2:
WALMART
The first job that I ever had was stocking shelves at a Walmart, and it was one of their giant supercenter stores which sold over 100,000 different items.
When I first started working there, I of course didn't know where all of the 100,000 different items were located. Plus, I was extremely shy and nervous around people. So I had a phobia of customers coming up to me and asking me where random things were located.
Sometimes a customer would ask me something easy like, "Where are your TVs at?" and I would confidently tell them where they were. But then a few minutes later it would suddenly hit me that I was wrong and that I had accidentally sent the customer in the completely wrong direction. Then I would start to worry that the customer might be really mad about it and that they might even be on their way back to confront me about it. So I would run to the employee bathroom and hide in a stall for half an hour just to avoid running into that customer again.
Although I was technically "stealing time" whenever I would hide from customers in the bathroom at work, I was supposed to be given two 15-minute breaks every day, but the managers would purposely make me work through both of them. So, as long as I didn't spend more than 30 minutes a day hiding from customers in the bathroom (or as long as I didn't average more than two and a half hours per week or 130 hours per year doing it) I didn't feel that I was doing anything unethical.
Working at Walmart wasn't all bad, and I actually managed to have a lot of fun during my time working there.
For example, because I was constantly getting asked where random items were located, I drew a really detailed map of the store and I put a big red X right where the blow dryers were located. Then I put the map in my back pocket and brought it to work with me every single day until finally after about 5 months of always having it in my back pocket, a man came up to me and said, "Excuse me young man, but can you tell me where the blow dryers are located?"
I was so excited that I quickly reached into my back pocket, pulled out the map, and then I handed it to him and walked away without saying a word...
About 10 minutes later, I was stocking shelves and I looked over my shoulder and saw that the man who I had given the map to was staring at me from a distance. He looked so confused, and it was obvious that he was trying to figure out how in the world I just happened to have a map to the blow dryers in my pocket. (And why a map like that would even exist in the first place.)
A couple of days later he showed up at the store again, and it was obvious that he still really wanted to know how I did what I did because he walked up to me and nervously said, "Excuse me, but I just wanted to thank you for your help the other day when I couldn't find the blow dryers," and then he just stood there as if he was anxiously waiting to see what I would say in response...
I then reached into my back pocket, pulled out another piece of paper, and then I handed it to him and walked away again without saying a word...
I had fully expected him to return, so the paper that I gave him this time was a realistic picture that I drew of him looking really confused and using a blow dryer!
I'm guessing that the drawing really freaked him out because I never saw him in the store again after that. But several months later, I was at a gas station, and while I was putting gas in my car, a car pulled up to the pump next to me, and it was the customer who had asked me about the blow dryers.
As soon as he got out of his car, he looked at me, gave me a casual nod and started to say "Good morning", but then he suddenly realized that it was me and a look of terror came over him as if he had just seen a ghost, and then he quickly jumped back into his car and sped off!
Because he was a lot bigger than me, it made me realize that I had the power to scare people by messing with their heads.
The Walmart that I worked at was so big that the top shelves were about 20 feet in the air, and sometimes customers would ask me to get something for them that required a ladder to reach.
However, all of the managers at work had told me that I wasn't allowed to use a ladder due to how nervous and jumpy I was. So if a customer asked me for something that was on a high shelf, I would have to go and find another employee to actually climb up the ladder to get the product.
But one day, a very beautiful lady asked me if I could get a lawn chair for her that was way up on the very top shelf, and because of how beautiful she was, I was too embarrassed to tell her that I wasn't allowed to use a ladder, so I decided to try to climb up the ladder myself!
I got a ladder from the back, and then I set it under the lawn chair she wanted and began climbing up to get it. (I was terrified of heights, but I really wanted to impress her, so I just kept climbing and told myself not to look down.)
When I finally made it to the top of the ladder, I grabbed the chair that she had pointed out, but then I heard her yell up to me that she changed her mind and that she wanted the one next to it, so I looked down to ask her if she meant the one on the left or the one on the right, but as soon as I saw just how high up in the air I was I instantly felt my legs go limp and I started to fall backward so I screamed and wrapped my arms around the ladder, hugging it for dear life!
After several moments of awkward silence, the lady yelled up to me, "Are you OK?" but I was so paralyzed with fear and embarrassment that I literally couldn't move or even respond to her question.
Once she realized that I was scared, she felt sorry for me and yelled up to me, "Oh, I'm so sorry that I had you go up that high... I didn't know that you were afraid of heights," and all I could do was just keep my face buried under my arms in embarrassment...
After what seemed like an eternity, I looked down again and noticed that the woman was gone, so I started to climb back down the ladder. But then she suddenly returned, and this time she had a manager with her named Mark (who was really mean) and as soon as he saw me on the ladder, he started yelling a bunch of embarrassing things at me, like...
"What the hell do you think you're doing on that ladder???"
"I told you that you are never to even touch a ladder!"
"Get down from there this instant, or you will be written up!"
Because he was yelling at me in front of a beautiful woman, I felt even more immobilized, and because he was yelling so loudly, several other customers started coming to the aisle to see what all the commotion was about, and before you knew it, there was a large crowd of customers gathered under the ladder looking up at me.
Because I was completely non-responsive, Mark pulled out his walkie-talkie and called for security, and then a big security guard showed up and had to climb up the ladder to try to "talk me down".
He climbed up the ladder until he was right below me, and he did his best to ask me nicely to come back down, but I just ignored him and kept my head covered without ever looking at him. So, he then reached up and grabbed my ankle, and it startled me so bad that I kicked my leg back as a reflex, and I accidentally kicked him right in the head, and it almost caused him to fall off the ladder!
As soon as I realized what I had done I looked down at him and told him that I was sorry, but he was understandably mad at me, and he shouted, "Look man, if you refuse to come down this ladder, then I'm going to have no choice but to call the actual police, and if you make me do that, I'm going to tell them that you kicked me in the head, which is technically assault and you might even have to spend the night in jail over it!"
As soon as he said the part about me going to jail, I felt more scared than I ever had in my entire life. And to make matters worse, I then looked down at the beautiful woman who I had tried so hard to impress by climbing up the ladder, and with a frightened expression on her face she turned to another female customer beside her and said, "Oh my God, can you imagine what would happen to that poor boy in jail?"
Then some of the male customers below started yelling up to me that I had better come back down because they had been to jail before and there was no way that a guy like me would survive a night in jail.
I then looked at the security guard with fearful eyes, and because he was used to dealing with criminals he could smell fear like a dog, and he knew what I was thinking, so he told me, "If you go to jail, the first thing that they'll do is take your mug shot, then they'll strip search you, then you'll have to take a shower with a bunch of other naked men, and because you are so skinny and are the closest thing to a woman that some of them have seen in years..."
I then stopped him and said, "OK, OK, OK, I'LL COME BACK DOWN!"
My fear of going to jail was far worse than my fear of heights. (And honestly, I was so "camera shy" that just the thought of having to get my mug shot taken alone was enough to keep me scared straight for life!) So I slowly climbed my way back down the ladder.
It was such an embarrassing experience, and as a humiliting cherry on top, when I finally made it back down the ladder, the crowd of customers all started clapping and cheering over the fact that I wasn't going to have to spend a night in jail, and I had to just stand there and awkwardly pretend to appreciate the ovation.
And then once the cheering died down, I got publicly fired by Mark in front of the large crowd, and I realized that working in a crowded environment like that was simply out of the question for me, and that I needed to find a job where there weren't so many people around...
3:
LATE NIGHT GAS STATION ATTENDANT
There weren't a lot of customers coming into the gas station late at night, so I was basically by myself most of the night and had no actual work to do. So, I started bringing art supplies with me to work and I was basically getting paid to draw most of the time.
There was a small tray of pennies near the cash register that said, "Take A Penny, Leave A Penny" to help out customers who needed a few extra cents to pay for their gas. And as a joke, I made my own tray and filled it up with courtroom sketches that I drew of the Pillsbury Doughboy, and the tray said, "Take A Pillsbury Doughboy Courtroom Sketch, Leave A Pillsbury Doughboy Courtroom Sketch."
The tray that I made would get a lot of strange looks from customers, and I would always keep a straight face and act like it wasn't meant to be funny, and sometimes customers would even take one of my sketches home with them. (Which as an artist gave me a big thrill!)
Although the people who would come to the gas station late at night were few and far between, they tended to be shady-looking individuals, and instead of bringing art supplies to work with him like I did, the guy who worked the night shift on my nights off would actually bring a gun to work with him, just in case, quote, "Shit hits the fan"!
One night at around 2:00 in the morning, a man walked in the gas station and told me that he wanted a pack of cigarettes that were behind me. So I turned to get the cigarettes for him, but when I turned back around he had his hand in his coat and he started shouting that he had a gun and that he would pull it out and shoot me if I didn't give him all the money in the cash register!
I immediately put my hands up and started yelling, "Don't shoot, don't shoot!" and he just yelled, "Shut the fuck up and give me all the fucking money in the fucking cash register!" and I was so scared that I almost peed my pants!
Although he claimed to have a gun, I kind of suspected that he was just pointing his hand so that it would look like a gun under his coat, but I couldn't tell for sure, and I didn't want to risk getting shot, so I decided to just do whatever he told me to.
I went to open the register for him, but I was in such a state of shock and panic that my mind froze up on me, and I actually forgot how to open it until he got so frustrated that he pulled his hand out of his jacket (and while it was still shaped like a gun) and then he pointed at the button that said "Open Register" and yelled, "It's that fucking button!"
Then he realized that he had just exposed the fact that he didn't actually have a gun, so his eyes got all wide and he said, "Oh shit!" as he quickly put his hand back into his coat. Then he looked at me all paranoid as if he wasn't sure if he should just take off running or actually keep pretending that he had a gun even though he obviously didn't.
Because I suffer from "secondhand embarrassment" (when seeing other people get embarrassed or make a fool out of themselves makes you feel embarrassed as well) I actually started to feel really sorry for him, and started to worry that he was going to be unable to fall asleep when he got home due to cringing about his embarrassing robbery attempt.
Then I looked up at the security camera and worried that he might even end up on the TV show "World's Dumbest Criminals" and never be able to go a day in the future without cringing about it!
I was so worried for him that I started saying, "Oh no... Oh no... Oh no" out loud uncontrollably, and he had to tell me, "Calm down, just give me the money and you won't get hurt!" because he assumed that I was worried because I was gullible enough to still believe that he had a gun.
I put all of the money in a bag for him and handed it to him, but I guess that it wasn't nearly as much as he was hoping for, because he looked at it with disappointment, and I felt so sorry for him that I actually pulled out my wallet to give him some of my own money, but he quickly snatched the wallet out of my hand while yelling, "Give me that!"
But as soon as he grabbed my wallet he looked at it strangely and asked, "Why is your wallet all wet?" Then he looked down at my pants and noticed that I had peed my pants. (He must have thought that I peed my pants because I was scared of him, but it was actually because I was scared for him.)
He then got a really disgusted look on his face and threw the wallet back at me while yelling, "You sick fuck!" and then he took off running out of the gas station with the money from the register.
The man had taken $187 out of the register, but I didn't want anyone to know about it because of how embarrassing it would be for the poor robber, so I simply opened my wallet and put $187 of my own money in the register to make sure that there wouldn't be any missing money from the register and there would be no reason for my boss to watch the surveillance footage.
When my boss showed up, I was acting a lot more nervous than usual, so he realized that something was wrong and kept asking me if everything was alright and if anything had happened during the night, but I just kept telling him that nothing happened and kept trying to change the subject by asking him random questions like, "You're not going to put Bill Clinton in a washing machine, are you?" but it was just making him more suspicious.
So my boss ended up watching the tape, and not only did he fire me for not reporting a robbery, he also called the police on me for trying to cover it up by putting my own money in the cash register!
The police came and I was arrested and taken to the police station in handcuffs! I then had to watch the embarrassing video with a bunch of police officers, and although I had spent all that time and energy worrying that if the video ever got out, everyone would be laughing and making fun of the clumbsy robber, the entire police precinct was howling with laughter at me and how nervous I was instead!
Luckily they let me go and I didn't have to be put behind bars, but I was unemployed again, and because I had just been through such a scary experience, I desperately wanted to find a job that was safer and less dangerous!
4:
THE OFFICE
I was able to get a job interview at an office that sold auto insurance, and when I showed up for my interview, I pulled into the parking lot and started walking towards the front door of the building. But there was an old man ahead of me who was also walking towards the door, and he was walking a lot slower than me, so I purposely slowed way down just to avoid getting close enough to him that we might have to say hello to each other.
When the old man finally got to the door, he opened it and was about to go inside, but then he turned around and noticed that I was walking toward the door, so instead of going inside, he just stood there and held the door open for me.
You have to understand that friendly gestures like this make socially awkward people like myself extremely uncomfortable, because although he may have been saving me the trouble of having to open the door, he was putting me in the much more difficult situation of having to open my mouth, and say, "Thank you" and possibly have to engage in meaningless small talk.
So, I started to walk a lot slower in the hopes that he would just give up and go inside without me, but it wasn't working, and he continued to wait for me at the door.
Then I pretended that one of my shoelaces was untied, and I bent down and started pretending to tie my shoe, but after about a minute of fidgeting with my shoelaces, I looked back up and he was still waiting for me. (Although now he looked a bit impatient, and looked as if he thought that I was purposely taking my time just to waste his time!)
I then stood back up and I honestly tried as hard as I could to walk toward him, but I just couldn't make my legs move forward. So, I just stood there and stared awkwardly at him, until it got so awkward that I actually started walking backwards involuntarily!
The old man was looking at me in disbelief as I walked backwards all the way back to my car, and I looked at him in disbelief too, because I honestly had no idea what I was doing.
Once I got to my car, I put my hands in my pocket and started feeling around with a confused look on my face to try to make him think that I had just forgotten something, and then I got back in my car and acted like I was searching for something.
I pretended that I was searching for something in my glove compartment even though it was completely empty, and after spending a few minutes doing this I glanced back up to see if the old man was still standing at the door, and I was horrified to see that he was walking towards my car with a big frown on his face!
I got so scared that I screamed, and then I started up my car and drove away from him as fast as I could!
I drove around the block a few times just to kill some time, and when I finally returned to the office, I was relieved to see that the old man was no longer outside. But when I went inside, I found out that he was actually my boss! AND I was over 20 minutes late! AND he was really mad at me because I had left big black tire marks in the parking lot when I sped away from him!
It was such an epically bad first impression that I should have been fired immediately, but instead of firing me, we actually had the job interview, and something completely unexpected happened...
During the interview (which I'm pretty sure only happened because of how badly the old man wanted to have the chance to get me alone in a room and personally chew me out) the old man started yelling at me about what happened and I was acting so nervous that he stopped yelling at me and started to think that something was seriously wrong with me. He then cut the interview short and sent me to HR, and I had to talk to a woman who asked me what happened in the parking lot.
I decided to just tell her exactly what happened, and to my surprise, instead of just telling me that I was "shy" and needed to "get over it" like everyone in the past would have, she told me that I was suffering from "severe social anxiety distress" and that it was OK, and that my special needs needed to be respected because they were an "equal opportunity employer".
They also did some mental tests with me, including giving me ink-blot tests, which I had never seen or heard of before and thought were fascinating.
I ended up actually getting a job there, but they made me a janitor, and it quickly became obvious to me that the only reason they kept me around was because they thought that I was mentally handicapped and because they got a tax break by hiring people who were mentally handicapped, and they clearly made a janitor just because it meant that I would mostly be out of everyone's way.
My boss also suddenly started acting super nice to me, and I realized that it was because he was scared of getting in trouble for yelling at or harrassing someone with a mental disability.
At first I was embarrassed about all this, but then I started to realize that I had just stumbled upon the ultimate "cheat code" in the corporate world and that I essentially had job security. (Even my boss was afraid of losing his job around me) And it was all just because I was too uncomfortable to make small talk with people!
One of the most mind-blowing things to me about working at this office was how often people would call off from work. There was even an employee "Call-Off Hotline" due to how frequently people would call off! And the reasons that people would come up with for not being able to come into work were so ridiculous that they would make me laugh.
People would call off claiming that there was a bug on their door or a racoon in their front yard and that they were too afraid to leave their house because of it.
After the presidential elections, several employees were demanding a full week off with pay to mourn the election results!
The dress code for the men working in the office was black pants, a white dress shirt, and a tie, and one of the men at work named Eric actually got a doctor's excuse saying that he could wear blue jeans because he didn't like the way he looked in black pants and his doctor wrote that it was causing him "crippling anxiety"!
All of this was crazy to me because I grew up way out in the country without modern conveniences like electric heating, and if you didn't work extremely hard by cutting down enough trees and cutting them into firewood, you could literally freeze to death in the winter.
Sometimes people would get creative and show up to work the day after they called off with pictures to prove their stories about having to call off. (Like pictures of their kitchen after a squirrel allegedly got in the house and tore up their kitchen.) just incase the boss had the attitude "picture or it never happened". And it inspired me to start calling off work, and to come up with the strangest reason that I could think of just to see if I could get away with it.
For example, one time I called off by saying, "I can't come into work because I'm having an imaginary argument with Frankenberry in the shower about abortion and I've got to find out who's going to win!" and although I couldn't take a picture of this, I did draw a picture of it and gave it to my boss the next day.
I needed money for food, but calling off work and spending the day drawing Frankenberry in the shower satisfied my artistic hunger.
There were two large women who worked at the office (Barbara and Roxanne) and who wore such strong perfume that it made me feel dizzy and nauseous! (And it would always blow my mind whenever the other men in the office would actually compliment Barbara and Roxanne on how good their perfume smelled!)
I couldn't take the smell of Barbara and Roxanne's perfumes anymore, so I talked to my boss in private and begged him to please not make me clean around Barbara and Roxanne's desks while they were working, and he agreed. But unfortunately, he actually told Barbara and Roxanne that I complained that their perfume was making me want to throw up! So, I knew that if I ever had to interact with Barbara or Roxanne in the future it was going to be super awkward!
There was a copy machine where I worked that was located in a small room by itself, and you needed to walk down a long and narrow hallway to get to it.
The problem with this was that sometimes a person who had just finished making some copies would be walking out of the copy machine room as I was approaching it, and because the hallway was so narrow, we would have no choice but to acknowledge each other with empty small talk such as...
Them: "How are you?"
Me: "Good."
Me: "How are you?"
Them: "Good."
Or even worse, the person would say something sarcastic like, "Working hard or hardly working?" or "Are we having fun yet?" and even though it wasn't funny to me I would have to pretend to laugh and act like that was my kind of humor just to be polite.
I couldn't take these pointless and awkward hallway encounters anymore, so if I was walking toward the copy machine room and someone suddenly walked out of it, I would instantly turn back around and come back later to avoid having to cross paths with them.
But one day, I was walking to the copy machine, and when I was about halfway down the narrow hallway, Barbara suddenly walked out of the copy machine room and started walking towards me, so I immediately turned around to avoid having to face her, but then Roxanne suddenly entered the hallway from the opposite direction and started walking towards me.
I then looked back and forth at both of these women who I was way too uncomfortable to interact with, and realized that I was trapped!
I then remembered the bridge scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where Indiana Jones was standing in the middle of a bridge that was made out of wood and ropes and there were people with swords who were coming onto the bridge from both directions wanting to kill him.
In the movie, Indiana Jones did something crazy. He pulled out his sword and actually cut the bridge in half, causing everyone who was trying to kill him to fall to their death!
And as Barbara and Roxanne were both approaching me, I got so uncomfortable that I turned to face the wall, then I reached my arms high up in the air as if I was holding an imaginary sword, and then I slammed my arms down in front of me as if I was trying to cut the hallway in half, and although I didn't cut the hallway in half, I did manage to hit the emergency fire alarm lever that was on the wall in front of me, and it caused the alarm to go off!
The alarm was so loud that Barbara and Roxanne both stopped walking towards me and started covering their ears, and then the sprinklers in the ceiling turned on, so they both got down on the ground and covered their heads!
I then jumped over Roxanne, ran out of the hallway, and when I realized that the sprinklers were going off all over the office and that everyone was soaked and wet and furious about it, I kept running out of the building and back to my car.
Once I got to my car, I turned around and looked back at the office and saw my boss exiting the building soaking wet, and although he normally moved very slowly (even for an old man) he was actually running towards me pretty fast as if he was determined to finally fire me! So I started up my car and I once again sped away from him and left another huge set of black tire streaks in his parking lot!
I drove around the block a few times just to kill some time, and hoped that everything would cool down, but when I returned, there were several fire trucks in the parking lot, as well as several police cars, and all my co-workers were standing outside completely drenched.
Although I might have had "job security" when it came to making awkward small talk with people, pulling a fire alarm unnecessarily in a public building wasn't something that I could get away with.
My boss informed me that not only was I was fired, but that I was going to be personally and financially responsible for all of the water damage I had caused to the office, and that the police were filing criminal charges against me for making a false emergency fire alarm. (Which meant that if I tried to find another job, this incident would show up when they ran a criminal background check on me!)
So I had no choice but to turn to someone for help...
5:
THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINE
Because I had left every job I ever had on such bad terms and had created such an embarrassing resume, I desperately needed help finding a job, so I broke down and decided to go to the unemployment agency.
When I walked into the unemployment agency, everyone was just staring blankly at the wall like we were waiting to be sentenced in a courtroom, and I immediately wanted to leave, but felt that it was my only chance of finding a job, so I got in line and waited for an excruciating two hours for my name to be called.
But shortly before they called my name, I suddenly heard a loud and familiar voice enter the building, so I turned around and saw that an ex-coworker of mine from Walmart named Jeff had just walked into the building and was making small talk with everyone.
I quickly turned my head back around and started silently praying that Jeff wouldn't see me because I was an extreme introvert and he was an extreme extrovert.
Jeff was also a HUGE wrestling fan. He would talk about wrestling all the time at work, and he even wore a Hulk Hogan t-shirt that day to the unemployment line!
I actually kind of liked wrestling too, but I was too embarrassed to tell people that I liked it, because back then, wrestling fans were kind of looked down on by non-wrestling fans for being gullible and for believing that wrestling was real, or for wanting to believe that it was real enough that they would willingly ignore evidence to the contrary and act like they were genuinely upset if the good guy lost or if the bad guy cheated.
Sometimes I would watch wrestling on free TV, but it would usually just be hype to get viewers to order the big upcoming pay-per-view events, and the announcers would say things like, "Call your local cable company and tell them that you're a Hulkamaniac, and that you want to watch the immortal Hulk Hogan and Brutus the Barber Beefcake and battle the Natural Disasters Earthquake and Typhoon live in your living room!" and I would just be thinking to myself, Oh my God, it would be so embarrassing to call the cable company and tell them that!
So I never watched the pay-per-views, and I wondered how anyone would have the confidence to pick up the phone and actually call and order them, but I would casually watch it on TV and was basically a "closeted wrestling fan". But because I had worked so closely with Jeff, and because he talked about wrestling so much, I actually ended up admitting to him (and only him) that I liked wrestling too.
Once it was finally time for me to be interviewed, the old man at the desk yelled, "Next!", so I stood up, and Jeff spotted me from the back of the line and started yelling, "HEY!", "HEY BUDDY!", "HEY, IT'S ME, JEFF FROM WALMART!!!" (Which was enough to make an introvert like me want to melt into the floor with embarrassment!)
Because he was shouting so loudly, the whole building became silent and started staring at us, so I had no choice to but stop and slowly turn around and give him a forced smile and a nervous wave. But then, in front of everyone, he enthusiastically shouted to me, "OH MAN, DID YOU WATCH SMACKDOWN LAST NIGHT???"
I cringed with embarrassment because now everyone in the building knew that I was a wrestling fan!
I was so embarrassed that I quickly started walking towards the exit door to get out of there while using one of my hands to pull my shirt up high enough that nobody could see my face, but this caused my stomach to be exposed, so I became shy and embarrassed about that too, and I started using my other hand to pull my shirt back down enough that nobody could see my stomach, and because I was pulling my shirt so hard in opposite directions, my shirt ripped completely in half right before I got to the door, and I was now shirtless in front of everyone!
Everyone was staring at me in shock and confusion, and since I was shirtless and so embarrassed, I instinctually tried to tense up my muscles so that I would at least look muscular, but it was painfully obvious by the expressions on people's faces that I was no bodybuilder and that I looked ridiculous doing it. So, I then resorted to trying to make it look like I ripped my shirt on purpose and that I was just trying to be funny, and I started flexing just like Hulk Hogan would after he would purposely rip his shirt off before a wrestling match and I pointed at the old man at the desk and yelled, "WHATCHA GONNA DO, WHEN HULKAMANIA RUNS WILD ON YOU???"
But then I looked around the room at everyone was just staring at me as if they were witnessing the most cringe-inducing spectacle they had ever seen, and then I looked over at Jeff and realized that I had just made myself look like the type of wrestling fan that even Jeff would be embarrassed to be seen in public with, so I quickly walked out the door and got the hell out of there!
Now that the people who worked at the unemployment agency had seen me do that, I was of course way too embarrassed to ever go back to them for help, and I had no idea what to do next.
6:
ARTIST
I bought a newspaper just to look through the "want ads", and after weeks of making uncomfortable phone calls, I had completely filled the classified pages with big bold Xs due to getting rejection after rejection.
So I was about throw the newspaper away, but as I folded it up, I noticed a healine on the front page that caught my eye...
The headline said that an artist had sold a banana duck-taped to a wall for millions of dollars, and it naturally struck my curiosity. I started reading the article and found out that there were quite a few modern artists who were selling art pieces for millions of dollars, even though the art they were making seemed to be intentionally non-creative.
There were artists selling scribbles that looked like something a two-year-old could easily make, as well as artists literally selling something they didn't even make (like an empty can of tomato soup) as "art", and somehow, there were extremely wealthy people out there who willing to spend a fortune on this kind of art.
Like a lot of people, when I first thought when I heard about this kind of art was, "Anyone could make art like that." but because I was so desperate for money, I started to seriously wonder if I could come up with an unconventional art piece that would get a lot of attention, and that could make a lot of money and get my name out there.
So I thought about it and an idea came to me!
I searched the internet and was able to find some old colonial clothing that looked like the clothes that the Quaker Oat Man would wear on boxes of Quaker Oats. Then I threw all the clothes in a pile, sprinkled some dirt on it, and called this art piece, "A Pile of the Quaker Oat Man's Dirty Laundry", and someone ended up buying it for $1,000,000!
It was enough money that I was able to pay off my debt, buy a house, and devote myself entirely to being an artist!
I even decorated my house with homemade wallpaper that was made entirely out of Rorschach style ink-blots that I made for artistic inspiration.
I also made a necklace of a handicap symbol, because now that I was making a name for myself and people were talking about me, I wanted everyone to think that somethind was wrong with me, and to remind myself that embracing my social awkwardness rather than trying to overcome it was the reason that I was able to escape a normal life and become an artist.
The artist known as "Elbow".
(Pictured above in his ink-blot test wallpapered house.)
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