe) from a large employer with over 100,000 employees and asked me to use my imagination to make their 401k plan sound sexier than the 500-page Fidelity RFP they also dumped on my desk (think about that one, please), and I said “whoa that’s not cool” or something like that, and they said “whoa that’s your fucking job you’re fired” or something like that.
And that, finally, gets us to my desert island all-time favorite firing. Age 17, Bishop Road McDonalds in Willoughby Hills, Ohio, for playing frozen burger patty hockey with a broomstick alongside my fellow fry cook friend.
I’m sure there are others, not to mention the infinite number of bad jobs I quit before I could be fired, and the ones I knew on the first day weren’t for me and the ones that were too ethically questionable for my feisty, activistic ass.
Despite how many of these jobs ended, I did learn a lot from these experiences. I learned how many good people work hard for too little, how awful customers can be and how to coexist despite that, why work ethic matters, and what it means to earn something. That, unlike Trump, the world isn’t just handed to you, and that there are actually consequences for how we show up. That we shouldn’t make a joke over those working jobs to barely afford the same American Dream those in power withhold from them, the same power players who choose photo ops over empathy, exploitation over progress, profits over humanity.
Point is, none of these jobs are on my current resume because they were far away and long ago in a different life, and because absolutely nobody cares about our earliest jobs. You know that, I know that, and everyone over the age of 20 knows that.
Everyone, apparently, except for one man, his cult, and the entire American media.
I used to work here and there and then I worked around
My reputation is shot all over town
Lost my job, woe is me
Think I’ll stay on tomorrow and watch a little TV
Okay boys, let’s go get fired now
Trump coined the phrase “you’re fired” on a reality show that has, in recent weeks, apologized for “creating a monster.’ Longtime NBC Chief Marketer, John D. Miller, said in a recent op-ed: “To sell the show, we created the narrative that Trump was a super-successful businessman who lived like royalty. That was the conceit of the show. At the very least, it was a substantial exaggeration; at worst, it created a false narrative by making him seem more successful than he was. In fact, Trump declared business bankruptcy four times before the show went into production, and at least twice more during his 14 seasons hosting. The imposing board room where he famously fired contestants was a set, because his real boardroom was too old and shabby for TV.”
Point is, it’s okay to get fired sometimes. Sometimes we’re fired because we’re young, immature, in the wrong job, growing up, stuck in a rut, going through something, questioning our purpose or a company’s intentions. Whatever the reason, it’s a part of life, a part of a career, a learning experience. Power begets power, like money makes money, and the ones most in need of firing are the ones most often in the roles of doing the firing. The ones with the most money hold the power to determine who gets what, and how much. And yet, somehow, the people most likely to spend years in the lowest paying jobs are rallying by the millions around the billionaires most likely to exploit them.
Three thirty-five a hour, hundred dollars a week
I go get me another job down the street
Lost my job, oh, oh, oh, fired for sure
If I don’t get me another job soon, my old lady’ll kick me outdoors
~
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