Aspiring artists inevitably acquire an impressive service-industry résumé, going from waiting tables to temping to restocking clothes racks to waiting tables again. Erstwhile actress Ayun Halliday is no exception. While waiting for her guerrilla theater troupe to hit the big time, Halliday bussed tables, answered phones, telemarketed, and schlepped drink specials. She also guarded a children's museum, sold patchouli to hippies, subbed in a first-grade class, posed nude for drawing classes, repaired theater costumes, and wore a giant Bert outfit.
Halliday's adventures in hourly wage-land, as recorded in her new book Job Hopper, are best read by comfortably salaried employees. For those who can claim the security of a professional career, her malingering co-workers and obsessive superiors elicit a chuckle and a "they'll do it every time" headshake. That's both the book's charm and its weakness: Halliday's experiences read like travel memoirs from a particularly amusing land, carefully chosen for maximum weirdness, quirk, and opportunities for snarky, self-deprecating asides. At her worst, Halliday resorts to rapid-fire hyperbole and condescension for her bourgeois co-workers: "When Marci showed off the new cubic zirconia she'd bought at Sears, Joanne clucked that Kohl's had the exact same pendant for five dollars less," she reports from a typing pool.
But at her best, she portrays incompetence and indifference with a clinically sharp eye. The book's zenith is her description of the beleaguered test proctor at the Illinois Board Of Education exam for substitute teachers. "Now, does everyone see a blank that says 'Last Name?' Go ahead and fill your last name in there." Anyone who's ever been in a roomful of idiots listening to the idiot-proof standardized directions for a standardized test may need to lie down for a few minutes after reading those pages. Halliday's book only skims the surface of service-economy hell; Job Hopper is no substitute for Selling Ben Cheever or the Studs Terkel-esque Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. It's a funhouse-mirror version of working life: distorted but recognizable, enjoyable enough to while away a summer afternoon.