21. Freelance House Painter, Fort Collins Colorado. During my time working at the Fort Collins Youth Recreation center I was really cleaning up my act – getting my life together and working steadily to earn a consistent, albeit modest, paycheck. I paid off all of my credit card debt and started putting some money savings, worked out every day, ate vegetables, didn’t go out drinking except on rare vacations, and even started flossing. So this is what it was like to be a responsible adult! I even picked up side work.
At the recreation there was another Norm – a really cool guy in his late 30’s who used to be an Olympic-level swimmer. He had been cleaned out in a divorce and now avoided most people and kept it simple; putting in work at the Rec center, bow hunting, and occasionally painting houses on the side. He hated all the bullshit that human beings brought, preferring the solitude of nature. We got along fine.
Norm got a job staining this huge cabin up in the mountains and needed some help. We talked it over and determined that if we got up there on a Friday and really hustled, 12 to 14 hours a day, we could have it finished by the end of Sunday. So we headed up into the mountains and came to this absolutely beautiful lodge made out of a red timber right at the top of a ridge. The view was amazing, and it was still cold at night at that altitude so there were remnants of snow around. It was a pleasure to work side by side in silence with that view around us.
22. House painter, Lopez Painting. When I moved out to Fort Collins I fell in with a crazy crew from Connecticut who had also transplanted out there – Dirty Denny, the immortal Reilly, Wes, and even Mitch D and Crazy Louie came out for the summer. Reilly got us jobs working for a painting company run by a big Mexican dude named Gene. He was an OG and the painting company, to the best of my knowledge, was not only to earn some cash but as a front for his side job of hustling drugs. Gene was slick as oil and you had to constantly watch out or you’d be played. He wore dark sunglasses, even indoors, and walked with a limp due to being hit in the knee with a baseball bat years earlier by another drug dealer. It was one of those love-hate things because you had to put up with his cheap bullshit but he was actually cool to us to, more like a friend than a boss, and showing up to work hungover or getting high on the job wasn’t a problem, and he even invited us to his family barbecues.
Gene had his paint crew drive a ridiculous brown van from the 70’s every day and we even got to take it home. It shook violently when we were lucky enough to get it over 40 mph on the highway and there were no functioning seatbelts, no heat or air conditioning, no seats in the back – we had to sit back there with the paint buckets and equipment and get tossed around with every turn, and the brakes only worked some of the time. We christened the vessel the Brown Bomber.
The work consisted of mostly interior painting jobs for new construction, which was foreign to me and quite mundane. I much preferred the sunshine and outdoors. Then again, it was more consistent work year round and not as physically strenuous or risky. I worked with a strange cast of characters, like I told you my posse from Connecticut, but one by one they got fired or got sick of George’s bullshit and quit for greener pastures. During the long, cold Colorado winters the crew was down to just me and Alien Eric.
Alien Eric was a scrappy local dude who you knew just wasn’t going anywhere in life. He wasn’t a bad guy at all, in fact he was pretty smart and we became friendly, but these days he probably would be medicated with Zoloft, Ritalin, Benzodiazepines, Lithium, and ProActive. But this was back in the 90’s, and so he was just considered odd and a little bit hyper. He was the perfect employee for Gene because he had no education and no other job opportunities, so had to stay loyal and keep working hard. Eric was a skinny dude with a big dirty mop of hair, someone you’d expect to be a stunt double for the movie “Dazed and Confused.” He smoked a lot of pot too, but mostly he talked about how the aliens abducted him.
Otherwise he was cogent, and who the hell knows – maybe they did take him, but it was just hilarious to hear him recount the event seriously. He was sitting in his two-room halfplex one night, getting high with his roommate Shaggy (seriously) and watching Shark Week, when there was a crazy bright light that came through his front window, blinding him. He was drawn to the light and got up and opened the front door, and…well you’ve heard it all before: blah blah blah flying saucer, little green guys, alien abduction, experiments, probes into every orifice of his body, returned to earth, woke up face down in his front yard the next morning with only fuzzy memories of the events but a sore ass. I still think that Shaggy slipped a Roofie into his Kool-Aid and got frisky with him, but that’s not for me to speculate. I won Eric’s confidence because I never made fun of him or discounted the story, and so he felt comfortable talking about it with me. We worked closely together over the many boring months so we had some good talks abut government conspiracies and lost ancient super-cultures; a chance to unburden his soul for him, entertainment for me.
The summers working in Colorado were beautiful but in the winter it was so friggin cold. I’d have to wake up at 5 in the freezing pitch black and sit in the back of the unheated Brown Bomber for a 45-minute ride to the house that we were painting. New construction had no working heat, so it was even freezing inside, and you’d have to thrust your hands in icy water to fill a bucket or wash brushes. In the afternoon it warmed enough where you could work without your heavy flannel coat and didn’t see your breath. Still, it was breathtaking, and the western range of the Rocky Mountains was a constant companion.
Our Friday ritual was to hunt Gene down for a paycheck. He wouldn’t show up on the job site, wouldn’t answer his pager, and would avoid being at his house as long as he could. Finally when we corralled him he’d write us checks and then hand them over like they were a bag of rubber kickballs. They always bounced. The next Monday we’d inevitably confront Gene and get to witness one of the best acting jobs since Meryl Streep in Silkwood. We would throw the check back to Gene and air our grievances as he examined it like it was an ancient Egyptian artifact, even weighing it out in his chubby hands and holding it up to the light. What he was looking for we never knew.
“I don’t understand, bud,” Meryl Streep, AKA Gene, would say.
“It’s in English, Gene.”
“How could this happen, bud? Your bank must have made a mistake – I don’t get it,” she said while scratching her head and looking perplexed, like I asked her to recite the square root of Pie.
“It says ‘Returned for Non-sufficient Funds’ Gene! Come on pony up and pay me!”
He always acted like he’d never seen a bounced check before, where by my estimates he actually bounced 80% of the checks he wrote to his employees, the paint store, his vendors, and who knows where else.
Gene was famous for his motivational pep talks. Every morning he’d assemble his workers in a circle, like we were a junior high volleyball team, and give us his now famous “Gene speeches.” Of course he was just always stressed because he ran his business horribly and had financial troubles, but the general message was that we had to pull together and work harder and give it our all for the sake of the team. For $6.75 an hour? I think I’ll coast, thank you very much. But his delivery was hilarious. He’d get fired up and go through a big pep talk, but the end was always the same: “You’ve got to give 110%, bud (he called everyone bud, probably even his wife). You got to pull this (pointing to his head) out of this (pointing to his ass) and stop doing this (mock jerking off)!” It became so predictable that we had to suppress laughter during his diatribes. Sometimes one of us would slip and then we’d all break down into laughter and he’d go ape shit. The speech was repeated at higher volume but this time we had to give 120% and the masturbation part was violently rigorous. One day I asked him, in all seriousness, offering up the matching hand gestures “So Gene, if I hear you correctly bud, what you want us to do is take this out of this an stop doing this. Right bud?” He looked at me like he was so proud he was going to cry – his prodigal son had finally had an epiphany and understood him. I continued, “and you want us to give 110%.” He nodded and looked like he was going to hug me. “But Gene, how can we give 110%, doesn’t it only go up to 100%?” as I did my best to look puzzled. The rest of the workers burst out laughing and Gene chased me around his front lawn, and then fired me when his fat ass couldn’t catch me. I was back by noon – the simple fact was that we needed each other because no one else would have us.
23. Donating plasma, Fort Collins, Colorado. I was broke. I mean broke broke. I had been arrested and stuffed and cuffed for a crime I didn’t commit – sort of – and was going through the horrible process of paying attorneys, court fees, etc. And unlike O.J., I was not looking for the real killer on the golf course. My biggest concern was keeping my sweet candy ass out of prison for 4 years, like they were throwing at me, but needless to say that money was tight. I was painting houses for Gene, who was the only employer probably more confortable that I had a criminal record, but even with 40 hours and overtime I couldn’t make ends meet. I was hungry for the first time in my life, and a big Friday night for me was to go to the local coffee shop for 99-cent refills and reading Voltaire or Henry Miller behind the frosty windows. Mostly I just did pushups and pullups in my room and stressed. Eventually I found a side gig to get me some much-needed money: I donated plasma twice a week at the local medical center. I’d go in there and they’d stick a huge half inch thick needle in my arm and for forty five minutes extract my blood, run it through a centrifuge to separate the white blood cells and platelets, and return the depleted red blood into my body. I got $15 the first time I donated in the week and only $12 the second time because my blood was so void of those platelets and white blood cells. I’d stumble out of there, dizzy and weak, with a chocolate chip cookie and a few bucks in my pocket to use at the grocery store. I ate on about $27 a week and that got me through.
24. Work Release Program, Larimer County Detention Center. When the State of Colorado sentenced me to 14 days in jail I had the choice to do the time in jail or in work release. I chose work release and got to leave the jail 5 days a week to go to my job painting houses. They searched me thoroughly every morning before I left and performed a thorough search and alcohol breathalyzer test every evening when I came back. If I ever moved locations within the workday, even to go get a burger, I had to call in the jail and register my whereabouts. They actually sent personnel from the program to drive around and check to make sure prisoners were where they were supposed to be. I was checked out to my boss George. He worked me a little bit but most of the time I just hung out at his house and watched TV. I had to lie on the floor, below the sight line of street traffic, because if a representative from jail drove by and saw me sitting there in a comfy chair watching TV I would be screwed and thrown in General Population.
25. Laborer, Dieter’s Water Gardens. I had a bunch of friends who moved from Connecticut out to San Francisco to enjoy the Cali sunshine, including a friend from junior high named Craig Dietter. Craig ran a water garden business that installed custom koi ponds and waterscapes. The work was really hard but pretty cool – we would drive out to some rich person’s house in Marin County in the morning and have the blank canvas of a patch of dirt or hill facing us. By the end of the day we’d have built a beautiful natural waterfall flowing into a koi pond. Most of my job was to carry rocks and dig ditches. In some days we’d lift and carry three or four pallets of rock, which are about a ton each. I was strong as hell and Dietter was about twice as strong as me. Of course you needed to be very high for this work, and smoking a little pot was encouraged to help you through the day, but cold beer was reserved for the late afternoon when all the work was done and we had to nurse our ailing backs. I had to take two buses over an hour and a half just to get to Criag’s house to leave for work, and the days were exhausting, but fulfilling. It was nice to be in the sun and work with the earth and water and have to paint anything. We even got to fly down to Hollywood one time, converting some rich lady’s swimming pool into to a big natural koi pond. Of course we got our partying in when we were down there. The bars in LA were crazy - people were crushing up and snorting Ritalin and I saw a dude crack a heavy beer pint glass over another dude’s head, spilling blood everywhere.
26. Right hand man, The Cable Car Deli (and sports gambling ring). I started going into a great little deli right on California Street near the cable car line. It was a dark little place with only a few tables, but sports always playing on TV and the best damn subs and sandwiches. I befriended the owner, a thirty-something Italian-American fireplug named Randy. Everyone called him Fat Randy because he was always talking about how he used to be a svelte athlete back in the day. He was definitely 50 lbs. overweight, but carried it over a squat muscular figure. He was a jokester and loved the ball busting I could give right back to him since I was the East Coast and understood how that worked. Randy and I became good friends and soon he offered me a job at the deli.
I was sort of like his do-it-all-guy. I’d arrive midmorning and get everything ready for the lunch crowd. I’d prep everything in the small kitchen, then work the cash register and building sandwiches for patrons. I’d also sweep, clean dishes, take out the trash, and do assorted errands for Randy all over town. I would give this person this envelope and tell this person that message when he stopped by, but never questioned my instructions. Fat Randy’s business partner in the deli was Fat Tony. Tony was really fat, and did nothing but pound beers all day while he worked. Randy pointed out to me that he was drinking out of a beer he hid somewhere all day every day, but it never neglected his duties and he was always there and always got the job done. One day we counted and Fat Tony swilled 26 beers during his 12-hour workday and didn’t even appear buzzed.
I became Randy’s road dog and sort of like his mentor. He grew up in Florida to a dad who was in the mob. His family had a big house and nice cars and boats but never really questioned it – it’s just the way things were. One day during high school the IRS came to the house and barged in, ripping everything apart and seizing every single item of value, including the house and cars. Fat Randy was traumatized by this, and channeled his anger and fear into sports. He played varsity baseball, basketball, and golf, and even though he was only 5’10” tall his fierce competitive nature and deceptive athleticism earned him a spot as a walk-on on the University of Florida football teams.
The deli was a nonstop buzz of activity. Everyone gave everyone a hard time and pranks were the highest order of the day. You had to be really sharp or you would fall victim to one of Randy’s joking hustles, and we had an ongoing prank war with the Vietnamese dudes in thick gold chains who worked at the pizza place next door. The deli was fun and it had endless food – fresh salami and provolone, roast beef and mozzarella, and even an oven roasted turkey that was cooked every single morning and would smell up the place so nicely. I was pretty broke and hungry at the time, and Fat Randy only paid me about $10 an hour cash, a hard sum to survive on in expensive San Francisco, but there was always food to eat and beer to drink – and I was encouraged to do so. Randy was engaged to a beautiful tall redhead his same age, and he serially complained about having to act like a boring old person when she made him attend social events with her friends. He would talk about these as his “Scrabble nights,” and it left him dying for some adventure. In me he found the perfect co-pilot, because I was down to do anything at any time, as long as he didn’t mind paying for our misadventures, and I never complained or questioned him.
It didn’t really hit me that he was running an illegal gambling operation out of the deli until one night when we had people over to watch a big boxing match – it was Tyson v Holyfield when he bit his ear. Most of the time there had been only a trickle of patrons, other than the occasional lunch rush, but definitely not enough to sustain a business in a high-rent district. But there was a nonstop progression of fat Turkish men with bad haircuts and bad suede sweat suits walking into the deli. They would say hi to everyone, grab a few slices of roasted turkey or cheese, a soda out of the cooler, and go right back past the kitchen into the back room. They were introduced as friends of Fat Randy’s, though they never paid and I never was told their names. In the back room there was a round kitchen table with one single home phone sitting on it, that day’s sports page fanned out. Call me naïve, but I really didn’t put two and two together that it was a whole racket – it was naturally a gambling and betting culture around the deli and that’s what I was used to in the East Coast. Well this night that we had the fight on TV Randy had all of these sordid characters over at the same time. There were more than I thought, and every seat was taken and some had to stand behind the counter. Randy had me tape up the windows with newspapers so no passerby’s could see anything inside the deli. The food and booze flowed around liberally and everyone bet vigorously, right out in the open, on the fight. Fat Randy collected their money but didn’t write anything down. When Tyson bit Holyfield’s ear and the fight was called they all went nuts and almost rioted because they all had money on Tyson and lost, so now they wanted their money back. Fat Randy told them all to fuck off and kicked them out of the deli, but they were back, one by one, making calls to place sports bets at the table, the next day.
Fat Randy never used phones. He would just appear, as if out of thin air, wherever you were and drag you into a day of drinking or mischief. It would be 8am on a Sunday morning and poof! – Randy would be outside on the street, in a hot BMW that you’ve never seen before – honking and yelling for you to come down, and you never knew where the party was going to end up. One time we might be opening $300 bottles of expensive port wine at a museum opening, another time drinking cold beer at the dog track. Fat Randy had no problem talking to any girl any time and his energy was infectious – the world was his playground. One particular night stands out because I witnessed one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. Randy told me ahead of time that we were going out drinking, but that we were going to run a hustle that he hadn’t tried since college. He told me to show up at the swanky Fairmont hotel bar at 9pm. Soon after I saw a cab pull up and Fat Randy get out gingerly, but with the cab driver taking him by the arm and guiding him into the bar. He was pretending to be blind. I couldn’t believe it and told him he was crazy to try that in public, but he stayed in character perfectly all night. He would look a little bit past you and had a back story how he lost his sight to some degenerative disease and now he was a computer programmer. We might have hit ten bars that night, all with Fat Randy as Blind Randy, and me hi handler to help him get around. We didn’t overplay it though; it was very subtle like he was really trying to be independent. I can’t tell you how many girls we met that night. They loved it that he didn’t feel sorry for himself and was so independent, and inevitably a fat or ugly girl would be all over him and in deep conversation, thinking she finally met the man of her dreams who couldn’t see her flaws. Late that night we went into a dive bar in the Marina and everyone noticed us when we came in. Soon some bar patron was buying us a shot and being super friendly. Randy told them that he wanted to play pool and they cut him to the front of the long line of patrons waiting to play, almost starting a fight until the guy saw he was blind and then encouraged him to play immediately. So Randy would hold the stick, aided by a fat girl who was his new admirer, and she would line it up in the right direction and then he would hit away. It was fucking hilarious, because when he was very close to the ball he needed to hit and only needed a tap he would wind up and smack it like he was breaking to start the game, and balls would crack everywhere and fly off the table. No one would admonish him or correct him. Then he would ask if he got one in, and he’d get hand slaps and encouragement from everyone around even though he hadn’t even come close. One time he ricocheted a ball in just by random luck, and the whole bar exploded in applause and cheers and everyone started buying him shots. Fucking classic.
But despite the bold and semi-legal lifestyle Fat Randy led he had a huge heart. He would always put a neighborhood kid to work for a few dollars, always give something to eat – but never money – to the beggars and homeless who walked the streets in front of the shop, and every Thanksgiving Randy and I would cook a huge feast and then round up the homeless from Van Ness Ave to Larkin Street and have them over for a home cooked turkey dinner. Eventually I needed a livable salary more than good times and sandwiches, so I moved on. Fat Randy and I were still friends but saw each other less and less. Him and Fat Tony had a falling out and Fat Randy was having trouble with the deli so they sold it. I ran into him on the street a year later and he was driving a brand new Ford Explorer and taking into a cell phone. He gave me his number and told me that we should get together real soon for beers and relive the old times. I agreed, and we parted company. I tried calling his number that week, but the number didn’t work. Who knows? Living the life of a mobster you’re always on the run.
27. Temp, Liver Transplant Ward, San Francisco Hospital. In between jobs as a laborer I yearned for something steadier and less backbreaking, so I registered with a temp agency. In a few days they got me a job as a coordinator for the Liver Transplant Ward at a big local hospital. The temp agency lady kept warning me how stressful and hard the job would be, and that doctors would be yelling demands at me all day long. I showed up for a few days and tried to figure it out. It was impossible to decipher who my boss was, who was supposed to train me, and what exactly I was supposed to do. People would fly by my desk all day, really stressed out and dropping huge tomes of paper on my desk, but that’s as far as I got. I quit the next day – I didn’t want to be at a job where I had a bad day because I went out drinking the night before and someone died because of it – no thank you!
28. Applicant, Phase 2 Public Relations Firm. This is interesting: I got fired from this job before I technically even got it! My buddies Whitey and Levi were working at a nice PR firm down on Columbus Street in North Beach and got me a foot in the door for an interview. The job was for a library research assistant, pulling periodicals and extracting research all day from their in-house media library. It sounded great and I felt I was perfectly suited for the work. I went on the interview, even ironing my $6 pair of used slacks from the thrift store and putting on my least-obnoxious tie, and hit it off great with the head librarian. I’d be working directly for her so it was important that we clicked, and we did. She enthusiastically endorsed me for the job, and that same day I met two or three other Department Heads and VP’s, who also gave me the thumbs up. They told me I had to take a quick personality profile test; standard procedure for all new hires, but basically the job was mine. They left me in a small conference room with a simple packet of paper to go through. I couldn’t believe my good fortune – the job was a huge step forward for me and I’d be able to work in a fun, creative environment AND get to kick it with my homies. The job started at almost 30k, an unheard of sum for me in those days – almost twice what I had made at any other job.
The test was easy enough and then I got to the essay part, my forte. The essay assignment was to write a press release about the invention of scissors. Ok no problem. I had never written a press release before, nor was it required for my new job description, but I would give it my all. I got the creative juices flowing and thought about how amazing an invention scissors would be if they just came out. So I wrote something like this:
“Introducing “Scissors” – the best new invention since the paper clip! A brand new office and household tool created by Dr. Scissorsky at the Institute For Paper Product Betterment. The “Scissors!” They slice! They dice! No more ripping paper by hand, no more messy edges and wasted paper. A clean, straight line every time through paper, cardboard, tape, and even cloth! From the people who brought you the Stapler. But wait, there’s more! Call today and we’ll throw in a second pair! Get yours today! (Limit twenty per household, Warning: Do not run with this product.)
…Or something like that. I had written a cheesy infomercial instead of a press release, but not one could deny that it was extremely creative and dynamic. Quite clever actually. I submitted the personality test and the head librarian kept showing me around the office, introducing me to my new coworkers and showing me my desk. I was to report to work on Monday and start filling out the HR new hire packet. I was so excited! Then she was abruptly called out of the conference room to speak to someone. She came back five minutes later with a look on her face like someone just killed her dog. She sat down and said she had some bad news. She couldn’t even look me in the eye and stumbled through her words; the President had taken a quick look at my personality test. I got high marks on everything but then he saw my essay about Dr. Scissosky and the invention of scissors and thought I wasn’t taking this seriously. He told her to inform me immediately that I didn’t have the job. She had argued to save my soon-to-be-employment but he was adamant and wouldn’t budge. She pleaded that he should at least meet me before making that decision, but he dismissed her, and me, without softening. She was almost crying as she told me that they had decided to go in another direction. I was stunned; I didn’t know what to say. I had already been picking out my North Beach lunch spots and spending my 30k a few minutes earlier, but there was no explanation for this – just a sad face and silence. Ok then. I got up and left the office, a little pissed off, not necessarily that I didn’t get the job – I was used to that – but that they basically approved me for the job then retracted without explanation. Later I found out, through my friends, that the librarian was equally as pissed. I found out why the President vetoed my hiring. Well my position was, don’t ask a question that calls for creativity if you don’t want people to be creative in their answers. The fucking invention of scissors? Really? I’m supposed to write that straight? Fuck you! But I knew it wasn’t the librarian’s fault so I decided, for once in my life, to take the high road. I purchased a really nice notecard with a beautiful Van Gogh painting on the front. I wrote the Librarian a thank you card, telling her that I appreciate her time and consideration. I ended it with a quote by Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” I heard through the grapevine that the Librarian got the card and put it in front of the President as a “see I told you he’d be a good employee, so fuck you!” Either way I didn’t get the job and never worked there, though my buddies told me that my Invention of scissors infomercial because a cult favorite among the employees and was passed around with a laugh.
29. Writer for Fillet Magazine, San Francisco, Ca. I was living in Frisco in the “Tender-Knob,” which is halfway between the Tenderloin and Knob Hill neighborhoods. I shared a great apartment with a couple really cool roommates. One of them, Adam, was an awesome guy who ran an online restaurant review magazine called Fillet. He needed writers so I eagerly volunteered. I knew I wouldn’t impress the hell out of anyone with my writing or Epicurean knowledge, so I tried to spin really creative angles on the stories to make them entertaining. My best story was a review of fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Burger King, and Carl Juniors, written with the culinary snobbery of French royalty. It was called “Deep Frying the American Dream,” and actually got some love, at one point only two links from Yahoo’s main page. I also wrote a piece about Rocky Mountain Oysters that featured Reilly, and a history of my family in Germany through the perspective of the traditions and customs of food. I have a couple of those stories printed out but I don’t think you can find them on the web anymore.
Adam is still doing great work – check him out: http://adamvpowell.blogspot.com/
30. Customer Service Agent, American Data Med. My first real office job was working as a customer service rep for a company whose office was right on downtown Market Street in San Francisco. The company scanned, copied, and stored documents for court cases, usually involving medical records. It was a huge business – you have no idea how many tens of thousands of pages of records are involved with any medical malpractice court case. So we had “drivers,” guys who would drive out to hospitals with their portable scanners and copy certain files page for page. Then we had the office, which consisted of mostly 18-22 year old Filipina women, a few other college graduates like myself, and my supervisor Craig. In the office we were supposed to issue, organize, and make calls to schedule copy appointments for the subpoenas that were issued with these court cases. The owners were some rich fucks from Orange County and were making money hand over fist, but were still cheap as hell with us. Their business model was to hire kids without college education, or in my case right out of college and with no other experience, and to pay them next-to-nothing while they are going through their “training period” of three months. They kept promising us raises at 3 months, then 6 months, then a big one at a year, only to have Craig take you out to lunch on that landmark day and tell you thanks so much but there’s no money in the budget right now so sorry, you wouldn’t be getting a raise, but surely at the next work anniversary you’d get a big raise so hang in there. The raises never came, and by the time most workers realized that they were being screwed, a year of diligent work had gone by. I, too, bought into the system and worked hard, so well that I was soon promoted to “First Ring,” a big deal around there but of course with no extra pay.
To pacify the troops from forming a mutiny the management had a strategy to take us out to drink once or twice a week for happy hour. They would bring the whole company down to the Italian restaurant below our building and let us know that the tab was on them. At first I thought I didn’t hear them right so I asked Craig for clarification. He confirmed – go ahead and order anything you want. It seemed too good to be true, so I had to ask him about five times to make sure I grasped any rules or restrictions on our free drinking offer, and request he put it in writing and initial every page. It was on. I was coming off a time in my life where I was very poor, hungry, and angry, sort of like Henry Rollins in his prime, and was supercharged and ready to make it happen at any give time. So we drank, and drank, and drank, mixing beer and Jager and Tequila and who knows what else, for about 4 hours. Most of the girls just had a couple drinks and left, but Craig and I ripped that place up. I stumbled home up the steep San Francisco hills, trying not to puke. The next morning at work I was not chastised, presented with a bill, or admonished in any way. This was great! Maybe alcohol, not religion, was the opiate of the masses!
My six-month review came and went and I sat down with Craig, who had to deliver the glum news that, although I had the best numbers in the company, there was no money in the budget right now for me but surely at my year review I would get a sizeable raise. Fuck this – I had been deceived and I didn’t like it. My attitude as a team player completely changed, and I soon saw a way to get my revenge.
Since my job performance was so great I was nominated for an office exchange program that they did every year with their main Newport Beach branch. They sent two employees up to the San Francisco office for a week to observe and train, and one of us got to go down there for the same. That year it would be me, and they would live to regret it. I was given instructions where to show up, a plane ticket, and a company credit card with an expense account. Big mistake. I landed in beautiful sunny Newport Beach on a morning flight. They drove me to the American Data Med office and dropped me off. I went inside and met a couple people but no one really knew where I was supposed to go or who I was supposed to report to. They finally found me a spare desk on the side of the building, and then since it was already 11:30 and they didn’t know what I was supposed to do, they told me to go to lunch. They knew I was on company expense, and suggested Subway, Burger King, or a couple of other modestly-priced places within walking distance that would allow me to be back within half an hour. I nodded in agreement and then jumped in a taxi the second I left the building. I went right to Benihanas and proceeded to enjoy a two-and-a-half hour lunch of steak, sushi, and Japanese beer. The bill was $94, and I had only been in town for three hours. My goal was to spend as much as possible on that expense account, within the rules of use, and stick it to them that way. I upgraded to the best suite in my hotel and kicked it with Big Ron, a sales agent for American Data Med from Arizona who used to play college football. He was a madman, and instead of working we hung out poolside and in the hot tub, ordering platters of shrimp cocktails and drinking Fosters Lager out of oil cans all day. Ron got so drunk that he started hurling lawn furniture into the pool, and doing cannonballs so big that the splash doused a nearby table of businessmen during an important meeting, soaking them to the bone and wrecking all of their paperwork. We ran. In fact I didn’t do a stitch of work that week. I showed up every day, albeit it late and hungover, and sat at my desk, but no one ever told me what to do. No one supervised me and there were no trainings that I was aware of. I grabbed random stacks of paper and files from here and there and spread them across my desk, and then engage in long phone calls to family and friends, giving the illusion that I was working. I would tell my cohorts that I was hitting the bathroom and then come back an hour later after a margarita and a burrito. I made great friends with all of the other sales agents whose desks were around me, and we went out drinking on my company card every day after work at Hooters.
The bar and restaurant bill alone for that week was $794, and that was a pretty impressive sum for back in 1997. I had numerous complaints and charges from the hotel, the rental car company, and a $200 tab in one-dollar bills at an establishment called Club Amore that I reported as “office supplies” on my expense report. The Newport Beach office loved me. We all partied like old war buddies when they came up for the company flag football game a few weeks later. Once my epic visit to Newport Beach was over and my SoCal office mates had left town after a weekend of football and partying, I called work that Monday morning and told them to take their job and shove it.
31. Short-lived modeling gig, POW Modeling Agency. I worked on Market Street in San Francisco and one day while walking along, minding my own business, I ran into a cute chic that was passing out flyers. She stopped me and said she worked for a modeling agency and that I had a nice face and should go up and talk to them. I did, mostly to try and holler at her down the road. The modeling agency was legit, and they thought they could get me some catalog work, though they weren’t going to say no to anyone who wanted to pay for their services. I got professional photos made and everything and had a “Zed” card that they could send out for jobs. The whole thing was embarrassing and I felt extremely insecure any time I had to go in there, a bunch of cold 6’ bitches running the place. Then again, this is before the days where every single woman thinks she’s a super model because she has fake tits, hits the Stairmaster a lot, and paid for some saucy photos of her wrapped in white drapery half naked, all aided by countless hours of Photoshop. They did get me a couple jobs, more promotional stuff like passing out products outside stores in the mall or on the busy streets during rush hour. It was nothing big, and quite embarrassing, so I just let it die on the vine.
32. Transamerica Insurance, Phil Spalding. I was hired on as an assistant to Phil Spalding, a life insurance agent with Transamerica Insurance. The location was cool – I worked right next door to the Transamerica building in the Financial District of San Francisco. Phil was a really nice guy and tried to teach me a lot and groom me for sales, but neither my head nor my heart were just not in it. I remember that I made 20 something grand a year and that was a HUGE deal for me those days! I could actually buy some furniture for my bedroom instead of sleeping on a dirty mattress I found on the street. I put on khakis and a tie every day and took the cable car down to work, and went to the gym or laid out in the sun in a park during my lunch hour. I was bored as shit and miserable sitting in a cubicle and killing time. It’s at that time that I started formulating an escape plan, a way to move to Brazil and live on the beach and teach English. Like I said Phil was a great guy, and I’m sure he didn’t get his money’s worth out of me, but I did put some effort in and appreciated his friendship.
33. House Painting, John Aurora. I moved back to Connecticut in the fall of 1998 with a grand plan in mind. I was going to lay low in Connecticut for a while, working my butt off and putting every cent away, and then jump on a plane and escape to Brazil. I picked up some work, all cash, helping my buddy John Aurora paint houses. John had a nice business and a great customer base, and there was always work painting, staining decks, washing windows, power washing, or cleaning gutters in the fall. I worked for him steadily, and after a while he saw that I was reliable and would put good work in even without being supervised. So he’d drop me off at the job site and then leave me to paint while he ran around to other jobs or gave estimates. After a couple weeks of painting solo it occurred to me for the first time: “if I’m here by myself anyways, doing everything, why don’t I go into business for myself and make a lot more than $10 an hour? I started my own little house painting company, Gorilla Painting, after that.
34. Teaching English, Boston, MA. I enrolled in a six-week program in Boston to get certified to teach English as a second language. My plan at that time was to move down to Brazil and teach English to make ends meet. It was the fall of ’98, and one of the best times of my life. I had some good college buddies who lived in a nice apartment in Boston, right near Newberry Street, and they put me up the whole time for free. One of them was out of town and one of them always stayed with his girlfriend so I pretty much had the whole place to myself. The English classes were really cool – the staff did an amazing job but we also had a ton of fun. It was refreshing being in a room full of like-minded international travellers and I flourished. There is no place like the East Coast during the fall, and walking the 20 minutes downtown to the language school every day gave me a chance for fresh air and to witness the falling leaves. After class we had a big group that would hit the bars for a few pints. I met some great friends, like Casey, who I visited in Japan, and my beautiful friend Autumn when I was in Boston. Everything felt right.
Oh yeah, the job part – at the end of our course, to prove our worth as teachers and get a passing grade, we had to put in a week teaching English to Russian immigrants. They were mostly older, I’d say from 50 years old all the way to 80, and had relocated to the US after the end of Communism. In Russia they were doctors, architects, musicians, important people, but they had to completely start over with no money and not even speaking the language once they moved to Boston. They were some of the most appreciative and happy people I’ve ever met and a blessing to be around. Of course we didn’t get paid to teach them but it was a pure pleasure. Our last class they all brought in traditional food and drink and we had a big going-away party. One of the older men made me drink a couple shots of some Russian brandy and it knocked me out! I passed out asleep in my train seat on the ride home after that.
The Epidemiology Department, Yale New Haven Hospital. I liked this job because I could say I worked at Yale and my job sounded super important. Come on now, how could you be a scrub and work in “Epidemiology,” when most people don’t even know what the hell that is? Epidemiology is the spread of infectious diseases within a hospital or medical setting. My job was only six hours a day, and I had to pour over charts and statistics and write a few reports. But for the most part I think I was underutilized, because no one really told me what to do and I had maybe an hour of work every day. The rest of the time was spent tracking my fantasy basketball team. Of course I won the pool, but no one every paid me my winnings. It was fun working downtown within Yale, even though I had to drive the Whip down there. Upon returning home from San Francisco completely broke I had to borrow $1,200 to buy a 1977 Chevy Nova. It was a huge jet-black beast that looked like the Bat Mobile. I replaced the 8-track player with a tape deck we wired with speakers from a Radio Shack home intercom system, covered the seats wit fuzzy black sheepskin, and hung a disco ball off the mirror. I loved the Whip, even though it got about 7 miles to the gallon and didn’t have anti-lock brakes. Even on dry roads you had to stop about half a city block before a light because jamming on the brakes would just cause a lot of smoke but not really slow you down. In the winter, driving through the snow and ice to work at Yale, the Whip was a rolling death trap. I think others on the road just stayed away as I drifted and slid all over the place, eventually coming to a skidding stop into three parking spots at my lot at work.
35. House Painting, Gorilla Painting. I saw that working for someone else would only ensure that I had to do most of the hard work and get shit wages, so I decided to go out on my own. Painting the exterior of a standard colonial home (which was big and a lot of work) would probably take a couple weeks from start to finish, and would mean $900 or so if I was working for someone else, or $2,000-$4,000 if I was working for myself. I had never opened or run a business before, never bid a painting job, never sold anything, and had no money, equipment, or even a car to work with. It was perfect – a blank slate. I was humbled by the worth ethic that I had all over the world while I was travelling, people fighting and struggling all day just to put food on the table for one more meal for their families. When I came back from my international journey I was about $30,000 in debt, an impossible sum for a broke kid in those days. Bankruptcy never even crossed my mind, so I just busted my ass working hard and In that first summer painting houses for myself I paid off every single dollar of debt.
I made some basic flyers and had my mom photocopy them at work on colored paper. I took a jog around a nice residential neighborhood, Spring Glenn, dropping a flyer on every doorstep on every street over a week’s time. I remember distinctly that there was some guy who was picking up the paper out in front of his house, and he was sort of a snobby prick. I’m sure I didn’t look like much, but when I said hello and told him what I was doing and handed him a flyer, he laughed and said “Good luck,” in a really sarcastic, condescending way. But I did get a few calls and went to meet the homeowners. I bid the jobs terribly low just to get them, but I did land a few. I borrowed some money and bought the Whip, my huge jet-black ’77 Chevy Nova with a disco ball hanging off the mirror. I roped an old ski rack to the roof and used it to transport the ancient, wobbly ladder from my mom’s garage. Once the homeowners gave me a deposit for the house I went and bought a few brushes and equipment and got started. I was in business.
I surprised myself with my determination. I had always been lazy and disinterested at work, but working for myself gave me motivation like I was shot out of a cannon. Over the next couple years my little company grew to average net revenues of over 100k per year – most of it cash. I had a storage unit, a cute logo with a big gorilla on it holding a paintbrush, advertising all over town, wholesale contracts with the local paint store, a new work truck, and two employees during the high season. For the first time in my life I had money and I was amazed at my own modicum of success, but it took a lot of insanely hard work and sacrifice to get there. I hustled like crazy when I saw I could paint a house a week and walk away with a pile of cash. The work was brutal – I’d run at a frenetic pace for 10-12 hours a day in the heat and humidity. All of the nasty sawdust, paint chips, sore shoulders, being covered with paint, breathing in nasty chemicals, etc. was now actually worth it because I could average about $10,000 - $15,000 per month during the busiest summer months. I got a little apartment on State Street in New Haven over a Chinese restaurant and thought I was living it up. People couldn’t figure it out. I drove a beat up work truck and wore jeans and t-shirts and was always covered in paint flecks no matter how much I washed and scrubbed. I shopped at Walmart and rarely spent money on myself. But then I would go to the bars to meet friends and have a couple grand cash on me at all times. I bought TV’s, computers, and furniture for my girlfriend and my mom, and always ran up a couple hundred-dollar bar tab for my friends and laughed it off.
I became a workaholic. I had no balance in my life and stressed way too hard over every job, every scheduling lapse, and every customer issue. I stacked all of my money in savings and would wake up at 3 am, unable to sleep, and check my bank balances and plan my future earnings. I couldn’t slow down. I remember running around at a pace that was so unhealthy, exhausting myself with work so badly that my body would break down every night, but still my mind worked, so I couldn’t go to sleep without beer or red wine. I had a huge project – this really beat up old house that had great bones but needed a ton of prep work. I would go around every inch of these houses and scrape the loose paint by hand and then go over it with a loud, messy disc sander. I was running behind on this house and it was threatening to slow down my plans for amassing savings. I was further slowed by a week of unseasonable rain. I refused to take a breather and wait it out – I got on my aluminum ladders in full rain gear in a pouring downpour, plugged my electric disc sander into the extension cord, and kept working. The cord of the sander was frayed and patched with electrical tape, so each time I pulled the trigger to use it, I would get an electric shock running up the aluminum ladder. I still continued, and electrocuted myself all day until the prep work was done and I was back on schedule. I was like a rat that had wanted that cheese so badly he’d keep shocking himself.
I think back now and realize that there was a lot I could have done different, but hey all that hard worked served it’s purpose. Soon I had $50,000 in cash savings. I was paranoid about keeping it in banks because I didn’t want it visible to the IRS, so I actually wrapped $10,000 at a time in plastic and tin foil and put them in my mom’s freezer. I figured that was the best place for it in case there was a fire, and what burglar every goes in the freezer and starts unwrapping leftovers. Once I hit 50k my mom and I both agreed it was too much money to take the risk of leaving it in the freezer, so I grabbed the packets and drove them straight to the bank to deposit. The poor young lady working as a teller looked on in confusion and disbelief as I unwrapped ten grand at a time from foil and handed her the cash, which was freezing cold to the touch.
I finally slowed down during the winter, sleeping all day for weeks, hitting the Thai food lunch buffet, and just hanging out. Since it was seasonal work I started taking trips in the down months, spending time in Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay during those years. I’d be back to the states in a few months, ready to start the next painting season fully recharged.
A few years after starting my venture passing out flyers in Spring Glenn I found myself painting yet another house in that neighborhood. My Gorilla Painting yard signs were everywhere and the phone rang off the hook with new jobs. I happened to walk by that same arrogant guy who had condescendingly wished me “Good luck” a few years before. He didn’t recognize me but I said hi to him as I walked past with a big smile on my face. I had made about $300,000 within a three-year period with almost no tax liability and no initial investment or debt. Yeah, I’d say I did ok, and he could officially kiss my ass.
36. Owner, Skyline Painting, Sacramento, Ca. I moved out to Sactown and envisioned starting up my profitable painting company again. I was in for a rude awakening – the paperwork alone to get a business registered and get your contractor’s license in California was ridiculous. Until I had those I couldn’t do any advertising, and they were serious about cracking down on unlicensed work. So I put the wheels in motion but had to do some work under the table at first. I quickly found out that I was in the wrong business for California; the houses were all stucco, which requires painting less often and none of the difficult sanding, prep, and oil priming that discouraged homeowners from painting their own houses like on the East Coast. The houses were mostly only one or two stories, it was sunny almost 9 months out of the year, and there were a million Mexican laborers that would paint for almost nothing. All of these things made painting houses a vocation with little or no profit margin. I designed a nice logo, had cool cards, and did jobs for about a year, but realized it wasn’t going to make sense, even after I got my contractors license and decided to make a change. As I transitioned into Real Estate I tried having employees who would do the work while I was at my other job, but they would always screw things up and cause more problems so I just gave the whole thing up.
37. Real Estate Agent, Prudential. Around this time – 2003 and 2004 – Sacramento was going through an unprecedented period of growth and exploding home prices. The rising market perpetuated itself like a feeding frenzy of greed – and everyone was either a real estate agent or buying and selling houses for profit. It was extremely easy to sell a few houses and make a mint load of money – you could train a monkey to be successful at it. I wasn’t. That kind of sales was not something I was good at, and for the most part it was a giant bullshit fest with everyone faking friendships until the deal went through so they could collect their $15,000 commission check and go blow it on a new car or wild nights of coke and champagne in the VIP room at the Park. I loved the investment strategies of real estate, especially buying and fixing up properties for profit, and exceled at it with my own investments. But I’m just not great at talking people into shit, even if it’s in their best interest. Don’t get it twisted – I did learn and grow and had a good modicum of success for a newcomer, but I didn’t love it and it wasn’t my thing.
38. Loan Officer and Owner, Streamline Funding. I liked the numbers portion of real estate better – the financial strategies to achieve a goal. I sold some loans and did OK, probably made over 100k for a couple years in a row – which was pretty modest for that industry at that time. But I had gone from paint-covered jeans and a beat up Jeep to a Mercedes convertible, fancy suits and ties, and multiple houses within about 18 months. The trappings of success never really felt right, though I kept being told by “friends” in my circle that that success is what I should be after. It was a shark tank - it was sickening to see all of my greedy salespeople lying, cheating, and stealing just to get the next deal. There wasn’t much that differentiated the best loan officer from the worst, because truthfully the processors did most of the work and deserved most of the credit, but if you were honest with a client you had a good chance of losing them; there was always a slime-bag loan officer down the street who would promise them the world the lowest rates in town, only to bait-and-switch them once they were invested in the deal and it was too late to back out. I was really good with the numbers and developed my niche selling option arm loans, BUT fully educating people on their risks and rewards of those complex products, and showing them exactly what they had to do to achieve success with that loan. Some did the right thing, some didn’t, but I can honestly say I never lied to anyone and always educated and represented them with integrity.
Eventually my boss offered me a partnership in the company. I wrote a check for $30,000 without a contract out of blind trust, and ended up getting screwed. Once I was on the inside I learned that there was no tangible business strategy, no feasible plan, and the books made absolutely no sense – it was all just based on a cult of personality around the owner’s fantastic sales ability. The market was going from hero to zero within a course of months, and everyone was confused and scrambling and afraid what would happen. I kept being the team player and feeding the company every month out of my own pocket, trying to work his nonsensical business plan and be a good soldier. I shouldn’t have. When it came time to make suggestions and changes necessary to keep Streamline Funding healthy and profitable, I was told we couldn’t do that, again and again. It failed miserably and went from two offices and maybe 40 employees to defaulting on the lease and packing up the few remaining desks and computers for storage. I was the fall guy – I sacrificed and paid probably about $60,000 out of my own pocket for a sinking ship where the captain wouldn’t let me do anything to save it. It was an expensive lesson, but I’ve learned it.
39. President and Owner, Unity Financial Solutions. The financial crash stunned us all, but I had every dollar and years of hard work invested in the real estate market. It came undone like an old sweater unraveling over a terrible 12 to 18 month period. Every day was like getting punched in the stomach, and you knew it was coming again the next day. Every email, every phone call, every conversation, was bad news and it just kept coming and coming. Even when you thought it couldn’t get worse, it did. After a while it was evident I had no company to work for, no means of income, and no reason to get out of bed and face that punch in the stomach again. It was safer to stay in a fog and do nothing than it was to risk being a participant in the real world.
Then one morning, after another stressful, sleepless night, I decided to do something about it. I still had a little fight left in me. I’m a big picture kind of guy so I tried my best to zoom out and look objectively at everything that had happened in the financial markets, and what the next years would look like. I determined that people would always have needs, but their needs would look 180 degrees different than what they did during the hot economic times. I, like everyone else, was seeing my financial situation becoming more of a cluster fuck every day, and I had so many questions about missing mortgage payments, foreclosure, the tax implications of losing a house, what my options were – there were rumors about short sales and modifications the banks were granting, and what to do with my mounting credit card debt. If I had these needs then everyone else was certainly going to have them soon. So I did a ton of research and sat down with every attorney and CPA I could find to learn the new landscape.
I also did some soul searching and made a list of what I wanted my life, and my professional life to look like. Making money was important, but even more so was helping people, longevity, not having to “sell” things people really didn’t need, and having the flexibility to come and go as I pleased so I could spend time with my family. I decided that I didn’t want have a big office with high overhead, a mistake that ruined so many companies, and didn’t want to have employees to manage, because honestly I sucked at it - I could barely manage myself.
So I built a company from conception that offered solutions to the NEW economy. It would be based on the foundation not of sales and profits, but that what people really needed was fair, balanced information for free. When it came to getting solutions – like mortgage modification, short sales, debt settlements, etc. I would connect them with some of the best, most ethical and accomplished attorneys and real estate professionals to perform those services. I would get paid by the attorneys when I brought them clients, but my company would give free debt counseling to anyone, whether they wanted to be a client or not. I would need no office other than a nice set up at my home, a former commercial building. Any vendors or employees I used would be sub-contractors and responsible for they’re own performance and I wouldn’t need to keep anyone on payroll or manage anyone. So the service and help I gave the client was amazing – literally giving away thousands of hours of free help to thousands of clients. When I got paid it meant that a client had saved a ton of money, and if they didn’t I would offer, an honor, an unheard of money-back-guarantee.
The company evolved and shifted as the new markets grew. I’ve added Enterprise Zone tax credits and tax refunds for businesses, as well as brokering Small Business Loans and Merchant Advances. I’m sure I will continue to grow in the industry, but my goal is to keep it small and simple, always being able to help the client first regardless of profit. It’s a very nasty industry to work in, but I am extremely proud of the job I’ve done and how I’ve put ethics and altruism before profit. It would have been VERY easy to do some mass advertising and make twice the amount of money with half the work, but I resisted the temptation – I wanted to grow this business with consistency, not the tremendous peaks and valleys that others had fallen pray to. There is no formula for success other than hard work and serving one client at a time.
40. Author, Tamarindo, Costa Rica…
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