Posts tagged new york city
Taking on the daunting task of working 100 jobs in 2012
Press Time!
Since my 100 Jobs 1 Year project is over, I won’t be blogging on my 100 Jobs 1 Year page as much anymore.
So please follow my personal page!
Also, follow my 2013 project 10,000 Kevins!
My 100 Jobs 1 Year story has been appearing not only on NBC, but in New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press, Macedonia, and Croatia!
Headline literally translates to “Swapped 100 jobs for a year!”
For those of you unfamiliar with Central New Jersey’s biggest newspaper, you may remember it from Clerks.
Job #100 - New Year’s Eve Correspondent
Wow! This actually happened.
Job #43 - Secret Shopper
Since the start of my project in January, I’d been signed up to a secret shopper site to let me know about special tasks they’d like me to work. Since my brother’s birthday is coming up pretty soon, I decided to take the opportunity to go to the Lego store in Queens.
As a secret shopper, you have to ask questions and see how well the store associates know their stuff. You also have to make sure they hit all their selling points and that they’re courteous to you as a customer.
I don’t know how, but either these people are nice 24/7 or they flagged me as a secret shopper early on. They were super friendly and helpful. One of them even went into the back a few times to see if they had the specific item I wanted. And this happened during a busy Saturday afternoon.
Instead of getting one of their lego playsets, I got a… Daniel, are you reading this? You’re going to have to wait til your birthday, brother! I’m not telling.
Do you want to be a secret shopper? Here’s the site that I use. If you look for others, make sure they’re legit. Do your research and don’t recklessly hand out your social security number!
Job #27 - Comedy Show Promoter
As I learned from my former attempt to sell comedy tickets, if you’re not a salesman, it’s better to take a job that guarantees money. So I found one.
EventPro Strategies hired me to hand out fliers for a TBS-sponsored comedy battle between Columbia and NYU. Piece of cake, we thought.
But if Manhattanites are adverse to taking fliers, Manhattan college students are all the more. Words like “TBS”, “comedy”, and even their own school name couldn’t make them grab a flier. Maybe it’s because they know that comedy clubs charge a cover and a two-drink minimum. And as a college student, that probably means Coca-Cola on the rocks.
We started promoting outside Columbia University, in the same location where I shot Job #9 - Substitute College Student. After that we moved down to Astor Place, site of the coffee house that inspired Doc Oc’s car-throwing scene in Spider-Man 2. Then we headed to Washington Square Park.
Remember (in Job #5 and #18) when I said that short, catchy phrases work the best in promotions? We finally found one that worked: “Comedy show!” Simple and memorable, right? Soon our job was complete! And so was my first sunburn of the year.
Job #21 - Selling Comedy Tickets
Ah, Times Square… huge billboards, the largest video screens in the world… almost every animate and inanimate object tries to market to you- signs, cowboys, video screens, dancers, free samples- to make you get something or go somewhere. With all that competition, a guy has to be pretty persuasive to convince you to get what he’s offering. Add when his wages are solely commission-based, the race is on! That’s where I was on that Saturday.
As a salesperson, it helps to believe in your product. And I know that- although not a stand up comic myself- there’s a plethora of clubs in NYC willing to showcase any level of talent to fill their wallets. Because once you’re in the door, they’ve got your cover and two-drink minimum. Thankfully the club I promoted only premiered talent that had TV credits- from Letterman, Comedy Central, and so on.
You’d think that a friendly New Yorker and the chance of seeing famous comics would convince tourists to want to buy tickets. But I didn’t sell any in the nearly four hours I was there. It was cold. I’m inexperienced. And I’m too nice. It almost pains me to look at that video.
What do YOU think of the people who sell comedy tickets in Times Square?
Job #17 - Packager
My temp agency reached out to me to see if I could work at CNN and make packages in their taperoom.
Score! Finally something that utilizes my skill set.
For the less-informed, I’ll tell you- in TV news, a package is a short news segment that’s part of a larger program.
When I arrived, I saw a bunch of packages already made
in the form of cardboard boxes.
Job #10 - Substitute College Student
This is definitely the weirdest job I’ve had so far.
A Columbia student hired me to go to class while she was out of town. I looked like a college student, so no one questioned what I was doing there.
I sat there for an hour-and-a-half and took notes. There was even a part where we had to split into groups and answer some questions, and my group won! We got granola bars as a reward. Good ol’ positive reinforcement. I miss the days when teaching a college student was like training a dog to fetch.
Even with that free granola bar, I’d rather work in the real world. Compared to work life, college is boring. So just in case you think college was the best time of your life, remember:
- College was siphoning money out of your wallet, not the other way around.
- You had to listen passively instead of doing something actively.
- Afterwards you found out most of what you learned was useless.
I wonder if anyone will miss me there. I purposely didn’t make friends so that no one would care that I disappeared.
Job #9 - Improv Show Videographer
Wonder why you never see videos of your favorite comedians from their theater days? Think of Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler- why don’t you see videos from their time at Second City?
There’s something about the live nature of improv that doesn’t come across on video. In live theater, pauses are valuable in a way they can’t be on YouTube. Improv also feeds of the audience atmosphere to create a scene that can never be as funny when you see it on screen. When my sketch team recently shot The Barista, we edited it down to almost half it’s original length- just because comedy on YouTube has to be a lot quicker to be funny than in person.
I edited the video above to highlight one single idea that spanned Herschel’s 25-minute set. You’re watching excerpts taken from the first through last scenes to show how an idea evolves over a show.
Oh yeah, and for the first time ever, no one came to their show. Gary DeNoia blogs about it here.
On Friday I helped people kick field goals in Times Square.
You’re wondering where the football field was in Times Square? 44th and Broadway. Duh. (Okay, to be honest, it was really more like the last 20 yards and the endzone.)
Tostitos held its “Fiesta in Times Square” to support the Big Brothers and Big Sisters Foundation. They gave $100K to the charity, and pledged to give another $100K if we could get 100 people to kick a field goal.
Which they did.
I worked as a brand ambassador, or a promotions person who’s the face of the event. My job was to place the football on the kicking tee about 500 times that day (yes, we counted).
Knowing I’d be working from 8am-8pm, I decided to stock up on carbs. Thankfully, carbs are what Tostitos is good at. Over the course of the day. I ate at least 7 bags of black bean artisan chips. Vegetarian, protein, and healthy carbohydrates in a single package? What will they think of next! (Tostitos, I expect royalties on that product bump.)
Each person got two field goal kick attempts. I myself tried it out. And for never having attempted a field goal kick, I did pretty well. Meaning the ball went in the air and goal-ward.
Two representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records were there to make sure it counted. One of them wore a track suit, but the other guy wore a business suit, as if to try to convince us he had a real job. Dude, you WISH watching football all day was your real job.
Nick Lachey was there, and a few other retired quarterbacks. Oh you don’t know who Nick Lachey is? I didn’t either. He sang in that late nineties boy band 98 Degrees and used to be married to Jessica Simpson. We were told not to request pictures or autographs from him.
Wait, hold on. Nick Lachey, you think you’re enough of a celebrity to request no pictures? I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that he only requested no pictures so that he could focus his time on the charity and not bring attention to himself.
Still, people waiting on the other side of the barricades wanted me to move out of the way so they could take his picture. Instead, I acted as if they wanted to get a picture of me and started posing, so some of them laughed and took my picture. (This is my sole strategy to attain stardom.) “Hey Nick,” I said when he came by. “I think they want you to get a picture with me.” He ignored me… can’t really blame him.
Note: If I’m standing in the way of your camera and any celebrity, it’s never a bad picture.
I met a few actors there. They told me to apply to Central Casting where they cast extras. Maybe that’ll be one of my 100 jobs!
Corrections since first posting: It’s Nick Lachey, not Nick Shea. Some of my followers also chided me for acting like Nick Lachey is only a moderately popular celebrity. So I’ll say that from what I can tell, Nick is a friendly person and I have no issues with him, and anything that looks like that in my post is only a result of my own ridiculousness.
