All Play and No Work Makes Benjamin a Fatass

Before I moved back to my hometown of Arcata from Portland, I knew that without much effort I could get a job at my local gas station/UHaul dealer (read previous post for more info on that monstrosity). I've been coming here since I was a little kid, and had actually been offered a job BEFORE I'd moved to Portland.  I'd always thought the gas station gig would be my dream dead-end job, as I called it.  The reason I didn't take it the first time around was the owner, my boss, had been selling my underage self beer and alcohol for over two years.  If I were to become employed, well I'm sure he would've figured it out in no time.

Fast forward about one year.  My first visit back to Arcata, I was already feeling homesick and seriously considering moving back.  So my first trip into the gas station here, I mucked it up with the owner, telling him how I ran a Uhaul center up in Portland, and that if I ever moved back he should give me a job.  He told me if I came back, come and talk to him and he'd find something for me.

Count it! Step one was already completed: I had a job lined up if I ever decided to move back. Obviously I also had a house to stay in (the parents) as well. When I finally decided to come back, I went and talked to the owner and got a job on the spot. It was beautiful, especially in a place like Arcata where the demand for jobs far outweighs the supply.

I knew what I was getting myself into in the first place. I knew it was a dead-end, minimum wage job, but that was what I wanted. I wanted a job that gave me the least amount of responsibility possible. As long as I was punctual and didn't call in sick too much, how could I possibly lose this job? I literally stand behind a counter for either six or eight hours a day, chumming it up with customers (which I am amazingly good at, read my Goebbels-inspired propaganda). I even bring in my laptop to surf the internet, and my guitar to work on new tunes I'm figuring out or writing. 

For the record, I am actually writing this very entry here at work, and I'm getting paid for every second of it. excersize

The problem is, now over two months into this job, I'm starting to miss the days of actually ACCOMPLISHING something when I'm at so-called "work". Not to mention myself being short on will power and being surrounded by soda, chips, candy, RedBulls, even the delicious Que Grande taco truck across the street, I can feel the pounds adding up. 

Not that I give two shits about how much I weigh, how I look or how unhealthy I am (average pack of cigarettes smoked in a shift: 1.2). I still feel almost guilty about it sometimes. Sleeping for 12 hours a day, "working" at a "job" where I eat candy and drink soda all day, and all the exercise I get is walking the block-and-a-half from home to work and back at night.

However, I cannot complain. For this is exactly what I wanted in a dead-end job. I don't like hard work, and I like soda! And I LOVE taking seventy-eight cigarette breaks a night. Not to mention the abundance of marijuana I am "tipped" every day. I actually weighed it all out a couple nights ago, and I have been "tipped" almost two full ounces. Mama-mia!

Those damn Salmon House kids and their fucking Brass Monkeys.