Because Levi doesn’t believe me:

I have a new job. It is still in the retail sector, but not strictly in the “screaming children at midnight on a Saturday on Rt. 46 retail job” sense that my last two positions have been. I am finishing up the training to be an e-mail/phone representative for a large online book retailer that isn’t named Amazon.com. It seems remarkably tolerable so far.

PROS
1. I am working a regular Monday-Friday schedule, which allows me to plan things for evenings and weekends with impunity. This is a big improvement over the last couple jobs.
2. It pays more. This will be negated almost instantly by the fact that I have an employee discount on books. But even if I was being paid minimum wage, I would still blow half my paycheck on books.
3. I realize that I will be dealing with a great number of “where is my order, you jerk” inquiries. I am prepared to deal with irate customers. The fact that my new employer culls its consumer base from only the theoretically-literate, but also a nationwide demographic gives me confidence that I will be on the receiving end of fewer “where is my order, you fucking fuck, i will be waiting for you outside when your shift is over” inquiries. Which were distressingly commonplace amongst the clientele on Rt 46.
4. No company-issue douchebag-lookin’ golf shirts to wear. I get to look like a douchebag in my own personal way.
5. Computer records allow me to stalk minor celebrities. Sarah Vowell seems to enjoy reading.

CONS
1. The commute – a little under twenty miles – can run a little over an hour, thanks to Lincoln Tunnel traffic. Luckily I have a cache of Jean Shepherd and David Sedaris CD-Rs to listen to, but I worry that my vast stores may be depleted by late November. I guess I could dig up those Feynman lectures, but I don’t know if I can hang with that early in the morning.
2. Speaking of mornings, this may be the first time since high school that I have regularly woken up by 8am. Even when I took Chinese at 8:30am, I usually stayed up all night and crashed after the class. I appear to be hardwired so that I cannot fall asleep before 2:30 or 3:00am. I am starting to fall in love with minor-league sleep deprivation.
3. Yesterday I accidentally left the new(ish) (International) Noise Conspiracy EP in my bookbag. I also put my apparently empty travel coffee cup into the bookbag, and then carried it out with me on lunch. I was walking through the atrium when I noticed the wet spot on the bottom of my bag. Nothing was seriously damaged, save for the liner notes of Bigger Cages, Longer Chains. It’s coffee-logged and stuck together. The liner notes are RUINED. Jesus, what do you even do with one of their CDs if you don’t have the adorable stark photocollages and Marxist rants to look at?

So really, these aren’t even very major cons. Granted, I am still in training. Shadowing of an active sales rep begins tomorrow, with solo work starting next Monday. Perhaps I will crash and burn. I happen to think that my NPR radio voice will soothe even the angriest botched Finding Nemo pre-order. We live in hope.