Blair Gets a Job
by Helen W.
A few weeks after TSbyBS...
You'd think that a guy like me would have had all sorts of odd jobs. But, the truth is, aside from a few summer jobs during college, I've always managed to land paying gigs related to my studies, frequently in the field – in Brazil, throughout Oceania, and even among native populations in the Pacific Northwest. More recently, of course, I’ve kept my teaching fellowship gig going so that I could stay in Cascade and work with Jim.
Well, that’s all shot to perdition now. I guess things will continue on with Jim as they have for the past four years, as soon as he’s back on active duty. I guess. We’ve got a lot to talk about, but I’m not up to it yet.
Anyway, until the next session starts at the Cascade Police Academy (and maybe after? I really have to figure this all out!) I’ve got to have some money to live on. So, I’m job hunting.
I always had it rattling around in my head that if things really caved in for me in the Anthro Department I’d go talk to my buddies in Sociology or Psyche, or even over in Math and land a job as a lab assistant or interviewer or even cleaning monitors. I never imagined that I’d be banned from campus.
So – plan A, getting the Dr. to go with the Sandburg, isn’t. Plan B, the find-something-paying-on-campus plan, gone. Plan C? I never had a plan C.
Even if Jim and I aren’t TALKING at this point (we’re not NOT talking either – it’s strange, and I’m NOT THINKING ABOUT IT) we’re exchanging notes, and this morning’s read ‘Gone to do some paperwork at the station, then to the gym per Dr’s orders. Here’s my debit card – get some groceries, would you? You know I never get the stuff you’ll eat.’ Which really isn’t true, since I will eat just about anything, though I might grumble. Jim’s the picky eater, between his official ‘meat and potatoes’ line and his allergies and the things he won’t eat due to unpleasant undertones or the slightest sign of spoilage. The NICE part of Jim’s being so finicky is that he really doesn’t mind it when I sidestep the big chains and go to natural food stores. Not that these places are necessarily fresher, but after living in Cascade for half my life I pretty much know which places have the best of just about everything.
Anyway, teasing aside, I’m happy to do the shopping, and appreciative of what Jim is trying to do by leaving me the debit card.
- - - - - - - - - -
I go to Phil’s Organic first, to get meat. It’s one of the oldest organic places in Cascade, and while I don’t really like their veggies, their meats are all free of the usual garbage AND they’re not that much more than at the supermarket. I’m picking up some ribs and a couple of cornish game hens and wondering whether I should pick up fish there or go to my favorite market near the docks when the first offer comes.
"Blair! Blair Sandburg!" says a voice, and I turn to see Callie Jones. Callie’s a public defender I interacted with some when I first started working with Jim; she’s now at home with her little girl. Anyway, it’s good to see her, and she’s heard that I’m going to be joining the force (how does everyone know what I haven’t really internalized?) and she asks the obvious – do I have a job for the summer? I tell her that my job for the day is to figure that out and she says, well, how would I like to be a nanny? It seems she’s going back to work and needs someone to watch her child, who’s 15 months old now, until a space opens up at the daycare center across the street from the PD.
"$10 and hour, and I’ll pay your taxes," she says. "I’ve interviewed a dozen candidates so far, and I’d trust you more than any of them. And, I’ve seen you with kids – you’re a natural."
Well, she’s seen me with teenagers, which are very different animals than toddlers, but Emiline IS a cute kid, and as she and I mug at each other I can sort of picture doing the child care thing for a few months. $10/hour after taxes is actually the most I’ve been offered in my life. So, I tell Callie I’ll think about it, and she tells me to get back to her ASAP. As I cut out of Phil’s, I’m less surprised that Callie thinks I look maternal (must be the hair) than that she’d trust me with her kid. First, there’s the "I’m a fraud" thing. And also, she’s got to have heard that I’m a trouble magnet!
- - - - - - -
I decide the meat will survive a quick trip to the Cascade docks to see how this morning’s catch looks. It turns out they have some king salmon just in from Alaska, so while it’s not what I had in mind it looks great and I pick up a couple of meals’ worth. I comment to Bill at the register that I thought it was still too early for king salmon and he says, no, the season is early this year, and that that’s a problem because his brother, Joe, likes to hire college kids on his boat and they won’t be available for a few more weeks. I mention that I’m looking for short-term work myself, and Bill says, "well, you’ve always seemed like an alright guy, and I know you’ve got to be able to handle yourself, what with your hanging out with the cops and all. Joe’d hire you in a flash."
A fishing boat! Talk about closed societies! Of course, I don’t dare leave Jim, even for a few weeks, but the offer is tempting.
- - - - - -
It’s a warm day, so I get the meat and fish home and then go to my favorite sandwich shop, Great Sprouts, for an early lunch (since I’m getting all the groceries on Jim, I’m feeling flush). There’s a "Help Wanted" sign in the window, and as I sit down with my organic cucumber and chicken sandwich Kelly, my waitress, slides into the booth across from me. "Blair, hon, at some point you have GOT to tell me what’s behind what I’ve been seein’ on TV about you and your cop buddy. Don’t forget who your friends are, okay?"
Kelly’s the first person outside of Major Crimes to actually mention the mess my life has become in such a straighforward manner. I find this curiously non-upsetting – I guess I’m just having too good a day to be rattled – and I keep her chatting for five or ten minutes, since her daughter, Jill, seems to be doing fine serving the other couple of customers. I ask her about the sign in the window, and she says that they’re looking for some to replace Jill, essentially, since the kid has nailed a summer internship at Cascade General. I’d thought Jill was 16 or something, but she’s third year premed at Rainier. She’s gotten tired of working at the restaurant on her off days, and Kelly doesn’t blame her. I’m not the least surprised when Kelly offers me the job, and she’s not surprised when I turn it down. I’m really starting to feel pretty good, though.
- - - - - - -
It’s getting close to noon, and the place starts to get busy, so I let Kelly get back to work and head out myself, to Wild America, where I expect to get most of what I need. There’s a help-wanted sign there too. Working retail of some sort has started to seem like a not-so-bad idea after talking to Kelly, even if I don’t really want to wait tables for tips and leftover beansprouts, so on a whim I head to the back office to see what they’re looking for. It seems they need register help. Right now. Desperately. So, I say I can start any time, though I can’t guarantee I’ll be there long (like, tomorrow). The guy I’m talking to, Reggie, doesn’t know me from Adam, but while we’re talking a few of the staffmembers who've been there a while and know my face drift past and say "hi", which seems to be good enough for Reggie. He says the big problem with me actually starting at that instant is that I need a background check, and those take a few days. I smile and hand him Jim’s card; 90 seconds and one phone call later, I’m being taught how to operate a cash register by a flirtatious septuagenarian named Claudice.
Believe it or not, I’ve always been afraid of the whole cash register setup. But, it turns out that I’ve got a great wrist for catching the laser scanner, first swipe. Claudice can’t get enough of it, as she constantly lets me know after she’s moved to the register next to mine. I’ve gotten enough of her, though, after an hour, so as the lunchtime shopping crowd dissipates Reggie decides it’s time for me to learn to work in the shelves. I know the store well, so I catch on quickly.
I’ve been facing shelves for about a half-hour when I notice a young woman holding a heavyset young man by the arm and talking to him intently. In a gut-turning instant I recognize the woman – Hilary Founder, whom I’d TA’d a few years before in Anthro 101. She’d been a senior sociology major fulfilling her distribution requirements. Intelligent, a little sullen, no more original than she’d had to be, but basically okay. I wander over, and hear her say, "you’re doing a good job, Bobby, really, but you have to be careful in the lot! That car could really have hurt you, and the driver could have been hurt too!"
Bobby is obviously having a hard time keeping it together.
Hilary notices me and looks like she wishes she didn’t have an audience. "Oh, Mr. Sandburg! Do you shop here?"
"Yeah, and I work here too!" I turn to Bobby, and say, "Hi, I’m Blair. Do you work here also?"
"Yes" says Bobby, shyly and glumly.
"Then we’re co-workers! I’m learning to front shelves today. Have you done any of that?"
"Yes" says Bobby, a bit more brightly.
"What’s your favorite department? Which section do you like best?"
"The jellies," he says, "because I like to think about eating them."
"Ha, I like the chips, for the same reason!"
Bobby is smiling now, and Hilary sends him back out to the parking lot to collect more carts; we both watch as he crosses carefully over to the cart return area.
"Okay, I know what I’m doing here," says Hilary. "Sociology majors don’t have a lot of options. So, I’m working as a coach until I figure out whether or not I want to go to law school. But what are YOU doing here?"
I laugh. "Don’t watch the news much, do you?"
"Too depressing, and I’m working 60 hour weeks with 6 different clients right now anyway. What happened?"
"Long story."
She sighs. Hilary sighs I lot, I remembered. "I’m not very good at this job. I’m not patient enough, and I don’t really LIKE people, ya know? But you seem like a natural."
I laugh. "What’s it pay?" I ask.
"You probably make more facing shelves," Hilary replies.
- - - - - -
I only have one other job offer. While restocking yogurt I run into a friend of Simon’s that I’d met at a barbecue once and she asks if I could tutor her son in math – and I take her name and number, though with just over a month left in the school year tutoring didn’t seem like something which would pay the rent. It might be interesting, though. It depends how my career in the grocery biz goes. Reggie has me do a few other things, and it’s 6 before I know it. I’d already cleared that as my quitting time, so I use my brand new 20% employee discount to stock up, then I head home.
- - - - - -
It’s 7:30 by the time I open the door to the loft, serially carrying five bags of groceries and a couple of Wild America faux Hawaiian shirts, my uniform for tomorrow. Jim has the salmon and some new potatoes grilling on the deck.
"So… where’ve you been, and who the heck was ‘Reggie from Wild America’".
"At work, and Reggie’s my new Simon," I say, "well, without the cigars, the height, the stature, and the bullet and stab wounds."
"You got a JOB?"
"Well – I could keep carry this around, I guess," I say, handing Jim back his debit card.
"But you don’t need to work at a grocery store!"
"Jim…" How to explain this. "Jim, I’ve had a great day. Everywhere I went, people threw jobs at me. Any idea how that makes me feel?"
"I’ve thrown a job at you, and you don’t seem too thrilled with it."
"This has nothing to do with – that," I say. I sigh. "You’ve offered me a job out of guilt…"
"No! It’s out of selfishness, Blair…"
I wave him quiet. "Whatever. Whatever. But it was great today to have people who AREN’T – um – involved with stuff, want to have me around. To want to PAY me. This is going to sound ridiculous, but Reggie said that I was the quickest study he’d ever seen, and that makes me, like, SO happy! I mean, I know that I probably have the highest GREs of anyone working there, so I guess it’s not such an achievement, but – do you know how long it has been since I was really GOOD at something that someone else could notice?"
Jim’s looking at me like I’m crazy. "I know Simon is a bit skimpy in his compliments…"
"Oh, Simon and I worked that out ages ago. I’m talking about Rainier here, man… I haven’t gotten an attaboy from anyone there since before I met you. Never knew it bothered me, but today I realized I LIKE being liked, you know?"
"I never noticed," Jim deadpans.
I chuckle. And realize we are talking, sort of.
*** The End ***
Author’s notes: This story was inspired by watching someone try to coach a mentally retarded man who was responsible for fetching shopping carts from the parking lot of a Trader Joe’s. The coach was being way too mean, and I wondered what sort of person would take that sort of job – whether this was one of the things you do when you have a BS in sociology but can’t decide what to do next. That got me to thinking about Blair and his situation
Feedback welcomed. helenw@murphnet.org.