Stupid Jobs
When I arrived back in northern California in the fall of 1958, I moved in with my parents on Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto. The first order of business was to find a job so that I could support myself and move into my own place, but what could I do? Neither the knowledge I'd gained at Finch (don't drink your finger bowl) nor the partying skills I'd developed at the University of Miami were much in demand. I scanned the want ads daily, looking for a suitable job and asking myself the same question that had plagued me during puberty:
Where do I fit in?
I decided to apply for a job as a receptionist in a lawyer's office, where multifunctional phones were just starting to rear their ugly little heads. My job was about being polite while trying to remember how many people I had languishing on the hold buttons. I failed—I'm still terrible at doing two things at once. After watching me struggle with the advanced technology for a few days, my boss informed me that my “phone manner” was unacceptable.
I remember taking another short-lived job as a market-research guinea pig. After seating me in a dark room in front of a glass case containing three different cartons of aluminum foil, they switched on the light for a fraction of a second. When they turned it back off again, they asked me which box I'd noticed first. The point was to determine which color scheme would best grab the average housewife by the eyeballs and lure her into a spontaneous purchase. Ever find yourself unpacking the grocery bag and wondering why you bought the instant dustball warmer? They've got it all figured out at both the advertising and the shelf level.
As I continued to search the want ads, one caught my eye. It read like this:
Singer wanted for new record label. No experience necessary. Call 555-1225.
My mother was a singer and I thought maybe I could squeeze myself into that job, whatever it was. I picked out a song that I loved and dressed to the nines for the tryout. Two men in a small recording studio with a closet-sized control room waved me over to a microphone to do the song I'd rehearsed. Unfortunately it was “Summertime.” For an all-black record label? Bad choice, but I figured it would be worse to attempt a song I hadn't rehearsed. Through the double-glass window of the control booth, I saw gentle smiles—not condescending—just two black men watching a little white dufus squirming under the weight of her own self-inflicted hubris.
I didn't get a callback.
I'd always been a lover of art and I considered myself a fair illustrator, so when an advertising agency placed an ad in the newspaper for a graphic artist, I showed up for the interview, not knowing exactly what a graphic artist was supposed to do. But I explained that I had an idea for updating their Bank of America TV commercials. “How about a cartoon character to liven it up a bit?” I suggested.
“No,” they said. “That would never work. The public doesn't want anything that frivolous when it comes to institutions entrusted with handling their investments. We have to convey the appearance of respectability and reliability.”
I didn't get the job, but on the tube, two months later, I saw a cartoon symphony conductor pointing out the benefits of a Bank of America checking account with his baton. Did they steal my idea? They would have said no. After all, I hadn't said anything about a symphony conductor.
How dumb could I get?