Well, before you brace yourself for a long and preachy diatribe about how work sucks, I have learned many lessons over the past ten years, and am currently (at the time of this writing) quite happy with my employment situation. It's been a long road, however, thanks to bad luck and, quite frankly, general laziness on my part to look for better jobs. Fair enough, but I did hit a lot of random and annoying obstacles which you may find entertaining, and it just so happens that I'm going to tell you all about them.

I had no friends in the Bay Area upon my arrival, and I already had about $1000 debt to deal with. Since I could type a good 80 words per minute, I snagged some really fast work with ADIA Temporary Services. I cut off my unkempt hair, wore a suit and tie, and immediately obtained a data entry position for some home equity loan company in San Ramon. I'd wake up at 6:30, wash up, drive in traffic to the hot and sunny San Ramon, sit still in front of a poorly positioned computer entering numbers from hundreds of loan forms all day every day for $8.50 an hour, and then drive home in the traffic, getting in at 6:00 and eating spaghetti with butter for dinner. After rent, gas for the car, and paying interest on accumulating credit card debt, $8.50 an hour adds up to spaghetti with butter for dinner.

Five weeks was all it took to completely destroy my hands, as I became the proud recipient of ulna neuritis, tendonitis, and carpal tunnel syndrome all at once. Here I was, a transient who moved to California to attempt to pursue a music career, and I nearly ruined all chances of that within two months. Now I had to sit at home doing nothing. I still had no friends in my new home town, so I sulked in my room all day thinking about music (since I couldn't pick up and play my instruments without my hands screaming). My debt grew larger as I couldn't work and the disability checks I got through ADIA barely covered rent for the month.

My hands healed eventually, or at least enough that I went back to doing temp work, sticking to assignments which involved less typing and therefore paid a lot less money. I worked short stints with strange and varied companies, including Law & Economics, The American Narcoleptic Society, DMC, and Mitchell Floyd Music.

(Editor's Note: Most of the names in the following Mitchell Floyd episode are fake, in hopes to avoid litigation. However, all the remaining facts and events are unfortunately true).

Mitchell Floyd, and his wife, Gabby Faure, ran Mitchell Floyd Music, a music production company responsible for many popular radio and TV commercials and themes. They were both incredibly shrewd businesspeople, and had to be since they earned millions a year on a modicum of talent (Mitchell had no knowledge about music theory, nor could he read or write music at all, and Gabby proudly admitted she could play kazoo but that was about it). They called me in as a temp to help file some backlogged paperwork. When they found out I had a degree in music as well as computer science, they figured I'd be good to have around to help do their banking, scheduling, and invoicing on the computer, as well as help out on the musical end of things. I scored some big points saying I loved Brian Eno as well, as Mitchell was big on fashionable minimalism.

They started me at $7 an hour for 30 hours a week. They even paid the $1000 finder's fee to ADIA. I thought, finally, my musical talents had a venue to be recognized. Unfortunately, first I had to "pay my dues," according to Gabby. This coming from a woman whose family owned a vineyard, and who also married into wealth.

Let me tell you a little about my "dues." I spent three weeks entering bibliographic information into a database about the 3000 or so art books Mitchell collected and desired to insure. Why insure books? Well, being collector's items, their total value was estimated at over a million bucks. After this long and mind-numbing task, Gabby printed out the 100-page list, threw it in a folder, placed it in a drawer, and forgot about it.

I also spent four weeks cleaning up and carrying out boxes and boxes and boxes of garbage in their loft in Emeryville, which they decided to convert from a dismal, dirty art storage space into an immaculate recording studio. I pulled a muscle in my chest during this long and arduous procedure, making it difficult to breathe without pain, but I kept on working, scrubbing the remodeled bathroom floor and scraping paint off furniture with noxious chemicals.

As well, I could be counted on to help them fill out endless union forms (sometimes containing false information in order to increase the pay to musicians from which they bought drugs) and babysit their baby son, Louis, who was three years old and a ways from being potty trained. I also became their own personal limousine service, carting session musicians to and from the airport, and picking up random art and household appliances they ordered over the phone.

I busted my hump in order to eventually earn the right to be creatively involved in this company, and after a few months they allowed me to transcribe some vocal charts for an upcoming session down in LA. I spent an entire day at the piano transcribing some poorly sung scratch vocals laid down by Mitchell, only to have them leave for the session without these charts. "Eh, we didn't need them," Gabby told me afterward. Thanks. That made me feel so wanted.

Feeling I slaved long enough for little pay I asked Gabby for a raise. This request was met with anger, along with a counter-request that maybe I should work a little harder and maybe then I'll be worth a raise. Needless to say I grew quite bitter with this job.

Then Jack Smith appeared, guitarist for a horrible 80's band with hits plastered all over MTV. I remembered being 13 years old and seeing his goofy face on the TV, wondering how such a lame band could make it that far. Now, ten years later, I was working for him, as he became partners with Mitchell in the wild and wacky world of music production.

Jack never liked me, especially after he saw the "Corporate Rock Still Sucks" bumper sticker affixed to my car. "What does that mean?" he asked, all angry and shit. Later that week he called me into the studio to play some awful keyboard string part for a Bayer radio ad he needed to wrap up. Once I got a good take down to tape he snapped, "See? Corporate Rock isn't so bad, is it?"

Another day, Jack took me aside and yelled at me, calling me a "frightened rabbit." This because I mishandled a call from some angry insurance lawyer who called Mitchell's line out of the blue and began yelling at me, when this asshole was really looking for Jack about some claim he made a week ago which I knew absolutely nothing about. Oh, whatever!

Fortunately, Mitchell never liked Jack, and dissolved their partnership as fast as it began. The lawyers came running to annul this partnership. It was like a divorce, complete with loud and petty arguments about who owned which snake cables, rack gear, and the like.

At this point I hated everyone involved in this lousy, shifty business, and my bad attitude became more and more apparent to my employers. You may be thinking to yourself, "I can't believe this Matt guy would throw away this golden opportunity to be in the wacky and lucrative ad business." Well, shit. Let me tell you more about why I found it difficult to hang on for dear life.

I sat by and silently watched Gabby scrawl fake names on a music union sheet in order to get a few extra bucks from a dumb Japanese car manufacturer who couldn't tell all the instruments were sampled and not played by the LA musicians she claimed. I witnessed the constant injustice of Mitchell getting $10,000 creative fees for simply gathering some local Bay Area musicians together and having them record a few jams. He paid these musicians, the real creators of this music, about $150 each for their troubles. And, once while being treated to lunch, I got an earful about the time he scored with a sixteen year old girl because she thought he and a friend of his were Hall & Oates.

One day I arrived at work at 10:00 and both Mitchell and Gabby were in full panic mode. They had a big deal with some ad agency in San Francisco, but to seal the deal they needed a DAT of some material for an 11:00 meeting. However, they were already late for some session elsewhere, so it was up to me to procure this DAT and get it to SF ASAP.

Somehow I did it. I sped from their house in the Berkeley hills to their studio in Emeryville only to find their DAT machines weren't hooked up to anything. All the cables were a mess, and all the source tapes were buried in the closet, filed in no particular order. I scrambled and found the right tapes to copy, the right cables to hook up two DAT machines, and set the process going. Meanwhile I fought with their old Mac computer to type in and print out nice labels for this DAT.

Once done, I fled to the city. I risked life, limb, and traffic tickets as I sped over the bridge, swerved around cars in the business district, and double parked. I then booked up two flights of stairs, and handed the nicely labeled, freshly copied DAT to the secretary. She informed me I got here just in time, as the meeting was just about to start. I looked at the clock. It was 11:01. Phew.

The next morning I arrived to work and was met with an onslaught of complaints from Gabby. She reprimanded me for leaving their studio a complete mess yesterday, as the DAT machines, the tapes, and several cables were still laying around on the floor after yesterday's frenzy. Instead of getting thanked for saving their ass and getting them yet another $10,000 ad job, I found myself apologizing, again, for a job not-so-well done.

All told, this whole experience was one big psyche-out. My first day on the job Mitchell happily informed me, "if you play your cards right, you'll be running your own sessions within a year." Well, six months had passed and my work days were spent wandering down to the lumberyard to scout out the strongest looking migrant workers to help landscape Mitchell's back yard, or going to the catering company near the studio to obtain matches so Mitchell could get stoned again. In other words, it seemed like very little progress has been made in my career, and I hated everybody involved.

I needed to scrape up a little bit of money before quitting, but I was losing the waiting game. Due to some bungled record keeping, Gabby bounced a $27,000 check, and regardless of the fact she couldn't balance her own damn checkbook to within $27,000, it was my fault. I guess I was also their full time accountant, and I didn't catch and prevent this error. Maybe they shouldn't have dropped that $27,000 on a black, 100 pound, metal sculpture of a cube which Mitchell later tripped over during a dinner party and their son later cut himself against its sharp corners. Idiots.

Of course, I found out about the bounced check while I was on vacation back east with my folks. How did I find out? Gabby called my parents' house to inform me. What was I supposed to do about it since I was 3,000 miles away? I don't know. So did she call me just to tell me she how pissed off she was? I guess so. Did this news ruin the rest of my vacation? More or less, yeah. Why the hell did I leave my parents' number with Gabby? I don't know.

The work week after that vacation was miserable. I couldn't do anything right, and both Mitchell and Gabby had permanent expressions on their faces that said, "What the hell is wrong with you?" I stumbled into work on Friday and wham, bam, I was FIRED. Gabby sat me down, cracked a awkward smile, and said "we have to let you go." Though it was hardly a shock, it was still terribly upsetting.

Even after handing me my pink slip in the morning, Gabby fully expected me to spend the remainder of my last day entering more info into the aforementioned useless art book database about 200 friggin' books they recently purchased. She then yelled at me for sitting around and staring into space instead of continuing to work with unrivaled vim and vigor these final hours.

If you've never been fired, let me tell you: it sucks rocks. I felt like I lost my golden chance to make a musical statement on this earth. I felt like I had it all in my hands and I dropped the ball. Over time I came to realize I simply worked for a couple of deceptive, clueless, yuppie-ass stoner jerks, and should be quite thankful I don't anymore. Maybe if I held on I could have been writing jingles for Hamburger Helper today.

Sigh. I quickly hopped back into the corporate saddle, getting full time work with DMC, a company I previously temped for and therefore already knew the ropes. Once again, I was back to wearing the shirt and tie, cutting my hair, and sitting in front of computers all day. At least now I knew the preventative measures to help stave off the dreaded CTS.

What did I do at this job? Well, DMC existed as an adjunct to Pacific Gas & Electric, and we had PG&E customers fill out lengthy questionnaires about their energy usage if they happened to be curious about why their bills were so damn high. They'd send the forms to us, a line of data entry temps would sit in a pen entering their scribbles into a computer, and then crude algorithms would be run on the data to generate neat little pie charts which we'd send back.

As a temp I was a proud part of the data entry pen, expected to only enter 150 complete forms a day and nothing more. When I was hired full time my pay increased from $8.00 to $8.43 an hour, which was still hardly enough to help me claw my way out of debt. However, with this whopping raise came an onslaught of new responsibilities.

I spent half my mornings training new temps. Unlike myself, most of the temps at this place didn't survive more than a week. Some barely survived a whole day. Oh lemme just say it: they were all supreme losers! Well, except for one guy who, despite the fact he chugged a six pack of Mountain Dew a day, had a slightly firm grasp on reality. In any case, every time a new one showed up I had to go through the same damn thing with them, and then supervise them during the remainder of their brief stay with our company. I also took over some systems administration tasks, i.e. network backups, shaking toner cartridges, and repeatedly removing viruses from people's computers. Above and beyond that, I was still expected to enter data from those cursed questionnaires all day.

Since I was a new guy at the company, I more or less had to work all through the holidays, and without overtime pay. I spent an incredibly dark and cold December completely alone, unable to travel home to visit the family since I was stuck working this lousy no-pay job, whereas all my friends and housemates got to leave and go someplace warm without me.

Sometime during this most depressing of holiday seasons I happened to stumbled upon some paperwork regarding one of the current temps. As it turns out, DMC paid ADIA $14 an hour for their temps, $8 of which goes to the temp and $6 went to ADIA. That meant that even though DMC saved $6 an hour for every hour after they hired me full time, they passed only 43 cents worth of the savings to me.

This more or less crushed whatever remaining spirit I had, and the brightest part of my life at this point came every day at 10:00am when I'd sneak off downstairs to buy a donut from the tiny shop in the lobby. Occasionally I'd splurge and spend an extra 10 cents to get a bear claw. Outside of that everything sucked.

And despite all my effort at work through this time, I was laid off in mid January since the company was low on funds, and I was low on the seniority pole. I was laid off along with four other people who were also hired around the same time as myself to help with the big December crunch. With December now in the rear-view mirror, we got tossed out like trash. Our severance package consisted solely of a photocopied brochure about how to compose a successful resume.

The night I found out I would soon be unemployed again Gabby (see above) called to inform me that, despite their promise to cover taxes for me, she was going to 1099 me for all the money I received during my employment with Mitchell Floyd Music. Flabbergasted, I hung up on her.

On our last day the entire DMC gang took the five of us laid-off losers out to lunch at some sports bar. We weren't even treated to this fine cuisine; when the bill came we had to throw in six bucks along with everyone else. Thanks. Thanks a lot.