A hero for today’s workplace, this professional pretender worked 82 jobs over the past 20 years, from CEO to porn writer to morgue driver. Meet Brandon Christopher, part con artist, part hustler – 100% funny – and learn important tips, like: why just quit when you can take a dump on your boss’s brand-new Benz? Hot off the press, enjoy this excerpt.
THE MORTUARY DRIVER: JOB #30
Spending two months in your apartment without a job is a lot like visiting another country without a camera: It’s great while you’re there but then some time later, when you’re back home, you start forgetting about all those good times you had and only vaguely begin to recall those magnificent sights you once saw when watching French films on TV.
My eight-week vacation had burned through all $2,100 that I had saved up. And since I had quit my previous job—or, to be more precise, just walked away from my previous job—I was again unable to get any money from the unemployment department. I had to look for work yet again, and that next morning I was ready with a fresh pot of Starbucks coffee, the Daily Variety, the previous day’s L.A. Times and my laptop computer. By 10:20, I had already faxed and emailed 11 résumés to various positions that I thought might be of some interest, and called several other companies that I felt more than qualified for.
There were no callbacks by noon. No email replies by the third cup of coffee. Nothing. By 2:45 I was beginning to worry. Had I lost my touch? Was 29 jobs the limit for one person? Was I going to have to borrow money from my parents or, even worse, get a retail job? Too many questions, at least on only three cups of coffee.
By 4 in the afternoon I was frantically emailing every job on four separate employment websites. There had never been this long of a lull before getting some type of reply from a prospective employer. I began adding even more variations to my résumé, equipping myself with working knowledge of almost any position available. By 4:25 I was a qualified landscape technician, an executive assistant, and a script supervisor, an office manager, and finally, a medical billing assistant. Still no calls. Quitting time for the day grew nearer, as did the worry.
