Askville Posts #17: The Most Bizarre Job

My answer to the Askville question "What is the most bizarre job you have ever had?". Long-time readers here have read all or most of this before, of course.

Given the subject matter, I'm not sure this answer will be allowed to stay up!

---

Working for a porn company 

I was quite the prude when I was growing up. I liked girls - very much indeed - but any public display of romance or sexuality embarrassed me terribly (although I must admit that there was also a terrible fascination in it, too). I’d close or cover my eyes when people kissed on TV or in the movies, for example. 

Blame it on natural shyness and an upbringing that could be considered abusive, in some ways. In any case, I even managed to get through college without really dating. 

Right after college, I planned to live with my parents in Connecticut for six months. I’d do temp work and save up my money so that I could move to the city of Boston, which I’ve always loved. The economy wasn’t too bad at the time, so I signed up with a temp agency and was given my first assignment right away: a publishing company in a small city nearby. I’d been interested in literature and publishing from a very young age, so I was quite excited. 

I was also nervous; I’d worked through much of high school, but a new job is always a frightening experience. Since I wasn’t exactly sure where the job was, my whole family drove over to find the building on the day before I was to start work. 

It was in a recently-gentrified district of an old seaport city. Lots of brick and new old-fashioned-looking iron lampposts. Really quite a pretty area, and only about a twenty-minute drive from my home. 

We found the building rather easily. The odd thing was that there wasn’t any sign on the building, apart from the street number. And there weren’t any windows on the ground floor or second floor. But there were some large windows on the third, top floor. 

We were all wondering why there were no windows or signs. "It’s a porn company!" I said, joking. 

But it was no joke when I arrived for work the next day. Yes, it was a porn and adult-products company. My job was data entry; I took letters and orders from customers, and entered their names and addresses into the company mailing list. My co-workers were almost all middle-aged black women, who were quite hilarious. The bosses (who occasionally came down from the third floor to amuse us) were all bright, funny young Brits. I remember one of them had a huge penis-shaped water pistol which he sometimes loaded with the company’s "spurious" Spanish Fly juice. Everyone would duck when he waved that thing around. But I never got sprayed. 

Another one once used one of the inflatable dolls - a "Heavenly Angel with optional heat, vibration, and tape-cassette speaking module" (this counted as high tech at the time, in the late 80s) - as a puppet, and cracked everybody up. The thing looked like a pink Barbie-doll princess Halloween mask glued to a roughly girl-shaped pink vinyl lifeboat. My understanding is that the technology has improved a lot since then.  

It was all quite a shock, of course, but I soon found that I was enjoying myself. The work itself was mindless, but went quickly enough; the pay was good; my co-workers and bosses were all funny, genial people; and it certainly was an interesting experience. 

It helped that there was a great little lunch counter on the same block, and an absolutely wonderful Victorian-style used book shop across the street. And the shop had a friendly cat, too! That was my idea of heaven.  

There were quite a few odd and amusing events on the job. The police came in for inspections, a few times; they were quite professional about it, just looked around for a while and then left. I’ve never worked anywhere else where regular police inspections were a part of the job, though. 

Employees who had to deal with the public in any way (on the phone, for example) all had made-up porn names. They used to laugh themselves silly over it. "John Steele". "Candi Boxxx". I was always a little disappointed that I never got to make up a name for myself, but I never dealt with the public. 

The letters themselves were a revelation to my prudish young mind. Yes, of course I read them; I’m a very fast reader, and who could resist reading mail sent to a porn company? Some letters were addressed to the company’s spokesmodel at the time, Seka. One farm boy from Dakota asked about a contest the company was running at the time; if he won it, would part of his prize be to take Miss Seka out on a date? He ventured to guess that she looked like a "real good milker". Apparently he worked with Holsteins a lot. 

One woman wrote and asked to have a custom-made vibrator built for her. She gave her specifications; I did a quick calculation and realized that she was asking for something built to the dimensions of a three-liter soda bottle! She also expressed an interest in acting. 

An angry customer wrote asking for a refund. He’d bought "spurious Spanish Fly sugar" and was angry that it hadn’t worked. You’d have thought that the word "spurious" (which was included in the name of all products of that type that the company sold) would have been a giveaway to him that it wasn’t supposed to work. But I guess he thought that "spurious" was a Spanish word that meant "extra powerful", or something.  

One customer sent a rather sad note along with a product return. He was returning an Arab Strap (if you don’t know what it is, don’t ask); in his letter, he said "please do not sell this to anyone else, as I have used it and I have AIDS." One of the area managers used a pair of tongs to take the whole thing (including the envelope) off to be destroyed. This was the late 80s, after all, and AIDS was still new and mysterious. Apparently those tongs weren’t there by coincidence; some angry customers mailed in all sorts of bizarre stuff, including plastic bags full of feces. Fortunately I never ran into anything like that. 

Another angry person sent a piece of paper covered in cut-out pictures of penises, with the crudely scrawled demand that the reader should "stick this in you @ss!!!" (sic). Oddly enough they also scrawled a bunch of crosses at the bottom of the letter. 

Of course we received a few angry letters from fundamentalist Christians. I must admit that I wondered how they’d gotten the address.  

But you know, most of the letters were actually...well, "nice" doesn’t seem like the right word for it. But I’d started the job thinking that anyone who bought porn or adult products must be a disgusting pig, morally repulsive. Reading their letters, though, I saw that they were just people - some of them not too bright, admittedly, but for the most part they seemed rather friendly and well-intentioned. They had needs, but that didn’t make them bad.  

Once I’d seen inside their lives a bit by reading their letters, I found I couldn’t despise them. I even felt a sort of amused affection for them. And to be honest, I had to admit that I shared many of the same needs that they wrote about. Who isn’t interested in sex, after all? 

After about six months I’d saved up a good chunk of money, so I gave notice and took off for Boston. I had more weird jobs there; I temped for a union that went on strike against itself, for example. I spent quite a while doing temp work in DSS departments in the region, and saw some strange and tragic stories of families and lives gone terribly wrong. And I spent eight horrible years working for a venture-capital law firm - I have plenty of stories about that hellish place. 

I seem to be a magnet for strangeness. Even before college, I’d had some strange jobs; for example, I spent one day doing a delivery job, and quit when I discovered that I’d been going through an area where people like me were sometimes stopped, pulled out of their cars, and discovered in chunks throughout the area for months afterwards. I worked in a Burger King (and I’ll never eat there again), where the manager rewarded his workers by pulling up a van with a hooker in it at lunchtime; boy, did I have to talk fast to get out of that one! 

But for the past ten years I’ve worked at a large non-profit company with a wonderfully calm and sane corporate culture (well, compared to the other places I’ve worked, anyway). I overcame my shyness, got married, and we have a wonderful little red-headed boy. 

With any luck, my bizarre-job days are over forever.

Askville Posts #17: The Most Bizarre Job

My answer to the Askville question "What is the most bizarre job you have ever had?". Long-time readers here have read all or most of this before, of course.

Given the subject matter, I'm not sure this answer will be allowed to stay up!

---

Working for a porn company 

I was quite the prude when I was growing up. I liked girls - very much indeed - but any public display of romance or sexuality embarrassed me terribly (although I must admit that there was also a terrible fascination in it, too). I’d close or cover my eyes when people kissed on TV or in the movies, for example. 

Blame it on natural shyness and an upbringing that could be considered abusive, in some ways. In any case, I even managed to get through college without really dating. 

Right after college, I planned to live with my parents in Connecticut for six months. I’d do temp work and save up my money so that I could move to the city of Boston, which I’ve always loved. The economy wasn’t too bad at the time, so I signed up with a temp agency and was given my first assignment right away: a publishing company in a small city nearby. I’d been interested in literature and publishing from a very young age, so I was quite excited. 

I was also nervous; I’d worked through much of high school, but a new job is always a frightening experience. Since I wasn’t exactly sure where the job was, my whole family drove over to find the building on the day before I was to start work. 

It was in a recently-gentrified district of an old seaport city. Lots of brick and new old-fashioned-looking iron lampposts. Really quite a pretty area, and only about a twenty-minute drive from my home. 

We found the building rather easily. The odd thing was that there wasn’t any sign on the building, apart from the street number. And there weren’t any windows on the ground floor or second floor. But there were some large windows on the third, top floor. 

We were all wondering why there were no windows or signs. "It’s a porn company!" I said, joking. 

But it was no joke when I arrived for work the next day. Yes, it was a porn and adult-products company. My job was data entry; I took letters and orders from customers, and entered their names and addresses into the company mailing list. My co-workers were almost all middle-aged black women, who were quite hilarious. The bosses (who occasionally came down from the third floor to amuse us) were all bright, funny young Brits. I remember one of them had a huge penis-shaped water pistol which he sometimes loaded with the company’s "spurious" Spanish Fly juice. Everyone would duck when he waved that thing around. But I never got sprayed. 

Another one once used one of the inflatable dolls - a "Heavenly Angel with optional heat, vibration, and tape-cassette speaking module" (this counted as high tech at the time, in the late 80s) - as a puppet, and cracked everybody up. The thing looked like a pink Barbie-doll princess Halloween mask glued to a roughly girl-shaped pink vinyl lifeboat. My understanding is that the technology has improved a lot since then.  

It was all quite a shock, of course, but I soon found that I was enjoying myself. The work itself was mindless, but went quickly enough; the pay was good; my co-workers and bosses were all funny, genial people; and it certainly was an interesting experience. 

It helped that there was a great little lunch counter on the same block, and an absolutely wonderful Victorian-style used book shop across the street. And the shop had a friendly cat, too! That was my idea of heaven.  

There were quite a few odd and amusing events on the job. The police came in for inspections, a few times; they were quite professional about it, just looked around for a while and then left. I’ve never worked anywhere else where regular police inspections were a part of the job, though. 

Employees who had to deal with the public in any way (on the phone, for example) all had made-up porn names. They used to laugh themselves silly over it. "John Steele". "Candi Boxxx". I was always a little disappointed that I never got to make up a name for myself, but I never dealt with the public. 

The letters themselves were a revelation to my prudish young mind. Yes, of course I read them; I’m a very fast reader, and who could resist reading mail sent to a porn company? Some letters were addressed to the company’s spokesmodel at the time, Seka. One farm boy from Dakota asked about a contest the company was running at the time; if he won it, would part of his prize be to take Miss Seka out on a date? He ventured to guess that she looked like a "real good milker". Apparently he worked with Holsteins a lot. 

One woman wrote and asked to have a custom-made vibrator built for her. She gave her specifications; I did a quick calculation and realized that she was asking for something built to the dimensions of a three-liter soda bottle! She also expressed an interest in acting. 

An angry customer wrote asking for a refund. He’d bought "spurious Spanish Fly sugar" and was angry that it hadn’t worked. You’d have thought that the word "spurious" (which was included in the name of all products of that type that the company sold) would have been a giveaway to him that it wasn’t supposed to work. But I guess he thought that "spurious" was a Spanish word that meant "extra powerful", or something.  

One customer sent a rather sad note along with a product return. He was returning an Arab Strap (if you don’t know what it is, don’t ask); in his letter, he said "please do not sell this to anyone else, as I have used it and I have AIDS." One of the area managers used a pair of tongs to take the whole thing (including the envelope) off to be destroyed. This was the late 80s, after all, and AIDS was still new and mysterious. Apparently those tongs weren’t there by coincidence; some angry customers mailed in all sorts of bizarre stuff, including plastic bags full of feces. Fortunately I never ran into anything like that. 

Another angry person sent a piece of paper covered in cut-out pictures of penises, with the crudely scrawled demand that the reader should "stick this in you @ss!!!" (sic). Oddly enough they also scrawled a bunch of crosses at the bottom of the letter. 

Of course we received a few angry letters from fundamentalist Christians. I must admit that I wondered how they’d gotten the address.  

But you know, most of the letters were actually...well, "nice" doesn’t seem like the right word for it. But I’d started the job thinking that anyone who bought porn or adult products must be a disgusting pig, morally repulsive. Reading their letters, though, I saw that they were just people - some of them not too bright, admittedly, but for the most part they seemed rather friendly and well-intentioned. They had needs, but that didn’t make them bad.  

Once I’d seen inside their lives a bit by reading their letters, I found I couldn’t despise them. I even felt a sort of amused affection for them. And to be honest, I had to admit that I shared many of the same needs that they wrote about. Who isn’t interested in sex, after all? 

After about six months I’d saved up a good chunk of money, so I gave notice and took off for Boston. I had more weird jobs there; I temped for a union that went on strike against itself, for example. I spent quite a while doing temp work in DSS departments in the region, and saw some strange and tragic stories of families and lives gone terribly wrong. And I spent eight horrible years working for a venture-capital law firm - I have plenty of stories about that hellish place. 

I seem to be a magnet for strangeness. Even before college, I’d had some strange jobs; for example, I spent one day doing a delivery job, and quit when I discovered that I’d been going through an area where people like me were sometimes stopped, pulled out of their cars, and discovered in chunks throughout the area for months afterwards. I worked in a Burger King (and I’ll never eat there again), where the manager rewarded his workers by pulling up a van with a hooker in it at lunchtime; boy, did I have to talk fast to get out of that one! 

But for the past ten years I’ve worked at a large non-profit company with a wonderfully calm and sane corporate culture (well, compared to the other places I’ve worked, anyway). I overcame my shyness, got married, and we have a wonderful little red-headed boy. 

With any luck, my bizarre-job days are over forever.

Askville Posts #18: Atheist Slander

My answer to the Askville question "If atheist believe in free speech, why do they slander Christians?" I've been discussing this a lot, of course, so my apologies that most of this isn't new.

Maybe I should write a book about the whole topic of atheism. What do you think?

---

I'm afraid that the question, as asked, doesn't quite make sense. Let me deconstruct it, and then I will try to give an answer.

1. Not all atheists necessarily believe in free speech. Atheists are not a uniform body. They share one point in common: they do not believe in the existence of any god or supernatural entity (and there are probably some self-described atheists who DO believe in some sort of supernatural being, although I can't see the sense in that myself). Apart from that, there are Republican atheists, Democratic atheists, Communist atheists, Libertarian atheists, neo-con atheists, socialist atheists...atheists who like chocolate ice cream...atheists who like vanilla ice cream...atheists with diabetes...pretty much the entire human spectrum of experience and thought is represented in the atheist community (with the obvious exception of theism, of course).

So while I hope that most atheists believe in free speech, I'm sure that some don't.

2. Belief in free speech does not preclude slander. In fact, it would be closer to say that the reverse is true; that free speech must, by definition, allow for the possibility of slander. In any case, this is very much an "apples vs. oranges" point. Free speech and slander are neither opposed nor interchangeable.

3. Suggesting that Christian belief is delusional or not based on demonstrable evidence is not "slander". Slander has a specific meaning: "In law, defamation (also called vilification, slander, and libel) is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressively stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation." (Wikipedia)

For such statements to be slander, they would have to be shown to be false. Since no one has irrefutably proven the existence of ANY supernatural being or force (much less the Christian God) no case for slander can be made.

It could also be argued that atheist arguments that Christianity is not based in fact do not harm anyone's reputation, since the vast majority of the American public is putatively Christian. Are they going to believe a fellow Christian, or the statements of a godless, immoral atheist - statements which impugn their own Christian belief just as much?

I'm afraid that simply disagreeing with Christian belief, annoying and frustrating as it undoubtedly is, is not in itself, slander. It's simply disagreeing. Yes, some atheists insult Christians, sometimes gratuitously; as an atheist myself, I regret that they do. But that's hardly a vice restricted to atheists. I've seen far more hatred and insults directed by so-called Christians towards atheists! Probably because there are so many more Christians than atheists.

You'll also see just as many - no, far more - insults being hurled around online and in the real world over politics, sports, and virtually any other topic on which two or more opinions exist.

I have seen a growing tendency in some Christians to claim that any disagreement with their belief, any expression of disbelief in theism, is somehow a brutal attack on Christianity. It is a common truism among some extremist American Christians that Christians are a persecuted people. This completely overlooks the fact that Christians rule America, rule atheists, and have since the founding of the Republic.

Every President has been a Christian, or at least a nominal Christian Deist. Every Senator has been Christian or Jewish. Virtually every Representative and state governor has been too. And it's not as if their faith isn't relevant; every single one of them has loudly proclaimed their religious devotion. This despite the fact that the Constitution mandates that "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States"! (Article VI, Section 3)

Meanwhile, atheists have lost jobs for not being Christian. They have had their cars keyed, tires slashed, and their children have faced ostracism and death threats in school - all for the "crime" of not being Christian. And (perhaps worse) for the crime of not shutting up, keeping their heads down, and quietly accepting extremist-Christian-inspired efforts by the government (the Christian government) to infringe on the basic protections afforded to all Americans by the First Amendment. Atheists in our schools and our military face real persecution and discrimination daily for their unbelief...and Christians claim to be persecuted in this country?

That's an insult to Christians and other theists around the world who really DO face persecution - and rape, torture, and murder - for their faith. At the hands of governments in the Middle East and China, for example.

I really am sorry that you feel attacked by the statements of atheists. And I regret any instances where you've been insulted or flamed by atheists; I think that such attacks are not only unproductive, but are actually harmful to the whole idea of inter-faith dialog. I've counseled atheists (and Christians) to try to avoid that approach, because all it does is hurt your own argument.

Having been on the receiving end of such flames (on all sorts of topics) I know how much they hurt. I'm an old Usenet veteran, so I've been called every name in the book. Heck, I was once called "an annoying little a--hole" in a nationally-distributed magazine. Now that was slander! I'm nearly six feet tall, and used to be a defensive tackle - no one has ever called me "little" to my face.

I still get a little angry when I think about that, to tell you the truth. But what I've learned is that is someone starts flaming you, it's a sign that they've run out of other things to say. The secret is to respond reasonably, and let the flames roll off your back - a lesson that I'm still learning.

Askville Posts #18: Atheist Slander

My answer to the Askville question "If atheist believe in free speech, why do they slander Christians?" I've been discussing this a lot, of course, so my apologies that most of this isn't new.

Maybe I should write a book about the whole topic of atheism. What do you think?

---

I'm afraid that the question, as asked, doesn't quite make sense. Let me deconstruct it, and then I will try to give an answer.

1. Not all atheists necessarily believe in free speech. Atheists are not a uniform body. They share one point in common: they do not believe in the existence of any god or supernatural entity (and there are probably some self-described atheists who DO believe in some sort of supernatural being, although I can't see the sense in that myself). Apart from that, there are Republican atheists, Democratic atheists, Communist atheists, Libertarian atheists, neo-con atheists, socialist atheists...atheists who like chocolate ice cream...atheists who like vanilla ice cream...atheists with diabetes...pretty much the entire human spectrum of experience and thought is represented in the atheist community (with the obvious exception of theism, of course).

So while I hope that most atheists believe in free speech, I'm sure that some don't.

2. Belief in free speech does not preclude slander. In fact, it would be closer to say that the reverse is true; that free speech must, by definition, allow for the possibility of slander. In any case, this is very much an "apples vs. oranges" point. Free speech and slander are neither opposed nor interchangeable.

3. Suggesting that Christian belief is delusional or not based on demonstrable evidence is not "slander". Slander has a specific meaning: "In law, defamation (also called vilification, slander, and libel) is the communication of a statement that makes a false claim, expressively stated or implied to be factual, that may harm the reputation of an individual, business, product, group, government or nation." (Wikipedia)

For such statements to be slander, they would have to be shown to be false. Since no one has irrefutably proven the existence of ANY supernatural being or force (much less the Christian God) no case for slander can be made.

It could also be argued that atheist arguments that Christianity is not based in fact do not harm anyone's reputation, since the vast majority of the American public is putatively Christian. Are they going to believe a fellow Christian, or the statements of a godless, immoral atheist - statements which impugn their own Christian belief just as much?

I'm afraid that simply disagreeing with Christian belief, annoying and frustrating as it undoubtedly is, is not in itself, slander. It's simply disagreeing. Yes, some atheists insult Christians, sometimes gratuitously; as an atheist myself, I regret that they do. But that's hardly a vice restricted to atheists. I've seen far more hatred and insults directed by so-called Christians towards atheists! Probably because there are so many more Christians than atheists.

You'll also see just as many - no, far more - insults being hurled around online and in the real world over politics, sports, and virtually any other topic on which two or more opinions exist.

I have seen a growing tendency in some Christians to claim that any disagreement with their belief, any expression of disbelief in theism, is somehow a brutal attack on Christianity. It is a common truism among some extremist American Christians that Christians are a persecuted people. This completely overlooks the fact that Christians rule America, rule atheists, and have since the founding of the Republic.

Every President has been a Christian, or at least a nominal Christian Deist. Every Senator has been Christian or Jewish. Virtually every Representative and state governor has been too. And it's not as if their faith isn't relevant; every single one of them has loudly proclaimed their religious devotion. This despite the fact that the Constitution mandates that "...no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States"! (Article VI, Section 3)

Meanwhile, atheists have lost jobs for not being Christian. They have had their cars keyed, tires slashed, and their children have faced ostracism and death threats in school - all for the "crime" of not being Christian. And (perhaps worse) for the crime of not shutting up, keeping their heads down, and quietly accepting extremist-Christian-inspired efforts by the government (the Christian government) to infringe on the basic protections afforded to all Americans by the First Amendment. Atheists in our schools and our military face real persecution and discrimination daily for their unbelief...and Christians claim to be persecuted in this country?

That's an insult to Christians and other theists around the world who really DO face persecution - and rape, torture, and murder - for their faith. At the hands of governments in the Middle East and China, for example.

I really am sorry that you feel attacked by the statements of atheists. And I regret any instances where you've been insulted or flamed by atheists; I think that such attacks are not only unproductive, but are actually harmful to the whole idea of inter-faith dialog. I've counseled atheists (and Christians) to try to avoid that approach, because all it does is hurt your own argument.

Having been on the receiving end of such flames (on all sorts of topics) I know how much they hurt. I'm an old Usenet veteran, so I've been called every name in the book. Heck, I was once called "an annoying little a--hole" in a nationally-distributed magazine. Now that was slander! I'm nearly six feet tall, and used to be a defensive tackle - no one has ever called me "little" to my face.

I still get a little angry when I think about that, to tell you the truth. But what I've learned is that is someone starts flaming you, it's a sign that they've run out of other things to say. The secret is to respond reasonably, and let the flames roll off your back - a lesson that I'm still learning.