I believe the gig economy is meant to keep the poor man poor. A desperate man acts out of desperation. “Whatever it takes” is vague and encompasses a myriad of tasks. In the past, I’ve financially bent myself over a barrel with: court costs, bills, debt, and not enough money to eat. It’s led me to places like: Craigslist, Shipt, Doordash, Wonolo, Papa, product demos, and more in search of work. It may sound sad but there were even some gigs that I was rejected from.

One of the gigs I was turned down from was ‘nude model’ for a fine arts class. Fortunately, I made some disparaging remarks about the interviewer’s home state of Nebraska that cost me that gig.  .

Craigslist has been the invitation to the most insane things in my life. Had I never used Craigslist, there are several key events in my life that never would have happened. I indirectly found my first job from an ad I posted on Craigslist. I was fifteen years old, I had gotten expelled from school (for the second time) for weed. My friend’s (who I met from Craigslist) stepdad owned a headshop and employed me as a sign holder.

The self-righteous smugness I felt when all of the cops and employees who expelled me saw me holding that sign was rich. I started as a sign holder and by the time I was sixteen, I was working inside. When I turned seventeen I had a key to the store and was promoted to store manager. The headshop was across the street from a cemetery in the same shopping plaza as the adult fun store and the Florida ski store.

The adult fun store was run by a cockroach of a human being named Frank. Frank’s claim to fame was he fucked Wednesday Addams back in the day. Frank had a thing for trannies, and due to business being so slow, he would often be caught watching porn. He would bring his dog to work with him, and he had a very sweet old lady who would help him out part time. What that woman was doing working for Frank, God only knows. Frank did not deserve to have such a nice person as an employee- but who am I to judge? I played many a prank on Frank throughout my tenure at the headshop. My favorite prank was when I walked by the store and he was watching porn, I’d pound on the window. I loved scaring the guy. When the sweet old lady quit, another mean old pit bull of a woman took her place as Frank’s gal Friday. The one time I scared frank, this lady came out of the store chasing me down the plaza and threatening to call the police. I never scared Frank again.

Reminiscing on this job is a large can of worms for me. This was during the peak years of drug use. My drug use has tapered off over the years, I don’t do drugs anymore. However during this time: I still owned a gas mask bong, my hair was down to my ass, I was taking psychedelics, pills, everything.

I thought this stuff was cool.

The headshop is out of business and I am out of communication with my old boss. The reason this topic is delicate for me, there was a woman who worked next door at a fashion boutique for ladies. She made a comment about my dance moves while I was holding the sign one day. My boss made a Facebook post about it and from there, the seed was planted.

I was full-on planning to bang this lady.

Rarely ever does somebody just have sex at first sight. It happens, but it’s not common. I had to get to know this lady and over time I did. One day we ended up hooking up (making out, hand stuff, clothes off) in the changing room in the clothing store. It actually freaked me out. I didn’t know how to process it and my boss didn’t believe me. Lucky for me, it happened a couple more times. One of the times, another guy I worked with saw it happen through the front window of the fashion boutique. That’s what it took for my boss to believe me. Afterwards, I was in shock and kind of did my best to not interact with the lady as much, but I didn’t regret it or hate her. It was overwhelming.

One day she gave me a ride home, and I had just taken some Kratom samples that were sent to us by a new distributor. It was some pretty powerful kratom because I was not feeling hot. So we’re driving down the main state road, and I hear a beep in her truck. Turns out she had one of those DUI breathalyzers in her car, she had to blow into it while I took the wheel. I didn’t even have a drivers’ license at the time.

When we pulled into my house, I fell out of the truck and threw up because the kratom had me that nauseous. I kept in touch with the lady up until her death. I had found out years later from some Facebook posts that she had killed herself around her 50^th birthday. It makes me sad to think of her.

When I was holding the sign on the side of the road, I remember people would stop and take pictures with me or of me. Some people would throw shit out of their cars at me. One time someone hit me in the head with one of those Whitman’s sampler chocolates.

My boss would have one big medical emergency a year, which put him out of commission. While he was out, the store was left in the care of whoever was under his employ. During my first year, this guy named Paul was the lucky soul. He was cool, but when the medical emergency happened Paul was a little sick of this being a pattern and he quit.

By my second year when the medical emergency happened, the lucky employee was me. I was tasked with paying store rent, utilities and more. To cover utilities I had to sell some merchandise to this guy who used to be a tattoo artist at the headshop. Man that guy was wild. He was the kind of guy who could get just about anything if you wanted it. He showed me some pictures on his phone of human skulls that he owned. Weird.

Another infrequent customer of the shop was the keyboardist for the Moody Blues Patric Moraz. That guy saw me and immediately fell in love with me. He asked to take my picture because he thought I looked cool.

One time I sold a crack pipe to my old art teacher from elementary school. He actually recognized me and was like, “woah, I taught you didn’t I?” He ended up getting caught stealing laptops from the school and pawning them.

I’m not going to trash the store, despite the many dishonest practices I aided and abetted. I will comment my formative years being spent in this environment did more harm than good.

I was paid under the table, but most of the time it was fair. The financial situation of the store deteriorated so much the owner had to give half the store to his wife who sold repurposed furniture.

When I left the headshop, the store was in a deep identity crisis. The front half of the building was a makeshift furniture showroom, and the back half was pipes and bongs and stuff. Weed was not yet legal in Florida, we had to call them water pipes, and we had to kick people out if they said ‘bong’ more than once.

The items keeping the store in business were fake pee and detox drinks. The customers were always the same people around the same time each month and they were not the people you’d expect to be buying such items. One lady was a nurse, and she’d come in in her scrubs, always on the phone, and she’d never even talk to me. She’d just have the money, I’d give her the pee, and we were done. It felt kind of disrespectful.

For almost a month, one skinny guy would come in on Saturday mornings and window shop. He’d look at the same ceramic water pipe that was maybe $30. He’d never buy it, but he was always browsing. The first few times were fine, but after the tenth or eleventh time I saw the dude it was getting annoying. I wasn’t sure what his deal was.

Flash forward a year later, my band played this gig where we shoved: a drum set, guitars, amps, me, the drummer, the guitarist, and a rapper all in a Prius. The rapper wanted to be dropped off at his dealer’s house, and I got out of the car with the rapper.

We get to the dealer’s house and that fucking guy opened the door.

That wiry son of a bitch who would browse for a month.

Him.

Inside the house, I saw binders full of names of people he fronted weed, I saw pounds and pounds of weed, Xanax bars by the hundred count, and stacks on stacks of money. I said nothing, but left even more confused as to what that fucking guy’s deal was.

Other times, I’ve seen customers come in and whip their filthy bongs out of their backpack asking me if I had a slide to fit it. I was like, “okay, first put that away before we both go to jail.” The job put a resentment in me towards stoners. These people made me ashamed to smoke weed.

Not everybody in the store was that bad though. There was this old man who looked like the Lorax who would stop by every now and again, and he was as friendly as all get out. When I sang with a barbershop quartet, he hired my quartet to sing to his wife on Valentine’s day. He died, and I still miss the guy honestly. He was the brightest light in that dark cave. His deal was besides the businesses he owned, his investments, and his philanthropic work, he grew weed. He grew some amazing weed. He grew weed that was on par with opiates, I mean it was incredible stuff.

As a weed smoker, the perks of the job were I was able to get all the new toys at wholesale or less. I had a vaporizer that looked like an inhaler, I had a dry herb vape pen, I really got into dry herb vapes at that point. Edibles still weren’t really common due to weed still being a schedule 1. Oh,

Stephen King called the store asking for cloves once. That was cool. There is still a 1% chance of it being the Seinfeld situation when George bought “John Voigt’s car” but, I’m pretty sure it was the real Stephen King. He does reside in that town when he’s not in Maine.

The only other story that comes to mind is one time I took a phone call from a really flirty girl named Cherokee, and I spent the whole day awaiting for my new girlfriend to arrive only to be greeted by a 300 pound ogre. On that day I learned voices and appearances are not always congruent and it’s important to not get lost in my own head.

Looking back on it now, I was grossly underpaid, illegally employed, and walked away with some crazy stories to tell. I would never do it again, but I still don’t entirely regret it. I wish I knew better at the time, and I know now I could have done better than but it was what it was, and it did help prepare me for some things later in life.