A Really Bad Day At Work
I can’t help but feel empathy for the poor saps who had a lousy day at work, ended up destroying the global economy and became the subject of countless memes.
Welcome to this little thing we call Moronitude! Been a big week here at Moronitude Headquarters. I got my second shot, my STIMMY and my first (very minor) sunburn of the year. Plus I managed to sleep for almost 20 hours in a day (thanks to that shot) and ate a bunch of pork buns from a fantastic Chinese bakery. Despite being so busy I was still able to follow every last minute of the boat situation. It’s absolutely riveting.
I could fill an entire newsletter with just a meme dump from all the content gold the Ever Given has, well, given us. There have been so many good ones, but my personal favorite is, unsurprisingly, made for the history nerds.
I would love to learn in the near future that the accident was part of a viral marketing campaign for an upcoming revival of “Punk’d,” but that doesn’t seem too likely. Nor do I think that it was a planned protest against global trade. It’s something far simpler—a very public version of somebody’s worst day at work.
As the editor of a magazine who does a bunch of writing in print and online, I have developed an entirely unique physical response that overtakes me each time I realize I’ve made a very public mistake. It’s a combination of the weightless feeling in your stomach you get on a rollercoaster combined with the sensation of having your optic nerves pinched. It’s especially bad when it’s in the print edition because there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about.
Luckily—knock on wood 10,000 times—the biggest mistakes I have made thus far involve minor misspellings, formatting errors or the accidental omission of the final sentence of an article. That last one really made me mad.
I still get this feeling every single time I discover a mistake, or even worse, when somebody points out the mistake to me. It not only hurts because I know I screwed up, but to also know that thousands of people have likely seen the mistake.
So on a very small scale version, I understand how the captain of the Ever Given feels. Of course, when you misspell a tattoo artist’s name wrong it doesn’t make the front page of every single newspaper in the world, but it still stings.
My personal very worst day at work didn’t happen at Inked Magazine (although the day I ate 5 habaneros for charity at work was pretty fucking terrible) or even in the media industry. It happened when I worked at a rental video store in Chicago. A pornographic rental video store to be exact. It wasn’t a sex shop, mind you. There weren’t toys for sale. There weren't a bunch of little booths in the back to host unspeakable acts. It was pretty much your standard issue video store with one notable exception—the content of the films for rent. We even had a life-size xenomorph statue like a cool independent video store should. Our version of the murderous alien was wearing some sexy lingerie, but you get the point.
These details are important to note before I go on with the story to make sure you understand that while “working at a porn shop” sounds like an outrageous endeavor, the day-to-day of working there was much more akin to working at a Blockbuster than a sex shop.
From the minute my shift started, I didn’t really want to be there. I don’t know if it was a sixth sense kicking in or what, but I just had a feeling about the shift. I was sitting at the register downstairs reading The Onion (in print!) when a customer came in to return some video tapes. The man just threw them down on the counter and stood in front of me absentmindedly. I went to grab the first of the tapes and as I started to squeeze I immediately knew this was a mistake, but it was too late to stop. The tape’s case was covered—absolutely covered—in vaseline.
The tape shot out of my hand and on to the floor. It looked like what you would expect out of a cartoon. And much like in a cartoon, I’m sure that I turned bright red as I started to roar at the customer. “What in the name of God is wrong with you?” I screamed. “This tape is covered in lube, you disgusting pervert!”
The following five minutes consisted of a back and forth shouting match with the customer first claiming there was nothing on the tape. Then he changed his story to “it must have been on the tape when I rented it.” As I threw a roll of paper towels and Windex at him and demanded that he clean up after himself, he started to get really embarrassed as he noticed the line building behind him. So the yelling ended and he quietly scrubbed the tapes while I showered myself in Purel.
We had a policy in place for these situations, because of course we did. A customer was supposed to receive three “substance warnings” and after that you could charge them a $1 cleaning fee. It was my policy, as it was the policy of many of my coworkers, to never let anybody get by with any of the freebies, we went straight to the fee and forced them to clean it up themselves. All that being said, it really didn’t happen too often, but when it did it, damn.
Not only was it disgusting, which it most certainly was, but every substance situation really messed with my head. When you touch an unknown substance on a copy of “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country” you can talk yourself into it being any of many things. It could be nacho cheese or butter from popcorn or Slurpee or whatever. When the name of the video is “Gangbang Girl 29” there isn’t much ambiguity as to what the disgusting slime covering the tape is.
It’s demeaning. Dehumanizing, even. But beyond how horrible the situation is in itself, it also forced me into crossing a line I tried not to. I didn’t want to make the customers feel like what they were doing was wrong. Part of the whole deal with the shop blending seamlessly into the neighborhood was that it allowed people to come grab their porn without feeling like an outcast, without being shamed for it. But after every substance situation I found myself not only crossing the line, but vaulting over it. I was forced into it, yes, but it would sit with me the rest of the day. I always felt worse about openly and gleefully embarrassing somebody than I ever did about the actual incident.
But this one time it was just so repulsive I didn’t even go through the usual cycle. Hell, it’s been almost 20 years and I still feel my blood boiling when I think about it. That was a bad day at work. Not “blocking all global trade” bad, but pretty damn bad.
Weekly Song to Rock Out To
Nothing Came Out by The Moldy Peaches
Since I wrote about my porn shop days, I figured I’d include a tune that was in heavy rotation in said shop. Part of the allure of working at such an establishment was the complete lack of dress code, lenient policies toward smoking and beer drinking during shifts and the freedom to listen to whatever the hell we wanted to. The Moldy Peaches were one of many bands I discovered from my coworkers.
This sort of anti-folk music really appealed to me at the time for a couple of different reasons. I loved the combination of vulnerability and hilarity in the lyrics, they really go all over the place. I also like how accessible it all seemed. You didn’t need to have a bunch of fancy instruments to start a band. Hell, you didn’t really need to be able to play the instruments you had. Being a little silly and novel was enough. A group of us from the shop went and saw them play when they came to Chicago. My memories of the show are quite hazy, there was some imbibing going on, but a damn good time was had. And I still really like this song.
Charlie’s History Corner
Thomas Francis Meagher
Like many famed Irishmen, Thomas Francis Meagher was a true original. The TL:DR version of his life goes something like this: led a failed revolution in one country, was shipped to the opposite side of the Earth in exile, escaped, led one of the world’s most famed brigades in another war on a third different continent, became acting governor of a territory in the wild west, possibly murdered. There have been hundreds of billions of people on the planet so far, but I’m confident in saying nobody else has a resume quite like Meagher’s.
Meagher started out his life in Waterford City, Ireland. Born to a relatively well-off family, his father was a merchant who retired to pursue politics who ultimately served in Parliament for a decade. It was at boarding school where Meagher started proving himself to be a fantastic orator, a skill that would carry him throughout his life. His father found Ireland’s Trinity College to be anti-Irish and anti-Catholic, so he sent his son to England for college at Stonyhurst. His professors there were also impressed by his speaking skills, but not so much by his Irish brogue, leading Meagher to take on an Anglo-Irish accent that many of his countrymen would regard as snooty.
Even if his countrymen didn’t necessarily like the way he spoke, they fell in love with what he was saying. Meagher’s impassioned speeches advocating for the repeal of the 1800 Acts of Union between Great Britain and Ireland—a fancy way of saying kicking the British out of Ireland—helped unite the Young Irelanders.
For years they had advocated for a peaceful repeal, but in July of 1846 things would change. In what would become his most famous speech, The Sword Speech, Meagher refused to agree to a resolution pledging a peaceful way forward. He instead argued that certain times called for armed conflict, and over the next two years he prepared for a revolution. The Young Irelander Rebellion of 1848 wasn’t the glorious revolution that would liberate Ireland Meagher had been dreaming of. It was put down with great ease and Meagher and his compatriots were arrested and sentenced to death.
His sentence would be commuted for fear of public outrage, so instead he was shipped off to Tasmania (known as Van Diemen’s Land at the time). Meagher had a pretty nice time in Australia, he even got married while he was there. But he wasn’t too keen on being a convict, as one can imagine, and he eventually set up a way to escape to the United States, leaving his pregnant wife behind.
His wife, Catherine, gave birth to a child who died when he was only four months old. She eventually left Australia as well, ending up in London with Meagher’s father. When she returned to Ireland with the elder Meagher she was serenaded in the streets of Waterford by thousands of people eager to celebrate the wife of a hero.
Meagher ended up in New York City once he made it to the states. He worked as a lawyer and founded a newspaper, the Irish News. Shortly before the Civil War he made a trip to Costa Rica, scouting out the country as a possible spot for a new Irish homeland. Finding a place for the Irish to immigrate would be a motivation of his over the years.
Once the fighting began, Meagher started recruiting men to fight in the Union army. Specifically, he wanted to recruit Irish immigrants so they could get battle-hardened, with dreams of possibly taking the fight across the Atlantic in the future. After being part of the New York 69th Regiment (nice), he returned to New York City to form the Irish Brigade. The Irish Brigade became famous after how hard they fought at both Antietam and Fredericksburg, taking heavy losses at both battles.
Meagher was not an exemplary commander in battle. Some of his own men believed that he was often drunk on the field, and at Fredericksburg he didn’t make it to the front lines with his men, claiming a bum knee limited him. Shortly after that bloodbath Meagher requested a leave to return to New York to recruit more men, but it was denied. So he quit.
After the war, Meagher ventured out to Montana where he had been appointed secretary of the new territory. Just like with Costa Rica, Meagher had an eye on making the new territory an ideal place for Irish immigrants to settle. The problem was that nobody else in Montana was too keen on this idea, nor were they very fond of Meagher. He would go on to make enemies on both sides of the aisle, and even though he ended up becoming acting governor, he had a long list of people who would have been quite pleased to see him dead.
In the summer of 1867, Meagher was on a steamship making the trip to Fort Benton to pick up ammunition for the Montana Militia. At some point on the night of July 1st he went over the side and into the raging Missouri River, never to be seen again. The circumstances surrounding his death are still a mystery, although many have speculated that he was murdered. Others believe he had been weakened from a recent battle with dysentery. Some think you may have committed suicide and still others think he may have had a bit too much to drink and stumbled overboard.
Thomas Francis Meagher led a life almost too unlikely to be believed, so it seems fitting that his death would be so shrouded in mystery. It gives us all a bit more to talk about, which I’m guessing he would be pleased to know.
Things to Read
A look at how anti-Asian hatred has taken a toll on New York City’s Chinatown. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/chinese-culinary-expert-grace-young-quest-save-chinatown-180977282/?no-cache
Kids have some pretty good ideas to get the Ever Given back on its way. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/03/cargo-ship-stuck-in-the-suez-canal-children-have-ideas-for-how-to-move-it.amp
That’s it! Sorry I only have two reading recommendations this week, there just wasn’t that much that impressed me. Or I was too busy to read much. Not so sure which one it was. Hope you enjoyed this week’s Moronitude! Thanks for subscribing and I’ll see you next week!