The most common criticism of this blog is that it is largely about doom and gloom. I don’t thing that is a fair criticism. Largely, a lot of my readership (both of you) don’t get how I react to the nonsense of the world around me.

Apparently, I write about it.

But it actually isn’t all about the doom death defeat and despair here at Locus Horribilis! Sometimes things go well.

Actually, they go well enough.

So at some point in my just barely getting by a friend told me to reach out to someone about a gig as a beer pourer¹ at the baseball stadium. I wrote a hasty email (I was at this point so demoralized from the job hunt that it was hard to put real effort into mere beer pouring gigs) and got a reply rather soon. Before I knew it I was setting up an interview. I wasn’t optimistic yet – nothing about the description of this job seemed like something that I could make mean something in the long run. It was only fair to the person interviewing me that I give it my all, so I dolled up nice for the interview and went to it putting my best foot forward.

The guy interviewing me was in shorts, sneakers and a t-shirt. I was in dress slacks, dress shoes, a button up and a vest. I’ve never felt more disarmed in an interview in my whole damn life. For a brief moment I fully believed in the Mandella Effect, and was convinced that I had slipped into an alternate reality where job interviews were not taken very seriously.

Not to mention that the guy interviewing me (the boss of this operation) looked like a little college-aged child, who would have the Pavlovian response have darting up and high-fiving whomever was around at the mere mention of the word ‘keg stand’.

He explained the job to me thusly:

1. Show up on time.
2. Clean a little and set-up.
3. Either pour beer or work the register.
4. Clean up when you finish.
5. Go home.

The hardest thing you have to do at most bar tending jobs is change the occasional keg, and even that task was delegated to someone else for this job. And for all your Herculean labor you were compensated with $8.50 an hour, plus tips.

That’s not a high wage, but take a look at those job responsibilities again. There is not a resume-writing huckster in the world who could spin those duties into anything worth putting on a CV. This is easily the easiest job in the world.

Other perks include:

• It’s outside.
• It’s Social.
• There are some attractive people there.
• You’re not sitting down.

Now, to be fair, they didn’t really train me at this job (a criticism that will be relevant in a few weeks time), but to be even more fair, they didn’t really fucking have to. It was about as self-explanatory as a job comes.

So I start doing it and like the previous waitering job the days are extremely hit or miss. But this time, I didn’t mind at all. For $8.50 per hour, you can waste my time if you really need to. But the difference here is that if you suddenly got one good tip, you didn’t lose the $8.50 an hour. Plus these guys didn’t fuck about and waste your time just to be on the safe side. If your bar was selling enough by the first pitch, your ass got packed up and sent home.

These people knew what they were doing.

But I did make some damn good money some days. I made almost $100 in cash tips alone on two occasions.

And the managers are all super nice and willing to work with you.

This would be a perfect job were it not A) only a few days every other week, and B) only about four hours a day.

Really, about the only truly negative thing I can say about this job is that I consistently leave it with a powerful urge to have a beer or three.

Truly this is the best job I have ever had.

But you want to know the really weird thing? People fucking complain about this job all the fucking time. I really can’t figure out why. I see the people who have been working their longer than I have bicker to each other about this and that. A lot of them are college-aged kids. Every time I see someone moping around I want to scream at them ‘fuck you man. Get it together. My other job is writing other people’s class assignments. I’ve pretty much gone the past four weeks or so without seeing another fucking human being’.

Fucking ingrates!