The history of Diacanu part 2.

So, where did I leave off with this?

Ah, yes, the crappy jobs that I mentioned at the very end of part 1.


So, yeah, it's right after high school, and my first job was at Unum, which used to be Union Mutual Insurance, but they shortened it to be trendy, and then they've changed it three times since I worked there, and I've totally lost track of what the hell they are now (and I don't give a shit).

Anyway, I was a cubicle monkey there for almost a year.
Pretty mindless job.
Punching names and social security info into a computer all day for their database.

It was okay.
Kinda boring, but tolerable.
In hindsight, I'd take it over most of my other jobs that came after that.

All that really sticks out in my memory is the food.
Dayum, the food.
I got really fat there.
You could buy bags of Jelly-Belly jellybeans, whole cakes, it was crazy.
By the time I got done there, my belly almost came to a point.

Next place was Hanover Insurance in the mail room.
That blew.
Supervisor was a ditto-head douchebag who could only talk about hating Clinton all fucking day.
Mindless, ugly, tedious, life draining people in charge of that hole.
I can stand any sort of work if the people are cool.
But, likewise, the work could be the easiest in the world, but if your co-workers blow, ugh.
Well...my co-workers on the same rung as me were pretty okay.
But, I was usually stuck with my immediate supervisor all day, and he was the tedious boring ditto-head turd.

The cinnamon buns where good there though.
*Shrug*
And working there gave me my hatred of corporate drudge work that inspired a lot of the scenes in The Fulcrum Unification (which is part of Torrent 1.5) .

Let's see..what came after that??

Ah, yeah, I. Zaitlin & Sons.
I always try to blot that one from my memory.

That place was/is a sweat shop.
I don't like to get into it.
Watch the scene bitching about the pointlessness of paper recycling in the episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit where they slag on environmentalists.
That about sizes it up.

Then, ah, yeah, "landscaping", at UNE (University Of New England).
Groundskeeper, basically.
Pppt.

Then, late-night crew at Toys R Us, that was my favorite job.
Opposite polarity of Hanover.
Work was harder, but the people rocked, so it made it fun.
One of my co-workers there gave me my first modem (referenced in History of the internet part 1), and we became pretty good buds, but I never saw that dude again after that.
Bummer.
Also, we patched heavy metal music over the PA system (remember, it was overnights, so the customers were gone) which instilled my love of Megadeth.

So, yeah, I had a blast there.
Good times, good friends, big bucks.
Coulda worked there forever.
But, it was seasonal, so after Christmas, pppt.

That job inspired some scenes in Nobody Loves Harry Hembock.

Then, there was Shop N' Save (which is now called Hannaford, but I still reflexively call it Shop N' Save).

There was another place that blew.
My main job was bag boy, but they had me doing lots of shit outside my job description.
And everyone there was either boring, or wouldn't fucking talk to me.
So, it was lonely on top of being painfully dull.
I think it was a deliberate spirit breaking thing by management.
No one ever had the same break period, so you never really got to hang with anyone long enough to get to know them.
Bleak fucking place. Did not like it there.

Best job there was a tossup between cart retrieval, or bottle return.
Cart return, cuz it got me outside, and away from the bullshit and assholes.
And bottle room, cuz that was all by myself, and away from the fucking bagging drudge.
And I got to play with a computer.
Even though all it could do was mass UPC scan bottles and cans.
It was so dull there, you looked for any escape.
Blah.

But, a job opened up at Toys R Us again, so I interviewed, got it, and quit Shop N Slave without leaving notice.
Fuck 'em.
Yeah, I hear the murmuring out there.
Fuck you too.
Youth is for being a misanthropic slack-ass.
When else are ya gonna get it in?

Wheell, I got my punishment for my attitude anyway, the second dose of Toys R Us was not the utopia the first stint was.
Quite the opposite.
This time around, it was a different batch of guys.
Assholes all.
Surly gun-nut sociopaths with extreme personality deficits.
I kept to myself.
No chumming around that time.
One of 'em, I'll never know who, smashed out the back window of my car on the last day.
Eh, it was a shitbox car, and it only cost me 100 bucks to fix.
Still...

And then, there was Wal-Mart
Worst job ever.
Biggest money ever, but worst job ever.
Horrible people, back breaking work, terrible.
I can shrug off back-breaking work, I can, but again, I need to be working with good people, or it breaks my spirit, and this did.
Wrung me out like a washcloth.
I finally got fired from there for what I figured out years later was a lie a co-worker who didn't like me told.
Long fucking story there.

Anyway, I literally had a fucking breakdown after that.
Fell right the fuck apart.
Straw that broke the camel's back.
All the years of bullshit from childhood to then finally crashed into me all at once.

Took up to fairly recently to clean up every last bit of the mess in my head.

So...yeah, all that pretty much overlaps with my early years on the net.
The Hyla & Spencer hanging out years, the drifting away from them (referenced in part 1), and the beginning of Krazyfool all kinda float alongside Toys R Us & Wal-Mart.

The exact chronology is a bit more complicated, but that's about right.

So, then, again, the early internet years up to now took place, and you know the rest.