Several years back I took a job in the music industry. Since I was a teenager I wanted to work in
the music industry. The coolness of
working with talented people, whom I respected, in a fast paced environment
that would be changing week to week depending on who was charting was
incredibly appealing. The charge of
seeing new releases and in someway affecting the daily lives of millions of
people was right up my alley. This job
wasn’t that.
With great shame, I think I lasted 9 months. Nine slave like months. The hours were long, the pay was short and
amount to do was insurmountable. Looking
back on it with some great perspective, it probably wasn’t as bad as I’m making
it seem but while you were in it, it was hellish. Most days were no less than 10 hours without
a chance to stop and eat. The management
was so disjointed that whatever was deemed as the only course of action to
follow on one particular week was thrown out the next week only to be
re-implemented the week after. Financial
austerity was constantly preached when it came to salaries and all expenses
until on a whim the owner would blow 25k on worthless ads.
Most of what I worked on was leading up to a singular week-long
event where the wealthy would pay extraordinary amounts of money to play music
and interact with musical celebrities of various degrees. Some of these celebrities made in 45 minutes
what the office staff made all year.
When I came in for my first interview I noticed the office
was covered in gear, posters, displays, and give aways from the most recent
week-long event. My eye was drawn to a
pile of three identical duffle bags with the coolest design. A little bit of background on Marshall
Amplifiers, they are considered the standard when it comes to loud, rock music
and they come in two pieces, the cabinet and the head. These duffle bags where made to look like
Marshall heads. You could carry them
like you would carry a head, they were similarly sized and they just looked
cool.
After I started working there a few weeks after my
interview, the bags were still there. I
was told that two of them were for participants and that we needed to mail the
bags to them. The third one was for
Roger Daltrey who (no pun intended) had been one of the celebrity musicians at
the last event. Now Roger Daltrey lives
in England and the cost of shipping a gift bag full of freeby give aways was
nearly $300, to which the owner baulked and told us to leave it there until
Roger was back in New York and he would simply hand him the bag.
Months went by without Roger Daltrey coming to New
York. Months went by with the bag
sitting there taunting me with its intrinsic awesomeness. Months went by of me working 10, 11, 12 hour
days for what ended up being slightly above minimum wage when you factored out
all the hours. The owner of the company
was devoutly religious. He was Hasidic
and the reason it’s important is because of Shabbos. Prior to working there I had never heard of
Shabbos. From my understanding of it,
Friday sun downish to Saturday sundownish, you can’t do anything considered
work. So every Friday the boss would
leave the office early and the rest of us would continue working roughly until
5, clocking out for a rare 8 hour day.
Well one Friday right before taking off for Shabbos the boss
tasked me with an incredibly, long, time consuming, tedious task that he wanted
emailed to him so he could look at it as soon as he was allowed to by God. One by one I saw my co-workers leave the
office, off to enjoy a happy hour somewhere.
Hour by hour I saw the sun set over Manhattan. I finished the project, emailed it, closed my
laptop, and said fuck it. Fuck it, today
is the day that I steal Roger Daltrey’s gift bag. Now I oppose stealing and think it shouldn’t
be done under any circumstances, but given the mocking that the bag would do to
me on a daily basis and given the opportunity to be able to say that I stole
Roger Daltrey’s gift bag, how was I going to live with myself if I didn’t steal
the bag? I grabbed the bag like a
Marshall head, closed the lights, locked the door and smiled all the way out of
the building.
Years later I was hanging out with some co-workers from that
place and over drinks I let cat out of the bag and told them the story, to
which they responded, “oh we knew you took it but we all stole stuff like crazy
from that place, amplifiers, digital recorders, you name it. “
I still have the bag and I still get compliments on it every
time I take it out in public.
