Octavia Hansen

Transportation. A Way Of Life . . . Maybe



Posted: Friday, December 02, 2011

by Octavia Hansen
Octavia Hansen

Every so often I think I should be working a "real job" so I throw out resumes for what I deem appropriate work. Since I don't have to work (Well, I do but that's another story . . . ) I am very picky as to where I throw my name about, what info I impart, what I apply for. Most of this is a waste of time, as any job hunter over the last decade will confirm. A lot of job sites are spam fronts, collecting contact info for later spam -- there being no job connected to what was posted. Since the internet took over most people's minds, jobs, people skills, spare time and communication, I have to assume (yes, I know the witty adage about 'assuming' anything) there is little effective other way to span the global search for gainful employment.

Gainful employment. Yea, like there's any other kind. Is there anyone sweating, giving up valuable hours of their life, just to break even or worse, to lose money? There are things done just for the love of it. Most of my life has been like that -- strangely enough, until about five years ago this was actually making money for me. I am an artist by profession, which has covered everything from corporate logos, billboards, hand painting on shirts, wall murals or postage stamp size spot illustrations to touching up the gleam on a carousel horse's eye at the Texas State Fair. I like to think I am not finished in my endeavor to beautify the world. Oddly enough, every time there is a drop in business, the first thing to be cut is the advertising budget, which has always signaled the doom of whatever business I was then employed. If the world is not informed by advertising of their goods or services, how was the world supposed to engage them? Sort of like a dying man in the desert not calling for water, saving his energy so he can die later.

Since I was emailing in bulk, most job listings on the internet having an address assigned to the post -- making the writer/company anonymous, I have no idea which of these fine establishments insulted my intelligence by contacting me. I suspect it was some lackey/flunky who needed to chalk up some kind of connection to justify their minimal existence in that corporation that holds sway over their life, scaring them into submission by proving most of the world is unemployed and they, too, could be on the receiving end of these dead emails if they don't rack up some numbers.

It's a mouthful but these are the kind of thoughts that arrow through my brain when someone pulls the mental string back . . . I just let go and aim for a bullseye.

The one line email read:

Would you be interested in a job in transportation?

Transportation. I know the definition of this term, I have friends in the business. But about one hundred years ago, it was akin to a death sentence. In England, for just about any offense that didn't end in immediate hanging, the next worst thing was to be sentenced to "Transportation." You became either a slave of the Crown, sent away on the next boat and expected to work off whatever you owed in the colonies (at one time this was Georgia in America, then later Australia) or you were simply sent to somewhere else in the empire so you wouldn't be a burden to the local legal system ever again, nor taking up space and food in the jails.

Transportation -- even though you became a "free" man (no longer incarcerated), you were ripped from everything and everyone you had ever known, thrown into if not a barren land then a hostile one, and had to begin again scratching out the meager living that probably caused you to cross into the poor attempt at a life of crime that got you into that mess in the first place. Not much improvement, perhaps a more lateral move, but you did get a free sea voyage out of it, met new people and didn't die in a dark, damp cell filled with other felons, rats, diseases or generally social lepers. But enough of the glamour side of this history lesson . . .

Me being the wordy gal that I am, having a lot of time on my hands after repainting the house; changing my wardrobe from Summer to Winter; draining the pool, painting a mural of 'Venus Born Of The Seafoam' across the bottom to humor passing airplanes, then refilling; scraping off the remains of dinner's past from an oven of unknown age and giving myself the best pedicure since the last one, decided to answer this one line, life changing email from source (or sources) yet unknown.

Yea, like there was actually a job attached to this anyway.

Oh, yes! Please give me ALL the information about a job in transportation!

After spending my formative years drawing everything I ever saw, straining through four years of University, employed twenty plus years in the print and advertising industry, winning numerous awards, honing my skills by computer courses, on the job training, sheer determination and love of all things artistic -- I'm ready to throw away the first half of my life, abandon all that I have ever loved for a crack at minimum wage, long hours and probable verbal and psychological abuse by management, so I can be employed in transportation.

Would this be loading? I can achieve the muscle strain, head banging, permanent back strain I hear so much about by my friends who can no longer bend to pick up a quarter on the pavement . . .

Or would this be an office job? I can sit for hours, nay days, under life-sucking fluorescent 60-cycle humming lights while filling in tedious numbers one through ten in the appropriate boxes until the phrase "going postal" tornadoes inside my skull, waiting to manifest itself later in this hideous career . . .

Or would this entail driving? Yeah, travel across the country at breakneck speeds, passing everything, never stopping to check out anything that makes this country is as wonderful as it is, isolated for days, drinking coffee I wouldn't use to remove paint, trying to converse with the Neanderthal populace that somehow got a hold of a driver's licence (is that really their picture?) and a vehicle the size of a house who terrorize traffic until they hopefully meet their doom in a firery one truck accident, instead of taking out a packed school bus, a dozen private cars and landing in an old folks home of which they will never be of that age to take advantage.

Hey, some days, I'm just better than others at stringing words together. They caught me on a good day. What else could I do?

I never have heard anything back from whatever e-company or transportation house received this epistle. (You know, when you don't get an answer for something, you can make up your own rejection notice . . . I used to do this for men who did not call back after a date, or who stood me up even before the date. Hours of entertainment.) I like to think that either the email service or the actual company read through my tirade and decided I was too unstable . . . even for them!

Kind of like Alice's Restaurant.

And if you don't get this connection . . . go find a copy of Arlo Guthrie's (who is currently playing at Carnegie Hall, NYC) Alice's Restaurant, a Thanksgiving Day/Vietnam Armed Conflict anti-draft narrative, a little bit of singing, explanation of why he couldn't do something . . . and you'll understand.

"You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant . . ."
Octavia (Yes, that's her real name!) is a busy gal in Las Vegas, NV. From New York City parents and Texas birth, she began in the best of both worlds, literate and comical. Extensive US family travel in her younger years, now she's on her third passport and numerous cars driven to pieces in the name of wanderlust. The Big O settled in Las Vegas, which she compares to running away to join the circus - IT'S FUN! Comedy and alternative thinking come easily. When she's not writing, she sings, she writes songs, produces her own CDs, attracted to shiny objects, looks stunning at renaissance festivals across the country and is only stopped by lack of time for all the projects she has in mind. What a woman!
This Article has been viewed 168 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
No comments yet.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.