After a couple months of lazing on the couch, my first post-college job came courtesy of a photography studio in lower Manhattan. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as that sounds.
This was 1989, before the tech boom, before the real estate boom, before Rudolph Giuliani began whoring the city out to every bland corporation he could find, before the island descended into a swamp of retail chains and overpriced boutiques, before it was inundated with tourists and millionaires. There was a lot of graffiti and crack, but not much glamor.
It wasn’t a fashion studio. I wasn’t surrounded by models. Rather, the place specialized in college and high school yearbook portraits with some side work shooting weddings. Located near what was then the Korean wholesale district, just west of Madison Square, the commute from the Bronx was about an hour and twenty minutes each way.
My job primarily consisted of stuffing envelopes. I’d sit at a large wooden desk and slip proofs and price brochures into pre-addressed envelopes the students had filled out when they sat for their graduation pictures.
What’s a proof? In the pre-digital world of film cameras, proofs were small sample photos that perspective customers could look over, hopefully inducing them to choose a few to be blown up into full size prints. Yes, you actually got free sample photos. But to discourage people from settling for the freebies, each proof was small, about 2×3 inches, and degraded in someway; they were either perforated or had the word “proof” ink stamped on the front.
Seniors sat for ca
p and gown shots as well as in their nicest street clothes. After looking over the proofs they received in the mail, students and their families could order staggeringly expensive packages that included everything from 11x17s to wallet sized photos.
Old people used to carry small photos of children or grandchildren in their wallets. It was a long time ago.
The work at this photography studio was absolutely mind-numbing. I’d start with a box of materials: package after package of proofs from some high school. Take the proofs out of a wax paper pouch; put them, a brochure, and an order form in a white envelope, some of which you addressed by hand if the student had forgotten; stack those up to be mailed; place the negatives in a small yellow envelope; file each small yellow envelope based on the pre-assigned red ink serial number in the top left corner. Don’t screw that last step up. If you do, good luck trying to fill the order when it came in. When you finished a box, run all the white envelopes through the postage meter. Then go get another box.
As I sat at my desk, stuffing envelope after envelope, Top 40 music rained down from the speakers above. Top 40 is another old person thing from long ago when pop music was still a cetnral part of pop culture. Most of it was quite bad. As I recall, Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” was on heavy rotation, blaring half-a-dozen times during a typical shift.
Fuck Billy Joel.
I had just turned 22. I didn’t really care that I wasn’t putting my recently acquired Bachelor’s degree in Asian History to good use. I didn’t care about much of anything. I had no idea what I was doin
g. I just sat there and stuffed envelopes at an uneven pace. They paid me cash. Life wasn’t good. Life wasn’t bad. Life just was.
Then I discovered the coffee machine. A Mr. Coffee model I think. The joe was free for the taking, and there were even paper cups if you didn’t have your own mug. I had never been a coffee drinker before, but that changed. Why? Partly because the coffee was free. Partly because I wanted something to do to break the monotony. Getting up and pouring a cup provided an oh so brief respite. And when I learned that if you finished up a pot, you were expected to brew a fresh one, it became an excuse to spend a good three or four minutes doing something other than stuffing envelopes. Joy!
But a funny thing happened. I began to notice that I was working harder. Hepped up on caffeine, I was suddenly stuffing envelopes at a record pace. Bang! Bang! Bang!
Another box.
I was starting to fit into the American dream. I was becoming a super fast cog in the machine. I was über productive. I, like the world, was on fire. It had always been burning, since the world was turning, and seemed like it would forever; or at least for as long I as kept funneling java down my gullet.
Then, coffee mania came to a quick and sudden end. Inexperienced, harried, and rendered careless by drug-induced euphoria, I made a mess of the coffee machine one afternoon. The stuff spilled all over the place. One of the bosses screamed. The other sighed. That wasn’t unusual. They were good bosses. Hell, they paid me cash to stuff envelopes, but they were always screaming and sighing. I slunk back to my desk and never returned to the machine. Or the coffee.
I had flirted with but was inadvertently saved from addiction’s grip and, perhaps even more ominous, a life of high achievement and über productivity. To this day, whenever I see some finely manicured and aspiring yuppie rush into a Starbucks for a fix of A-1 Worker Juice, I shudder and think to myself: There, but for the grace of God, go I.
I’m gonna go take a nap now.