This, too, is an excerpt from a collection of essays I’m writing about the whacky jobs I’ve had.
Practically Paris All Star Assistant Services
My interview took place in a courtyard with the director of the company. I showed up wearing tailored grey pants and a pink cashmere sweater; he was wearing medical scrubs the color of a vintage hand mixer, which was odd, because I had applied for a position in the tourism sector. His name had three or four components to it and he closed his eyes when he brought up something important. Other unsettling elements came up during our interview, irregularities that any normal person would have absorbed as cues to stop, drop, and roll the hell out, but I had just moved to Paris without legal working papers and I couldn’t afford to be picky. Things got even more uncomfortable when he showed me the office. There were five different phones placed throughout the office at various heights, each one with a specific purpose. The “black one”, for example, was only for incoming calls from the director’s wife. Every nerve in my body told me not to take the job, but take it I did, placing my hand in that of Mr. Maniben Nayek Kosamblya Surat’s while an interior monologue dashed through my head. If it turns out to be terrible, I can always quit!
What constitutes a terrible position? When I was seven years old, I attempted to set up a salon in my bathroom, but there wasn’t any room for a chair between my closet and the sink so customers- had there been any- would have had to kneel down and lean back in a piercing back bend in order to get their hair cut. This certainly constituted an uncomfortable position.
In eighth grade, I worked in a vintage shop on a tucked away corner in the unfit part of town. When I wasn’t wiping down the curio cabinets, I brought erotic hosiery to giggling men behind a velvet curtain the color of a Shiraz with a 15% alcohol level. I was twelve years old when a great big bear of a man asked me if I had a “teddy” in his size. This put me in an uncomfortable position because I thought he was referring to a stuffed animal. The overall impact on my appetite was the same as if I’d actually understood what he was talking about. Lounging with a teddy bear, lounging in a teddy, the man was overheated and he had far too much hair on the outside of his body. There are certain elements to which the youth should not be exposed.
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. There was my first introduction to Avel, the enigmatic “Officer of supplies” who came to work each day in a collared pink shirt and sweatpants. There was the morning that the dyslexic accountant asked me to clean the toilet daily as part of my job. And then there was the toilet. That was it- probably. The defining moment. The desk they assigned me to was actually a fold up table, propped in front of the door to the bathroom, to the right of the printer. Anytime anyone wanted to use the facilities, I had to get up from my fold-up chair, clear off and arrange my fold-up table, and wait patiently out of earshot while the party in question went through several private arrangements with their digestive system.
It was difficult, unfortunately, to stay out of earshot. The office I worked in was a ludicrous 16 x 24 rectangular, probably too small to be legal, although I never looked in to it. At any given time, there were four of us working in that coffin of linoleum and plaster; me in front of the bathroom, Avel on a stool, Nesrine, the aforementioned accountant, in a frustrated heap by the doorway, and Mr. Mariben Nayek Kasamblya Surat, blinking and gesticulating and throwing out used tea bags.
It was an impossible arrangement. Not only was the environment devoid of one ounce of privacy, but Avel always smelled. You would think that you would get used to a body odor of such grandiose prevalence, but I never did. He had several pink polos, but he only had one pair of grey sweatpants, and when the weather cooled he brought out his one and only sweater, a brown and white concoction made out of the kind of synthetic blend that ends up in the “free” crate on some stranger’s yard.
Mr. Surat, on the other hand, smelled endlessly of cinnamon. It wasn’t a bad smell, per se, but mixed in with Avels’, the pint-sized office of Practically Paris stunk like an expired tin of potpourri from some out-of-the-way Christmas Shop in a tired strip mall.
Mariben wore his medical scrubs the first day that I met him, but he never put them on again during the three months I was there, so God only knows why he was wearing them in the first place. Every morning after that, he donned a pair of black leather overalls which called to mind a deranged blacksmith, or some medieval madmen of this sort. Because I hadn’t ascertained whether or not my colleagues were made out of flesh and blood and I hadn’t made any friends yet, in Paris, I didn’t have a single person to snicker with about this. I took care not to speak of my employer’s finery on my Sunday calls to home. I didn’t want my mother to think I was working in the kind of place with mirrored windows and “peep shows” available for a hundred francs.
In fact, I had to avoid telling my mother any details at all because I didn’t have access to a great many of them, myself. When I first took the job, I was told that I would be working as a “tourism consultant”. I would correspond with and arrange exclusive jaunts around the country for overweight Americans and their listless wives. I would find a translator to take the Japanese shopping. I would send young bankers up in hot air balloons with a felt-box in their pocket of their corduroy pants. I would lease helicopters to fly over castles and fill them with insurance agents on a “retreat”.
This might have been an interesting way to spend my waking hours, but I wouldn’t really know because I probably arranged three trips of this nature during my entire time there. Practically Paris All Star Assistant Services was like a woman’s handbag, filled with trinkets and bonbons and vague, alarming secrets. For every legitimate item of business we conducted, there was something illicit lurking behind it.
The tourism sector- for instance, why don’t we start with that? We offered bus tours and boat tours and night tours of Paris, and on paper these came complete with your own car and your own guide. In reality, you were ushered into a group of sixty other people who had made their reservations through some anonymous site where they paid a trifle of what you did and ended up having a grand old time on “The Bateaux Mouche” because hey! Who doesn’t like shrimp cocktail as part of a prix fixe?
Shrimp cocktail is all well and fine when you’re eating it in the confines of a private, chartered boat- but when you find yourself dining “family style” with Dean and Dora Dixon from Farsworth, Wisconsin, well, it just tastes frozen. We sold “semi-private”, customized tours of Paris through our website and booked people, instead, on public tours through another company. It was quite ingenious, really- the way it worked was this. I replied to people’s innocuous emails (“Is it warm in Paris? Are the back streets safe?”) for a week or two. After a series of orchestrated exchanges, I would rope them in. “Paris is quite comfortable, even in the winter and ladies will enjoy catcalls at all hours of the day.”
Mariben told me early on that he wanted our customers to relate to the person signing off on emails in an emotional way. I understood this as: I shouldn’t make fun of them, I should disclose helpful, timely tips like “leave the McCain 2008 lapel pins at home”, I should encourage and indulge them with their antiquated concerns about their upcoming trip to The Other Side.
All this- yes. And more. Mariben insisted that I work under false names like “Constance”, “Prudence”, and (my choice) “Grace”. Mr. Surat wasn’t an American, but he was convinced that this was the kind of hokey thing that Americans did.
“They need to know your values,” he explained, standing beside me in his cinnamon and leather.
“These names are ridiculous. They don’t sound real.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, pointing to the screen. “The important thing is that they know what you stand for.”
What use was it, arguing? The boss considered leather overalls appropriate business attire and he interviewed me with a stethoscope draped around his neck. I was paid once a week in crisp, useful cash for a job that demanded roughly six and a half percent of my total brain capacity. Prudence. Efficiency. Dedication. Grace. What did it matter, really, once the clients landed, sniffed at their hotel soaps, indulged in some Camembert and got back on the plane?
And round and round it went. As “Grace”, I coaxed and coddled my American clients for weeks on end and only to dump them on some boat cruise with a molding carpet. Mariben, outrageously, saw no fault in this plan. He envisioned my role as that of an ambassador to our client’s dream vacation. I was with them from the beginning, telling them what and what not to pack (A waterproof trench coat, oui! A fanny pack? Non!). I answered their inane questions about the climate and the familiarity of waiters with requests to keep all sauce on the side. I was gracious and effable and I was always there. In the client’s mind, if “Grace” didn’t respond, it was simply because she was running about somewhere in low heeled, suede shoes, inquiring whether or not the hotel put chocolates on the pillows because, really- wasn’t there enough temptation in the world, as it was?
So on the happy day of their tour, instead of finding a private driver and a coach car, our clients found themselves hustled into a mêlée of fifty year old bumpkins with tote bags and magnets and compact umbrellas. In order to stay the natural reaction to flee, or to sue, I hired a “hostess” to meet them at their hotel and escort them to the bus, or boat, or inner tube that would take them around the treasured City of Lights. Usually, everything went well on the way there- the hostess would chat amicably with the wife and wink at the husband, pointing out the little shops selling macaroons and linen. And then, somewhere around the Tuileries, a bloated crowd would bloom and our clients would begin to show their first signs of distress. “I thought this was a private tour?” The woman would attempt. “We want our money back?” They were meek or they were adamant. It depended, in fact, on how much the couple liked each other in the first place. The Midwesteners were always pleased as pie to have the occasion to “meet some other Americans”, and I often received follow-up emails from the matriarch in the party (Marjorie, Heather or Maud) expounding the benefits of traveling “en masse”.
But more often than not, things went very wrong. Usually, we could get the clients over their initial disappointment that the tour was not a private one. Most people, after all, were happy just to be somewhere where their children were not. The real problem came when our hostess lead them to the drop-off point for the group. The company that led the tour, (legitimately, I should add) featured hostesses equipped with slim-fitting dress suits, brochures and shiny buttons, advertising prices 35% lower than ours.
If our victims realized this while our hostess was still in their vicinity, she was instructed to forget all of her English, pull out a walkie-talkie, shrug a bit, and bow. We chose our hostesses from a seemingly infinite selection of Nesrine’s cousins, buxom girls with dark eyes and dark hair, enchanted and distracting. They carried meal vouchers in their pockets to “Planet Hollywood”, which they were to distribute with abandon when charm didn’t work. We had a secret weapon for the ones who spelled trouble from the get-go. One of Nesrine’s cousins had a really splendid unibrow- a stupendous accessory that stayed off the complaints. Clients were so awestruck by its presence, so taken aback by the ability of an otherwise attractive girl to allow such a thing to bunk out on her forehead, that they all fell mute in front of it, too afraid to point out the fact that they’d been swindled, less the tragic Armenian interpret their complaints as a form of mockery. Ah- it was unfailing and comical and deft! Americans are nothing if not hypocritically polite.
Avel moved up in the ranks during my short time at Practically Paris. He went from a loyal boy Friday to a useless-every-day man. Near the end of my sojourn amidst the loons, I discovered the reason for his promotion in the form of a cardboard box. Filled to the brim with nude photographs of Mariben’s wife, this had been Avels’ groundbreaking task. Avel was a lot of things, but he wasn’t ambitious. The only person who could have had the idea to organize his “family” photos into categories such as “supine”, “with cat”, “al Fresco” and “Mexico” was Mariben himself. Surely, Avel was just doing his bidding, and he got a little something extra for keeping his mouth shut.
And so, two weeks into my adventure, instead of having Avel and his odiferous polos one morning a week, I got to enjoy them Monday through Friday.
Avels’ job involved refilling the staples, restocking the paper, sharpening the pencils, and conducting “ink tests”; an independent venture that saw him removing the cap off a pen, writing “Avel” on a piece of paper and deciding whether or not the pen had a satisfactory amount of ink left inside. He did this with all of the pens in the office. He did this twice a day.
Being the owner of just one pair of pants, (with the prefix ‘sweat’ included in their description), Avel was a great fan of recycling and he encouraged us to adopt the same spirit of thriftiness in our office lives. He took it upon himself to create a little board where he attached notices and diatribes against our selfish, unsustainable actions. One time, I found a printed copy of an email I had sent to a friend in New York. I had found my prose particularly witty that day, and thought I might start including printed threads of email conversations into my diary since I couldn’t be bothered to write in it myself. I found this first email, (which, by some strange chance, was relatively safe for work) stuck up on the board next to another piece of paper with a carefully drawn arrow. “IS THIS YOURS?”
When I came in that morning, Avel coughed and checked the level of ink in his pen for good measure. He wasn’t one for greetings. I tore the paper down in an all too-early huff (I hadn’t had any caffeine yet, my God!) and snarkily inquired if going through people’s personal trash was one of his hobbies. “The trash is not personal,” he replied, casting an intimate look towards the bin at his feet. “And you didn’t use both sides.” He reached out his arm- bathing me in the putrid glory of his early morning eau d’Avel, and carefully removed the push-pin from the accusatory note before taking it down and turning it over.
“See?” He said. “Both sides.”
Both sides indeed. Page 2 of his memo contained an Office To-Do list with an instant coffee stain at the top right corner.
“Paper costs money.”
“This place is a little small to be leaving me notes.”
But the notes continued. And then things got dirty. He literally became obsessed with the trash. He began manically combing through the litter in search of infringements upon whatever it was that he saw as his duty. Permanent markers that still had an hour or two of life left in them, an unlabeled CD, “WHAT IS THIS”, and once, a receipt from the grocery store, “IS THIS IMPORTANT?”
I really let him have it after I found that. There were tampons listed on it, for Christ’s sake.
“It’s disgusting!” I yelped. “And illegal!” (Perhaps?) “Get out of my garbage.”
Oh- how he hated it when I called it mine. He grabbed the receipt in question and brought my attention to one specific item, fifth down from the top.
“Memo Pad, 15 Francs.”
He’d drawn a black rectangle around the article with the aid of a ruler, and I was filled with rage and pity for this ruler-wielding Mongolian who snuck into the garbage the minute we went home.
“It’s private, Avel.” I said, trying hard not to scream.
“Then it shouldn’t be in the trash.”
I took the receipt out of his hands, folded it neatly into quarters, and then, under his watchful and visibly pained eyes, I tore the paper into eight separate pieces and put each one in the trash. My trash.
The next morning (he was always the first one to arrive and the last to leave, and because I once found a pink polo hanging in the bathroom and a bottle of detergent, I think he might have lived there) I found my receipt taped back together and hung up on the board.
“IMPORTANT. FOR TAX PURPOSES”. Even his handwriting pushed me over the edge. When he didn’t write in capitals, he brought out that damn ruler and managed to crack out one character every five seconds. The process was arduous and ridiculous and heartbreaking to watch, and it’s possible that the man had some mental issues, but I didn’t care.
I ran across the courtyard to Mariben’s apartment where the door was always open and found him tottering around in his leather coveralls and a matching pair of slippers.
I told him that my privacy was being invaded. I told him that I couldn’t “work under these conditions”. I asked him what Avel’s job actually entailed.
“He’s a very methodical worker,” Mr. Surat said, with his eyes closed.
“He’s compulsive!” I felt on the brink of tears. I hadn’t felt so exasperated by another human being since my cousin’s Catholic wedding where I was forced to sit next to son of the owner of a shooting range who considered Hooters the be-all and end-all in Continental cuisine.
“We must all try to get along.”
I whined. I pined. Mariben closed his eyes and rubbed his hands together. His stoic response suggested that I wasn’t half as valuable as I thought I was and I felt terrible about myself for the rest of the week. If that strange little man preferred to lose me over the offensive Avel, than what in the world was the point of my college degree?
During my initial interview with Mr. Surat and his unexplained scrubs, I asked if he could find it in his cinnamon-scented heart to sponsor me for a Visa. He said, yes, he could if I could commit to two years with Practically Paris. This seemed like an eternity, but I did not have an administrative mind and assumed, as I did with so many things at that time in my life, that I could walk away from it all if it didn’t work out. Had I had the sort of hearty constitution that thinks a little bit of sacrifice goes a long way, I would have applied for a job with a law firm or an American school before leaving the US, and I would have disembarked with a selection of desirable apartments picked out for me by the company receptionist, all patiently awaiting my ‘yay’ or my ‘nay’. I would have had a long term Visa tucked into a stylish travel wallet and a wardrobe that consisted of nylons and blouses. But what, pray, would have been the point of that? If I wanted to walk around town with a handsome salary and a badly cut knee-length skirt, I could have stayed in Greenwich, Connecticut. The lack of choice is clear.
And so I left after college with the unfounded assurance of my French Teaching Assistant that I would have “no problem finding a sponsor”. If I hadn’t been so smitten by his dopey smile and his undisciplined hair, I might have followed up on this statement and found out it wasn’t true. But I didn’t. And so I found myself biding my time while the dyslexic accountant tried her very hardest to navigate her way through my application.
Or at least, it looked like she was trying. Now, in retrospect, I wonder if it wasn’t a ruse. Each time Nesrine filled out the application, there was something horrendously wrong with it. Usually, my name was metamorphosed into a first and last name that had no more than one letter in common with my actual name, and she consistently listed the year of my birth as 2001, which would have made me approximately 8 months old. For some inexplicable reason, Nesrine refused to let me fill out the application myself and then complained about how long it took for the prefecture to send her another one. It didn’t take me long to realize that my dreams of legality were not going to be realized at Practically Paris anytime soon.
This was irrevocably proved on a sunny morning in November (read that last line again because it is anomaly. It’s a proven fact that there is no sun in Paris in November. In fact, there is no sun, ever) I came into the office earlier than usual and caught Avel at it. It was truly unbelievable. He had taped up a bit of toilet tissue he’d found in the wastebin, and had managed to eek out “THIS IS WASTEFU” with a purple marker when I walked in. Even for him, rummaging through the assorted elements associated with the expulsion of natural waste was a new low. I was aghast. I felt as if I had been touched in a very inappropriate, very dirty way.
Just as I gathered up the strength to throw a grown-up temper tantrum, Mariben ran in, his face and neck the color of a Japanese eggplant.
“You need to go.” He hissed. “They’re coming!”
Without a word, Avel removed his right knee from his stool, stuffed the toilet tissue in his pocket and left the unfinished missive on his desk. He grabbed his brown and white sweater from atop the computer and left without a word. Mr. Surat swept by me, (I still had my coat on), folded up my fold-up desk and went into the bathroom. I steered myself for a lecture on my inconspicuous toilet paper consumption, but he emerged five seconds later with a broom in his hand.
“Just sweep in the courtyard, okay?” His eyes were bright. “You’re my maid.”
I put my hands on my hips, refused to take the broom and launched into an explanation of how I was no such thing, and what the hell was going on in the first place, when suddenly there was a conflagration of men at the office door in more leather than Mariben.
The one closest to the doorway held up a badge. Mariben let out a little sigh.
“Mariben Nayek Kosamblya Surat of 12 Villa Saint Jacques, you are being charged for the alleged trafficking of barbiturates and the false translation of medical documents. Do you have a lawyer?”
Mr. Surat said he did, and offered the men tea. Tea! Before leading them across the courtyard to his private quarters, Mariben turned around to face me and asked me, please, to sweep.
“I’ll increase your last paycheck.”
Broom in hand, I followed them outside. Mariben lived on the ground floor and his windows let out onto the courtyard. I tried to eavesdrop on their conversation, but they closed the door behind them, and in any case, Mariben’s French was absolutely indecipherable. I stood outside in the brisk November air and slapped at the same spot for a while with my ridiculous broom. Fifteen minutes later, Mariben emerged in a winter jacket with an envelope and a set of keys. He took the broom out of my hand and replaced it with the envelope.
“We tried!”
The officers and I watched as he locked up the office with Avel’s unfinished memorandum and all his pens inside. Mariben stared for a moment at the little office and then he turned his back to it to face the gendarmes. I searched his face for the meaning of his final words. We tried to get you a Visa? We tried to offer low cost prescriptions to illegal immigrants? (Not likely, in a socialist country with free healthcare). We tried to provide Americans and the occasional Japanese tourist with a gay, if overpriced, inclusive tour of Paris? Goddamit! I thought, as the heavy front door buzzed and closed behind them. I was unemployed.
