A Working Stiff's Manifesto: A Memoir of Thirty Jobs I Quit, Nine That Fired Me, and Three I Can't Remember

I found this to be extremely sad yet also funny.

If you attended college and graduated with a degree, envisioning a future where you would land a dream job or at least a position that paid a bit more than the minimum wage, considering the effort and resources you invested in obtaining that degree.

However, only to realize that you are now competing with high school students for dead-end and crappy jobs. It can be quite disheartening.

But then, there is this book that has the power to make you laugh at it all. You are not alone in this situation!

Oh, Mr. Levison, I have felt that sting myself. I have even gone so far as to gift this book to several of my favorite English Professors.

It serves as a sort of catharsis, allowing us to find humor in a rather unfortunate reality.

Maybe it's a way to cope with the unexpected twists and turns that life throws our way after college.

At least with this book, we can find some solace and a moment of levity in the midst of the chaos.

The story started off well, with an engaging beginning that held promise.

However, as the narrative progressed, it took a sharp turn towards the dark and miserable.

Despite having some truly funny moments in the early chapters, the book then dedicates a whopping sixty excruciating pages to a single set of jobs in Alaska.

Out of those sixty pages, there is only one solitary funny line.

Instead of more humorous moments, what we are presented with are long and horrible stories.

These stories often involve people ganging up on someone and subjecting them to a beating.

And unfortunately, it only gets worse from there.

The tone of the book becomes increasingly bleak and depressing, leaving the reader feeling rather disheartened.

It's a pity that what started with such potential ended up being a rather unpleasant read.

I read this for a Country Music/Literature class in college that I was taking. It was an extremely interesting class.

The article is an amusing and entertaining read. It's about graduating from college with an English degree and facing the challenge of not being able to find work.

This really frightened me at that time. However, whenever I would start to panic about my future job prospects, I would always recall that I could just write a book like this guy did.

He had some truly funny and memorable working experiences. For example, as a truck driver, he must have had many adventures on the road. And working on a fishing boat also provided him with unique stories to tell.

Overall, this article not only entertained me but also made me think about my own future and the possibilities that lie ahead.

The sportsball jock sniffer Rich Eisen of ESPN has coined the term “remote drop” for any great movie that comes on TV. Presumably, this comes from when he’s channel-surfing and actually lucks into something he knows he has to watch. It’s so good he drops the remote. Hence, “remote drop.”

I’m not sure what the literary equivalent is, but whatever it might be, it definitely applies to the small body of work produced by Iain Levison. Like Vonnegut or Bukowski, there is something so damn readable, so painless about his prose. It’s a rare gift, and it only makes it that much more of a shame that he seemingly got out of the game a long time ago. Oh well. C’est la vie. Or maybe “So it goes,” would be more apt, since I’ve already mentioned Vonnegut.

A Working Stiff’s Manifesto is the book that started it all off. It’s been more than twenty years since it was written, but that hasn’t lessened its bite at all. If anything, time has been especially kind to this book, but only because the world—specifically the work world—has gotten even crueler, more callous. In 2002, the countryside wasn’t quite choked with Amazon’s fulfillment gulags, and the democrats at least still halfheartedly courted the working class. These days, America is not so much a corporate oligarchy as a plutocrat’s paradise, a pirate’s cove to be raided rather than a nation to be exploited.

Or, as Levison observes somewhere in the book, the Carnegies and Fords at least left behind endowments and built museums and libraries to last the ages. The Zuckerbergs and Musks and Bezoses just take and take and occasionally fire their little phallic rockets into low earth orbit.

It's all horribly depressing, and would make for a grim read if Levison weren’t so funny, such a stylist, and so averse to feeling self-pity. The book starts with him in New York City, trying to score any kind of dignified, decent job he can find. Soon, however, he discovers that good jobs are not just rarer than hen’s teeth, but his English degree makes him a liability. No one wants to hire an underemployed aesthete who still probably has dreams of writing the great American novel and would regard manual labor as beneath them.

Levison hardly fits the “waiter-with-a-degree” cliché—and in addition to being bright, he has a longshoreman’s lack of pretension. Eric Hoffer is probably a better comparison than Thoreau, whom he excoriates for his famous line about men leading lives “of quiet desperation.” (Easy to say, Henry, when you’ve got a trust fund that enables you to gaze at your reflection in a pond all afternoon.)

But all the people on the other end of the hiring process don’t see Levison’s writing, with its acerbic wit or cutting insights. Neither do they know how tough he can be when lifting boxes or moving furniture. They only see what’s on the application, and it doesn’t look good.

Eventually, he gets a job filleting fish at an upscale supermarket. It goes well for a few days and then starts to go south as his employer begins to berate and abuse him. And then, when it looks like he’s about to meet the time-in threshold to get some benefits, they cut him loose. It happens again and again until eventually—after being discarded, shafted, or otherwise screwed one-too-many-times, Levison breaks bad and begins stealing. Rather than earning the reader’s opprobrium, though, his “crimes” only make him that much more sympathetic. His rage isn’t quite political, but it’s inspiring in its way.

There are myriad misadventures, including accidentally blowing the head off a donkey statue with a heating-oil hose (long story) and bleeding into bottles of merlot (ibid.) Somewhere along the way, Levison signs on for a hitch as a deep sea fisherman in Dutch Harbor, Alaska, and there things segue from the comical to the truly tragic.

He falls in with a group of fellow-itinerant fish catchers as desperate and spectral as the ghost crew of the Flying Dutchman. He guts fishes until his hands curl into carpal-tunnel afflicted claws. He works in a hold where he nearly drowns in a deluge of fish dropped on his head from industrial-grade nets hanging on giant crane jibs above. He gets sliced and gouged by the sharp fins and spines of some of the ornerier deep sea fishes that flop around as their gills starve for water.

Through it all, he must deal with his fellow crewmembers who, having been lost at sea for too long, have grown a bit “tetched” in the head. Imagine Office Space mixed with Moby Dick and you’ll have a rough idea of what this poor bastard had to go through.

At last, Levison makes his way back into the Lower Forty-Eight, a few years wiser, and hardly a dollar richer. Yes, it sucks, but it also shows how much more bearable life can be when one tries to go through it with some grace, humor, and intelligence. Most people only get the back injuries and the bitterness. Levison got the back injuries, the bitterness, and a great little book that rewards rereading and can be savored like a good beer.

I think it was Charlie Chaplin who once said that the essence of all comedy was “a man in trouble.” Critic Roger Ebert expanded on that with the insightful gloss that it was only funny when you’re not that man chasing his hat in a high wind.

A Working Stiff’s Manifesto makes me wonder if Ebert was right. There’s something that makes me think Levison finds it all as ridiculous as the reader. Maybe that’s the only way to keep from crying?

Five stars, regardless. And come back, Iain, wherever the hell you are.

Levison's pen is a true demonstration of cynicism and black humor.

By telling his own story, he blows up the American dream.

And the working world over there is not always so nice and pretty!

His words cut through the false illusions and show the harsh reality that lies beneath.

We see the struggles, the disappointments, and the absurdities that people face in their pursuit of success.

It's a wake-up call that forces us to question the ideals and values that we hold dear.

Maybe the American dream isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Maybe we need to look beyond the shiny surface and see the truth for what it is.

Levison's writing challenges us to do just that.

It makes us think, it makes us laugh, and it makes us realize that sometimes, the only way to cope with the world is to find the humor in it.

So, pick up his pen and take a journey into a world of cynicism and black humor.

You might just be surprised at what you find.

**"From Nicole's List"**

Nicole has a list that holds great significance for her.

This list might be filled with various things, perhaps her goals, dreams, or even a simple to-do list.

Each item on the list represents something important to her, something that she either wants to achieve or accomplish.

Maybe it's a book she wants to read, a place she wants to visit, or a skill she wants to learn.

The list serves as a reminder to her, a source of motivation and inspiration.

Whenever she looks at it, she is reminded of what she is working towards and what she hopes to become.

It gives her a sense of direction and purpose in life.

Nicole treasures her list and is determined to work hard to cross off each and every item on it.

She knows that it won't be easy, but she is willing to put in the effort and time to make her dreams a reality.

After all, as the saying goes, "where there's a will, there's a way." And Nicole definitely has the will to make her list come true.

If you've got five thousand dollars, you have the luxury of actually taking the time to search for something decent. This amount of money can provide a certain level of financial security, allowing you to be more selective in your job hunt or other pursuits.

I've had this book for such a long time that I've completely forgotten who gave it to me. I suspect it was my cousin, and I'm truly grateful to him for passing it along. This book had me in stitches in many parts, with its humorous and engaging stories.

My absolute favorite was the bartending gig he describes, working in the freezing dark with a drunk teenager. The description of looking out the east window and seeing the two guys being paid to freeze in the dark, or perhaps not seeing them at all but knowing they're out there, was both comical and a bit eerie.

The best-described section was his time in Alaska, which was also the longest chapter. The vivid details allowed me to picture exactly this cold, wet, and seemingly unending period. It sounds like a living hell on earth, especially with all the felonies that occur up there and the bait and switch tactics used to get people to work on ships.

The most aggravating part was his experience assisting his friend Jim at a trucking company. Having moved many times myself, I can't even begin to imagine packing up someone else's unpacked house. The need to account for every single item, from remote controls to boxes of fish food, aquarium rocks, and egg timers, is简直 overwhelming. And the fact that he could potentially steal something by simply not inventorying it added an extra layer of complexity to the situation.

This book could have benefited from some additional editing. At one point, a character was given a different name, which was quite confusing when I first noticed it. However, overall, it's a quick and entertaining read. I managed to finish it in just one day. It also provides a pretty insightful look into the world of working various common jobs in America. Levison often breaks down the numbers by the hour, and it's truly disheartening. No one can realistically survive on these meager earnings, especially considering that this book is already 20 years old.

He works at a restaurant, a trucking company, a temp agency, a ship in Alaska, a grocery store cutting fish, and at the end of it all, his simple desire is to have a job near a coffee maker. It's a relatable and somewhat humorous conclusion to his series of adventures in the working world.

I absolutely loved this hilarious book.

The story follows an English degree graduate who, in the 90s, finds himself unable to secure a job in his field.

Over the course of more than 10 years, he endures a series of 40 odd minimum wage jobs, living hand to mouth.

Despite the hardships, he has the remarkable ability to turn his experiences into engaging and humorous writing.

The book is not only a reflection of the challenges faced by many in the job market but also a testament to the author's resilience and creativity.

It provides a unique and entertaining perspective on the working world, making it a must-read for anyone looking for a lighthearted yet thought-provoking read.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good laugh and a relatable story.

It will keep you entertained from start to finish and leave you with a newfound appreciation for the power of storytelling.