A new column for NewsBlog 5000, Off the Bus with trace Roy's experiences in the modern job market.

As a busdriver you have a lot of responsibilities. You also have a lot of freedoms. This is not so in the real world. Not at all.

After my candidate did not win the election, I spent a long time wandering in the wilderness of depression. I'd stay at home sitting around in my Dole '96 cap, severely soiled skivvies, masturbating to cheap Chinese porn. It was during this four years of self discovery that I managed to let my chauffeurs license lapse and do a few things that will permanently not allow me to get one again.

So after some treatment and a forced regiment of wearing clothes, I needed to get some work. I did what they do in the movies. I purchased a Sunday paper, a red marker and some hand lotion. The Sunday Employment Section looked like it was attacked by the West Virginia Red-Wring-Hickey-Monster. After a month of rejection letters I switched to even cheaper Indian porn, the kind with musical interludes.

The Indian Food Market/Video store was located in a strip mall with a bunch of other businesses. One of the businesses happened to have a secretary with killer ass, an ass I followed from the parking lot into one of the other businesses. That business was Job-Tastics and the killer ass belonged to an employment consultant named Marlene.

Marlene mistook my staring at her as invitation to sign me up and do some of the job tests. I thought she was just trying to hit on me because she had me do a lot of things like putting screws into the proper holes and identify what goes into what's proper slot. Doesn't that sound like trying to get the message out or what?

On the job acumen sheet, I scored quite high. Marlene was so excited, she seemed not to notice me staring down her blouse and arranged for to start a job that next Monday. Though nothing happened that night with Marlene, I still had my big bag of porn to fall back on. And then, sometime later, I realized I had a job.

Though suspicious at first, the job seemed ok. On the first day, there was a new employee orientation where I could scope a bunch of hot chicks (What I am saying. If it is female and not too gross, I'll get with it.) There were three people on my third shift, two women and me. We were by ourselves at night with no supervisors or oversight.

The bottom dropped out of telecommunications and my company was caught up in it. They eventually cut my shift to just one person a night. The extra work load left me no time for masturbating to Yahoo Personal ads.

One night, I had to leave my desk to use the facilities, and a VP coming home from a particularly unsuccessful business trip found my station unattended. When I got back from a satisfying but furtive bowel movement, he started to jump my ass. I was the weak link. I could cause my department to let a customer down and lead to the loss of that customer. I should never leave my desk unattended. And a bunch of other stuff that makes sense to say to the only person on shift. So after yelling at me for fifteen minutes and letting me know I'd be written up, I attended to the work that had piled up, a fax offering discount Viagra.

This was something I could really apply my bus driving experience to. Sometimes when I had to drive for a long stretch to deliver the candidate on time, I'd resort to doing my business in a drink cup. Number 1 was easy, number 2 required dropping your pants and standing up the seat a little (don't you try this, not everybody has my ability to keep your feet on the pedals at all times).

The problem was storage and eventual disposal. I didn't want to just pitch the poop package in the trash and smell it all night long. So I started to store the package in a desk of an empty cubicle about three down and two over.

As the employee pool started to get drastically reduced, more jobs were stacked on me to the point I just couldn't get away from cubicle at night. At this point, I just made a logical leap and starting taking a dump in my lower desk drawers. I knew the daytime temp who shared my station didn't use those drawers anyway.

Now, when I go to the bathroom, I like to have something to read. It relaxes me and helps things get out. Much like my chauffeurs license, this was to be my downfall in the telecommunications industry as well. I was intent on reading an article on my former associate Bob Dole, when that same VP came around the corner and found me squatting on my lower desk drawer.

Even then I didn't notice him. I must have sort of forgotten where I was, because when he knocked on my cube wall, I yelled, "Occupied, come back later." Even after I explained to him how it was his idea, and how high my efficiency had gotten, I was still fired on the spot.

I won my unemployment. I had faxed all the letters from the VP encouraging me "to continue doing what I was doing to improve my performance" to the Hearing Officer. I made sure to make a point that part of doing what I was doing to improve my performance was sacrificing human comfort and staying at my station at all times. All the VP sent to the unemployment office was a letter that said, "He was taking a shit in a desk drawer!"

So then it was back to Marlene…

posted by NewsBlog 5000  # Saturday, February 11, 2006