Sunday night: A different night, a different bar. Drum and bass night at one of the downtown clubs. Doc Filth believes himself to be a great Techno DJ, so we always come out to see his competition. I hate the music, but the beer is cheap, and a lot of our friends come here. Not to mention that raver girls are usually far more attractive than punk rock or metal girls.
“I’m so fucking sick of working on Sundays,” I yell to Doc over the pounding drum beats as we nurse our Moosehead. “It’s such a fucking waste of time. I made over 400 calls today, and got a total of ten payments. Everyone just wanted to bitch and complain about being bothered on a Sunday. I wish they would just change the schedule and work us on a day that people were willing to pay instead of just pummeling us for nothing.” We are seated at the oak bar, across from where three televisions are playing whatever sports are generally popular in late spring/early summer.
“That’s how they break you down,” he yells, refilling his glass.
“Huh?”
“They put you through that so you can be broken down and readily accept the rhetoric. Look at you, you toil away at your job, hate it intensely, and get drunk every night to forget. So you are more likely to believe what the company wants you to believe.”
“The company rhetoric is ‘pay your bill, or we shut your damn phone off.’ I believed in that before I started this job. I don’t pay my bills either, and I accept responsibility for what happens. I don’t call up some innocent jerk and scream at him because I’m a dumbass. Why does it not only have to be my fault that I don’t pay my bills, but my fault that no one else does either?”
“You make a convenient scapegoat.”
“I don’t want to sound like some heartless conservative, but whatever happened to personal responsibility? Whatever happened to someone being held accountable for his actions? We’re out of the ‘90's. Isn’t it time to stop blaming everyone else for our problems?”
“Blaming other people is the core of the American Dream. ‘Get rich quick, or find someone whose fault it is for preventing you.”
“Maybe that’s my problem, I’m not quick enough to lay blame. Maybe I would have fewer problems if I attributed them to someone else.” I refill my glass and take a sip. “Maybe instead of trying to create some kind of art, I should churn out a genre novel and hit the bestseller list.”
“No, there are already enough Stephen Kings out there. We don’t need another.”
“Think about it though. Fantasy novels are easy and fun to write. All you need to have is some neat races, a threat to the entire world, some evil wizard, and a giant battle at the end. Bang! Cash-cow. I can’t think of a more formulaic type of writing. If I put my mind to it, I could hack out something entertaining in about a month, make some cash off that, and spend 11 months writing something I care about.”
“This sounds like the porno idea.”
“It’s exactly like the porno idea, but I just don’t need to know 100 different words for vagina and I wouldn’t be so ashamed that I wrote under a pseudonym. I could revive some of the stories I wrote in high school. They weren’t bad.”
“Yes they were,” he says bluntly.
“Come on. Some of those were written ten years ago, I was fifteen. If I wrote it now, it would be bad, but for a wee lad in the tenth grade, it was damn good. I can churn out way better schlock now.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Besides, what were you doing back then? You hadn’t gotten into music yet, and all you could do was start a story trying upstage me, and then never finish it. At least I managed to finish my projects.”
He looks up and down the bar, waves to some guy I don’t recognize, and looks back to see if I remember the prior conversation. “So are you going to hump that Alicia chick, or what?” he asks in a desperate attempt to change the subject. “Because if you don’t, I want to have a chance.”
“Because you’re an irresistible ladies-man. She gave me her number. I should give it a shot. I’m sure she’s into writers who are washed up before they start. I mean, I have a promising career ahead of me as a bill collector. My manager told me so.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, I know, right? My dollars collected have been the highest on my team since my second month. They try to tell me that the way to collect is to be nice and polite, and they tell me to imagine how high my numbers would be if I changed my tactics, but bullying has kept me in the top 25 reps for five months now. I’m at $500 dollars per hour, 200 above my goal. Tell me who needs to change tactics.”
“You could be Number One.”
“Yeah, that’s the line they always try to feed me. I don’t see them cancelling out my payments for bullying customers to get them. I do the job and I do it right. They should be happy with that.”
“You should come work at Atum. You’d make more money and wouldn’t ever have to work a Sunday.”
“I thought you said the job sucked.”
“It does,” he says, with a nod. “We could work together, then it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“I suppose I could pick up an application tomorrow.”
“You should.”
“Or, I could sit content with my position and not make any major changes in my life,” I sigh.
“Which is probably what you’ll do.”
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