In the magazine's masthead it says I am the "Personals Representative," but on my business card it says I am the "Personals Coordinator," which is what I call myself because I'm not just a representative. To me, "representative" suggests that I'm just taking personal ads in, but there is much more to the job than that. My job is so broad it's ridiculous. I'm responsible for getting all the personal ads into the magazine every week. I'm also supposed to do marketing and PR for the section. And at the same time, I'm also in charge of customer service for the section, which means that anybody who is pissed off, or wants information, or wants to know how the personals work, calls me. And I also do the design and layout. So it's a lot.

I'd like to get out of this job right now. I've been saying I'm going to quit for months. In fact, I even went to an interview recently and then told them I was leaving, but it didn't work out. I'm really sort of burnt on it. The big problem is that I'm in a salary situation now, instead of working on commission. It used to be that my incentive was to try to get the minutes on the phone line up. Traditional classified sales are about selling space, but in personals that didn't used to matter--it used to be about generating minutes on the 900 number. And it used to be that I got a percentage of the revenue from the phone line, and that was great. But gradually, over the last couple of years, people have stopped calling and started using their emails and faxes to send us their ads. So the commission thing got replaced by a salary and--even with a bonus--I'm making at least $20,000 dollars a year less than I was before. So it sucks. I have no incentive, so I give a lot less of a fuck about it.

I'm still working pretty hard, though. I'm here about seven or eight hours each day. Mondays are usually a ten, if not a twelve hour day, and there are occasional weekends when I have to come in. A lot depends on volume and the size of the issue of the magazine.

I have more than one boss, but basically, I work directly under the publisher. He's like the epitome of every frat boy I hated in college. A typical salesman. If the magazine would make money by having an ad with a picture of his mother naked in it, I'm sure he'd get his mother to pose. I get along with him because I have to, but I try not to talk to him very much.

Most of the time I'm here, I'm fielding phone call from stupid people who piss me off because they're idiots. That's the worst part of the job. I get like fifty phone calls every day from freaks and losers. Sometimes I get so uncomfortable talking to these people I just crack up. I mean, I have laughed out loud at these people when they're placing their dumb ads. And the thing is, I used to care. I mean, things used to make me laugh, but in a good-natured way. Now I'm just laughing at them. I also used to flirt a lot more with the women on the phone, although I still do that sometimes. And I like to talk to the dominatrixes because they're usually pretty cool and smart; most of them have a good story or two if you can get it out of them. You know, about some guy they tied up or something.

But mostly I get crazy people. I get these calls from women who you know are crazy. You can just hear it in their voice--it quivers. See the thing is, over the last couple of years, all the reasonable people have gone over to using their emails and faxes to send us their ad copy. So the people who call me on the 900 number are invariably stupid. They don't know what they're doing, or they just want to talk to somebody because they're so alone. And they are so alone. And it's sad. It's definitely sad. But these people drive me insane. And that's why the job sucks.

I have this one guy who calls almost every week and says the same thing. He says, "I'm sick of people lying to me. I said I wanted someone to respond truthfully to my ad, and I said I wanted to meet someone who isn't overweight. And lo and behold, when I go to meet the woman she's 250 pounds and she's 5'2" tall." Then he goes on and on. "Everybody's always lying and I can't take it anymore. That's why I haven't met anybody--they always misrepresent themselves."

I don't know whether he's telling the truth or not. I just know he's crazy. Certifiable. And I also know he's never gonna meet anybody. But having said that, I should say that I've gotten invitations to weddings from people who met through the ads. So it works. And overall, I'd say that most of the personals that make it into the magazine are from normal people. But the crazy ones, the ones who keep calling back again and again, they're the ones who dominate my life. Every now and then I talk to someone who is genuinely nice, and I help them if I can. I still try pretty hard sometimes--I write their ad, or hook them up some way, and I might feel good for a second. Maybe. It does happen. But not much.

I like the magazine itself, I think it's a good product. And the office here is pretty diverse, a pretty nice group of people. I guess it's not the average workplace, because I can dress in jeans and a tee shirt and nobody gives a shit. It's pretty casual. And that is one of the main reasons I'm here. I can come and go as I please; the management is very laissez-faire. I'm just counted on to get a certain amount of work done every week, and I always do. And that's really why I haven't been fired yet. The numbers aren't what they were, but that's a national trend. Personal ads are just not making what they once were, so that's in my favor. The numbers crested about a year ago. The market is saturated.

We've tried to do some things to boost the section and generally that's just resulted in some pretty disastrous events. It's been embarrassing. We've done these parties, which I will not do anymore. They were intended to promote the personals, and to get more ads in the magazine. But when normal people show up at these events, all they see the fat guy who hasn't showered in a week with his Star Trek pin that glows in the dark, and his glasses with tape holding them together and he hasn't brushed his teeth in a month and you can smell his breath twenty feet across the bar, and you're trying to foster a social environment, it's the worst. All I want to do is sit there and drink whiskey. That's the worst. I hate it.

Now, of course, I'm supposed to be expanding the section--that's part of my job, but I don't give a shit. If I get fired I would be on unemployment, and that would be wonderful. I would love to be on unemployment. Other than that, what I'd really like to do is get more in to the graphics end of it, which would better prepare me for a job somewhere else. As I said, I lay out my section and, over the past year, I have been trying to become more proficient with Photoshop and Quark, two computer design programs. Ideally, that's what I would do. I actually (laughs) had this dream last night that one of the production manager's assistants became my boss in a new production department. She hired me to do production, and I was totally psyched. I would much rather do that. So that was my dream last night (laughs). I was doing graphics and it was cool and then I woke up screaming when I realized I had to answer the phone today.

The only reason I haven't quit is that this pays the rent. I need to get fired and get the unemployment money. I can't just live on nothing. If they fired me, I think they should replace me with somebody who was in a fraternity or a sorority in college. Someone who conforms more to the status quo. I'm too negative, and cynical, and pissed off. I'm intolerant of people. They should probably also hire somebody who's single. Because that person could probably get laid a lot. I have a girlfriend, and I've been happy in that relationship since I've had this job, so I've never responded to any of these ads. But there have been women I would have checked out though, hell yeah, and I'm sure I could have gotten laid. It would probably have been a bad thing to do, but I could have.

I think that from doing this job, I have come to believe that people will try to get away with anything they can. There is not a moral code anymore, people just want to get away with something. They are all alone and they are frustrated and they'll do anything to relieve that. It's disheartening to a degree. But then again, I'm cynical. I don't have a bright, rosy outlook on life, which is something I suppose you should have if you want to do this right. Especially at the parties, because you're supposed to be talking to people to get them to place ads. But if somebody came up to me to do that at an event, I'd be like, get the fuck out of here. It's like somebody calling you at home and saying, "Buy my stuff." And since I can't do that, I hire other people to do it instead, which is the American way. But that holds me back. I should be better at it, but it's just not in my personality makeup. So I need to move on.

The only thing I've really learned from this job is that I need another one. I'm just too burnt out. But the next time I take a job, I hope it's not something that just leads to a dead end, like this one does. Although, I guess most jobs lead to a dead end. At least in my life they have.

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