Vision Problems

"Good morning, Jennifer. It's Marcus."

"Oh, hey, Marcus. What's up?"

"I'm not coming into the office today."

"Oh? are you sick?"

"I'm having vision problems."

"Oh, my God! What's wrong?!?!"

"I just can't see the point of coming into work today."

Marcus chortled/ guffawed/ snorted into the phone as he hung up. I was working as a long-term temporary (what?) receptionist at an insurance agency in Los Angeles in the mid '90's, and Marcus was my (far superior) co-worker and my friend.

I could relate. I was having the same problem. Daily. At $7.00 an hour, who could see the point of showing up to work? I spent more money on magazines and lunch than I made each week. Forget about rent and groceries! Thank God I had a rich roommate.

We took turns each week buying groceries. On her week, the fridge was stocked. On my week, she ate out and I had to ingest endless mounds of spaghetti with week-old, wilted mushrooms. They were dried out and covered with slime. But they didn't kill me!!

I always did seem to have enough to go out on the weekends, though. I would drop a hundred dollars easily in one night. (Don't laugh; that was big money to me back then and still today.) That didn't mean I always made the ernt, which is what prompted me to get a second job.

Through yet another connection in the entertainment industry (watching the local news in L.A. is like watching Entertainment Tonight), I landed a job as a cashier at the Laugh Factory. What a coup! How fun to hang out at a comedy club, meet comedians (the funniest people on earth!) and drink cocktails! Hooray for me. I was truly living the dream. Well, not really my dream, but surely somebody's. It sounded good anyway.

How was I to know how painful it is to watch an unknown comic bomb in front of a packed house? Or worse yet, bomb in front of an audience of two people? Oh, the agony. I expected to stand at the back and enjoy the free show. Instead, I found myself cringing and holding my ears inside the cashier's booth, blocking out the dead silence/ groaning/ crickets chirping in the background. Alternately, when only a few people showed up, I would plant myself at the back of the room and laugh loudly at really lame jokes, as if this somehow made up for their gut-wrenching failure.

The one highlight was meeting Bret Butler. She was on the brink of stardom with her own sit-com coming out. She was also in the midst of divorce. She was nice. She talked to me a little and said she liked my lipstick. It was Real Raisin, I will never forget. She was very funny. She gave me hope. Not for all the sucky comedians I had been subjected to; there was no hope for them. But for people like me, who are forced to work some crappy job in ye old comedy barne, that we will actually be entertained for once instead of feeling compelled to slit our wrists for someone else's ineptitude.

To make matters worse, while I was working there, I was accused of stealing. Every night, the manager would bring down the till for the register. She was supposed to stand there while I counted the money and recorded the starting balance on a receipt. Then, at the end of the evening, everything was supposed to balance. One night, she stood hovering over me, and I counted the money. Usually, the starting balance was one hundred dollars even. This particular night, I only counted eighty.

"There's only eighty dollars here."

"Are you sure? Count it again."

Again she hovered over me and watched as I counted out eighty dollars. It wasn't like it was eighty-thousand dollars, which might probably be stressful and intimidating. I would not know first hand because I have never held eighty thousand dollars in my hand, not even in Monopoly money, because when I played Monopoly back in the day, a lot of money was, like, five hundred dollars. Now that's what people spent a week on frappacino at Starbuck's.

So, I counted it again, and again, I came up with eighty dollars, being the whiz with money that I am.

"Yes, there's only eighty dollars. So what do I do?"

"Just write 'eighty dollars' for the beginning balance, and we'll figure it out later."

Little did I know that 'we'll figure it out later' meant, 'you are screwed and will be accused of stealing a paltry twenty dollars because I am a filthy, fithy liar'. At the time, this potential outcome did not occur to me. Why would it? My manager told me to do something and, by God, I did exactly as instructed. At the end of the night, I balanced my till to eighty dollars. The whoop-ass didn't start till the next morning.

I got a phone call first thing, as it was a Saturday and I was scheduled to work that night.

"Jennifer, it's 'Lamey'. I need to talk to you." 'Lamey' was the owner of the club. Hmm, I thought, why is he calling me? Maybe he wants to ask me out. Oooooh, that's awkward. Uh-huh, no.

"Apparently, the till was twenty dollars short last night. Were you aware of this?"

Summoning my twenty-three years of wordly wisdom and confidence, I replied, "Yeah."

"So, you took twenty dollars from the till." Excuse me?

"No, I didn't." You go, girl!! Whoo-whoop.

"Well, the manager told me that you counted one hundred dollars in front of her, but then on the receipt you've written eighty dollars. So, clearly you've taken twenty dollars. We've no choice but to suspend you from the schedule for two weeks."

Huh? I didn't really know what to say here. I was confused on two points:

1) The manager had clearly lied, and stolen the money herself, which was stunning to me. Why steal twenty dollars? What's the point? The consequences far out-weigh the gain here. In L.A., you could pretty much get two beers and a pack of smokes for that. Might as well stay home. If you're gonna steal something, go big, like eighty million dollars from a bank (is that an unrealistic amount? I wouldn't know) or a Picasso from the Guigenheim, if they even have a Picasso. Again, I wouldn't know.

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I would make a crappy criminal. I can't keep my mouth shut. I'm always bragging about things, like, "I only paid $2 for this skirt!! What a steal!" Can you imagine if I stole twenty whole dollars!??!? The cops would be on me like Lindsey on meth. Too obvious.

2) Why didn't they call the law? 'Suspended from the schedule for two weeks'?! Um, SO. I was poor as dirt anyway. That was not going to hurt me. The fact that I was not fired and arrested was a relief, and also shocking. So, of course, I, being totally immature, naive, and in all likelyhood, severely hungover, took my licks, though they were completely undeserved.

This has always bothered me because, as I said, I'm no theif. I can tell you, however, who is. I won't say her name, though it rhymes with Shmuzanne. I will not identify her other than to say she is of Asian descent and she currently hosts some kind of home show on cable. Take that, bitch, for throwing me under the bus. For twenty dollars. I hope it doesn't cost you your career. In all fairness, it didn't affect mine. I wonder how it felt to put the blame on someone who is poorer, younger, yet more attractive than you. Maybe you needed the money for breast implants, poor thing.

So now I'm writing while at work, which I guess qualifies as a form of stealing, though I justify it by telling myself it is for my mental health and allows me to be a better worker. The time I spend not working at work probably adds up to a good bit more than twenty dollars, but it's hard to say. It's all in how you look at it.