Holy
crap in a Bundt pan...
Due to the
recent well-publicized shortage of
amateur websites produced by assholes who consider themselves to be
clever, I
have been called into action. My name is Jeff Kay, and I’m an
Ugly American living
on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, near Scranton, PA. And I’m here to
serve, baby.
The
State of My Fat Ass A journal of
sorts, updated every once in a while.
--
Today's payday. At my job we get paid twenty-four times per year: on the
fifteenth and last day of every month. I'd never experienced such a
schedule before accepting my current position, and it made me nervous at
first.
For years it was a real sphincter-clencher to get from one paycheck to
the next, and that's a mindset not easily shaken. I didn't much care for
the idea of being paid two less times per year, even though my
new employers were agreeing to pay me enough to make it less of an
issue. A person can't just walk away from twenty years of
hole-flexing.... I think John Adams originally said that.
My favorite way of being paid, back in the day, was weekly. I worked
several piss-ant retail jobs where payday was every Monday. That's a
perfect set-up for the undisciplined drunkard's apprentice. Even if you
blew it all by day three, you were within check-floating distance of the
next payday, or you could just hunker down and eat pasta with Campbell's
Bean with Bacon soup as a topping for seventy-two hours or whatever. But
when paydays are fourteen days apart, it requires a little more
self-control. And that's why I preferred the weekly pay.
I've heard about people who get paid monthly, and that triggers a
full-body shiver, even today. I can't imagine such a thing. A thirty-day
chasm to gap? Holy fuck.
But, like I say, I'm so old it doesn't really matter anymore. Much of
the magic has been sapped from my paydays at this point, and I kinda
miss it. Oh, I sure as hell don't want to return to the days of constant
struggle and worry, but I liked having a mini-holiday every couple of
weeks. Because that's what it was: a holiday. And by the time I finished
observing it.... Well, break out the bean spaghetti.
In the Greensboro and pre-Toney Atlanta years, I had check-floating down
to a science. I knew how long it took for a check to clear at each local
business; I had the information hardcoded in my brain. There were a
couple of grocery stores where you could shoot all the way from the
three-point line, and never get burned.
I was also aware of the places where they didn't have those fancy-pants
machines for credit cards, and only used a catalog of some sort to check
your number. By the time that thing was updated, and the world was
alerted to the fact that your shit was maxed-out, a person could do some
real damage.
And there was an ATM on Fulton Industrial
Boulevard in Atlanta that would give you whatever amount you requested,
regardless of your balance. I don't know what that was all about,
perhaps a frayed wire, but I clung to it like a life preserver. Sure,
I'd get slammed with a twelve-dollar fee the next month for being
overdrawn, but it was a small price to pay in certain circumstances.
I remember having a weekend trip planned with a girlfriend once, but
there was only, like, $2.17 in the bank. So I visited the magic ATM, took out
$150, and we had ourselves a great time. Sometimes I felt like kissing
that shorted-out machine.
But Toney put an end to all my shenanigans. As soon as we moved into our
pre-marital "den of sin" (copyright 1990, my grandmother), she
took control of the finances and got me straightened out. I still wasn't
making any money, of course, but she introduced me to the concept of
budgeting (whoa!), and tossing aside all the exhausting scamulations.
I remember riding through Atlanta one day and realizing that I didn't
need to hide from the cops anymore, because all my car registrations and
inspection stickers were up to date. And payday was right around the
corner, and there weren't a half-dozen checks outstanding or any of that
nonsense. I felt like I was in a parallel universe; the colors seemed
brighter somehow, and the air sweeter.
If Toney hadn't come along, I'd probably be living in a cabbage box
beneath an interstate exit ramp by now.
But I sometimes miss the old magic of payday: beautiful, beautiful
payday. Perhaps I should launch into an extended rock 'n' booze frenzy,
and spend the mortgage money on compact discs, draft beer, and
y'allternative club shows? It might be fun to walk around the
neighborhood of irresponsibility again, and see some of my old friends?
Yeah, I'd better run that past my wife first....
Do you get paid in some unorthodox manner? And were you ever a slacker
like me? If so, how'd you bridge the wide chasm between paydays? Did you
have your own personal shorted-out magic ATM, or anything like that? Use
the comments link below to tell us about it.
--
Today's payday. At my job we get paid twenty-four times per year: on the
fifteenth and last day of every month. I'd never experienced such a
schedule before accepting my current position, and it made me nervous at
first.