How’s a cool dude supposed to make enough dollar bills to get to and from the big bad city? Let Matthew Crawley tell you all about it.
Listen to the story as it was told at The Watercooler storytelling night or read on.
I love my job. But like most people, when it comes to employment, I’ve had a dark history.
My first job wasn’t bad. When I was only three years old, I was a volunteer for New Zealand Couriers. Dad was the (paid) courier, I was the cute little guy handing the packages to the grown-ups, many of them now presumably long dead. It was the first and the last time I would embody the role of the brazen hustler, for many years to come. Shortly after this brief stint in the wild world of couriering, I retired and settled into a decade of shy awkwardness.
They say examining our childhood years can reveal a lot about where we’ll end up, and my life is no different. My career in journalism hit a swift and steady stride when I became one of the Western Leader’s hand-picked team of delivery boys. I had the BMX, I had the courage and I had the job. I was 10 years old.
Twice a week, I would arrive home from school to discover the tightly bundled stacks of paper and ink sitting at the foot of the steps that led to our front door in Poinsettia Place. I’d head inside, guzzle down a Garfield mug full of pineapple Raro, and smear copious amounts of Vegemite across some Cruskits that Mum had stashed in a Tupperware container in the pantry.
Then it was time. I’d fetch a pair of snips - often without even asking a grown-up to help me - saddle up, snip free the stacks of papers, and load them up for delivery.
It all sounds so idyllic, I’m sure, but let me tell you this. It’s no easy feat cycling on an ‘80s kid’s BMX, laden with a swollen sack of badly packed Western Leaders on either side. Many were the days I found myself collecting and re-packing the precious cargo, mere metres into my journey up and down the cul-de-sac. Fighting back tears, and red-faced, I’d battle on, determined to deliver my consignment to Mrs Vercoe, Jean next door, the Edwards family, the elderly woman with the mind-bogglingly fat ankles, her gothic daughter with the red Volkswagen, and the Māori family, and the Chinese family, and whoever lived down that massive driveway you couldn’t see the end of.
Once the cul-de-sac was serviced, it was time to hit Lincoln Road. The big kahuna of roads, when it comes to Henderson North. After dropping my news-bombs into the slots of the scattered residences on the Poinsettia side of the street, I would cross, and the real fun would begin.
The late 1980s and early ‘90s were kind to Lincoln Road. Her pointless rows of decades-old family orchards finally began to be felled, making way for the likes of Pizza Hutt, a bowling alley, a women-only gym, Telecom’s Waitemata Branch, and Bedpost.
Ah, Bedpost. Their Lincoln Road store was staffed by two middle-aged men who looked like the suburban versions of Tintin’s Thompson and Thompson. And the slightly younger blonde woman who likely kept the two of them desperately vying for her affections, making secret pledges to leave their wives, and awkwardly making tired gags about her and various new types of beds they were selling. It was never busy, so the arrival of me and my paper were always greeted warmly and with condescending praise for my work.
The woman behind the desk at the whatever-it-was-car-place was truly the object of my young affections. It was my head first tumbling debut in the Broadway production of Unrequited Love.
Years later, I’d build one more memory with the dudes at Bedpost Lincoln Road, when they would agree to let my high-school grunge band “Fairy” use their powerpoint to feed power to our amps and basic PA, as we set up roadside in Te Pai Park and provided the soundtrack to our “Pay The Teachers More” campaign, in solidarity with Chris Carter and his friends in the Teachers Union. It was like the 1960s all over again, but with simplistic catchy slogans set to the only two power chords we knew. As fate would have it, our performance made it into the history books. Immortalised on page three of the very same newspaper that had brought me so far. Good days.
Last up on my epic afternoon delivery run was the car yard receptionist. With her glowing ginger ringlets, of-the-era blouses, and kind smile, the woman behind the desk at the whatever-it-was-car-place was truly the object of my young affections. It was my head first tumbling debut in the Broadway production of Unrequited Love. Delivering a paper, and being a cripplingly shy 10-year-old, I can’t tell you there was much interpersonal interaction going down, but there were enough polite smiles and thank-yous for me to hold on to the dream that she might one day feel the same way.
Sadly, it was never to be. Months passed, and my frenzied daydreams of miraculously obtaining the power to turn invisible - so as to be able to sneak around the desk and kiss her unnoticed - began to fade, replaced with a new and dangerous obsession: the lollies on the desk.
Presumably there for paying customers only, lollies for adults with driver's licences, I would attempt to time my visits so as to enter when she had her back turned. Silently placing the paper on the desk, I would then reach for the open casket of forbidden sweets, and at the last second - pull away. It was a deadly game, and only once, on my final delivery day, did I secretly steal a stale, gelatinous, banana shaped treat. I was immediately filled with overwhelming shame and remorse. I ran from the building, mounted my little blue bike, and sped off towards home, never again to darken the door of my first true love.
Fast-forward to the year 1996. I’m a long-haired fool, straying further and further from the path of academia. I’ve discovered Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins, and my band is playing the big gigs, with the aforementioned Bedpost the most shining example. But, something is rotten in paradise. A visit from 95bFM and the bands Nothing At All and Nonoxynol 9 to Waitakere College for a free lunchtime concert have planted something in me that I can’t deny: the rock’n’roll dream.
It’s not long before I’m filling out a volunteer form at the bFM offices, whiling away the hours from midnight ‘till dawn doing graveyard radio shows, discovering mochaccinos, and promptly dropping out of school. So how’s a cool dude like me going to make enough dollar bills to cover the bus fare to and from the big bad city? A cool dude like me is going to work full time at Georgie Pie.
It was a six-month tenure. A maroon bow-tie, matching cap, skin destroying dishwashing chemicals, and a distracting and obvious sexual tension between my manager Kirsty and Daniel, the uptight manager of the neighbouring Finance Plaza McDonald's. Kirsty and Daniel, up a tree, while I come up with as many excuses as possible to hide out in the walk-in freezer eating from the plastic sack of Gold Rush chocolate nuggets. These were hard months, but I lived them, and I still have the bow-tie, and a polaroid to prove it. I was sixteen.
So how’s a cool dude like me going to make enough dollar bills to cover the bus fare to and from the big bad city? A cool dude like me is going to work full time at Georgie Pie.
You can judge all you like. Working at Georgie Pie never killed my rocking spirit, oh no. One day, hell bent on a weekend off to go to Parachute Festival, I nervously approached the broom cupboard that was the office of our new manager Ken. I don’t recall what happened to Kirsty, but the romantic in me likes to believe she left to begin a never-ending, passionate session of inter-fast-food bonking, backstage at the ill-fated rugby museum we shared the top floor with. Anyway, Ken. Some people are firm but fair, unfortunately Ken was meek, and a dick. He refused to allow me the time off to go and hang out with my friends, revelling in the twilight of my Christianity, so I fucking quit.
Parachute was awesome, and initially I regretted nothing, but eventually the months spent unemployed, living at home, masturbating and eating increasingly massive white bread sandwiches got the better of me. I folded, and got myself a job at a Christian bookshop in Greenlane, walking straight into the auspicious role of Inventory Manager. I was seventeen.
Inventory Manager basically meant unpacking boxes of Christian books, music, and paraphernalia, working under the watchful eye of a hairy-necked Mark Lundy lookalike called Uncle Brian, or Uncle Bri, to his favourites. He spoke with a soft, baby-ish tone, and had a catchphrase that sounded like a cockatoo exclaiming “How the heck are ya?”
Uncle Bri also had a furious temper. After a while, I couldn’t help but wonder whether, as in the classic incident in Mark Chapter 11 verses 15-19, Jesus himself would, perhaps a little ironically, been suitably unimpressed at the notion of us selling “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets for a profit. If you’re not familiar with Mark Chapter 11 verses 15-19 for some reason, that’s the bit where Jesus goes into the temple and finds people selling things in the courtyard for commercial gain, then he takes a big stick and smashes up the tables, tells them to get lost, and stop making money in the name of God. For my leaving present, I received a large red towel, with “Snow White” written on it, and a cartoon depiction of Snow White kissing the prince. Good days.
I left, not solely because I was having wavering doubts about my place in that world, but rather to go and take up the job of “TV Presenter” on a TV show called Jovial Strobe. The TV show was being made in Snells Beach at a TV station called Family Television Network. What could go wrong? I’d just turned 18, so I packed up my life into one bag, and headed up to live my new life as an unpaid television star.
I lived in the bottom floor of a bach on the beach, sleeping in what used to be the water tank for the house. Concrete walls, concrete floor, no light, and at the bargain price of $15 a week. My flatmates were comprised of a socially challenged beardo who left pungent, coffee-tinged wee-wee in the toilet and never flushed, a nice guy called Phil who had a cool van and liked electronics, and a guy called Dave from Australia.
Anyway, me and the team of passionate youth television makers piled into the van, visiting towns up and down the country with our zany, poorly planned, poorly acted What Now style show, which centred on a magic travelling couch. Shortly after we finished filming a couple of dozen episodes of Jovial Strobe, we got our barely existent funding cancelled. Ron, the station manager, and mouthpiece of the maniacal egotist that was our cult leader Trevor Yaxley, told us there just simply wasn’t the budget to keep making this show - which was entirely made by volunteers and costing nearly nothing to make. So it was that I was thrust unwittingly into a new role - Transmission Operator.
Ever worked at a Christian TV station in a windowless room, mindlessly capturing video feeds and censoring anything that could possibly be deemed offensive, for fourteen or fifteen hours at a time? It’s awesome. My job was to timecode the offending articles, then head into the edit suite where me and my flatmate would edit out the offending snippets of light cursing or questionable moral balance. I was eighteen. Good days.
One day, I had finally decided to try and get my life back. I told Ron, another of those meek but dickish sorts, that I had decided to leave. In the reception area of our station, Ron informed Trevor, who let’s remember was a millionaire cult leader who had begun to spend most of his time forming what he called “God’s Army”, that I was leaving. Trevor then turned to me, and said, “God doesn’t want you to leave yet. God wants you to give us two more years, and then you can go”. I’m not sure he actually remembered my name, but no doubt God did. I told them “No problem, just let me go and visit my family for a week”. I packed my one bag, jumped on my 50cc scooter, and scooted the hell out of there forever.
Shortly after that, I moved to London and had an awesome life, happily ever after. The end.
Oh, wait … do I have time to tell you about the photocopy shop, the temp job at British Royal Mail, the horrible job making tea for lawyers in the British Treasury, the call centre, the next call centre, and the… no? Next time maybe, if you’re lucky.
This story was originally told at The Watercooler, a monthly storytelling night held at The Basement Theatre. If you have a story to tell email thewatercoolernz@gmail.com or hit them up on Twitter or Facebook.
Illustration: Kerry Ann Lee
This content is brought to you with funding support from New Zealand On Air.