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Kindle Notes & Highlights
I think that abusing people about their appearance is an easy and convenient way for managers to show off their power.
It is the sales version of a gang rape.
“I’ll give you another week,” she tells me as she turns away, ending the meeting. I leave quietly. “What was that about?” Jacques asks. “She thinks I have a bad attitude.” Jacques laughs. “She not been fucked in a year.”
“You can achieve it if you put your mind to it,” Jim tells me, guru-like, as we pull up at the house. He thinks I lack desire, that burning in the gut that makes you want to accomplish goals. I do. I think the goals are meaningless.
Mackerel. Sweet, oily, smooth, unspined mackerel. Last time I was pushing mackerel, I didn’t know how good I had it. I struggle with the mackerel, shoveling armloads through the hole. Fuck ’em if I’m going too fast, this is the last one before break. Let them go faster. I can feel the muscles in my arms, as well as my legs, cramping up now. When I bend over to use the shovel, my back is burning. The fucker who took me off the slime line wanted to kill me. That’s what the looks meant. They tried to bury me in a fish pile, and if I lived, I’d have the most miserable job on the fucking ship.
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“Once you’ve learned to eat shit, you realize it don’t taste so bad,” he says. That’s a beautiful motto for life.
After four days on the Killoran, I realize I have finally done it. I’ve found the worst fucking job in the world.
So I got fucked, but it happens. It happens a lot. There’s nobody there to stick up for you. A long time ago, before the Depression, the labor movement was a group of courageous men standing in front of armed Pinkerton Guards with nothing but an idea—that they should be treated fairly. Now it’s a bunch of Italians burying each other in stadium cement. When you’re fucked, you’re fucked, and if you complain you’re a crybaby.
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, Thoreau said. Later, he added that most men lead lives of quiet desperation, indicating that few, if any of us, were taking his advice. Fuck him, he had a trust fund. Who the hell else but a rich man could afford to spend a summer sitting by a lake thinking about life? I’ll take the next thing that comes along and stick with it, because the looking, the hope that something better is out there, drains you of more energy than the drudgery itself.
“I find that English graduates don’t do well in this field,” he tells me. “They tend to be too analytical.” That’s great. Not only is my degree useless, it’s a liability.
I watch football games and see endless commercials about retirement plans and investment portfolios, and I look around at the other people in the bar. Who are these commercials for? Not for anyone here. A long-term investment for these guys is next week’s Monday Night Football—the Steelers and seven. These commercials used to be for beer and chips. I’m part of a demographic that is slipping off the radar.
I could write a book about this shit. So could a million others.
