This is one of a series of posts about jobs I’ve had during my time on this planet. You can read more posts by clicking the “jobs i’ve had” tag, and read a lengthier intro to the series in the first post.
Now we’re hitting post-college jobs. This was temporary work I took on a month or two after graduating from Tennessee while I was living with my parents and looking for a real job. The actual work I did as a gopher was unremarkable: sweeping, shoveling, going to pick stuff up at Lowes and other places that sold building materials to contractors.
It gets its own post primarily because I spent a lot of the time working inside the Country Club of the South, a gated community where many of Georgia’s richest people live.
I wouldn’t quite describe the houses as mansions the way you see mansions on Bells Ferry near the governor’s mansion, but they were big. Driving around the neighborhood felt like being thrown into the fourth world in Super Mario Brothers 3. It was totally normal to see Tom Glavine on his front lawn playing catch with (I assume) one of his kids, as we did a couple of times.
The houses were full of things people collected and didn’t use, and the people who owned them never seemed to be home.
One house had a workout room in the basement stocked like a miniature Bally’s. There was no smell of lingering sweat, and the lat machines may as well of had shrink wrap on them. That house also had at least six or seven plasma screen TVs hanging on the wall. They were probably plugged in, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if they hadn’t been, as some were mounted as impractical viewing angles.
Another house had a hand-carved pool table in the basement which looked like it easily could have cost $100,000. The felt showed no signs of wear. I had to help move that fucking thing, and it nearly killed three of us it was so heavy.
The funniest house to me had its own movie theater inside. The owner had an entire room full of unopened DVDs he collected. I don’t know if this is true or not, but a co-worker said they walked in to him jacking off to porn on the big screen one day.
There were a couple of co-workers who were interesting. The guy who came with me on runs to pick things up always had a good dirty joke. And there was an electrician who also did some blacksmithing in his spare time, crafting iron door handles and hinges for dungeons to accurate medieval specifications. I saw some of his work in the basement wine cellar of another house.
This job only lasted a couple of months before I was hired to write for a newspaper. That post may take me a while to put together, so bear with me.
If you’re looking for more narcissistic drivel like this, Nikki and Amber have new entries for your perusal.
Narcissistic drivel? Give me a break, it’s a BLOG for Christsakes!
May 21st, 2009 at 11:17 am