CHAPTER 15
(Job Searching With Noodles)
I ended up staying inpatient at Southwestern Virginia Mental Health Institute for nearly a month. The entire time I was there I never got one single visit. In fact, the institute had to violate its own rules and flat out release me on my own. All they gave me was a phone card with thirty minutes of talk left on it. No horse and saddle like the olden days. No $75.00 and a pair of blue jeans like the 90s. Just that phone card with 30 minutes of talk time. In fact the hospital was so ignorant to me they were sure to mail a $2,000,00 bill to my parents house before I even got released. $2,000.00 to be abused and tortured? How did this make any sense? But what really made the stint in the Luny Bin a nightmare? Dickey. Old batty bushy beard Dickey. My roommate. He was a fusser alright.
My delirium had plagued me while being a patient at Southwestern Institute. The treatment center was co-ed and I never felt like at any given point a patient in there named "Annie" ever belonged. I was highly convinced that Annie was secretly an undercover reporter curious about what goes on in those Luny bins. She just never fit the mold and I wondered how she talked a doctor into being prescribed meds as we all took meds in there. Annie was around my age and as cute as a button. I was convinced if she wasn't a secret reporter than she at least make a good tea party house wife with the way she looked so innocent in that dress. But eventually I had to admit to myself that she may actually be a real mental patient.
Perhaps she was another Gone Girl in the making. Perhaps she had a husband that was a dick so she rat poisoned him. Only fools went to prison and this could potentially be Annie's way out. A crazy card. I'd watch the movie or read the book later to find out what was really going on with Annie. But as for the batty old scruffy roommate Dickey I had? He was the real deal for sure. Dickey was a dick.
But Dickey had something in Southwestern that I would never have the patience to acquire. I had the skills of course with my background to acquire but never would I have the patience.
Seniority. Dickey had seniority because he had been there for months and months. The staff told me all his poopy pants moments (screaming/slamming doors) were in fact because he was mad at the hospital because they were taking forever with getting him section 8 housing. The one skinny nurse in her twenties with the lazy eye didn't like me for some reason. I get dirty looks from her all the time but this purple clad girl was always certain to shoot death ray darts at me with her good eye like 100% of the time. One day when Dickey was being a Dick she allowed him to sleep in my bed. I was furious when I walked into my hut one day to see Ms. Lazy eye giggling as she supervised Dickey burrowing his stinky ass into my bed. I probably should have reported her but I'm not usually a tattle tale. If I was then EVERY fast food worker for minimum wage would be unemployed for purposeful negligence. That's right any Taco Bell employees reading this story. Give me my fucking hot sauce!
These OTR Billybig rigging jobs often come with sign on bonuses. I had to utilize a job searching strategy that I had learned from a corpulent correctional officer in F.D.C Philadelphia. Because I was doing less than 10 years in Federal Prison the staff often liked to remind us that it wasn't entirely game over for us. They were used to seeing inmates every day doing twenty plus years behind bars only to discover upon release they wouldn't even know how to order an MTO sandwich at a gas station let alone have the skills to fill out an online job application. I clearly remember the short fat correctional officer that we always used to take advantage of mostly because we could. He was soft. We never adhered to his orders. One day the young fat C.O came over to our table where we were busy talking about wild sex stories from our previous lives on the streets. We were giggling about them silly hoes when we were accosted by that hyper little squeaky toy of a correctional officer. I was in the middle of a conversation with Ishy. A guy my same age doing a nickel with the Feds. We would get out at the very same time. Even meet again at the halfway house. We were both in our early breeding twenties.
"So what are you guys going to do when you get out?" Asked the guard.
Ishy went first. "I dunno, my mom said I can stay with her."
The short fat man looked at me. He was maybe only two or three years older than me and shorter. I was 6'3". A very lean 174 lbs.
"I dunno either." I said, "My Public Pretender tells me my apartment has been shut down. My mother mailed me an article that the textile mill I'd been at for four years has been shut down as well."
But the short fat one was a positive thinker. And why wouldn't he be? Just look at him. Employed by the Feds with REAL benefits looking the way he did. That's a success story by itself!
The guard waved his arm in dismissal. "Ah you guys don't have to worry about crap. You're both still young yet. Lots of good jobs still out there that can pay $15-$20 an hour. Plenty of them."
I imagined trying to explain my colorful past to my next employer. "But we got Federal Felonies with gaps in our records the longer they keep us here."
The fat man took over. "Well hey, let me give you some solid advice. You guys like chicks right?"
We all nodded. We were hoping the conversation could gravitate to our previous topic about the girl that likes it every hour ON the hour. Did this fat boy really have some wild sex stories or was he gonna make some up like everyone else just to fit in?
He continued. "Job searching is just like searching for a girlfriend in a lot of ways. You just have to picture a big bowl of spaghetti getting thrown right into the wall. Sure most of it is gonna fall to the ground but there's always gonna be that one little noodle that sticks."
His statement was true but I was giggling hysterically. One little noodle I couldn't help but wonder what the women thought about him. By the way he carried himself most of the time he was far from cocksure and I was quite certain he hadn't dated in a while for him to find the spare time to drum up funny little stories about little noodles sticking to the wall. But I would eventually learn years later that this short fat guy's noodle advice would greatly behoove me with my job searching.
After I got released from the mental institution I realized playtime was over and I'd better start throwing some spaghetti against the wall. Somehow my mother was able to beg the unemployment agency to give me at least some sort of stipend to job search despite them rejecting my claim. There were no retroactive payments but they used my Wendy's income to allow me $123 a week which barely covered gas let alone food. It wasn't the UC agencies money that I needed more than anything it was getting into their system if I ever wanted to get another job. Unemployment agency could not give me a single dime but I still needed to get into their system to expedite my job search as Red Blooded Republican John Deere Lancaster County employers are known for being what I call "System Haters". Every employer out there usually likes some sort of incentive to hiring a stranger and the simple fact of knowing those UC checks stop going out after hire gives them incentive to have you jump on their time clock real quick.
I ended up temporarily moving into my Uncle's house to use his high speed computer to job search. I sat at that computer from sunrise to sunset until my legs went numb. I don't know the exact number of job aps I was submitting each day but it was a lot. I remember nagging Schneider Trucking the most. My favorite color growing up was always orange and I figured they valued safety the most because all their trailers were always orange. This Cinderella man was determined to squeeze into one of their pumpkins!
Two days had passed and I was determined to nag their recruiters one more time. I was starting to learn their recruiting system inside and out. These recruiters get lots and lots of calls. Do you think they really remember everybody?
I was on the horn with Stacy from Schneider once again. I recognized her voice but was hoping she forgot mine. Things were about to become amusing.
I had already made it more than halfway through the interview this time. I had opted to re-submit another application after she rejected me two days ago. I knew I was eligible to drive their big 80,000lbs pumpkin and didn't like being discriminated against.
"Wait a minute." Said Stacy with a slight chuckle. "I see Celadon on here. This looks a lot like the application I dealt with two days ago. Why did you use an escape ramp again? And what's a weapon charge again?"
"Oh it wasn't a really big deal. Just took a wrong turn I guess you could say."
Stacy chuckled a bit realizing I just successfully took up an additional ten minutes of her time after she had just called me two days ago to tell me I wasn't eligible for hire.
"Is this Blake?"
It was all I could do to keep from giggling. I knew my pops would find all this a bit funny. Eventually I had to squeeze into one of their big pumpkins. They had drivers that had been working there 40 years and owned homes. Every professional job searcher knew that if something was good, drivers would be sticking around. Why should I go to some one star company when I knew eventually I would want to leave and have to take a pay cut starting all over again waiting for benefits from a next job? I was no sucker! I was going to keep aiming my bowl of spaghetti right at Schneider trucking!
I finally confessed. Right from my high speed internet job searching office. My thumb was worn out from all the mousey clicking I had done for the day. I had gone through many coffee filters at this point.
"Yes this is Blake. Hello Stacy."
She chuckled when she realized whom she was speaking with. "Oh that's funny. I just spoke with you two days ago."
"I know. I re-applied."
She grunted a little to quickly stifle her giggles. I had no way of knowing who was adjacent to her cubicle and possibly ear hustling.
"Well I apologize Mr. Steidler but we are not able to move forward with your application. Respectfully of course."
I was confused. The "What it's Like" song by Everlast that always played on the radio always encouraged hoboes to re- apply. How could I move FORWARD when Schneider Trucking insisted on moving BACKWARDS by focusing on my past?
I didn't know how to respond to Stacy. She said "respectfully" and was just being nice. I drummed up a response.
"Well you guys can move in any direction you want. I know that "I'll" be moving forward by continuing to click on this mousey."
Stacy just wished me luck, giggled, then hung up the phone. I was beginning to realize the noodle strategy was wasn't panning out too well like the guard promised it would. My uncle was thrifty so the heat never got turned on very much. Even bundled up in a coat while job searching was leaving me with a cold wet noodle. So why wasn't my noodle sticking?