The second job I found off of Craigslist was a fabric store. This is another employer I have no respect for.

Marvin Lee Taylor. He went by Lee.

This man used a walker, had suffered 2 strokes, still smoked about a pack of Marlboro menthols a day in the fabric store. He ate fast food every day, went to Bible college somewhere, and he was as gay as a three dollar bill.

His partner F. Moorman, owned Moorman’s Antiques, and I worked at the satellite store called [redacted] Upholstery. As I write this now, F. Moorman is dead. I met him once, and I had no problems with him.

The job description: Open the fabric store, assist Lee with daily operations, close the fabric store. The store was open from Thursday to Saturday from 9am-4pm The pay was $9/hour.

When I started, I didn’t mind Lee’s quirky behavior. I cleaned and organized the backroom. The front of the store had expensive pieces of furniture and about 50 bolts of fabric. I would move and arrange the bolts and furniture, but most importantly I made sure there were no dead bugs in the store.

The backroom was a whole antique shop haphazardly strewn between surplus bolts of fabric. Lee, being in a walker, couldn’t do all that stuff. So when Lee wasn’t asleep in a Chaise lounge, he was awake pontificating about life back in the day, or what was wrong with the city today.

This was how I learned Lee was racist.

Very racist.

The front door remained locked unless a customer rang the doorbell. One day this young black girl came in looking for a rug. He held her up at the front door for as long as he could, and when he begrudgingly let her in the store, he followed her around as if she was trying to steal something.

This was the beginning of the end for me.

I may have a sick sense of humor, but I don’t tolerate racism. As the girl left he told her “this isn’t Target, our rugs are boutique” I’m paraphrasing due to hazy memory but it didn’t sit right with me.

Lee also would tell me racist jokes as if I were okay with it, and I’m not going to repeat the jokes he told me, but just know they were not funny.

I, personally, do find stereotypes funny when it’s done right. Especially if the joke is to highlight how PC culture does more harm than good. Patrice O’Neal is one of my all time favorite comedians, I grew up listening to George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and of course Dave Chappelle. I’m of the Adult Swim generation, I watched a lot of Whitest Kids U’ Know, and I grew up having roast battles with my friends of all races. I’ve said some fucked up shit, I’ve had some fucked up shit said to me, but when it’s humor and not hate speech, we can recognize what it is.

The shit that Marvin Lee Taylor was saying “as a joke” was not funny. T

he other breaking point at this job for me was the day he brought his kid and grandkids in. They were something out of a Tennessee Williams play. Trailer trash whites who made a negative impression on me. His daughter hated him for being gay. Apparently his (ex) wife was also gay. Anyways we parted ways by: Frank and Lee wanted me to take more responsibility at the store so Lee could retire. They wanted me to be genuinely excited to take over their fabric store. I told them for four days a week, under 30 hour work weeks, at $9/hour, that wasn’t possible.

The end.

Third job I found directly off of Craigslist was a vegan ice cream store. But that story is a bit larger than this post and will have its own spot. Past this, I never looked for jobs off of craigslist again.

I did not take every job I applied for on Craigslist. Once I responded to an ad for a sales position. At the interview they refused to tell me what it was we were selling, or how much I would make. They just put a contract in front of me and said we’re doing orientation in 2 hours. When I asked basic questions like, “So what is the job exactly?” and “What is the rate of pay? Is it 1099? W2?” the hiring manager lady got very defensive. So I left.

Instead of jobs, I transitioned to Craigslist gigs. One time I worked a photography table and booth for a kids’ cheerleading competition.

I’ve also worked a few music festivals cooking pizza or bartending. I got to see Anderson Paak for free, I saw Booker T. and the MG’s play Green Onions, and a few other cool bands around the way.

The trippyest gig I ever got though was in June 2019. The National Guard was running a training exercise and they needed actors to role play as victims or wounded people so the soldiers could get some practice in. I signed up, it was a two day event. The first day we got rained out, but we still got paid. The second day we had to fully participate in the event. When we were briefed for the simulation, the commanding officer said, “Have you ever seen the movie Contagion? That’s what we’re preparing these boys here for today.”

After we put in makeup and given costumes, we were given symptoms. We had to run through the simulation nonstop for about five hours where we were diagnosed by different soldiers. This was June 2019, and some odd 8 months later in March 2020, there was a pretty big event involving the subject matter of the movie Contagion.

This still fucks with me to this day.

A more lighthearted and fun gig I got was to strap a sign to my car and drive between three very rural towns for 8 hours a day.

It was me, this hipster guy from Austin, TX, and he had me recruit one of my friends to do the job.

We had a very strange dynamic.

The hipster guy from Austin thought I was cool, so he wanted me to think he was cool by making fun of my friend that I recruited. They would get into weird passive aggressive fights. The first fight was the hipster guy was making fun of my friend for driving one of those box cars. “The sign won’t stay on because your roof’s too flat.” He’d say, and for the rest of the day he’d make comments about having a flat roof. The reason why we were driving these signs all day was this guy’s furniture store was going out of business. His big advertising move was to hire people to drive around the surrounding area spreading exposure.

We were packing up at the end of the day and I think one of us went to light up a cigarette and the hipster guy panicked and yelled “Not in front of the store!” That became a bit of an inside joke.

We also got into a fight about the use of the word “boy.” My friend used the word boy in a statement and Both Texas guy and I leaned towards it being racist. I have now lived here in the south for long enough to confirm that it is not racist, and it is just a manner of speech. That being said, I’ve had to be careful surrounding my own use of the word, because I still don’t like how it sounds.

Speaking of racist, one day we were out in the sticks on this back road and I pulled over to pick some cotton. Hipster guy freaked out because “that’s stealing someone’s private property.”

We did have some fun with the job though. One day we stopped in this dusty old pawn shop and played some really old amps and guitars. On the route to and form work there was an old purple building and the only words spraypainted on it were, “Guns, pipes, ice cold beer, toys, faeries, skulls, etc” I lost the picture of it, but that place was hilarious. The one day I stopped there I had to pee and the store owner literally told me to pee outside.
I’ve written some reviews for some random companies online from Craigslist, I’ve beta tested some websites from Craigslist, I even wrote one girl’s college essay about diversity for $50. I’ve mainly used Craigslist more as a buying/selling platform, but the few years I decided to experiment with Craigslist for jobs this is what happened.

Recently, I became part of a film crew that I met through a Craigslist ad. We were filming a reality show about cats. I hold the boom mic and run the sound.