Finding work in New York

by George McKibbens

Poor people in New York City are not impressed that Rudolph Guilliani has been voted Person of the Year by Time Magazine or that he has appeared in GQ and Cigar Aficionado. Any mayor who makes homelessness illegal and turns Manhattan into a police state is not in high regard of anyone that lives paycheck to paycheck.

During a recession the efforts of the rich to gentrify parts of the city like Harlem and the East Village backfire. When there are no Dot Com jobs and middle management positions available, landlords are at the mercy of the tenants who are no longer forced to pay over $1000 for a one-room apartment in Queens.

In October of 2001, I finished the tour of my one-man show in Brooklyn (which proved to be an underground success in other cities, but and ultimately lost a lot of money thanks to a bankrupt Brooklyn theater owner). I was sleeping in the attic of a church in Hells Kitchen for three weeks, and every day I was looking for a bartending job. There were none. I looked for retail jobs. There were none. I looked for jobs as a waiter, and wasted $10 applying for a government job. I found an apartment thanks to meeting a Brazilian shuttle driver in a bar. The same week I was lucky enough to land a job as an usher at the Big Apple Circus. I was able to pay rent, working six days a week, 10-13 hours a day for $250 a week; which is roughly 3 to 4 dollars an hours. The circus was a non-profit in which they did not have to comply with minimum wage laws and their corporate sponsors received a tax write off.

I had a residence and a way to pay for transportation to and from work. I was proud of myself until I began my new job. Circus life meant that I was on my feet the whole day doing nothing remotely interesting. I scraped cotton candy off the ground, arranged chairs, and showed the circus patrons to their seats. The circus was only in town for another month, and I had beaten out five people for the job.

Tips were few and far between. I tried to seat people with the most expensive tickets, I could never afford to come to the circus and I would never want to attend the circus because the show was horrible. The people who tipped had ringside or box seats. Often time’s women would drop their purses and if you crawled under the bleachers and got it, their husbands would tip you. If the audience was a crew of rich women tips were a lost cause, just a ‘thank you,’ and spilled popcorn and soda in your hair. I became bitter and was very rude to all patrons, and then I started getting more tips. Can’t explain the logic in that.

The animals were treated better than the staff. The life of a horse in the circus was spent in a small stable for most of 24 hours with frequent grooming, then the horse would have 10 minutes to run circles in a ring while Russian acrobats did tricks on their backs.

Most of the ushering staff were first generation Russian, or from the Bronx. I was the only caucasian person at the job who was born in the United States; I was also the only usher born in the United States who was not from New York. It took at least two years of being an usher to graduate to a managerial position, such as supervising usher or head usher. These positions included a red tie, to distinguish from the yellow bow ties of the regular ushers, and a silver flashlight. Most usher’s flashlights were black and held the AA batteries together with scotch tape. Each usher had a section of the circus to clean, there were 12 ushers in the circus, and five brooms. We had a minimal amount of time to sweep between shows. We could not all sweep at once, and we could not go on break until we had finished sweeping.

The job of the supervisor was to make sure that the ushers did our jobs. The usher’s job was heavily mundane and suicidal. The ushers who did not have the stamina for the work often had problems with authority.

Damon, a 30 year old man from the Bronx almost got into a fight with the supervisor one afternoon because he would not permit any more of the supervisors harassment. James was our supervisor and proud of the fact that he had been with the circus for three years. Two of the years he was an usher. Whenever an usher would sweep, take out the trash, wipe the tops of the trashcans, or do any of the simple tasks we were assigned, James would give us our assignment again as if we were doing them incorrectly; which perpetuated the stupidity of the circus. If the usher failed to do his or her job, James was at fault. When we swept the isles, James would ask us to sweep the isles. James’ job at the circus was redundant to say the least.

I was one of the few ushers who did not have children. The work was physically draining, to the point that relaxing was the only thing that matterd. The war and the economy did not cross my mind, though I’m taxed for it first. When I worked forty hours a week in Boston and 60 hours a week in San Francisco, I spent a lot of time writing about things like American Imperialism, and drug laws. As a former member of the Young Socialists, this job was making me lose interest in politics.

Poverty is not the least bit interesting when you are broke. All I did every day was return from work, drink beer, write in my journal, then fall asleep. I did not care in the least how many of my tax dollars were killing Afghanis. Activism and social awareness are luxuries of people that have time. And all the ushers who had kids were mainly concerned with purchasing winter coats for the new year.

Damon and I had similar lifestyles. We both worked one shit job after the other. When Damon asked me what I did with my free time I replied, "I write." When I asked him what he liked to do, he said, "I watch the Knicks and the Yankees." Two of Damon’s friends had moved to Sacramento, and Damon wanted to join them once he saved up enough money. I told him he should do it. Every day Damon would tell me that he was going to quit and go to California. He never did.

Two pay periods later we got our checks and I had saved up enough to cover the following month’s rent. I finished my shift and handed the supervisor my uniform. I gave Damon my voicemail number and left.

"What are you going to do after this?" Damon asked me the day I quit.

"I’m going to try to get another job. It won’t be easy but I have a few weeks to find something else."

Damon never left the circus.