This acting gig was starting to suck and it had barely been forty-five minutes. I didn’t want to ask people for money, so I’d try to get off the phone as quickly as possible if the Mildred didn’t enthusiastically offer up a $100 donation right away. I wasn’t going to be a particularly good telemarketer, but I didn’t want to be a terrible human.
Sixty minutes into the first shift, a break-time bell rang and a small guy in an oversized suit emerged from a back office. This was Skeezy Big Bird’s boss. He was like a sad version of Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny. With considerable effort, Sad Joe Pesci hoisted himself up on one of the folding desks and in a thunderous voice launched into a motivational speech like they do in those Wall Street movies. “Every-bahdy! Pause ya’ comp-yootahz and listen up!”
Portly Pete removed his headset, adjusted his hearing aid, and angrily whispered to me, “What did he say? I can’t hear shit!”
“Pause your computer and listen up,” I translated, fascinated that he could perfectly hear the meek Mildreds but not our boss’s booming voice.
“A! First of all, Jackie ova here,” Sad Joe Pesci began. “Jackie brought in tree-hundred fitty-five dollaz. Way to go Jackie! A! Anybody do better than her? Let’s take a closa look.” He glanced down at a hastily printed sheet of paper that Skeezy Big Bird handed him. “A! Phil brought in a clean two hundred. Good job! Who else we got?” He glanced again. “A! We got Joey with one-ninety-five. Not bayd not bayd!”
He’d go through the top five earners. Skeezy Big Bird would toss little pieces of candy out to them. Portly Pete, who felt snubbed, mumbled “Bullshit” as he fixed his hearing aid and put his headset back on. This didn’t feel like a nonprofit in support of public safety. Just an hour in, I was feeling like maybe this thing was a giant racket.
All afternoon we called Mildreds. The bell rang again an hour later, and again Sad Joe Pesci got on the desk to announce the top five earners. Skeezy Big Bird threw the individually wrapped pieces of candy. Portly Pete grumbled.
There was another part of it that made me queasy. It didn’t take much reflection—even from a recent high school graduate—to recognize that this was a rough place for adults to end up for a job. I was trying to make some money before college, but what about the other people in the room, like Pete? A lot of them were parents, with health issues and grown-up responsibilities like a mortgage. They seemed vulnerable too. And they were willing to suffer through the indignity of having candy tossed at them like children if it meant they could bring a few bucks home.
That night, the situation weighed so heavy in my stomach that I decided I’d quit the following morning. I would barge in there and tell Sad Joe Pesci right to his face that it was wrong to take advantage of people’s grandmas. “What if someone did this to your grandma?!” I’d say. He’d be stunned. “I never thought of it like that,” he’d say. “Thank you for opening my eyes. From now on, I’m going to be Responsible Joe Pesci.” Then I’d make my exit to a standing ovation. Slow claps. Glory.
I drove my dad’s Chevy Nova to the strip mall fifteen minutes before the start of the shift. I walked through the door with confidence. Skeezy Big Bird was standing at the front of a group of six people—all of whom had gotten there early too.
He calmly blinked at us a couple of times the way the real Big Bird blinks on regular Sesame Street, which was a little creepy. Before I could get a word out, he announced, “Raise ya hand if ya quittin’ and ya here for ya check.” We all raised our hands. Did this many people quit before the start of every shift? “The job’s not fuh everybody,” he said.
Sad Joe Pesci came out from his back office to distribute employment termination forms to the group. This was apparently the pre-shift ritual, taking care of everyone who quit from the day before. With an unexpected audience present, it seemed like the wrong time for my morality speech. Sorry Sad Joe Pesci, you’ll have to stay sad a little longer. I signed on the dotted line, ending my illustrious telemarketing career less than twenty-four hours after it started. “We’ll mail the payment to ya,” Sad Joe Pesci said. “Take kay-uh.”
I still felt skeeved by the whole situation, so I did the only thing I could think of: I reported them to the Better Business Bureau.2 When my measly fifteen-dollar check arrived, I donated it to a local food bank. I wanted to wash my hands of everything, without profiting from any part of it.
When we think of amoral money-grubbers, we tend to imagine people who run shady corporations, corrupt politicians who give their children White House security clearances, or vile stockbrokers who defraud investors. But they are us. To some degree, we’re enablers every time we buy products from companies and countries with a less-than-stellar human-rights reputation. We often point fingers at others while we ourselves contribute to a system that makes life tougher for someone else. This was the first time I realized that. That kind of amorality isn’t just at the very top of the food chain—it’s in the middle and at the bottom too, in a janky New Jersey strip mall, where Sad Joe Pesci is just trying to scam enough grannies to pay his child support. The telemarketing firm apparently did have a legit third-party contract with some type of law enforcement organization, and I’m still not sure if they were aware of the way money was raised. It didn’t matter. I learned that a lot of people are motivated not by a sense of purpose, or love for their fellow humans, but by an ambition to grab dollars by any means—to scam better, harder, faster.
As for me that summer, I went back to the classifieds. That farmhand job was still open, so I took it. Working twelve hours a day in the hot sun felt like honest work. I loved being outside, and I saved up enough money to get those headshots. I didn’t even need a gym that year! Turns out loading boxes of vegetables into tractors all season long will turn you into a pretty ripped twink.
It was a weird detour to end my time in New Jersey, and a good lesson in getting clear about what my priorities were. A car was still far off, but I’d be heading to LA with a little extra cash and my integrity intact. For now.
1?Just kidding, jeez.
2?I told you, I am a huge nerd.
CHAPTER FIVE THE PANOCH
Flying to Los Angeles for college felt like moving to a different country. From the laid-back people to the crawling traffic, it was nothing like the aggressive New Jersey culture I had grown up in. My suburban hometown was always on the go. We filled each hour of the day with a task, a hobby, sucking the marrow out of life—or at least sucking the ricotta out of the cannoli—twenty-four seven. After my summer of Adonis-transforming farmhand work, I was ready to take this attitude with me to LA, ready to achieve my dreams.
My parents dropped me off at Newark Airport for my Continental Airlines flight to LA. I had checked a large green military-looking duffel bag with just the basics: clothes, sneakers, toothpaste, and a towel. My mom’s close friend Hansa Auntie, who lived about an hour south of LA, would drive up the next day to help me sort out the shower supplies and bedding.
On my first day at UCLA I met Todd, my freshman orientation roommate. A super-relaxed blond dude from Orange County, Todd dressed and sounded like a movie version of a surfer, even though he had never actually surfed. He endeared himself to me quickly, because every time he spoke, his statements came out like questions: “Hi dude? It’s nice to, like, meet you? My name’s, uhhh, Todd?” Perpetually on-the-go New Jerseyans are a highly declarative people who speak very clearly, and with our hands, so this statements-as-questions thing was new to me. （You won’t hear anyone from New Jersey say, “Go, like, uhh, fuck yourself?”）