My day on the South Side: Part - 2

IN CASE YOU MISSED PART 1.

I think we can all agree that the national media embellishes the hell out of everything.  Its non stop, in your face and jammed down your throat politics, sports, holidays, and for some FUCKED up reason the Kardashians.  So, as someone who grew up in Waterville Maine, my mental image of Chicago's South Side was what I had seen on the news and on History Channels every other episode of Gangland.  Obviously I was not gonna be in Waterville Maine, but I knew enough about Chicago to know that not ALL area's of the  south side were a fucking "war zone".  I just blindly assumed there was no way my employers would put me in a Dangerous situation.  Looking back on that moment I can say with 100% confidence that my "Street Smarts"   failed to make an appearance.  

I walked out of the office building.  It was crisp fall day and the sun was beaming but it was cool enough that I was not pouring sweat in my suit and tie.  I had never had a job that required me to wear a suit.  Usually all I needed was a nice pair of pants and a shirt that was "provided."  I made my way to the train station with a few other fellow employee's that also relied on public transportation to take them to their territory or "T's" as they so brodudelessly put it.  They were all wondering where I would be heading.  I will never forget the looks of "Holy Fuck", "Son of a Bitch" and "Good fucking luck" that came across their faces when I showed them my T(erritory).

We all piled into the train and headed towards our destinations.  The ride was long.  Not only was I heading to a shady section of town, but the thoughts of a new sales job in a new city with huge income potential were echoing through my head the whole time... I knew it was going to be tough, but I also knew I had to stick with it.  I had to validate moving to Chicago.. NO pressure right?  Finally after about 30 minutes I arrived at my destination.  I got off the train and walked down to street level.  The sun was still burning and it had warmed up.  There wasn't a fucking cloud in the sky and at first glance the area did not look half bad.  "This looks alright.." I thought, and dug out my map to find a good starting point.  After settling on a location I folded up my map, boated up my Tablet and made my way to my first business.  

On this day I would learn just how quickly the city of Chicago can change just by simply crossing a street.  After coming to my first intersection, I crossed the street and took a left to head down to my starting point.  It was not to long after I had made this change in direction when I came across a man sitting on a slab of cardboard in one of the ally's.  At first glance it was clear that he was someone who did not have a place to call home.  His clothes were musty, he did not have any shoes and the few belongings he had were in a worn out trash bag that he clutched to his side.  I also noticed the way he was starting at me, dead in the eyes, looking right into my soul like he was the fucking Southern Oracle from the Never Ending story.  It was enough to make me stop dead in my tracks and look back at him with my best "Can I help you?" expression.  He finally spoke.  

"Ohhhh...White boy.. Be safe White boy...Be safe man.  If I were you I'd turn the fuck around and walk away"  

It was around this time I became a little concerned.  Here was a man who had nothing but a trash bag full of clothes and a piece of cardboard and yet... his biggest concern was my safety.  I did my best to shake it off.  That's the advice he followed and he ended up homeless!  Wait... why is there another guy across the street yelling at me?

To be continued.....        

       

    

My day on the South Side

They say there are two kinds of smarts.  "Book Smart" and "Street Smart"  I could take a while to break down the difference between the two of them, but its been a long day.  I will only say that considering the somewhat lack of book smarts I have dealt with throughout my life, I've managed to get by just fine. Oddly enough I work at a used Bookstore. ( No relation to "Book Smart)  The job itself?  Not to bad.  The people I work with are overall solid dudes and duddets.  The customers can certainly get on your nerves.  If you've ever worked any kind of retail in the past you know how difficult people can be to deal with.  But aside from the occasional over privileged yuppie fuck wad, most people are relatively pleasant, and the ones that aren't pleasant sulk to themselves and won't talk to you which is fine by me.  I would much rather interact with someone like that vs some fucking smart ass, needle dick, angsty teenager.  My dick may not be much bigger, but at least I've seen Slayer three times.

The only drawback is that I drive an hour and twenty minutes to AND from work.  If it were not for the Chicago  traffic it would be more like 45 minutes.  Still, even 45 minutes would be a drag.  I drive a 1998 Ford Ranger pick-up truck.  Quite possibly the worst fucking vehicle you should be using through the bumpy inner streets and the stop and go marathons on the interstate.  The amount I spend on gas in a month is only 100$ cheaper then what I pay for rent. I'm coming up on the 4 month anniversary of my check engine light coming on, not to mention the other little warning lights that like to flicker on and off every now and again.  The main reason I'm not taking it in to get looked at, (aside from the fact that I'm not very "well off") is the first time it came on was when I first started it up in the parking lot of the auto shop that I had JUST thrown 400$ at for a new Alternator.  I just try to tell myself that some sort of amateur fucked up the wiring when it was getting fixed.  Plus... its an old truck. It could just be his way of telling me "WHEN THE FUCK IS THIS GOING TO STOP?!"  Regardless, it still starts up every day and gets from point A to point B.      

People that come in the bookstore are almost always shocked when I tell them I commute from the city.  The can't understand why someone would do all that driving.  I dunno.. I guess in their perfect little fairy tail of a world jobs are still being given away.  But in my peanut butter and jelly sandwich eating world jobs are fucking hard to come by.  This job may not be the most ideal job in the world, but it beats the shit out of what I was doing before that which was being unemployed for almost two months.  Not to mention the few days leading up to the two months of unemployment.  Not only were they some of the most memorable days of my life, but they also make it a hell of a lot easier to handle a simple hour an a half drive through stop and go traffic.  

Its been about a year since those few days.  I had just been offered a sales position with huge income potential.  It sounded great compared to what I had been doing for the past month.  Leading up to that I had been working 25 hours a week at a gym.  The hours sucked and my boss and I never got along.  When I put in my two weeks notice after getting the sales job she told me to "just fucking leave."  I had a feeling I would not be hired back if the new job did not work out, but that certainly sealed it.  The bridge had been burned and in a few days, I was wishing it never happened.

The new job required a week of training before being sent out into the field on our own.  During that week I would sit in an office every morning with the other new employees and learn about what we were going to be selling and to whom.  It turns out we would be doing door to door selling of cell phone plans to local business for their employees.  What this meant is we would walk around the streets in a suit and tie with a tablet going into every business in our "territory" and fucking interrupt them at work to ask them what they used for a cell phone plan and if they wanted to switch.  If at that point they were interested and by some fucking miracle they trusted a complete stranger that just showed up unannounced we would take their credit card and run a credit check with the tablet.  The sales people I shadowed during my week of training made it look easy.  Obviously there were people that had zero interest, but we would always make at least 1 sale a day.  Sometimes that 1 sale was all you needed if you sold them multiple lines.  For every phone line you sold you made commission.  I was obviously nervous about it, but figured it was just a matter of getting out there, doing it and finding my style.

The day finally came when I got my "territory."  In this section of the city I would be responsible for going into every business to try and sell them cell phones.  They handed me a little map with the streets I was suppose to hit.  I looked at the map.  I recognized a few street names.  Chicago being the huge grid that it is has the same streets all over the city.  However...I began to notice that the letter S appeared on the street name.... S as in "South"  Chicago's famed South Side.  When people talk about Chicago they talk about what a great city it is.  The summer's are awesome, the sports are fun and the girls are pretty....just stay away from the south side.   But really though... how bad could it be?

To be continued....