PART 1
PART 2
In mid December, Adam and Warren circulated an e-mail around the office that nobody would be getting any Christmas bonuses this year due to disappointing sales. That meant that I wouldn’t be receiving a $20 note that apparently I was entitled too. For other people who had been there far longer they felt hurt because when Adam takes his vacation during Feb. to warmer climes they know it will be courtesy of their bonus money. However, the Christmas party went on as scheduled and let me tell you that it was one that could only happen at the Save an Ad.
The Christmas party was to start at noon on a Friday. We would come in to work as scheduled and the office would still be open because some people would be conducting business, such as the car magazines. It was also payday for us so that was another added bonus as well. When the clock struck noon, all of us stopped working and went to unload cases of beer from Seamus’ car. There was also a buffet that included veal, eggplant, and salad. I’m sure Jenna enjoyed the fact that the veal was gone in no time.
Buckley asked Adam if it was ok for us to smoke weed in the promotions room during the party and he told him that we could go outside since it wasn’t that cold. A little bit later, Brian, who worked in displays and was Buckley’s smoking buddy, came in to the promotion room and started rolling a spliff. He was going to take it outside but Buckley insisted we smoke it in the promotions office. Brian said that he did not think that Adam and Warren would appreciate it. Buckley replied that he asked Adam earlier if we could smoke inside the promotions room and since he’d said we should go outside, that meant it was ok to smoke inside. Buckley, who had successfully conned Adam and Warren into controlling the promotions room, was too lazy at this point to even lie. Maybe that’s a sign that you should be smoking less weed. Buckley also made an announcement that “Brian has 15 half quarters for sale”, as if the art of subtlety did not exist.
Brian relented and pretty soon the room smelled like someone had burned a pound of reefer. There was an eight year old girl at the party, one of the employees daughter’s, and we were all worried that she was going to come in. Sure enough, she opened the door while we were smoking one of about 85 joints and I was just like, get away! The door kept on opening and eventually no one even cared. Seamus did walk in and this one guy name Dan from classifieds, who apparently was the original Dan at the Save an Ad, passed it to someone else and was like “I don’t even know what is going on.” I asked Buckley if Seamus cared and he told me that a bit of weed that someone had bought from him earlier was really from Seamus. This reminds me of a little vignette that Alicia had told us before. Apparently, a memo was sent around the office asking people to check if they smoked weed or sold it. A few people actually checked off that they smoked weed. Alicia thinks that the memo was sent out not to punish anyone but for Adam to get more hookups. Apparently, I know why this memo was not sent around when I was working at the Save an Ad because Adam could do worse than to ask his trusty manager Seamus.
At around two, some Russian lady came in and appeared to be distressed. Brian saw her and he was like, do you want to place an ad? Apparently, Buckley forgot to give the cheques for Adam to sign and the Russian lady, who worked at a nearby cheque cashing place called Money Hut, did not notice that the cheque wasn’t signed when Kavitha cashed hers in. She was promptly ordered to go to the Save an Ad to see what the problem was. When the Russian lady smelled the weed and saw everyone drinking she must have had visions that she had been had by Kavitha and that her immediate future would involve an unemployment cheque. Eventually, everything was sorted out and things resumed back to normal.
There was a little bluegrass hoedown going on in the promotions room involving a banjo played by Winnie, as well as various utensils. People commented that it felt like we were involved in a sequel of Where Brother Art Thou. Someone suggested that we should do a documentary on the Save an Ad and I told them that it was a bad idea because people would accuse us of staging it. Everyone promptly nodded their heads in agreement and that was the end of that.
Believe it or not, the Christmas party was the first time that I had been high at the Save an Ad. I refused to get high at work because I was not going to play their game. There’s a consequence for everything, and one reason I think so many people stay on at the Save an Ad is because their constant smoking renders them unmotivated to move up in life. A week prior to the party, I had a conversation with a few people who said that people either quit the Save an Ad right away or stay forever. As I was sitting on the couch a thought cracked through my haze that I had crossed the invisible line from a potential quitter to a lifer and that I was at the point of no return. Was I going to be stuck in the Save an Ad reality forever or would someone merciful send me to the next phase in order to save me from such an existence? Eventually, the crowd dwindled until just myself, Buckley, and Brian were present, or more accurately, Brian passed out on the couch. Somehow I managed to find my way to the subway and go home.
Like the Indianapolis Colts making it to the Super Bowl, some just things weren’t meant to be. In my case, I had missed the deadline to extend my work permit in Canada so I just decided to move back to the US. I made one last visit to the Buy & Sell to say my last goodbye to everyone and see what its like to be Buckley for a day. Instead of bumming cigarettes, I was giving them away since I bought some from the US for everyone to have. As they say, the more things change the more they remain the same and the Save an Ad was no exception.
If I ever forgot how ridiculous the Save an Ad is I sure remembered during my last day there. Apparently, Buckley thought he had been checking his e-mail address Buckley@promotethis.com even though Seamus had it on record that he hadn’t checked it since Dec. 24 (it was Jan. 6). Apparently, Buckley was unaware that his e-mail account had been set to Buckleyandpromotions@xxxxxxxx.com. Now I know why Buckley never received my e-mail saying that I was going to quit. When Seamus asked Buckley if he had remembered the password for Buckleyandpromotions.com he was like, “Um, I can’t remember.” Dan gave Buckley the advice that “maybe you should smoke more weed.”
I was talking to Dan of classifieds for a while and only then did I really begin to feel the pathos of the Save an Ad experience. People had been continuously calling him for free ads but no one would was willing to purchase a bold one. Eventually, Dan pleaded for someone to take him out of this “free ad reality” but he knew that was not going to happen. Before I left we smoked a joint and he told me that if you ever come back to Toronto you know where to find me.
So how do I sum up my experience at the Save an Ad? A cynic would say it was nothing more than a temporary job that I took up to pay the bills while I was wrapping up school. However, it obviously meant something because I did not write these words because I got bored watching the grass grow in winter. No other experience in Toronto, or in my life for that matter, gave me the inspiration to write a multi-page diatribe such as this one. Quite sadly, or not, it’s a high possibility that when I’m an old man, unless I leave a beautiful corpse behind, the Save an Ad will be my most prominent memory of Toronto even though I completed a Master ‘s degree in Geography at the University of Toronto.
As I reflect on my experience at the Save an Ad it brings up more questions than answers. What is the purpose of the Save an Ad? Is it a tax shelter, a secret government program to employ the unemployable, just another badly run business, or had I been tripping for two months? Thank god I’ll never know because I’m never going to work there again.
To end this story I’m going to bring up an interesting vignette. As I said in the beginning, I asked Dan if he was sure that the Save an Ad would overlook my legal status and he said he was certain it turns out he wasn’t allowed to be working either. He told me that he is on disability. Whether it was for his schizophrenia or drug addiction I will never know because I don’t ask questions that I don’t want answered. Ignorance is bliss.
THE END
- d.f.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Friday, January 21, 2005
A NEWSPAPER STORY PART 2 OF 3
PART 1
It turns out that there were also some crazy people in display. One of them was named Winnie who was in her fifties but looked older and didn’t say much. She had absolutely no tact and the only time she said anything to me was when she asked me if I had a cigarette in her low growling voice. Apparently, her boyfriend was a crackhead who always fell off the wagon when he got it together. Winnie got evicted from her apartment and was staying in a motel that did not allow people to have pets. She kept her cat in the Save an Ad office temporarily. Once, the cat ran away from her and she was frantically looking everywhere for it around the office. Seamus, being the veritable smartass that he is, made an announcement on the intercom that “Winnie has lost her pussy.” Before I could finish laughing he made the announcement again just in case no one heard the announcement the first time. Its funny, but before this incident I had never really paid any attention to Seamus. He was the only person, besides Warren and Adam, that made decent money from in the Save an Ad, owing to his position as general manager. Although he is 34, he resembles a frat boy who recently completed university and who thinks that he is a bit cooler than he is. The cat stayed in the Save an Ad for a week and it designated the rug around the copy machine as its litter box.
Adam and Warren took a special interest in Winnie that went beyond the call of duty. Even though they were universally derided by everyone around the office as being tight with their money, I think that Adam and Warren helped pay for her temporary accommodations. According to someone, Winnie was Adam and Warren’s get out of hell card. On Winnie’s desk was a picture of her holding an “employee of the month” award next to Warren and Adam. I asked a few other people if they had known about any such award and they had not.
The writings on the wall suggested that Radk’s 2 year reign as boss in the promotions had run its course. This had nothing to do with his behavior but rather the fact that only myself and Graham showed up with any regularity, which meant that the room was not making the money it should. Eventually, Graham was told by Seamus that he was being moved to classifieds. However, Seamus insisted that Graham get a new outfit since his current one, which consisted exclusively of a green Gap sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with big holes below his ass, wouldn’t pass muster outside of the promotions room. Seamus asked me if I wanted to be moved to display and I said sure because it would free me from working inside an ashtray.
Graham actually purchased a new outfit of khaki pants and a buttoned down jean t-shirt but apparently Seamus was jerking him around and he was never even moved to classifieds. I was moved to display but only after prodding Seamus. The promotions room was still open for business.
My new desk contained a computer that had been completely taken over by viruses. When I innocently tried to check my e-mail it would always re-direct me to pornographic search engines. I figured that I would get some training but that was not to be. I observed someone for 30 minutes on a Friday and that was the extent of it. I was given absolutely no direction and was told to look up numbers in the yellow pages and just randomly phone up businesses. As I’d find out, business owners treated phone solicitation as a crime surpassed only by shoplifting and embezzlement.
There was a person in display that provided leads, consisting of ads found on the internet, named Buckley. I had noticed previously as the shady guy that always bummed cigarettes from Alicia. Buckley had two monitors hooked up to his computer. Supposedly, Adam and Warren could access anyone’s monitor through the computer network in order to see what they were doing Buckley’s solution to this intrusion on his time was to link another monitor to his computer that could not be accessed by Adam or Warren.
After a futile effort thumbing through the yellow pages, I asked Buckley for some leads. He provided me several pages, most of them consisting of massage parlors located in Barrie, north of Toronto. Invariably, the vast majority of the workers that I talked to were either Russian or Chinese and they were paranoid. Whenever I asked for the person that handles “advertising” i.e. their pimp, they were always miraculously on vacation. And they say pimping aint easy! They always thought I was an FBI agent or something whose goal was to shut down their place of employment and deport them.
One of my funniest phone calls was to a “French” lady that provided personal massages. She answered the phone in the loveliest French accent that would put Amelie to shame, but when I asked her if I could speak to the person that handles advertising she instantaneously switched to a decidedly unsexy husky Canadian accent and said “this is not a business”. When I told her that I was from the Save an Ad she did not become combative, probably because she felt sorry for me, but instead calmly stated that she was not interested. She never did revert back to her French accent. That’s her loss because I just might have signed up for a session with her otherwise.
I have to give Seamus the genius award for moving me to display in November even though most businesses set their advertising budgets after the New Year. I was beginning to mislead businesses unintentionally as my desperation increased. I started calling travel agents and telling them that we had a very extensive travel section. When one expressed surprise, I decided to check out our travel section and it consisted of three little ads that even Sherlock Holmes would have trouble finding.
At the end of my first week in display, Radk was informed that he would be demoted to classifieds. After about 18 months, Adam and Warren finally got a clue that just maybe Radk wasn’t a good fit for the job. During his last day as boss, Radk celebrated by smoking crack and he openly downed a Vex (alcoholic beverage) in front of everyone. Even though I sound very negative about Radk I feel sorry for him. If I had tears to spare I could cry for him as sadly he resembles a dead man walking. It is highly probable that he will meet his maker by way of a drug related death and if he wants to reach fifty he better start praying hard.
So what was the fate of the promotions room? Well Buckley actually persuaded Adam and Warren that he should become the new boss of promotions. Buckley was in his early thirties and married with one kid. He looked a bit younger than his years and must have been the shady kid with the backwards baseball cap that sold pot in the middle school bathroom. In the early 90s, Buckley was part of a band called XXXX that signed a major record deal with Sire Records and produced one album called XXXX . One of their music videos even got played on MTV once. He said that the “Madchester” scene from Manchester, England had a large influence on their sound and, judging by the name of the band and album, LSD apparently did as well.
Buckley totally revamped the room and put up a multitude of posters that were not necessarily the most appropriate decorations, given the fact that the occasional odd client came in to place an ad. They included a poster of Kurt Cobain, aliens, and various movies. Right in front of one of the desks was a poster of the LSD guru Timothy Leary, superimposed on a purple psychedelic background, exhorting us to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Buckley did ban smoking in the room because otherwise he would be smoking “a million cigarettes” or more accurately bumming them.
Buckley was going to provide leads and he devised a new pitch that reflected his loose interpretation of ethics. As Alicia said numerous times, Buckley is a con artist and he admitted so as much with a shrug. For $55, we told the customers that we would run their ads for eight weeks and it would continue on until their car/item was sold. Unless they elaborated, we tried to finesse the fact that after 8 weeks their paid ad would in fact morph into a free classified ad that was not categorized in any particular order, rendering it difficult for consumers to find it. Also, if consumers were reticent about giving their credit card numbers over the phone he told us to tell them that they would not have to pay G.S.T. while in fact no one has to pay G.S.T. for advertising.
Warren and Adam gave Buckley full autonomy in terms of recruiting new workers, which he found off a music discussion board called 20Hz. His hook about the Save an Ad was that “it’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo.” Many people replied back to him, including one person who was concerned that he wouldn’t be hired because he lacked sales experience but had worked at hotels and had done “like 3,000 hours of volunteering.” Buckley was able to attract three people named Dan, who became Stu, Ben, and some disaffected Joy Division like kid. Timothy Leary’s words apparently had an impact on the Joy Division kid because all he did was stare out into the blank space. To no one’s surprise, he quit within a week.
If there was one thing that Buckley did with consistency it was smoking pot. Everyone in the office knew, except Buckley because he probably forgot, and he rolled joints at his computer as if he was in Bob Marley’s house. He did have the courtesy to smoke his joints outside. On Buckley’s first day as boss, Adam asked him why his eyes were shut and Buckley replied that he was tired. Adam told him to use Visine the next time he got tired and said that he reeked of weed.
It was comedic that out of all the people in the office, and in Toronto for that matter, Adam and Warren picked Buckley to run his own office and granted him full control. If the Save an Ad was located in by some alleyway in the suburbs that would be one thing but they let Buckley control his own office in the middle of downtown Toronto which is supposedly Canada’s economic engine.
The next round of hires from 20Hz were a couple of friends that had recently moved to Toronto from Abbotsford, BC named Jason and Jenna. They were in their early twenties and were more on the alternative side. Jason looked like a slacker who managed to keep up appearances while Jenna was one of those annoying vegan types who wants everyone to be one too. I was tempted to buy her a mink coat.
Apparently, typing ads became too much work for Buckley because it interfered with his duties of surfing the internet and getting high. He, without consulting Adam, designated Jason as his “secretary” and as Dan said, Jason morphed into Buckley II. Between typing up the occasional ad, Jason would explore the wonders of MSN. It was a treat watching Buckley slumped in his chair behind his two monitors while listening to Happy Mondays tunes, predating their seminal album Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches, that I thought only I had listened too. Oh, Sean Ryder would be so proud! Like clockwork, Alicia would tell Buckley to turn the music down and he always came up with the same comeback which was “turn down your hearing aid.” I’d always envision Buckley going back to his high school and telling his teachers, who probably told him that he’d be a burnout with no money, that he does absolutely nothing at work but get stoned and surf the net and yet still gets paid.
Kavitha, who is a 19 year old girl attending Centenniel College, came in to work at the Save an Ad. She apparently had worked there previously and was known as a star seller. I asked her how she got introduced to the Save an Ad and she told me her story. She used to work at a telemarketing place downstairs, which was replaced by the worst Middle Eastern restaurant you’ll ever find. She got fired from that job after she was overheard by her boss on the phone telling an old lady that it was not necessary for her to get her credit card since she said she would have to turn on her heart monitor in order to walk across the room to get it. Kavitha is very nice and she had this personable quality on the phone that seemingly made callers forget everything and give her their credit card number.
If someone wants to place an ad with us they have the option of sending us a photo of their car which we will place on our website. I got a call from a client that complained he had repeatedly checked our website and could not locate a picture of his car. I told Buckley, and he told me that putting pictures up on the website is too hard because, apparently, that meant he’d actually have to do something. I noticed that the guy listed a website in his ad called www.skylinegtrs.com which featured various cars for sale such as Nissan Skyline GTRS, of course, and Mercedes. I went to take a look at it and it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. Each little tab made a different car sound effect when you moved the cursor over it and it was filled with flash animation. I was like, how do I explain to this guy that we can’t put a fuckin picture on the website because its too “hard”? Besides, our website, looked like one that was put together by a bunch of grandmas to promote a high school bake sale for the school library so he probably regretted in the first place that he placed an ad with us. In order to deflect himself from having to handle complaints, Buckley designated Jenna as the customer service lady even though at times she appeared as diplomatic as Saddam Hussein.
- d.f.
PART 3
It turns out that there were also some crazy people in display. One of them was named Winnie who was in her fifties but looked older and didn’t say much. She had absolutely no tact and the only time she said anything to me was when she asked me if I had a cigarette in her low growling voice. Apparently, her boyfriend was a crackhead who always fell off the wagon when he got it together. Winnie got evicted from her apartment and was staying in a motel that did not allow people to have pets. She kept her cat in the Save an Ad office temporarily. Once, the cat ran away from her and she was frantically looking everywhere for it around the office. Seamus, being the veritable smartass that he is, made an announcement on the intercom that “Winnie has lost her pussy.” Before I could finish laughing he made the announcement again just in case no one heard the announcement the first time. Its funny, but before this incident I had never really paid any attention to Seamus. He was the only person, besides Warren and Adam, that made decent money from in the Save an Ad, owing to his position as general manager. Although he is 34, he resembles a frat boy who recently completed university and who thinks that he is a bit cooler than he is. The cat stayed in the Save an Ad for a week and it designated the rug around the copy machine as its litter box.
Adam and Warren took a special interest in Winnie that went beyond the call of duty. Even though they were universally derided by everyone around the office as being tight with their money, I think that Adam and Warren helped pay for her temporary accommodations. According to someone, Winnie was Adam and Warren’s get out of hell card. On Winnie’s desk was a picture of her holding an “employee of the month” award next to Warren and Adam. I asked a few other people if they had known about any such award and they had not.
The writings on the wall suggested that Radk’s 2 year reign as boss in the promotions had run its course. This had nothing to do with his behavior but rather the fact that only myself and Graham showed up with any regularity, which meant that the room was not making the money it should. Eventually, Graham was told by Seamus that he was being moved to classifieds. However, Seamus insisted that Graham get a new outfit since his current one, which consisted exclusively of a green Gap sweatshirt and a pair of jeans with big holes below his ass, wouldn’t pass muster outside of the promotions room. Seamus asked me if I wanted to be moved to display and I said sure because it would free me from working inside an ashtray.
Graham actually purchased a new outfit of khaki pants and a buttoned down jean t-shirt but apparently Seamus was jerking him around and he was never even moved to classifieds. I was moved to display but only after prodding Seamus. The promotions room was still open for business.
My new desk contained a computer that had been completely taken over by viruses. When I innocently tried to check my e-mail it would always re-direct me to pornographic search engines. I figured that I would get some training but that was not to be. I observed someone for 30 minutes on a Friday and that was the extent of it. I was given absolutely no direction and was told to look up numbers in the yellow pages and just randomly phone up businesses. As I’d find out, business owners treated phone solicitation as a crime surpassed only by shoplifting and embezzlement.
There was a person in display that provided leads, consisting of ads found on the internet, named Buckley. I had noticed previously as the shady guy that always bummed cigarettes from Alicia. Buckley had two monitors hooked up to his computer. Supposedly, Adam and Warren could access anyone’s monitor through the computer network in order to see what they were doing Buckley’s solution to this intrusion on his time was to link another monitor to his computer that could not be accessed by Adam or Warren.
After a futile effort thumbing through the yellow pages, I asked Buckley for some leads. He provided me several pages, most of them consisting of massage parlors located in Barrie, north of Toronto. Invariably, the vast majority of the workers that I talked to were either Russian or Chinese and they were paranoid. Whenever I asked for the person that handles “advertising” i.e. their pimp, they were always miraculously on vacation. And they say pimping aint easy! They always thought I was an FBI agent or something whose goal was to shut down their place of employment and deport them.
One of my funniest phone calls was to a “French” lady that provided personal massages. She answered the phone in the loveliest French accent that would put Amelie to shame, but when I asked her if I could speak to the person that handles advertising she instantaneously switched to a decidedly unsexy husky Canadian accent and said “this is not a business”. When I told her that I was from the Save an Ad she did not become combative, probably because she felt sorry for me, but instead calmly stated that she was not interested. She never did revert back to her French accent. That’s her loss because I just might have signed up for a session with her otherwise.
I have to give Seamus the genius award for moving me to display in November even though most businesses set their advertising budgets after the New Year. I was beginning to mislead businesses unintentionally as my desperation increased. I started calling travel agents and telling them that we had a very extensive travel section. When one expressed surprise, I decided to check out our travel section and it consisted of three little ads that even Sherlock Holmes would have trouble finding.
At the end of my first week in display, Radk was informed that he would be demoted to classifieds. After about 18 months, Adam and Warren finally got a clue that just maybe Radk wasn’t a good fit for the job. During his last day as boss, Radk celebrated by smoking crack and he openly downed a Vex (alcoholic beverage) in front of everyone. Even though I sound very negative about Radk I feel sorry for him. If I had tears to spare I could cry for him as sadly he resembles a dead man walking. It is highly probable that he will meet his maker by way of a drug related death and if he wants to reach fifty he better start praying hard.
So what was the fate of the promotions room? Well Buckley actually persuaded Adam and Warren that he should become the new boss of promotions. Buckley was in his early thirties and married with one kid. He looked a bit younger than his years and must have been the shady kid with the backwards baseball cap that sold pot in the middle school bathroom. In the early 90s, Buckley was part of a band called XXXX that signed a major record deal with Sire Records and produced one album called XXXX . One of their music videos even got played on MTV once. He said that the “Madchester” scene from Manchester, England had a large influence on their sound and, judging by the name of the band and album, LSD apparently did as well.
Buckley totally revamped the room and put up a multitude of posters that were not necessarily the most appropriate decorations, given the fact that the occasional odd client came in to place an ad. They included a poster of Kurt Cobain, aliens, and various movies. Right in front of one of the desks was a poster of the LSD guru Timothy Leary, superimposed on a purple psychedelic background, exhorting us to “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Buckley did ban smoking in the room because otherwise he would be smoking “a million cigarettes” or more accurately bumming them.
Buckley was going to provide leads and he devised a new pitch that reflected his loose interpretation of ethics. As Alicia said numerous times, Buckley is a con artist and he admitted so as much with a shrug. For $55, we told the customers that we would run their ads for eight weeks and it would continue on until their car/item was sold. Unless they elaborated, we tried to finesse the fact that after 8 weeks their paid ad would in fact morph into a free classified ad that was not categorized in any particular order, rendering it difficult for consumers to find it. Also, if consumers were reticent about giving their credit card numbers over the phone he told us to tell them that they would not have to pay G.S.T. while in fact no one has to pay G.S.T. for advertising.
Warren and Adam gave Buckley full autonomy in terms of recruiting new workers, which he found off a music discussion board called 20Hz. His hook about the Save an Ad was that “it’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo.” Many people replied back to him, including one person who was concerned that he wouldn’t be hired because he lacked sales experience but had worked at hotels and had done “like 3,000 hours of volunteering.” Buckley was able to attract three people named Dan, who became Stu, Ben, and some disaffected Joy Division like kid. Timothy Leary’s words apparently had an impact on the Joy Division kid because all he did was stare out into the blank space. To no one’s surprise, he quit within a week.
If there was one thing that Buckley did with consistency it was smoking pot. Everyone in the office knew, except Buckley because he probably forgot, and he rolled joints at his computer as if he was in Bob Marley’s house. He did have the courtesy to smoke his joints outside. On Buckley’s first day as boss, Adam asked him why his eyes were shut and Buckley replied that he was tired. Adam told him to use Visine the next time he got tired and said that he reeked of weed.
It was comedic that out of all the people in the office, and in Toronto for that matter, Adam and Warren picked Buckley to run his own office and granted him full control. If the Save an Ad was located in by some alleyway in the suburbs that would be one thing but they let Buckley control his own office in the middle of downtown Toronto which is supposedly Canada’s economic engine.
The next round of hires from 20Hz were a couple of friends that had recently moved to Toronto from Abbotsford, BC named Jason and Jenna. They were in their early twenties and were more on the alternative side. Jason looked like a slacker who managed to keep up appearances while Jenna was one of those annoying vegan types who wants everyone to be one too. I was tempted to buy her a mink coat.
Apparently, typing ads became too much work for Buckley because it interfered with his duties of surfing the internet and getting high. He, without consulting Adam, designated Jason as his “secretary” and as Dan said, Jason morphed into Buckley II. Between typing up the occasional ad, Jason would explore the wonders of MSN. It was a treat watching Buckley slumped in his chair behind his two monitors while listening to Happy Mondays tunes, predating their seminal album Pills, Thrills, and Bellyaches, that I thought only I had listened too. Oh, Sean Ryder would be so proud! Like clockwork, Alicia would tell Buckley to turn the music down and he always came up with the same comeback which was “turn down your hearing aid.” I’d always envision Buckley going back to his high school and telling his teachers, who probably told him that he’d be a burnout with no money, that he does absolutely nothing at work but get stoned and surf the net and yet still gets paid.
Kavitha, who is a 19 year old girl attending Centenniel College, came in to work at the Save an Ad. She apparently had worked there previously and was known as a star seller. I asked her how she got introduced to the Save an Ad and she told me her story. She used to work at a telemarketing place downstairs, which was replaced by the worst Middle Eastern restaurant you’ll ever find. She got fired from that job after she was overheard by her boss on the phone telling an old lady that it was not necessary for her to get her credit card since she said she would have to turn on her heart monitor in order to walk across the room to get it. Kavitha is very nice and she had this personable quality on the phone that seemingly made callers forget everything and give her their credit card number.
If someone wants to place an ad with us they have the option of sending us a photo of their car which we will place on our website. I got a call from a client that complained he had repeatedly checked our website and could not locate a picture of his car. I told Buckley, and he told me that putting pictures up on the website is too hard because, apparently, that meant he’d actually have to do something. I noticed that the guy listed a website in his ad called www.skylinegtrs.com which featured various cars for sale such as Nissan Skyline GTRS, of course, and Mercedes. I went to take a look at it and it was the most amazing thing I ever saw. Each little tab made a different car sound effect when you moved the cursor over it and it was filled with flash animation. I was like, how do I explain to this guy that we can’t put a fuckin picture on the website because its too “hard”? Besides, our website, looked like one that was put together by a bunch of grandmas to promote a high school bake sale for the school library so he probably regretted in the first place that he placed an ad with us. In order to deflect himself from having to handle complaints, Buckley designated Jenna as the customer service lady even though at times she appeared as diplomatic as Saddam Hussein.
- d.f.
PART 3
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
CADILLAC FOR EACH FOOT
"we drink too much, we sleep to little, we're out of touch with nature,
would you catch me sideways? i don't know."
- flatt street,supafly baggypants
what a mantra for 2005. it's a new year. we start tonight's episode with a new series by contributor d.f., an old roommate from the annex palace over the past summer who had some experiences with not-quite-so-sane people in an under the table workplace while awaiting a work permit. he's gone back to indiana to lay low for a while, but he's left us with "a newspaper story", so keep tuning in every day for a new episode over the next three days.
it should be noted than names and places have been changed from the original in order to save my ass from these times of constant threat from lawsuits. i've also edited slight grammatical errors, as it was sent as a draft.
***************************
“It’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo”
- job classified on the music discussion board 20HZ for the Save an Ad
Introduction
A new sub-leasee took over my place in the summer of 2004 which meant that I would have to find a new place in Sept., since it was apparent I was not going to complete my MA before the summer’s end. Luckily for me, I found a place just up the street and the price was right. Two of my new roommates were Michelle and Dan who were a couple but lived in separate rooms. To no one’s surprise, they officially broke up within a few days of moving in.
My first impression of Michelle and Dan was that they were free spirits who cared about others. When Dan told me that he had taken a break from school for a few years, I pictured him traveling the world trying to help the less fortunate among us. Dan and I lived in the basement, while Michelle’s room was upstairs.
My funds were running low and I calculated that I would probably have to secure some sort of employment by mid-October in order to insure my solvency. The only caveat was that I would have to work under the table since my student permit prohibited me from pursuing employment off-campus. My original plan was to ask my half great uncle Ernest, (my grandfather’s half brother) for a job. He owns a Thai restaurant near Eaton Center called the Salad King and he had a roster of 60 employees. He certainly could have taken on another worker since his restaurant was perpetually busy during the lunch hour, necessitating the need for his waiters/waitresses to take orders on a PDA system, and he had recently completed $1 million in renovations. My mom was not too hot on my idea since he was not exactly her favorite relative. My great grandfather had four wives and my grandfather was his first-born son, while Ernest was the baby of the family and was procreated by his mother when she was in her twenties and my great grand father was in his sixties. To put their age gap in perspective, Ernest was born around the same time as my mom. Apparently, the young pearl, or gold digger as some might say, received a higher share of the inheritance than she “deserved,” and she passed it along to Ernest with, according to my mom, a side helping of arrogance.
I asked Dan if he knew of places that would hire me under the table and he told me he knew of two places. He said that he worked as a telemarketer for this newspaper called the Save an Ad Classifieds who hired people as long as they had a pulse. I questioned him point blank if they would overlook my “illegal” status and he said there would be absolutely no worries on that front. I then asked what sort of workplace the Save an Ad was and he chuckled. Apparently, it was in its own unique category as far as jobs went and was the biggest joke there is. I tried to get him to elaborate on details but he did not divulge much, not out of secrecy, as I would later find out myself, but for self-respect. After all, did he want me to think of him as a liar right off the bat?
Later that day, Dan’s friend “Crazy” Morris and his girlfriend stopped by to hang out. As it turns out, Morris is the one who introduced Dan to the Save an Ad a few years back. Dan and Morris were talking about their boss Radk (pronounced Radek) who liked to shove various odd substances into his veins. Dan then showed us some pictures from the Christmas Party at the Save an Ad and they were having some sort of caricature of a bluegrass hoe down. I saw Radk and he showed nothing in the picture that would betray any accusations that he had a habit. Dan also pointed out a guy named Lorne in the picture who shared similar hobbies with Radk and was supposedly going to inherit millions of dollars from his sugar mommy who is sadly dying of cancer, and was only a few years older than him.
I envisioned Radk as some sort of illegal immigrant from Eastern Europe who was a reject of the Communist system. In fact, Radk was a pseudonym, along with his last name Radchenko. To this day, I never did find out Radk’s real name and I never will.
In the evening, all of us picked up some drinks from the LCBO (government liquor store) conveniently located across the street. When we got back, Dan started talking about the pills he had to take. Unbeknownst to me, he had a chemical imbalance known as schizophrenia. If the saying caveat emptor (buyer beware), concerning random roommates, did not have any meaning before it sure did at that moment. Morris was partial to mind altering substances from A to Z and he said that Dan could handle the crazy amount of pills he was prescribed because he was a former heroin addict. Morris quickly interjected that “you knew that, right?” and I was like well I know now and I’ll never forget.
September turned in October and eventually my funds were falling precipitously low. I told Dan that I was interested in working since my MA research paper was coming towards completion, which meant I had time to fill in. He told me to come in sometime to talk to Radk.
Save an Ad
When I entered the promotions office of the Save an Ad I nearly passed out from all the smoke in the room. Everyone in the room except Dan, who chewed Nicorette like there was no tomorrow, smoked like it was 1929. Its not like they couldn’t get up and smoke in the hallway where smoking was allowed as well. I chatted with Radk for a bit and he explained to me what the job involved. We would go through older private listings in a car classified magazine called Car Swap and ask them if they want to get a “better” deal in the Save an Ad newspaper. The ads in our paper would run for 6 weeks for $30 and the hook was that if their car sold before 6 weeks they could use the remaining time to sell another item in our paper for up to three years. Radk told me to come in the following week. When I stepped outside of the Save an Ad I saw what we were up against when I stared at a nearby flashing billboard that said "carswap.ca".
The Save an Ad office is located off Yonge St. in the heart of downtown Toronto. Its located in a lowrise building around many businesses that cater more to the desperate than the rich such as Money Hut and Supadeal Pizza. The building contained offices for the Save an Ad and a couple of other publications such as Performance Racing News and Performance Auto. There was some kind of hierarchy to the place that tangentially resembled the high school pecking order. At the top were two owners of Jewish origin named Warren and Adam. The manager of the place was a guy named Seamus who I’d later discover definitely knew about Sportsline. The people at Performance Auto are mostly younger Asian guys who believe that Hondas with ridiculous modifications are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They dressed well, or at least tried to, and they put on a show of bravado like they actually had pride in what they were doing. Performance Auto contained jokers who were all white. The Save an Ad was the child that got whacked hard with the ugly stick and even within it there were distinctions between departments.
In the main office of the Save an Ad were people that sold display ads to businesses. At a glance, they seemed like relatively normal people who you wouldn’t notice on a subway. Also in the main office, and below them, were people who worked in classifieds. They took calls from people who wanted to place free classified ads and they would try to persuade them to purchase bold ads that cost money and were larger. People in classifieds represented an eclectic cross section of people who were the loonier types in school such as those that liked to play dungeons and dragons, confuse the wrestlers Stone Cold and the Rock with god, and do strange things while under the influence.
And then there was the promotions room where I would be working which was tucked away in its own netherworld. There were 3 types of people that worked there: those with criminal records or on parole who could not get hired anywhere else; people collecting welfare payments who could not legally work at all and students who needed a bit of extra cash. I was in my own unique category since I was a student and a goddamn illegal immigrant or something of that nature.
On the day before I was to start, Dan informed me that Radk had given him a call suggesting that the promotions room was going to be shut down. Even I had never managed to be fired from a job before I started but it appeared that things might change. Dan told me to come in anyway and act like nothing happened. When I came in I was told by Radk that the room was under threat because of lack of sales and that he’d only take me on if I did not clock in until I made a sale. After 2-3 hours I did make one but I never received payment for my few hours of free service.
Despite my lack of telemarketing experience, I was given no training, which appears to be the modus operandi of the Save an Ad. Radk gave me a pitch sheet which even I was astute enough to know was complete rubbish and I chucked it into some forgotten corner. At the time, there were four other people besides Dan and I working in promotions. There was Jerry who was in his upper twenties and was actually quite level headed in spite of his dress style that consisted of black boots and some weird amalgamation of anime and goth that I couldn’t quite figure out. There was Melika who was a thicker black girl that attended York University and who I found out one day was quite pious. I asked her if she did anything fun for Halloween and she said that she doesn’t celebrate it because it’s against her religion. She is part of a Church called the 7th Day Adventist that is against all fun from what I gathered. Melika was a sweetheart and if her goal in life is to save people from eternal damnation she would have no shortage of candidates at the Save an Ad to choose from. Her only sin was that she annoyed me every time she referred to the Save an Ad in her pitch as the “Save an Ad Newspaper Company.”
Graham was in his late thirties and he looked like a typical street guy waiting to get a room at the Scott Mission. Apparently, he was a former alcoholic and every time the smoked wafted from his No. 7 cigarette I wished he’d become an ex-smoker as well or switch to a less disgusting cigarette. And then there was Lorne who cannot be placed in any category and who defies all meaning of logic. He was also in his late 30s, and shared a place with Graham as well as his girlfriend and he sold unregulated painkillers otherwise known as heroin. I also think he was on parole or probation because he kept on asking Radk to give him a letter. He was a husky guy with his hair in a ponytail and wore ugly designer label shirts with big lettering. He had one Parasuco shirt that was especially hideous with its combination of puke orange and yellow. Whenever I talked to Lorne, he’d have this wicked smile and look in his eyes, akin to Don King, like he was trying to charm my soul away from me or something. If Lorne ever had a conscience he left it at the side of the road many moons ago. Dan (my roommate) was known as Gary, or alternatively as Flong which is a derivation of his surname. It is company policy to give you a new name if someone else at the Save an Ad has the same one.
There was actually another person working in the room named Alicia but she sold display ads. She is of Jewish origin and in her early 50s. Apparently, she did not get along with the people in the main office, including the owners, so she had her own makeshift partition at the corner of the promotions room. From what my ears told me she used the tough love approach to selling ads. She’d spout out expletives like they were going out of style and yet she had a whole stable of clients ready to renew their ad space. She also had the propensity to complain about how smoky the room was without irony as her ashtray filled up. She was really nice, in a motherly way, and won me over forever when she said that she did not want the new microwave to be placed next to her cubicle because her health would be harmed by the radiation. She was the Jewish mother I never had!
Later on my first day, Jerry told me I had some messages on my phone. I checked them and it turned out they had actually been sent to Radk by Lorne’s sugar mommy who proceeded to forward the message to everyone in the whole office. In the message, she said that Lorne had conned her because she provided him with a $170,000 down payment on a house even though he was still living with his girlfriend. She confirmed that she did in fact have cancer and did not have much time to live. She also stated that she gave Lorne a $5,000 ring and that today was supposed to be their wedding day. The kicker was when she said that her Lorne stole her son’s bike and I noticed that bike right next to his desk. She talked for ten minutes, until the message was cut off, and then she proceeded to leave another one. This time, she was saying how Lorne was living in a “lap of luxury” thanks to her and that she was in Penthouse, which I choose to believe is a figment of her imagination. She even managed to take a potshot at me when she said that Lorne is a loser for working at the Save an Ad when even her 16 year old son earns $800 a week. That message also went on until she was cut off. Lorne claimed that within a month of meeting her she tattooed his name in big letters on her lower back, which meant to him apparently that he had free reign to take full advantage of her. It seems that she did not give Lorne enough cigarettes because according to Alicia he would scoop up her butts from her ashtray. This allegation was confirmed after work when Lorne picked up a used cig outside the front door.
Radk was the boss of the room which meant that he typed out the ads, did our payroll, and other important things like download music and games and look at bizarre pussy pictures. He was working illegally because he was on welfare. Once when Alicia was on the phone with an important client he played these animal noises from a website called Zooish.com at full blast. Radk is around 40 and grew up in various Ontario locales like North Bay and Sudbury. Despite his gaunt looks, he had good bone structure and it appears if he took a different path in life he could have kept up a handsome appearance. At 22, he enrolled in an alternative high school in Toronto, which is for at risk teenagers, and the principal tried to kick him out because he messed around too much. According to Dan, Radk was a talented drummer during the 80s but his life went down the tubes due to a combination of excessive drug use and bad luck.
Apparently he suffered a bit of brain damage when he fell down a fire escape while he was on ecstasy. Dan told me that Radk, along with Lorne, smoked crack and/or did heroin in the bathroom regularly. When I asked Dan why they’d be stupid enough to smoke crack in the bathroom he asked me if I knew what it smelled like and I said no and that was the end of that.
- d.f.
PART 2
would you catch me sideways? i don't know."
- flatt street,
what a mantra for 2005. it's a new year. we start tonight's episode with a new series by contributor d.f., an old roommate from the annex palace over the past summer who had some experiences with not-quite-so-sane people in an under the table workplace while awaiting a work permit. he's gone back to indiana to lay low for a while, but he's left us with "a newspaper story", so keep tuning in every day for a new episode over the next three days.
it should be noted than names and places have been changed from the original in order to save my ass from these times of constant threat from lawsuits. i've also edited slight grammatical errors, as it was sent as a draft.
***************************
“It’s a cross between (the movies) Glengarry Glen Ross, Office Space, and Gummo”
- job classified on the music discussion board 20HZ for the Save an Ad
Introduction
A new sub-leasee took over my place in the summer of 2004 which meant that I would have to find a new place in Sept., since it was apparent I was not going to complete my MA before the summer’s end. Luckily for me, I found a place just up the street and the price was right. Two of my new roommates were Michelle and Dan who were a couple but lived in separate rooms. To no one’s surprise, they officially broke up within a few days of moving in.
My first impression of Michelle and Dan was that they were free spirits who cared about others. When Dan told me that he had taken a break from school for a few years, I pictured him traveling the world trying to help the less fortunate among us. Dan and I lived in the basement, while Michelle’s room was upstairs.
My funds were running low and I calculated that I would probably have to secure some sort of employment by mid-October in order to insure my solvency. The only caveat was that I would have to work under the table since my student permit prohibited me from pursuing employment off-campus. My original plan was to ask my half great uncle Ernest, (my grandfather’s half brother) for a job. He owns a Thai restaurant near Eaton Center called the Salad King and he had a roster of 60 employees. He certainly could have taken on another worker since his restaurant was perpetually busy during the lunch hour, necessitating the need for his waiters/waitresses to take orders on a PDA system, and he had recently completed $1 million in renovations. My mom was not too hot on my idea since he was not exactly her favorite relative. My great grandfather had four wives and my grandfather was his first-born son, while Ernest was the baby of the family and was procreated by his mother when she was in her twenties and my great grand father was in his sixties. To put their age gap in perspective, Ernest was born around the same time as my mom. Apparently, the young pearl, or gold digger as some might say, received a higher share of the inheritance than she “deserved,” and she passed it along to Ernest with, according to my mom, a side helping of arrogance.
I asked Dan if he knew of places that would hire me under the table and he told me he knew of two places. He said that he worked as a telemarketer for this newspaper called the Save an Ad Classifieds who hired people as long as they had a pulse. I questioned him point blank if they would overlook my “illegal” status and he said there would be absolutely no worries on that front. I then asked what sort of workplace the Save an Ad was and he chuckled. Apparently, it was in its own unique category as far as jobs went and was the biggest joke there is. I tried to get him to elaborate on details but he did not divulge much, not out of secrecy, as I would later find out myself, but for self-respect. After all, did he want me to think of him as a liar right off the bat?
Later that day, Dan’s friend “Crazy” Morris and his girlfriend stopped by to hang out. As it turns out, Morris is the one who introduced Dan to the Save an Ad a few years back. Dan and Morris were talking about their boss Radk (pronounced Radek) who liked to shove various odd substances into his veins. Dan then showed us some pictures from the Christmas Party at the Save an Ad and they were having some sort of caricature of a bluegrass hoe down. I saw Radk and he showed nothing in the picture that would betray any accusations that he had a habit. Dan also pointed out a guy named Lorne in the picture who shared similar hobbies with Radk and was supposedly going to inherit millions of dollars from his sugar mommy who is sadly dying of cancer, and was only a few years older than him.
I envisioned Radk as some sort of illegal immigrant from Eastern Europe who was a reject of the Communist system. In fact, Radk was a pseudonym, along with his last name Radchenko. To this day, I never did find out Radk’s real name and I never will.
In the evening, all of us picked up some drinks from the LCBO (government liquor store) conveniently located across the street. When we got back, Dan started talking about the pills he had to take. Unbeknownst to me, he had a chemical imbalance known as schizophrenia. If the saying caveat emptor (buyer beware), concerning random roommates, did not have any meaning before it sure did at that moment. Morris was partial to mind altering substances from A to Z and he said that Dan could handle the crazy amount of pills he was prescribed because he was a former heroin addict. Morris quickly interjected that “you knew that, right?” and I was like well I know now and I’ll never forget.
September turned in October and eventually my funds were falling precipitously low. I told Dan that I was interested in working since my MA research paper was coming towards completion, which meant I had time to fill in. He told me to come in sometime to talk to Radk.
Save an Ad
When I entered the promotions office of the Save an Ad I nearly passed out from all the smoke in the room. Everyone in the room except Dan, who chewed Nicorette like there was no tomorrow, smoked like it was 1929. Its not like they couldn’t get up and smoke in the hallway where smoking was allowed as well. I chatted with Radk for a bit and he explained to me what the job involved. We would go through older private listings in a car classified magazine called Car Swap and ask them if they want to get a “better” deal in the Save an Ad newspaper. The ads in our paper would run for 6 weeks for $30 and the hook was that if their car sold before 6 weeks they could use the remaining time to sell another item in our paper for up to three years. Radk told me to come in the following week. When I stepped outside of the Save an Ad I saw what we were up against when I stared at a nearby flashing billboard that said "carswap.ca".
The Save an Ad office is located off Yonge St. in the heart of downtown Toronto. Its located in a lowrise building around many businesses that cater more to the desperate than the rich such as Money Hut and Supadeal Pizza. The building contained offices for the Save an Ad and a couple of other publications such as Performance Racing News and Performance Auto. There was some kind of hierarchy to the place that tangentially resembled the high school pecking order. At the top were two owners of Jewish origin named Warren and Adam. The manager of the place was a guy named Seamus who I’d later discover definitely knew about Sportsline. The people at Performance Auto are mostly younger Asian guys who believe that Hondas with ridiculous modifications are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They dressed well, or at least tried to, and they put on a show of bravado like they actually had pride in what they were doing. Performance Auto contained jokers who were all white. The Save an Ad was the child that got whacked hard with the ugly stick and even within it there were distinctions between departments.
In the main office of the Save an Ad were people that sold display ads to businesses. At a glance, they seemed like relatively normal people who you wouldn’t notice on a subway. Also in the main office, and below them, were people who worked in classifieds. They took calls from people who wanted to place free classified ads and they would try to persuade them to purchase bold ads that cost money and were larger. People in classifieds represented an eclectic cross section of people who were the loonier types in school such as those that liked to play dungeons and dragons, confuse the wrestlers Stone Cold and the Rock with god, and do strange things while under the influence.
And then there was the promotions room where I would be working which was tucked away in its own netherworld. There were 3 types of people that worked there: those with criminal records or on parole who could not get hired anywhere else; people collecting welfare payments who could not legally work at all and students who needed a bit of extra cash. I was in my own unique category since I was a student and a goddamn illegal immigrant or something of that nature.
On the day before I was to start, Dan informed me that Radk had given him a call suggesting that the promotions room was going to be shut down. Even I had never managed to be fired from a job before I started but it appeared that things might change. Dan told me to come in anyway and act like nothing happened. When I came in I was told by Radk that the room was under threat because of lack of sales and that he’d only take me on if I did not clock in until I made a sale. After 2-3 hours I did make one but I never received payment for my few hours of free service.
Despite my lack of telemarketing experience, I was given no training, which appears to be the modus operandi of the Save an Ad. Radk gave me a pitch sheet which even I was astute enough to know was complete rubbish and I chucked it into some forgotten corner. At the time, there were four other people besides Dan and I working in promotions. There was Jerry who was in his upper twenties and was actually quite level headed in spite of his dress style that consisted of black boots and some weird amalgamation of anime and goth that I couldn’t quite figure out. There was Melika who was a thicker black girl that attended York University and who I found out one day was quite pious. I asked her if she did anything fun for Halloween and she said that she doesn’t celebrate it because it’s against her religion. She is part of a Church called the 7th Day Adventist that is against all fun from what I gathered. Melika was a sweetheart and if her goal in life is to save people from eternal damnation she would have no shortage of candidates at the Save an Ad to choose from. Her only sin was that she annoyed me every time she referred to the Save an Ad in her pitch as the “Save an Ad Newspaper Company.”
Graham was in his late thirties and he looked like a typical street guy waiting to get a room at the Scott Mission. Apparently, he was a former alcoholic and every time the smoked wafted from his No. 7 cigarette I wished he’d become an ex-smoker as well or switch to a less disgusting cigarette. And then there was Lorne who cannot be placed in any category and who defies all meaning of logic. He was also in his late 30s, and shared a place with Graham as well as his girlfriend and he sold unregulated painkillers otherwise known as heroin. I also think he was on parole or probation because he kept on asking Radk to give him a letter. He was a husky guy with his hair in a ponytail and wore ugly designer label shirts with big lettering. He had one Parasuco shirt that was especially hideous with its combination of puke orange and yellow. Whenever I talked to Lorne, he’d have this wicked smile and look in his eyes, akin to Don King, like he was trying to charm my soul away from me or something. If Lorne ever had a conscience he left it at the side of the road many moons ago. Dan (my roommate) was known as Gary, or alternatively as Flong which is a derivation of his surname. It is company policy to give you a new name if someone else at the Save an Ad has the same one.
There was actually another person working in the room named Alicia but she sold display ads. She is of Jewish origin and in her early 50s. Apparently, she did not get along with the people in the main office, including the owners, so she had her own makeshift partition at the corner of the promotions room. From what my ears told me she used the tough love approach to selling ads. She’d spout out expletives like they were going out of style and yet she had a whole stable of clients ready to renew their ad space. She also had the propensity to complain about how smoky the room was without irony as her ashtray filled up. She was really nice, in a motherly way, and won me over forever when she said that she did not want the new microwave to be placed next to her cubicle because her health would be harmed by the radiation. She was the Jewish mother I never had!
Later on my first day, Jerry told me I had some messages on my phone. I checked them and it turned out they had actually been sent to Radk by Lorne’s sugar mommy who proceeded to forward the message to everyone in the whole office. In the message, she said that Lorne had conned her because she provided him with a $170,000 down payment on a house even though he was still living with his girlfriend. She confirmed that she did in fact have cancer and did not have much time to live. She also stated that she gave Lorne a $5,000 ring and that today was supposed to be their wedding day. The kicker was when she said that her Lorne stole her son’s bike and I noticed that bike right next to his desk. She talked for ten minutes, until the message was cut off, and then she proceeded to leave another one. This time, she was saying how Lorne was living in a “lap of luxury” thanks to her and that she was in Penthouse, which I choose to believe is a figment of her imagination. She even managed to take a potshot at me when she said that Lorne is a loser for working at the Save an Ad when even her 16 year old son earns $800 a week. That message also went on until she was cut off. Lorne claimed that within a month of meeting her she tattooed his name in big letters on her lower back, which meant to him apparently that he had free reign to take full advantage of her. It seems that she did not give Lorne enough cigarettes because according to Alicia he would scoop up her butts from her ashtray. This allegation was confirmed after work when Lorne picked up a used cig outside the front door.
Radk was the boss of the room which meant that he typed out the ads, did our payroll, and other important things like download music and games and look at bizarre pussy pictures. He was working illegally because he was on welfare. Once when Alicia was on the phone with an important client he played these animal noises from a website called Zooish.com at full blast. Radk is around 40 and grew up in various Ontario locales like North Bay and Sudbury. Despite his gaunt looks, he had good bone structure and it appears if he took a different path in life he could have kept up a handsome appearance. At 22, he enrolled in an alternative high school in Toronto, which is for at risk teenagers, and the principal tried to kick him out because he messed around too much. According to Dan, Radk was a talented drummer during the 80s but his life went down the tubes due to a combination of excessive drug use and bad luck.
Apparently he suffered a bit of brain damage when he fell down a fire escape while he was on ecstasy. Dan told me that Radk, along with Lorne, smoked crack and/or did heroin in the bathroom regularly. When I asked Dan why they’d be stupid enough to smoke crack in the bathroom he asked me if I knew what it smelled like and I said no and that was the end of that.
- d.f.
PART 2
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