There is this god-awful scene where an 8-year-old Tsotsi’s father kicks their dog (looks like a Rottie/Lab mix) twice, breaking its back. And it just writhes in pain, whimpering, and crawls out the door and the father yells at Tsotsi not to go to him. Meanwhile I was frantically digging around for the flipper to fast-forward and eventually just dove at the DVD player to skip a chapter ahead. It was terrible. Do not see Tsotsi. Do not!
And it also bothered me that the guy who plays Tsotsi looks a whole lot like my old friend Themba the PIE student at Bard. Except Themba would have taken much better care of that baby, I’m sure.
But enough of this. What I really want to talk about is the assholes at the Unemployment office. They have a lot of jobs there for waitstaff and catering and hotel mumbo-jumbo that you can’t apply for from anywhere else. I wasn’t going to receive benefits. One, I’m an optimist and think that gainful employment is just around the corner, and two, I’d have to apply to New York which is a big pain in the ass. But this guy, my “career counselor,” is a total moron and can’t seem to understand this concept. And he can hardly string two sentences together without getting distracted. And he can’t seem to figure out how to get the printer to work because he keep pressing the print to file button. When I point this out, he tells me that I am not allowed to look at the company profiles. And all the while I am thinking, why can’t I just have this guys job as I could easily be 20 times as competent. And then I yell at myself in my head because this man probably has kids to feed at home.
So I spend about 30 minutes on their computers looking for jobs and copying down job codes to give to him so that he can print out the application information. I found about 10 or 12 things that looked reasonably promising. Of course, the actual company name is hidden from us lowly, unemployed peons, until we give it to our “career counselors.” So it’s always a shot in the dark. Then I take my paper with all the numbers on it and he says, “Sorry, we can only look up five jobs for you per day.” So I sigh and let him look up those jobs. The fourth job was listed as “wait staff” in Greenville (I’m thinking Red Lobster or Sticky Fingers, etc). And in his robotic voice he says, “Greenville...Server...$2.35/hour plus tips...will train...The Waffle House.” I burst out laughing at the absurdity of it all. The guy looked rather put out. I don’t blame him.
“No, sir, I think I’ll pass on that one...the smoke...yeah, the smoke. I can’t be around that much smoke.”
Can you imagine? I’m willing to stoop low, but not that low. Besides, no one ever tips at the Waffle House. Ava worked at the Waffle House in Greenwood and said this woman used to come in, order a cup of coffee, and then peed all over the seat. I just can’t.
And then, to add insult to injury, I try to get him to look up another one of the jobs instead and he’s like “no, sorry, I can only look up 5.”
Why the fuck can’t I get a stupid job anyway? I mean, I have a college degree...the most useless college degree ever. I feel like I’m walking around town with a big E stitched on my shirt. Beware, this unruly woman majored in English. I’m telling you, they scatter like flies.
