Listen, Ethan. I hired you because you seem like a good kid. A kid with a lot of potential and ambition. Someone I could count on to come in every morning ready to work, wanting to learn, and hungry to succeed. When we first met, I saw more than just an Ivy League diploma and a pair of Master’s degrees. I saw a kid who seemed ready to take on any challenge thrown his way, even if that challenge was the upkeep of a glory hole in a Cracker Barrel bathroom off the side of I-95.
Your performance has been subpar at best. The fact is, you knew what this was all about the day we had our interview in this very stall. And I thought we were on the same page. I run the business operations—marketing, financials, accounting, etc.—and you? You take this rag and that spray bottle of disinfectant, and you clean that hole in the wall where strangers stick their genitals.
I guess I could tell early on that your heart wasn’t in this. That you felt somehow above this work just because you can “hear all the noises.” I’ll admit it, sterilizing grimy sex-holes at roadside establishments isn’t the most glamorous job in the world, but it’s a job nonetheless. I’ll never understand you Millennials, with your entitlement, too good to earn a hard day’s pay, too good to clean a carved-out piece of dry wall just because it’s used for depraved sex meet-ups.
Don’t think I haven’t noticed all the goofing off you do in your urinal all day. Playing on your cellphone, texting constantly, scouring LinkedIn for a job that doesn’t require you to wear double-ply latex gloves and protective eyewear. Hell, just the other day you were playing Candy Crush while I was trying to teach you how to properly sand down the inner edges of a circular, three-and-a-quarter-inch, anonymous pleasure-factory. Is that showing me that you want to work here? That you’re ready to run a glory hole of your own one day?
You’re not in college anymore. This isn’t some second-rate internship; this is the real world. And in the real world, people walk into bathrooms and pay good money to insert their private parts into mysterious holes and experience the thrill of what awaits in the darkness. It’s called capitalism, Ethan!
You know what? I don’t want to have this talk again. You’re a smart kid. You’re capable of being a doctor or a lawyer or anything else in the world. But the fact remains; you chose to get two English degrees instead of something with more concrete value. And I’m not saying you won’t ever be a professional writer or even the Poet Laureate of the United States one day. But right now, you’ve only got two jobs: first, lose that smug, Ivy League attitude—it’s bothering the hell out of the regulars; and second, take this mixture of ammonia and clinical-grade hand soap, and scrub the Eastern Seaboard’s highest-grossing glory hole until there’s no trace left of the previous session.
Now, are we clear? Great. Please don’t make me sorry for doing your mother this favor.