I Never Asked To Be A Volunteer

                So I had a dream that one of my housemates was clipping his fingernails into my sugar bowl.  I’m not gonna get all analytical, mail my mother a bomb for not potty-training me early enough.  Nothing like that.  I just thought I’d mention it.  I also had a dream that some cocksucker stole my little, banged up, spray-painted Toyota Celica that’s really not all that bad ass but which I like a whole bunch anyway.  Then I woke up from this exciting nap at 5:20 PM in the dark, thinking that it was tomorrow morning and that I had to get up and go slave at the goddam Goodwill again.

                I’ve been slowly chewing away at the time that I owe for community service at the Goodwill store a couple miles from my house.  They refer to us as “volunteers”, implying that we’re volunteers.  Right.  Volunteered by some jerkoff  who couldn’t mind his own goddam business, the same way that all those poor fuckers who went to Vietnam in the 60’s were volunteers.  And all those Africans and their progeny who toiled in the miserable heat under threat of grievous bodily harm?  Volunteers. 

                You may think it a bit extreme to compare cleaning the bathrooms at a Goodwill  for no money to getting one’s legs blown off in a jungle or to be starved, beaten and raped for the duration of one’s lifetime.  Perhaps it is a bit extreme.  It’s still bullshit, though.  I’d rather be working at the humane society but since I’ve got drug charges I’m evidently unfit to clean up puppy puke.  And as unsavory a task as cleaning kennels is, I think that I’d come off it feeling as if I had made some poor, sad, scared creature’s life just a little bit better by being a nice guy, even if I was volunteered to do be there.  Maybe take them out one by one to let them sniff around or maybe play a little fetch if they’re into that kinda thing.

                As things are, half the people who work at the Goodwill treat us all like slaves.  “I’M NOT PAYING YOU ZERO DOLLARS AN HOUR TO TALK TO THE OTHER VOLUNTEER WHILE YOU PUT GARBAGE THAT I GOT FOR FREE ONTO SHELVES SO I CAN SELL IT AT THE HIGHEST PROFIT MARGIN POSSIBLE!” one of the lazy jerks who works there for 8 bucks an hour barked at me as I was doing her job for her.  Well, this is an embellishment.  That person has no idea what a profit margain is.  Hell, they have a big sign by the punch clock that informs the management that 30 minutes isn’t .30 of an hour, that it’s .50.  And 45 minutes isn’t .45.  So I guess I am helping out some poor, sad, scared creature who can’t leave the miserable existence in which he finds himself after all.  It’s not very fulfilling.