Yet Another Tale from Minimum Wage

The first real job I ever had was as a janitor of a small office building. I was a junior in high school, and worked with my friend Karl. It wasn’t that bad of a job except for the toilets. Karl and I would show up after school, hang out for an hour talking about women (Kama and Wendy specifically), music, and comic books. It took less than two hours to clean the place if we really worked at it. Basically it paid for my CD’s and comic books. Also, I’ve always wanted to say “I cleaned toilets for a living.” Then they finally leased out the basement offices.

The first company was a couple guys who sold vacuum cleaners. Every time I ran into them, they would try to sell me these supposed miracles of vacuuming. I don’t know why they thought a teenager would want a vacuum cleaner. Karl would later on be wooed by the apparent cash cow of vacuum cleaners and started working for them. I think it lasted a month. My main problem with them was that they smoked a lot. This meant I had to vacuum their office everyday. Hmm? That kind of makes sense now.

The real character was the guy who ran the “modeling agency.” My question was why do you need a modeling agency in Columbus, Ohio? The second question was why were they in the basement? The guy who ran the “agency” was some Middle Eastern guy who always wore flashy Lycra shirts. Not that he was ever there. Weeks would go by, and there would be no sign of him. The best was his lame attempt to make the office look like a model agency. This extent of his decoration was putting up Kmart clocks for NY, Tokyo, London, and Munich I think. The clocks had their corresponding name spelled out in those shiny stencils used for mailboxes. Half the time the clocks didn’t even work. The other half they didn’t even have the right time. There were also random headshots spread out on the table in the “meeting room.” These headshots were always in the same place. They never moved. Also, none of them had their resumes on the back. How strange is that? A couple times there were some women there with think Eastern European accents. They looked tore up. There was no way they were models even by Ohio’s standards. This lead Karl and I to believe the “modeling agency” was a cover up for drug running or human trafficking.

With my dream of being a private investigator still intact at that age (I read too many Encyclopedia Brown Books), I set out to find evidence of this man’s evil doings. I thumbed through folders that just contained more head shots, tried to unlock his desk, and just snooped around. I’d like to say that I came up with highly incriminating evidence that helped the FBI bring down one of the largest human trafficking organizations, but I didn’t. If I actually had money and a car I’m certain I would’ve broken the case or been arrested for trespassing. It’s at this point I realize how pointless this story is.