Getting Up to Speed and Losing It On an American Idiot

It's been 3 weeks since I started the new job and the training period is over. I have been getting the knack of where all the paths lead as far as the multiple computer systems and redundancies are in the commercial making process. It takes about 15 minutes to make a commercial, according to the expected production schedule (as in: you're expected to produce 3 or 4 an hour). Get the client info, find the client's data, write script with given info. Open pro-tools, record script. Lay in music track, mix to mp3 and put into client folder. Send to video production. Close client file, go to next client. Repeat.

As you can guess, the creativity level is pretty low. This is a factory style production studio and you're expected to get up to speed pretty fast. So far, so good. But I've already given up on working part time at TLA on weekends. After the second week (and almost three weeks with no time off), the sudden realization that my (almost) 50 year old body doesn't have the stamina that my 20-something one had. I gave notice and last Sunday was my final day of selling smut to the masses. After almost 8 years and never getting out of the mail room. Plughfhfh.

I don't know if it was the fatigue of working so many days in a row, the knowledge that I was not going to be doing that phone jockey work for much longer or a combination of the two, but for only the second time in my 8 years at TLA, I lost it on a caller. The first time was several years ago when a woman who objected to getting a gay oriented catalog told me she thought all gay people should be shot. I called her a few choice names and hung up. I was told to be a good boy and - since that day - had been. But then came Max.

A quick explanation. Like most mail order companies, TLA buys mailing lists from companies that broker such things. I consider these brokers to be unscrupulous whores that sell their clients off to the lowest bidders, and pad those customer lists with dead people, the ignorant and those who would otherwise have no interest in your products no matter what. TLA once used a swimming suit company's list as a gay mailer address source, and the Customer Service Crew paid dearly for that in terms of abuse. But if you gave to HRC, subscribed to any number of magazines, or bought something through the web, chances are you're in one of TLA's brokers' lists.

Which somehow happened to Max. It was only about one hour into Saturday Morning's shift and I answered a call that started with "You Mother-f---ing Cock-s----ing child molester." I was stunned into momentary silence and then asked "what can I do for you please." He then let loose with a whole combination of profanity laden homophobic insults and finally led to the fact that he got a gay catalog. I responded calmly with "You're a moron but I'll help you anyway." I was then told that I was going the Hell and worked for a bunch of sick bastards and that I would soon have to look God in the eye for what I was doing.

At that point, I not only went militant homo on Max, I went militant atheist homo on him. I told him God was a fairy tale, he was an ignorant hick and if he wanted child molesters, he should go to his closest Catholic Church. Among other things. All while I was still trying to get him to give me his address, which he was parsing out to me between curses, insults and Fox News Bullet Points and the ongoing Child Molestor name calling. I finally got to what state he lived in and he let me know it was Oklahoma. "Figures," I muttered. That really set Max into a whirl.

"It's the likes of you that made the Twin Towers fall" he blurted amongst more Southern insults against us northerners, redneckery and general stupidity. I finally exploded, cursing him out for being a useless idiot in state that should just secede already and take Timothy McVey and his non-Yankee ghost along with him, and please stop using his itty bitty penis as an excuse for not admitting he was a big old cowboy queen in midst of dumphukistan.

At this point, Max hung up. My supervisor was all but screaming in agony over my outburst and figured it was a good idea for me to clock out and go on home. I was happy to, in fact I felt pretty good about giving Max a dose of pissed-off-queer. Although I did enter him into the "Do Not Mail" file. At least if he's going to have an aneurysm, it won't be because he got another TLA catalog. It will be more likely he gets it from exerting himself behind the porta-johns with some rent-boy at a Tea Party Rally.