I have thrown my hat in the ring on websites like Fiverr and Upwork. I have never been selected for a gig on Upwork. I have had the account for a year, and I only apply roughly twice a year when I have nothing else going on. I’m sure if I feverishly pursued the gigs on Upwork, I would get something back however at this time Upwork is not a priority for me.

To date, I have had one gig from Fiverr. I am a musician so my Fiverr gigs were all music related.

One day I got an offer from a man called Robert Six Owls.

Robert Six Owls was a shamanic breathwork healer from Asheville, NC. The gig was to create a meditation album that guides people through all seven Chakras.

I was 18 maybe 19 years old at this point.

Eager to work, I accepted. I went into the studio and recorded the craziest drums we could come up with. I spent the next six months playing with synthesizers and DAWs to dial in something people could meditate to. I nailed Chakras 7-9 but 1-3 took a lot of revisions. To illustrate how green I was, I operated on the pay me half upfront and pay me the other half when we’re done model.

Robert Six Owls was not hard to work with, and he accepted the final product, paid in full and left me a great review. He was even so gracious as to let us join him on one of his healing sessions. He was in Daytona for a weekend and my drummer Jay and I decided to drive out and meet him.

Ten minutes before we got to the destination, Jay decided he was going to talk in an Indian accent the whole time, and we were going to act like that was normal. I was not expecting Robert Six Owls to be in his mid to late 30s and wearing braces.

Of course, I had to ask how he got the name.

He was on some vision quest road trip event where on his trip he was instructed to pick up every piece of roadkill he came across. By the end of his trip, he accumulated six dead owls in his truck he had been carrying from North Carolina to Oklahoma. Hence, Robert Six Owls.

We sat in a circle, which was supposed to be portal of sorts to another dimension.

We filmed the whole thing.

Somewhere out there in a Google drive file the film of this is still around.

He stabbed my drummer in the tit with a tuning fork. He played with my feet. There was music going on and he instructed us to breathe. As weird as it was, nothing raised any red flags and nothing made us uncomfortable. We never felt endangered at any point. At the end of the journey, he had us color in some circles, and told us not to do any drugs or eat greasy food because we just had mind-altering experience. Pretty sure we smoked cigarettes and got a pizza on the way home. Oh well.

I wasn’t active on Fiverr much, and even now I don’t really maintain the page much. But maybe I need to be…

****************************************************************************************

Spring 2018

I was a valet at a dog track and casino in Arkansas. This is funny because we spent two weeks listening to a lady defend the business by saying, “Those are not slot machines, those are electronic games of skill.” Apparently dog racing was legal but gambling wasn’t so they had to really treat the state law like a child plays with a slinky. When I took lunch breaks I got to watch dog races for free. I wasn’t 21 though so I was not allowed on the casino floor, I had to enter the building through a really long back entrance.

I got to drive all kinds of cars. The first time I got to drive an extremely large pickup truck, I was taking it to the parking lot and I said out loud, “I don’t think it’s going to fit.” And then time stood still for a moment. It occurred to me, that is the reason why this man bought this truck. This is the only time in his life he will ever ask himself whether or not it’s going to fit. I left the job because I was going to California. This was kind of a big job to take, knowing I was only going to be there for like three weeks.

****************************************************************************************

Summer and Fall of 2022

I did demos for a few different liquor companies over the years as well. One of them was for a company that made premixed Moscow Mules. After I got hired, I was told I could work as many or as little events as I wanted. I was paid via Venmo, I had to book my own tasting events, and I never met any of the actual workers. Most of these events ended up with me getting shitfaced and talking shit with liquor store employees.

Another liquor demo company I ended up entangling myself with was a startup from this lady who was taking her first foray into marketing. I was her bartender at a different event and she was charmed enough to hire me to do her stuff. It started out great. Events went well, she’d set me up with everything I needed, and I’d sell a lot of product.

A day came where I was sent to a liquor store with whom I had an existing rapport with before I joined her team. At the event, I was wearing joggers. The owner was there and complained I wasn’t dressed appropriately. There was another lady there who was like low-key my competition, but I didn’t know because I was just there to have some fun. Everyone else at the liquor store was fine.

Anyways, the next gig she sent me to, nobody there was expecting us and they did not have any product for us to sample. The product was a $60 bottle of whiskey. This company makes an $80 bottle as well. I didn’t see myself going out of pocket and getting reimbursed for this, and the owner lady was embarrassed. I went home. My last demo was for this vodka brand that was really bad. I’ve brand repped some vodka brands in the past that were really good. I don’t like vodka, even as a drinker, it’s not my go-to. So I told customers I rate the vodka a solid 6 out of 10. The employees at the store let me try some of their favorite vodkas and I thought we were getting along fine. It all turned when one customer walked in and he knew me from my server job. I hadn’t seen the guy in ages, and we were talking for a while, and the side glances from the people behind the counter were sharp. I don’t know if they were just not about me holding up the store traffic like that, or maybe that guy comes in there a lot and he’s made some enemies out of the employees. Either way, they called the owner after I left and said I was rude, and they even called the company who puts out the vodka and said the same thing. I was fired. This was my last attempt at trying to fit into the alcohol industry. I quit drinking a few months after this job ended.

****************************************************************************************

I am shocked to admit that I had a job that I got off of a company’s website that made Craigslist jobs look like a fortune 500 company. The gig was: I arrive at different grocery stores, take inventory of the product, set up a table and sample the product in hopes to sell the product. The product was coffee concentrates. I was paid bi-weekly via Venmo.

It started out okay, each store was accommodating and friendly, and I was having some interesting and engaging conversations with shoppers. There was confusion among consumers because the name of the company was “Mississippi Cold Drip” a lot of people assumed it was cough medicine. Upon further thought, I do not think this was the best name for mass appeal of a product. Sure, if you look up cold drip on the internet, you’ll find some beakers and alchemical setups for coffee, and it is well known within the coffee community. However, I understand why the layman would be confused.

I actually got a date from doing this job. I ended up asking one girl out, and we went out once or twice. Not a bad time.

Two major events caused this job to go south. The first was, the manager guy Jon would send me to these stores in the middle of nowhere with absolutely no foot traffic. Once or twice is fine, but it became a trend and for almost five weeks in a row I was setting up in stores with maybe thirty people in the entire store. Jon got upset because of how low my numbers were, and that it was costing more to keep me doing the job than I was making. Problem was, he wasn’t taking any of my reports into account. It came to a head where he showed up and monitored me during one shift, and he saw I was doing my job perfectly. We were at a busier store, where there was enough volume to generate some sales, but he was there strictly to “coach” me. Despite having an argument about the shoes I was wearing that day, we came to an agreement that if he sends me to a store that has low volume, I would work shorter days. Then he stopped paying me.

For like two or three weeks I was working and seeing no money from it. I hope I’ve made it obvious by my lack of discretion in the job search that I needed the money. We had a two hour phone call in which I had to argue my hours, and validate that I deserve to be paid for the work that I’m doing. He called me out for a lack of civility towards him, but I’d had about enough of his shit. He’d send me all over the damn region, and sometimes I had to do the vendor side of the job in the back with the shipping/receiving people.

Anyways, we ended the phone call at this wouldn’t happen again, and he paid me and all was well.

Two weeks go by and it was the day he was supposed to pay me, and he didn’t. I civilly asked him for my check in a, “Hey what day was payday again?” way. He immediately started with the excuses and tried to give me the runaround and I said, “I quit.” I went so far as to message the owner of the company on Facebook about this, and eventually Jon paid me. He gave me some mealymouthed excuse about how he didn’t realize my hours were on the last pay period or something and then sent me like another $10 with the memo, “Stiff drink on me.”

Months later the owner replied to the facebook message with, “How much do we owe you?” with a tone indicating that this has happened before. I told him it was taken care of and wished them the best. Last I saw, Jon was part of some “Crawfish 2 Geaux” company at which, I hope he’s paying his employees.

****************************************************************************************

Unfortunately, this has happened to me another time recently. I was contacted by a recruiter for a job that seemed to be exactly what I was looking for.

They needed merchandising done for a well-known headphone company. The job offered benefits and that was what hooked me into saying yes. I started the job, and all was well, and then two pay periods elapsed where I did not see a paycheck.

I called to investigate, and it turned out the insurance benefits charged me twice for months that I had not even started the job yet. They said they were unable to refund the double deductions, and they also said I don’t work enough hours to qualify for benefits. With their app constantly bugging out, and no actual support from the staff, I quit because it was more of a headache than it was worth.

Lesson learned: don’t take jobs from recruiters.

****************************************************************************************

There’s a slight pattern of me not getting paid on time. My reaction to it has changed over the years due to how many times it has happened to me. The tea store didn’t pay me on time because the manager didn’t file a certain form properly. The ice cream store didn’t pay me on time because I was too new in the payroll system, so they had to write me a paper check. Marketsource charged me double deductions for coverage I wasn’t receiving, and I don’t know what Jon’s problem was. My point is, each time was a learning experience, and I can’t change these factors that lie beyond my control. I’ve grown calloused to the system, and although I do not enter an engagement expecting to get fucked over, it no longer comes as a surprise.