Living is a mistake. If good things ever happened to me, I would say that some grief-stricken mutual friend of ours will be sobbing gently while digging up the yard of one of my many enemies to plant trees fed by our biodegradable burial pods so that he forever has to live his life in my shade. But everything is garbage, and the universe never gives me what I want. So, sadly, we’ll still be alive, and I will definitely be luxuriating in the recliner you haven’t let me buy but I’m scheming to get anyway. That’s a good foundation for a healthy marriage, right? Having a plush, comfy rocking recliner that clashes with the house’s current midcentury modern design just show up on your doorstep and being like shrug when your wife objects? I mean, it’s already here, we might as well watch an SVU marathon in it…?
Yo, I Need a Job.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am writing to you regarding your company’s customer service representative opening. I have been working as the client services director, which is a mostly fictional title, at an animal hospital for the last fourteen years and have developed substandard phone manners while also somehow managing to maintain a tenuous grasp on my sanity. I am used to an incredibly busy and fast-paced environment, serving as a personal assistant to seven doctors, each with drastically different personalities and demands, as well as being an unpaid servant and chambermaid to literally thousands of wealthy suburbanites and their unruly pets.
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My duties included, but were never limited to:
? answering phones without an attitude
? swallowing my pride while people talked down their noses to me about cat vaccines
? feeling chagrined as clients made jokes like, “Brought you a present!” while tossing steaming bags of dog feces for parasite screening on the desk next to my iced tea
? getting bitten on the leg more than once without murdering anyone involved
? staying awake for eleven hours at a stretch despite the 50 mg of Benadryl in my system, because believe it or not, I am allergic to stupid cats
? sniff-testing the effectiveness of industrial-strength institutional-grade air fresheners against the smells released from animal mouths, butts, and inner ears
? fielding questions like “Why is there a worm coming out of my dog’s penis?” (A: That is his penis.)
? giving meticulously detailed driving directions to the practice over the telephone in 2016
? ordering enough office supplies to both cover the anticipated needs of the clinic and also offset the collateral damage inflicted on the supply closet by the staff. (Who needs thirty-six blue ballpoint pens in their house, I mean, who?)
? making playlists full of dope yet inoffensive midtempo jams as a subtle reminder that they had chosen a hospital with cool-ass motherfuckers working there yet ones who are savvy enough to know that you can’t have the word “shit” unbleeped during business hours
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I’m very good at covertly grinding my teeth down to stumps as gentlemen who’ve clearly chased a soiled diaper with bitter espresso wheeze instructions on how to best do a job I have held for the entirety of my adult life directly into my face. And while my brain says, “Go kill yourself,” my mask remains a placid lake of serenity, whose surface remains unrippled despite the frothy rage boiling just beneath its surface.
I am also exceptional at keeping a straight face at the same time a person asks, “Ugh, is this table clean?” while pointing in disgust at a sterilized table upon which she has been asked to set a creature who is enthusiastically licking its own asshole. Or when a man primed to spend upward of $100 on pain pills for a dog complains about how much his 100 percent optional companion animal is costing him, despite his having paid twenty-five hundred real American dollars to bring that purebred host to all manner of insect, arachnid, and parasite into his home.
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I excel at remaining outwardly calm on the telephone while women yell at me about cat dandruff on speakerphone from within the lush confines of their roomy Land Rovers. I’m totally able to keep a cool head as someone explains to me in a condescending tone how of course she can’t come in to get [redacted]’s flaky dry skin checked out at four thirty; she has a job. Don’t I know what having a work schedule is like?!