Being a “temporaily” unemployed writer, I have had to scrounge around and look for job opportunities. One of those desperate moments is when I register with an agency, and submit to hours of testing on my MS Word, Excel and “Numbers” skills. The last category is when you have to type the same number in a box that is above the empty box on the monitor screen.
These employment agencies are as depressing as a hospital, nursing home or the DMV. They are usually windowless, flourescent lit evironments staffed by very fat women. These mediocrities sit at a desk and assess you in the narrowest and least imaginative way. “Let’s see. Do you know Vista? Because if you do, I can place you at Atlantis Motels in Reseda and they need a front desk greeter for $12 an hour!”
There is no accounting for the strange ways of wealth in Los Angeles. People you think are rich, might be broke, but lease a $700 a month BMW and live in Beverly Hills. The millionaires next door, actually are on my street, here in Van Nuys. They live behind gates and own acres of land in one of the largest retail developments in the Mid-Wilshire district.
An investment banker in New York, who dresses so stylishly that his custom made suits were noticed by Ralph Lauren, recently wrote me to ask if he should give up his job and try moving to LA because he is “creative” and wants to work in film or do “something” in design. He probably makes at least $500,000 a year and perhaps he has some savings and can make a go of it here in LA.
But imagine the day that his savings run out, and he has to walk into the musty offices of Apple One in Glendale and submit to a typing test. Maybe he only can turn out 30 WPM. The fat lady with the donuts and generic hand moisturizer bottle at Apple One will look at him with bewilderment and say, “But what are your SKILLS?” He will walk out of there and down the street and buy a plot at Forest Lawn just in case…….
Here in Van Nuys 
I agree with your observations on the soul-sucking environment of most temp agencies.
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BTW, hiring 7 writers to simultaneously rewrite a script only to chose one, in order to “speed up the development process” is redundant and they are employed… for a minute.
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Andrew apparently doesn’t know that most people in the entertainment industry make more than him working only six months a year while drawing unemployment checks between gigs.
I was a working writer in LA, living in NoHo for 10 years and I totally understand you frustration. Even if I made a lot one year, I was afraid to spend it for fear I would end up like the bum at the Donut shop asking me for a quarter who used to be a VP at Columbia Pics before Sony bought them.
Even having gone to the right schools and knowing the right people, one can be among the over educated and broke. LA is replete with those, and conversely, plenty of rich idiots.
Keep up the writing, but remember to depend on something else for money!
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They use the word “redundant” in England. We say “fired” or “unemployed”.
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Doesn’t redundant mean being unemployed? As in you’ve been made redundant? I’ve been redundant for months!
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Andrew,
First, hopefully you understand I was being tounge in cheeck. If not my sorry as I am not a real writer and as such can by definition never make myself clear.
Second, one of the funniest retorts I’ve read in a long time. you are a real writer.
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Do you think it is polite or courteous to call an unemployed person who is jobless, redundant? I have taken hours and days to write this blog, editing and writing words with the utmost brevity and precision without wasting time or repeating myself. Ever.
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“Temporaily unemployed writer?” No wonder you are unemployed , you are redundant.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. Yes, the rich in LA are the people who are the least obvious. At least until their bequest endows an entire museum or library or hospital. The rich don’t lease SLK 320s precisely because the people who lease SLK 320s don’t become rich not the other way around.
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