By Matthew MacIntosh
I was running out of money, and it was entirely my fault. I’d been laid off from my job as a “product manager” for a consulting firm, but I never actually managed anyone. Instead, I edited workbooks that taught real managers how to produce more widgets, more efficiently. And while I don’t blame myself or my employer for the Great Recession, I know that showing up to work with a Mohawk just before the third round of layoffs couldn’t have worked in my favor.
I signed a release form stating that I wouldn’t publicly denounce the company in exchange for a small severance package, and I used three years worth of credit card miles to drift around Thailand for a month. Quite possibly the most amazing thing I’ve ever done, I slept in a bamboo hut in a Lahu village so remote we had to take elephants over a mountain range to get there, helped a Thai NGO write their annual report, taught English to 14-year old monks, swam in the Indian ocean, learned a little Thai massage and became infatuated with petite, blonde, crazy South African.
That’s the plus side of walking into your day job with a Mohawk. The downside occurs a two years later, when you’re forced to take a temporary job at a steel mill.
Technically, it wasn’t a steel mill, but “steel casting company” doesn’t have the same ring, and most people have no idea what that means. A casting plant takes hot molten steel, pours it into sand molds, and turns them into heavy steel widgets. What kind of widgets? Something to do with oil rigs or truck parts or God knows what else. I didn’t really pay attention because it wasn’t my job to make anything tangible. Instead, I took the data from a stack of cards that filled half a room and entered the information into a laptop. Management would later crunch the numbers and work out more efficient ways to make more steel widgets. My ability to type 90 words per minute without drooling on myself made me the perfect candidate.
My supervisor was Ali, an Industrial Engineer and a classic narcissist. Everyone hated Ali except his boss, who had no idea he spent three quarters of his day on Facebook. Ali would come in every Monday and brag about his sexual exploits, even though anyone with a modicum of sensitivity could tell that nobody cared. Other times, he would wax philosophical about his conspiracy theories. For example, you can rearrange the letters of “Obama-Biden” to almost spell “Osama Bin Laden.” Makes you think. Almost.
One morning, Ali came in with a big smile on his face. “I’ve been out womanizing all weekend!” he announced. Yes, he really said that. I slipped my earphones on to drown him out and began entering data while I listened to French podcasts. I’d studied abroad in France my senior year of college, and I didn’t want to lose my French fluency. I would close myself off to the outside world and mindlessly key data into a massive database while I dreamed about the cobblestone streets of le Quartier Latin à Paris. If those guys had any idea I was listening to Frenchies drone on about Philosophy and politics, they would’ve kicked my ass.
What’s amazing about that time in my life is that I have nothing but warm memories. I would get up before sunrise and head out to the plant. I knew I was getting close because I’d see a plume of steam rising from a nearby factory next to the freeway. My clothes reeked of toxic chemicals and my shoes were covered in soot. My days were segmented by the sound of a horn that signaled our breaks, and the roach coach arrived promptly at 11:30 AM. I got scolded once for forgetting to wear my hardhat… and for heading out to the parking lot 30 seconds before I heard the horn. And yet, none of this mattered. After all, I was in love.
I met Mary at café that serves the best loose-leaf tea in Berkeley. She stood 5’2” tall and had olive skin, big brown eyes, and a wide smile that made you feel as though the world was pregnant with possibilities. She glowed. I sat next to her and asked her what kind of soup she was eating because I couldn’t think of anything better to say, and within ten minutes we were talking about world travel, mindfulness and enlightenment.
Mary was an executive assistant with a degree in Psychology form U.C. Santa Cruz, and she hated her job. She had just broken up with a New York investment banker and recently sailed from Brazil to South Africa to help a team of scientist study the massive vortex of plastic in the middle of the South Atlantic. She had no background in environmental science, yet she convinced them to let her join them on the expedition through sheer strength of personality. That pretty much sums up Mary. She dreamed big and whenever she put her mind to something, she accomplished it. However, like me, she rarely put her mind to accomplishing anything practical.
After her adventure, the humdrum of everyday life left her wanting more, and our collective yearning was undeniably romantic. One morning, after broadcasting a debate between a socialist and his right-wing adversary, the French radio station played Jon Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer.” It became our anthem.
“Wooooah, halfway there… woooah, ooooh, livin’ on a prayer!”
Mary’s parents referred to me in private as “the unemployed writer,” and her father would ask, “Soooo, Matt… how’s life at the steel mill?” He was originally from Leeds in Northern England, and I could never figure out whether his tone was condescending… or just English. It was probably both, but it didn’t matter. His judgment just fueled our passion. It was us against the world. The environmentalist and the starving artist—two wayward adventurers who would prove the world wrong.
“Take my hand, and we’ll make it, I swear… wooooah, oooh, livin’ on a prayer!”
Ali liked to use four syllables words he didn’t understand, such as, “I got an infection, the disposition of which is, I have to take an anti-biotic.” One Monday evening in early May, Mary sent me a text that read: “OMG! Osama Bin Laden is dead!” The next day, Ali told me he just knew they’d kill Bin Laden during an election year. That would make for a great conspiracy theory if it were, in fact, an election year.
“It’s not an election year,” I told him. “2010 was the mid-term, and we don’t vote for the president again until 2012.”
“Well,” Ali sputtered, “Still… you see my point, right?”
All this made for some great Facebook status updates, and my friends loved the Douche Bag Boss (DBB) chronicles. Here’s a favorite from April of 2011:
DBB is raising money for charity by auctioning himself off to the highest bidder. The winner gets to join him for a bike ride and an afternoon picnic. Any takers?
One day he suggested we get lunch together. He sped through the parking lot, blaring his horn at anything in his way (cars, forklifts, human beings, etc.)… because he’s just that cool! He spent the entire lunch talking about bong hits and booty calls, and he never once asked me about my life. We split the check and went back to the plant.
Everything was going swimmingly because, after all, I was in love! I remained optimistic about launching a freelance copywriting business. I had a website that I’d designed from scratch and a portfolio I’d built by offering my services for free or well below market value. I received a call from an agency that specialized in staffing creative professionals, and they had a prospective writing job that paid nearly twice as much as the steel mill. I figured it was just a matter of time before things took off. I just had to limit my spending and wait it out until something took.
There was only one hitch—the steel workers decided to strike because they wanted better health benefits. I couldn’t in good conscience cross that picket line, so I called my temp agency and told them I didn’t feel comfortable going to work until they reached an agreement.
The strike was only expected to last a few days but it went on for an entire week, so I felt the financial impact. Fortunately, they let me return to work afterwards because good data entry clerks are hard to find. When I came back, much of the management team looked at me askance, but the workers treated me like a celebrity. Raoul, a robust foreman with a handlebar mustache (the kind hipsters try to emulate) shook my hand and introduced me to his team. “We all heard what you did,” he said, “You’re the only one in the office who refused to work, and we appreciate it!” We all laughed at Ali’s expense, and I went from the lily-white college boy with no calluses on his hands to “one of the guys.” Ali complained that I’d left the office without his permission to tour the plant with Raoul, but I shrugged him off. I had the people on my side! I was a regular Che Guevara, and his bourgeois ass was going to hang from a flag pole when the revolution came.
Hasta la victoria, siempre!
Alas, the revolution never came. I did a series of jobs, some of them writing gigs, others well below my skill level. Eventually, Mary decided that, while she loved the artist component of the starving artist motif, she wasn’t so into the starving part.
“What if we’re always poor?” she asked. A fair question, since I’d been poor my entire adult life, but I believed until the end! Bon Jovi still sang to me.
“Union’s been on strike, he’s down on his luck, it’s tough…. soooo tough!”
Shortly after Mary and I broke up, I landed a full-time job that secured a solid income and excellent benefits. I was finally writing for a living and working for a boss I respected. Mary wasn’t right for me for a variety of reasons, and my life has improved drastically since we parted ways. Yet, while I’ll gladly take gainful employment over the steel mill, I remain a touch nostalgic for spring of 2011.
Whenever I drive past the Gilman Street exit on the 580 Freeway, I see that plume of white steam rising above the grimy factory next to the casting company. And every time I smell that otherworldly aroma of carcinogenic chemicals, it takes me back to laughing with the steel workers, listening to terrible French music in between radio segments and dreaming about traveling the world with Mary.
I’d never suggest that “life is what you make it” and “all suffering is in the mind.” I 
That said, when external events aren’t so rough… when you’re making ends meet and ready to embrace the next stage of your life… when your worst complaint is that your boss is annoying and your job would be painfully monotonous without the French to keep you company… a shift in perspective can change everything. And even though falling out of love can be excruciating, falling in love never hurt anybody.
