I’ve found many jobs on Craigslist. For instance, I worked at a fabric store.

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

The owner was ambulatory, but with limitations. Despite his survival of two strokes, he still smoked a pack of Marlboro menthols a day. In the store. He ate fast food every day, was a Bible college graduate, and he was as gay as a three dollar bill.

I didn’t mind his quirky behavior at first. The front of the store was spattered with expensive furniture and fabric bolts. My job was to move and arrange the bolts and furniture, but above all- make sure there were no dead bugs in the store.
The back half of the store was an antique shop. I guess we can call it an antique shop. If knickknacks haphazardly strewn between surplus bolts of fabric count as an antique shop.
The owner needed a walker to get around, he was incapable of maintenance tasks. When he wasn’t asleep in a chaise lounge in the front window, he pontificated about life back in the day.

This was how I learned Lee (the owner) was racist.

The front door remained locked unless a customer rang the doorbell. One day this young girl came in looking for a rug. The owner held her 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 told me racist jokes as if I were okay with it, and I won’t repeat the jokes, because they were not funny.

I find stereotypes funny 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 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 Marvin Lee Taylor said “as a joke” was not funny.

The 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 leave a bad taste in my mouth. Lee’s daughter hated him for being gay. Apparently his (ex) wife was also gay. This engagement closed when 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, was not possible.

The end.

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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.
I saw 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 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.

Afterwards, I transitioned to Craigslist gigs. Gigs would span from photography booth for a kids’ cheerleading competition to music festivals. Some days I would cook pizza others I would bartend.

The trippiest gig I ever worked 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. It was a two day event where the first day got rained out, but we still got paid.
The second day we fully participated in the exercise. 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 makeup and 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 was when I strapped a sign to my car to advertise a furniture store going out of business. We drove between three rural towns for 8 hours a day. It was me, this hipster guy from Austin, TX, and one of my friends to do the job. We had a very strange dynamic. The hipster from Austin thought I was cool, and he wanted me to think he was cool. He expressed his sentiment by making fun of my friend. They would get into weird passive aggressive fights.

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 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.

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 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 through a Craigslist ad. We were filming a reality show about cats. I held the boom mic and ran the sound.