I think we can all agree that job hunting is the worst thing ever. I’ve been on an aggressive blitz this week for the past couple of weeks and I can tell you, I’d rather walk naked through an Abercrombie and Fitch CEO board meeting than write a resume and cover letter. Why is it that I can write a blog, tweet a tweet, and tell you all about my precise level of moistness for Idris Elba but I can’t even bullet point a single skill I obtained as a real estate ho? I don’t even know the proper job title is. I forget how to string words together. And I would rather give good old fashioned blow jobs under a desk than create a profile on LinkedIn. I just can’t with that site.

On Monday I had a phone interview where I paced back and forth on my back deck like a wild cat while I answered the questions. This is why I can’t have an office job, I can’t sit still on a chair. Even when I write these blogs that take up half a day, I’m moving from “half lotus” to “boat” and then to my own personally patented yoga position that I call “snake laying an egg-” don’t ask.

After stuttering and forgetting the word “customer,” I managed to get a second interview where I had to go to the actual place which is in Etobicoke, which means I have to QEW it, which is the highway where all the exits have like sounding names. “Islington” and “Kipling” look exactly the same, at least to me. I got off the wrong one, of course, got lost, then got very sweaty, and arrived ten minutes late. It didn’t matter, I had to wait 40 minutes for the interview because the woman wasn’t even there! And then when she arrived, I had to follow her to a remote office, even more sweaty, dry mouth, and out of breath because of 3 FLIGHTS OF STAIRS, I answered a bunch a questions clearly and concisely, with only an occasional nervous bit of too much information rambling. The interviewer woman, who was probably 35-ish, did NOT get my sense of humour so I was able to keep it dignified. HOWEVER, at the very end, she asked for two forms of ID which I was told to bring and I actually had because I am nothing if not always prepared.

“What do you need it for?” I asked, thinking it is a good sign.

“We need to run a police check,” she says.

Fuck. This has happened before when someone googled me, which of course is not a police check per se. A woman with the same name as me got arrested in Toronto three years ago for terrorism during the G20 shindig. It turned out her crazy husband was the one building bombs in their swanky Forest Hill home, unbeknownst to her, but she still went to jail and made headlines. People thought it was me even though her first name is spelled “Kristen” not “Kristin,” but you know how thorough folks are with details ಠ~ಠ….not. Oh well, hopefully the police don’t use google. And if I get this ridiculous job, it will be blog fodder galore, I promise, maybe it will even have its own anonymous Tumblr. A police check takes a couple of days and then a THIRD interview, she said. It’s jaw-dropping really, I’m not going to even tell you where it is because most of the people who work there look like they are from the island of lost misfits so if I don’t get it, I’m going to volunteer to be the next experimental monkey that gets launched up into space.

If I could really be me, and not the boring version, and could write a resume my own special way, it would go something like this:

1. Data Entry Clerk at Pratt & Whitney Canada. This is the summer job I had at my dad’s company during university for 3 years. I still remember my badge number, 27642, because I had to type in hundreds of times a day, along with payroll and shittons of mysterious engineering data that went into a giant box of a computer that was the size of an ensuite bathroom. This was the 80s, you could probably fit all that crap in an iPad now and all the women that worked in that department are probably dead from carpal tunnel-related cancer. There were twenty ladies in the department, a hummer of hens, all clucking their dentures while they clacked on the keyboard. And smoking all the while. Women can sure multi-task. Martha, Shannon the Crazy Bitch, and I were the summer students whose papas swung us these soul sucking jobs. Martha and I, forming an impenetrable love club, kept our spirits up by gossiping, and Shannon kept jealously accusing of being “lezzies” like we cared. Martha had the best stories because she had a bazillion boyfriends and she was a total sex goddess. She liked me because I made her laugh so hard that no sound would come out so we would stay out of trouble that way, her laughing silently and me squirming in my seat imagining what it was like to bang a Jamaican man on a dance floor.

We lived for the two weeks in July that was called “Plant Shutdown’ because it was then we had to work the four to midnight shift and not have to go in at 7:00 a.m. with our dads. One of us would get an Oldsmobile (ALL the Pratt & Whitney drove those!) and after our shift at midnight we would hit the local brasserie and drink until 3 a.m. Good times.

But the best EVER time was that Tuesday we got out extra-early at 6:30 in the evening because the big clunky computer spontaneously farted out an explosion, and she had the brilliant idea of taking the Oldsmobile over the bridge and into the CITY which was Montreal, FYI. Her Jamaican boyfriend, Winston, was taking a summer class at Concordia, and was shacking up in an apartment in NDG with his cousin, James. We could go over there, order Chinese, drink some beers, then head back home at midnight and her dad would never know she hijacked the car downtown.

Here’s how it went real time, play-by-play:

7 pm: We arrive at Winston’s apartment.  Winston is a BIG STRAPPING black boy on a football scholarship, hotter than hot, of course.  Martha gives him a big goopy kiss. James, his skinnier but also cute cousin, is also from Jamaica is speaking Patois to set the mood. It should be noted that it is July and they are not wearing shirts and they were sweat-ayyyyy. They had already ordered the food. They give us a beer and some egg rolls. Oh yes, and of course, a big giant doobie is passed around.

7;10: Still eating and not yet finished the first beer, Winston puts on some reggae music at maximum volume.

7;15: Martha and the cousin James are “dancing rub-a-dub” which looks like this:  The guy is standing against the wall and the girl is grinding her crotch on his upper thigh. Hands are everywhere.

7:20: I am grinding my crotch on Winston’s knee. His fingers are sliding around in my ass crack.

7:25: Martha’s clothes are on the living room floor and she is in another room. With James.

7:30: I am stark naked on the couch with Martha’s big giant Jamaican boyfriend on top of me, pulling his pants down.

7:31: Okay, now I am freaked out. I HAVEN’T EVEN FINISHED MY BEER AND THERE IS A NAKED BLACK MAN ON TOP OF ME. How did this even happen so fast? This is what happens to me when I smoke weed, I get paranoid. I manage to slither out from underneath him and he is a perfect gentleman, he hands me my clothes. I apologize and flee like a scaredy cat. Believe me, I wouldn’t do that now.  Flee, that is.

7:45: I am at my friends’, Kingsley and Mark, apartment a couple of blocks away, and telling the tale what just happened in the timeframe of a tv sitcom and oh, how we laughed. Also, as it turns out, I am wearing Martha’s bra inside out.

SKILLS:  Knowledge of DOS, data entry, and Rub-A-Dub wizardry

2.  Busser at Le Select Bistro. This was my very first job in Toronto. I had to bus tables, make cappuccinos, and keep the bread baskets full. Everyone, the owners and the customers, thought it was cute to have hanging bread baskets over the tables and I would constantly get yelled at by the customers: “THERE ARE CRUMBS IN THE CREAMER!” Where I wanted to say: ‘IT’S FROM THE FUCKING BREAD BASKET, MORON!” But I didn’t, I politely apologized got them some “fresh” cream, all right.

SKILLS: Revenge

3. Assistant Manager at Parachute in Yorkville. This was a store that sold the quintessential eighties fashion victim-style clothing. It was one of the funnest jobs I ever had. In fact, I’m going to lazily link from the archives to a whole blog post I wrote about it, it’s that epic.

SKILLS: The fine art of fag hagdom, how to pose in the mirror like a supermodel

4. Receptionist at a head shot photo studio. I do not remember the name of this place! I remember my boss was named Joe Black! I remember I was reading Martin Amis’ “Money” when Carole Pope came to pick up her photos in and said; “Martin Amis is so nasty and that is why I love him!” I remember trying to process that statement and not really understanding how anyone could like anything “nasty,” I was that dumb and naive. But I was starstruck so I pretended to agree. Carole Pope was one of my all time lady heroes.

Skills: Satire, also I got good at quitting jobs.

5. Bike Courier for Sunwheel Bicycle Couriers. I delivered important documents in the era pre-fax machines for a year with gusto and tenacity until one day, I crashed into the back of a parked truck climbing up Yonge Street because I wasn’t looking. I bashed my head and stabbed my leg with a wheel spoke. I finished my deliveries, bleeding and concussed, riding a bike with a wheel shaped like a Pringle chip. Like a boss.

Skills: North and South, East and West, developing an innate knowledge of where toilets are located.

6. Shopgirl at Holt Renfrew.  I sold pantyhose to rich Forest Hill and Rosedale women, who, when they got a run in their stockings, would always bring them back for a replacement. I know, right? You’re thinking what cheap cunts, HOWEVER, the pantyhose industry is a diabolical business because a single pair at Holt Renfrew cost $7.95 and they would only last a day. Do that math and then tell me these ladies are cheap. I wore Donna Karan opaque tights for $19.95 and they NEVER ran, in fact, more than 25 years later, I still have 3 pairs. So I pushed these babies to these grateful women and was top in sales during the winter season.

Skills: Up-selling, talking the talk, making animal sculptures out of spent pantyhose

7. Painter. I painted with this dude who did Marbalux faux-finishing in Italian wedding halls.  What a hot mess. I did that until I was 8 months pregnant and then I couldn’t bend over. I actually loved that job and learned a lot, no joke. Painting is all about patience.

Skills: Fucking use a good quality primer, fucking never use alkyd when latex will do, fucking use actual painter’s tape, not dollar store masking tape for a clean line, fucking take down the light switch covers, fucking wrap the brushes and rollers up in cellophane so they don’t dry up, and fucking don’t sit on someone’s white sofa when you have hunter green paint still wet on your ass.

8. Stay at home mom.  I had two babies and raised them to be fine upstanding teenage citizens. Both of them are really smart and I drank like a longshoreman while I breastfed them, hahahahahahahahahaha.

Skills: Herding, hoarding, humility

9. Real estate sales. Helped people buy and sell homes. That’s where I started this blog, hoping to help my career and promote community and neighbourhood spirit. Instead I went off on a tangent and ended up telling you stories of how I a rub-a-dubbed a Jamaican man one hot summer night, hahahahahahahahahaha.

Skills: Resume writing

REFERENCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST