Resumes

I used to work at a coffee shop on New St. I was in the preparing/getting/delivering of things business. Prepare the coffee, deliver the coffee, get the empty cup, etc. People gave me loose change and one dollar bills to do this; it blew my mind every time. Some did it half begrudgingly, some self-congratulatorily and some with an ernest appreciation, or at least these are the faces and tones they projected. At some point I came to realize that all of them, even (and probably most of all) the ernest ones did this out of pity. I was, in essence, one of those homeless people who, completely uninvited, begin washing car windshields, only I was sanctioned and allowed.

At the time of this realization I was still pretty O.K. with the proposition. The job was simple, harmless and superficially rewarding from a human interaction standpoint. Bringing coffee and pastries to total strangers in need of such things is rewarding in some small way and hardly anyone is rude to someone bringing them something, especially the caffeine crowd. So what made me start resenting this job and myself for occupying it? Amazing as it was, the loose change and dollar bills more than paid the rent and put food and wine on my table. Stress was hardly in my vocabulary and there was even something soothing about watching passer-byes flitter on sun-soaked sidewalks to a symphony of clacking drummed out by an unknowing orchestra of laptop users playing solos with their headphones on. Even now, having sorted all this out in my mind, I marvel that something as simple as a resume could set off such an emotional, psychological and existential inquisition within myself. Am I truly that tenuous? The answer is undoubtably : Yes. A maddeningly beautiful and emphatic: YES.

I should have added "resume filer" to my list of duties above because at least once or twice a day I would be handed a little typed piece of proof from some job seeker that he or she was up the the monumental responsibilities inherent to the title: Barista. I never quite understood how a degree in history or membership in the Boy Scouts were going to impress in the fast paced world of getting and delivering until I did some research on the authoritative voice on resume crafting. What I found out was that the resumes I'd been receiving were pretty much what one could expect from a generation of people who's God actually answered their prayers @ night. As it turns out, God is not a stickler for spelling or punctuation. No matter how sloppily a true believer types a hope or fear into the sliver sized rectangular search field thousands of answered prayers always appear. The more I thought about it the more I realized that the electronic prayer answerer and miracle maker is just as cleverly unhelpful as the cosmic one. They may go about their ineffectiveness in polar opposite ways, (one offering silence, the other 232,116 query results) but each approach nets the same reaction from their flock. That being the prayerful will almost always pick the most convenient solution to their problems. This truth was unfortunate for me and the the countless people who handed in the same ProJobs.com template (which happens to be both Google's first of many offerings to it's followers and professionally boring) since I filed these resumes spherically in the receptacle for "Answered Prayers Which Are to Go Unanswered" or, trash can. I did this with little remorse because what I was handed was so mindless and robotic. Where's the life? The creativity? At the time I convinced myself it was a way to get back at people for being so unthinking and boring, but I see now I punished them because they failed to entertain me , to distract me from myself and self loathing.

Then one day it came. I almost didn't see it as it's author snuck it on the counter amongst the multi colored pamphlets offering pottery classes and guitar lessons. It too was multi colored and small, a hastily cut out section of cardboard taken from a flat screen TV box folded in two and held together by three thin strips of electrical tape. As I held it in my hands I got the sense that I should be alone when I opened it, so I excused myself from the barely audible click-clack sonata of the customers keyboards and locked the door to the men's room behind me. [Aside: There is immense safety in shit. No one messes with someone taking a shit, holding a shit or threatening to shit.] Once inside, I unfastened the pieces of tape, unfolded the cardboard and read: "Please don't let me fall between the couch cushions of life." scrawled in loopy cursive and black magic marker. Truly, I had never received a more desperate or unnerving application. What did it's author want from me or the coffee shop on New St? How does one keep from falling in between the couch cushions of life? Was I already there, crammed into some comfortable lightless nook next to forgotten pocket change and fragments of stale potato chips? All I knew was that I needed to find this person and look hard into their eyes. I wanted to see if they resembeled that strange figure I avoided while brushing my teeth each night.