Jobs suck

Posted August 18th, 2003 by Sean Williams

Jobs are hard, that’s why people are paid money to do them. I have an acquaintance who is losing her job after twenty years and she is blaming it on inter-office personality problems and reverse racism and anti-semitism, and I can’t imagine working at a job that I hate and having to deal with all that bullshit as well. Of course, she isn’t a very pleasant woman, and it seems to me that only unpleasant people get reverse racism, but whatever, there is still a lot of bullshit at every job.

But, just for the annals, let me tell you about this audition I had yesterday. I was invited to come in and read for a show. The part was written by a dear very close friend of mine and directed by someone I had worked with before who requested that I come in. The role is that of a thirty-something guy in a long term relationship that talks like my friends and I do, so it was almost cheating in my favor.

The first thing I read was okay, then the director gave me an adjustment and I did a really good job, as did the girl who was reading with me. I left for a bit and then was called in with another girl. This somewhat less talented girl did the reading with me and we were fine and when the director gave me my cue, I directed the last line of it straight to her. She was a little stunned and when she said ‘thank you’, the girl I was reading with said, ‘Oh, wow. I thought you guys were just talking, I didn’t realize that was the script…’

I mean, I don’t do stuff very well over all, but this particular character for this particular writer, I’m pretty damn good at.

So, I left and waited to be bunched together with other women. The director came out and called together everyone who had been auditioning and said, ‘God, I hate casting. Listen. Secret Ballot time. I want everyone to pull out a piece of paper and write down the name of the person you most want to do. Girls write down one of the guys’ names, Guys, do the same for the girls.’ And then she disappeared.

I assumed that she was joking, of course, you never go to a job interview and are asked by your co-applicants to decide who in the room is the hottest. That’s a world that we just don’t live in. But no, the other actors started pulling out pieces of paper and ripping them up and writing down names.

I stood up and said, ‘Listen, I know you all want to write down my name, but you should know, I have a burning horrible case of VD that is highly contagious.’ No-one laughed, no-one even looked at me. Of course they weren’t going to write down my name. ‘Seriously, it goes from my knees to the middle of my chest- just this horrible cracked scabby thing, so keep that in mind when deciding who you’d do…’

After deciding that I didn’t want to actually make a scene, I left.