Things I Love About Memphis

So, I’ve lived in Memphis for right about a month now, and while this is by no means enough time to really have any authority on the city, here are a few things that I’ve observed about the old Bluff City in my first thirty days:

1. Memphis is sort-of like the Wild West.

By this, I mean that there isn’t a lot that you can’t do in Memphis. Want to park your car halfway on the curb? Go for it. How about just parking it in that sketchy alley behind your building, or that grassy knoll by the river? Sure, as long as there isn’t a sign (and sometimes even if there is) you’ve got free reign to do whatever the heck you want with your motor vehicle. If you need more conformation for #1, please read the preceding post, or take a look at this picture:

Now, it may be hard to tell from the picture, but these fine gentlemen are sitting on riding lawn mowers, which are strapped to a trailer, which is being pulled down I-240 at approximately 70mph. Don't be fooled by the guy sitting on the front mower, this should be anything but a relaxing situation. In any other city, this has to be some kind of traffic violation and would probably be considered some kind of reckless endangerment or even cruel and unusual punishment. In Memphis, apparently it's nap time.

It is a city full of contradicitions--gritty and grimy, but somehow appealing. Where else can you go to a barbecue restaurant in a parking garage? Or, for that matter, walk down an alley to the most famous barbecue restaurant in the world? Or find people with no home and very little money completely decked out in Elvis gear? There is something kind of charming about all of the city's quirks. People, as much as they might say they hate it, have a deep love for this weird little town. And it's infectious. Which leads us to number two:

2. Memphians Are Crazy (Mostly About Elvis)

If you've never been to the Elvis Vigil, you should go. In fact, I think every self-respecting Memphian should go once--a mandatory pilgrimage to Graceland. In case you haven't been, though, let me try to explain the insanity. Graceland itself sits on a fairly major five-lane road, but the night of the vigil the entire street is closed simply to accommodate the sheer amount of people who want to honor the King on his death anniversary. It's insanity-- a five-lane street closed for at least half a mile and absolutely packed with people. It looks a little something like this:

This is not a great picture, but just to give you an idea of depth, those little lights at the front of the picture? Those are people holding candles. It is literally packed with people from the man in the cowboy hat, all the way to those lights. Now imagine that over a half of a mile.

Not only is the street jam packed with people, but there is a massive line of people that you can't see in this picture moving like a processional of Elvisian Monks. The line starts at the end of the streets and wraps around all the way up to Graceland, where all of these Elvis-worshipers are gathering around his grave. At midnight, they light a huge candle on top of his grave and every one weeps for the Alpha and--Oops, I mean the King of Rock and Roll. Seriously, though this is the closest thing to a cult worship ceremony I've ever been to. All they need is a golden statue of Baal instead of Elvis's grave. If this sounds a little extreme to you, just walk around in the street a while and look at people's homemade Elvis memorial displays. Most include framed pictures of the king (undoubtedly taken off walls in their homes) and some kind of candle display. My personal favorite was this one:

Yes, those are candles spelling out Elvis, and a collage with their favorite Elvis quotes, oh and roses.

Now, even though I've been having a little fun at the expense of these people, let me just say that I respect them. It's hard to love anything as much as these people love Elvis. How many Easter services have you been to that looked like these pictures? Or that lasted all night for that matter? No, I have a pretty profound respect for these people, but still they are kind of hilarious. I mean where else can you see a set of 70 year old twins wearing matching homemade Elvis shirts with Elvis embroidered on the back?

And for you true-blue Memphians, I realize you might protest, saying that most of these people that come for Death Week and the Elvis Vigil are out-of-towners, crazy tourists that don't really belong to the city. Well, before you get too high up on your horse, please consider the next picture, which is about as pure Memphis as it gets.

3. Memphis is Ghetto-Fabulous

There's no preface for this picture, all I can simply tell you is that we saw it cruising around downtown:

Yes, that is an Oldsmobile with rims and a Cinnamon Toast Crunch Logo on it. Where else in the world could you see something like this? Only in Memphis. And the other thing I love about this, is that the driver saw us taking the picture, leaned out the window, smiled, waved and honked as he drove off. I mean honestly, how can you hate that? It's a Cinnamon Toast Crunch car, and that is definitely not Wendell driving it.

By the way, I saw all of these things over the course of one weekend. This is normal Memphian activity: riding on open trailers down the freeway, worshiping Elvis, and owning Cinnamon Toast Crunch cars. Of course, it's not all insanity, as soon as we drove away from the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Car, there was a pack of Kappa Sig Frat boys on their way to Beale, and everyone else on the freeway was driving normally around the men napping on their trailer, but what's incredible is that it's all taken for granted. Guaranteed no one else really thought twice about the men on the trailer, and people here have seen the Elvis vigil happen every year. It's not crazy anymore; it's not even a contradiction--It's just normal.

All of this was kind of the inspiration for this blog, in a way. Hush puppies are the quintessence of Southern food. Hearty, doughy and fried. Yuppies--young urban professionals with their American Apparel outfits and desperately hip vibe are decidedly un-Southern. But if there's any place in the south that the combination makes sense it's Memphis, where everything else makes sense anyways. So, that's what I'm doing here--serving up hearty-dough fried stories of the young, the urban, and the employed.

The "Traffic Incident"

At some point, I really do plan to make a post explaining this blog and it’s name as a sort of introduction. In fact, that was my plan for today’s post, but occasionally circumstances so extraordinary and unforeseeable occur that they demand to be recorded immediately.

First of all, let me say that with these two posts I don’t mean to make my life sound like it’s exciting—it’s not. For the most part my days are spent perusing the internet for gainful employment or watching my roommates play video games, so don’t get the wrong idea.

In any case, my roommates (whom, for the purposes of this blog, will be known as [Kaidan Alenko] and [Brick]) and I were on the way home from a Target run last night (I told you my life wasn’t exciting), when all of the sudden we were thrust into a “traffic incident” that became something like a combination of all three Bourne movies, Police Academy, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation rolled into one muggy Memphis evening.

Now, I could try to employ all my verbal powers to explain this accident to you, but I think the only way to truly get a sense of what happened is to give you pictures. Before we start it’s important to remember these things: [Brick] was driving; [Kaidan Alenko] was in the passenger seat, and I was sitting on the back driver side. And, the action unfolded like this:

1. We (circle) are driving in the far left lane of a one-way road and there is a vehicle (rectangle) a little in front of us in the middle lane:

2. The second vehicle proceeds to make a left turn at the next intersection from the middle lane.

3. Clearly this is going to be a problem, but the problem is further compounded by one other factor—there is a family (face) crossing the intersection our friend the rectangle is trying to turn across. So the whole situation looks like this:

4. [Brick] with no other alternative reverts to video game-style evasive driving tactics:

5. While the tactic works incredibly well, when [Brick] turns the wheel back to straighten out he overcorrects, and we spin 180 degrees and stop on the curb narrowly missing the back end of another car (triangle).

There are a lot of things people say happen to you in situations like this, but I don’t know if they really do. For instance, my life did not flash before my eyes. In fact, I don’t really remember saying or thinking anything other than, “This is lasting a really long time.” Which brings me to my next point, people always say, “It happened so fast,” but this didn’t. It was like the whole world was struck by a tranquilizer dart. Everything slowed down, and I remember very small, insignificant details: the look on the Father’s face as we missed his family by a few feet, a mixture of pure panic with a wave of relief running up behind it (whether this was from his bladder emptying or because we didn’t hit him, I can’t be sure), the feeling of the car beginning to spin and being certain of all the things we were about to hit—the retaining wall past the curb, the building across the street, and finally the car behind us as we screeched to a halt.

The only thing about time slowing down is as soon as it’s over the whole world speeds up again just to balance everything out. [Kaidan Alenko] and I flew out of the car. And as I’ve been known to hit several immobile objects in my day, I felt the first thing to check was the car behind us. This perhaps was not the most logical thing to do, as [Kaidan Alenko] was running down the street waving his arms like a lunatic to get the culprits to stop, but after yelling in disbelief that the cars were in fact ok, I too took off after the escaping bandits.

One thing you should know as a human being is that cars are much faster than people. You know those movies where someone is in a car and chasing a person on foot? Yeah, in real life, that person would be dead. And so too, our pursuit ended fruitlessly. We came back to the scene and met the family we nearly sideswiped into oblivion. They were incredibly nice about the whole almost killing them thing (They were from the UK, got to love those English) and even stuck around to be our witnesses when the police showed up.

Ah, the police. Now if you’ve never been to Memphis, you may not really understand the police here. First of all, there are a lot of them. Police are in Memphis like Starbucks are in most other big cities. If you are standing next to one on a street corner, you can most likely see another one from where you’re standing. And secondly, though there are a lot of great ones out there, approximately one in three are actually capable of helping you in the way that you would like.

So, Cop #1, actually a county sheriff, arrives and after we explain the accident to him, he tells us, “Oh well, there’s not really anything to report. It’s not a wreck, and it’s not a hit and run either since nobody got hit. This is just a traffic incident.” Yes, this is infallible logic. No one got hit, so therefore no hit and run occurred. Forget the fact that another car caused what could have been a fairly serious “traffic incident,” and after they saw us trying to stop them, clearly implying that some damage had indeed been done, they just sped off.

Cop #1 doesn’t know what to do, and being a county sheriff doesn’t have jurisdiction to do anything, so he calls someone from the city of Memphis—Cop #2. We rehearse the whole story with Cop #2, and the Brits vouch for us again (God save the Queen). However, Cop #2 is a little more suspicious. She says with attitude, and I quote, “Well if you hit the brake how’d y’all endup all the way over here?” Apparently physics is not a required course at the Memphis Police Academy. But let’s break Newton’s third law of motion down: A vehicle in motion at 35 MPH and changing direction rapidly, though the brakes are on, will continue to stay in motion until another object interacts with it. In our case, the curb. Thank you Coach Gates 7^th grade science class.

Now I was a little frustrated already from Cop #1 and Cop #2 had only exacerbated the situation, so when she starts questioning basic physics a synapse that must have been knocked loose during the crash snaps and I say, just barely out of her ear shot, “Oh you’re right ma’am, we just set all of this up for fun.” [Kaidan Alenko] quickly shuts me up before we get arrested, and thankfully Cop #2 doesn’t know what to do either and calls in Cop #3.

Remember what I said about the 1 cop in 3 rule? Well, that’s exactly how it worked out for us. Cop #3 is wonderful. He gets the whole thing reported in under 30 minutes and tells us how to contact the right authorities to get a hold of the camera footage (Oh yes, there were cameras). At this point, our friends the Brits have left, and the cop is actually so nice that instead of calling a tow truck, which he is supposed to do, he lets us put a spare on the car and drive away. Yeah, that’s right I said drive away. After all of that, the only thing we got out of the whole thing was a deflated tire. The cop did give us one other piece of advice before we left, and this is why cops in Memphis—even the best ones—will always remain a mystery to me. He said, referring to the other car, “Next time man, you should just hit ‘em.” Nevermind that we all would have been seriously injured. So remember that out there if you’re ever in a bad situation that it’s possible to avoid, “Next time, just hit ‘em.”

Where we landed. Note the skid marks on the curb.

Inches.

The Infamous Interview Story

This story ought to start with a disclaimer: everything in the proceeding text of this story is absolutely true. I am one of many multitudes of recent college graduates who walked proudly off the stage degree in hand—and directly into a shroud of unemployment. This is the story of the first time I thought that shroud was lifted and the disastrous consequences that followed.

About a month into my job search, I found a listing on a very reputable job search website for a “Junior Account Executive” position with a “Sports and Entertainment Marketing Firm.” The position had no experience required, offered training and opportunities for advancement. Now while this to-good-to-be-true listing might set off some red flags for more salted job search veterans, for me, a dreamy-eyed college kid recently gestated from the loins of academia, this sounded perfect. I applied and was contacted within a couple of days to come in for a first-round interview.

Day 1: The First Round

Looking back, I think I was abnormally nervous for this first interview. Maybe it was the possibility of actually being employed or maybe it was the idea of seeing the inside of a real-life office, but on the drive out I found myself resisting the urge to pull over and throw up more than once. The only thing that really kept my body from doing this was an equal fear of throwing up on my suit, thus disqualifying myself from the interview process entirely.

In any case, I made it to the interview early and vomit-free, just like every college business professor told you to. I was actually so early that I was able to sit in my car for a while and do some research. This is perhaps the most sickening part of the story for me; you’ll understand why soon. I worked hard for this interview. I had done research and knew the company handled an NBA team in the city, and spent my spare time memorizing the roster and recent news about the team, in case it should come up during the interview.

With just the right amount of time to spare, not ten minutes early and a little less than five, I walked into the office of my possible future employer. There are moments when a space hits so many of the right notes that the whole thing comes off totally wrong. The walls were all painted a dark red with black leather couches and a glass coffee table furnishing the waiting area, an overly modern IKEA secretary’s desk--complete with an overly modern secretary--finished out the room nicely. The surround sound speakers pummeled Jack Johnson at a decibel level above which Jack Johnson should never be heard. The whole thing looked like Abercrombie and Fitch had gone to college and immediately after finishing had opened a marketing firm together.

I introduced myself to the secretary whose name was Georgia and began chatting her up. Another college business professor rule of thumb: make friends with the secretary. Georgia and I talked about the south, and with a drawl so pronounced that I knew she couldn’t be from the city, she gave me the cliff notes version of her professional life. She was so flattered when I mentioned she didn’t sound like she was from the city that I thought she might just hire me on the spot.

After I filled out all the necessary paperwork, I finally met Daniel my interviewer. There are a few things that will immediately make you feel comfortable in an interview, one is a person with a good sense of humor, the other is a very genuinely nice person, and while Daniel didn’t have these right off the bat, he did have perhaps the most important quality for setting another man at ease—he was shorter than me. Daniel and I didn’t talk long, he asked a few basic questions and seemed impressed with my answers, but the whole time I was going through the interview I could not get out of my head how much this guy resembled Richard from LOST. He was a shorter version to be sure, but it turns out he had all the guile.

The only question that is noteworthy from that first interview was when he asked me if I had any experience managing people. I replied that I had managed many teenage lifeguards, and that I wasn’t sure there was a harder group to manage than that, he laughed and replied, “Yeah, I know what you mean man, when I worked at Hollister…” I’m sure Daniel kept talking after that, but I didn’t hear any of it because the fact that he managed a Hollister clothing store sent me down another track entirely. I noted his gelled and rock hard faux-hawk, his light colored, tailored suit, the bold tie, and the thumb ring. Oh yes, this guy was a Hollister manager, and not one of those that just did it to get by--he really, really enjoyed it. I found this profoundly funny, and while I still wanted the job, it set me at ease enough to begin thinking, “Yeah I could do this for a while; I’ll just quietly make fun of everyone that works here.” Oh, but this was not my fate dear readers, Daniel would have the last laugh on me, and he knew it the whole time.

At the end of our little conversation, Daniel asked me back for a second round interview the next day where I would “shadow” another “account executive” while meeting with “clients” and going about a normal day of “business.” Pay attention to these quotes because these were all the words and terms he used to describe things in my interview, and they are the same words that led directly to my downfall.

Day 2: It hits the fan.

I show up the next day early again, walk in to the baccalaureate Abercrombie and Fitch to find a group of three other perky, young professionals waiting on the couches. I assume correctly that they’re all here for the same shadowing process, however, they’re all quiet (apparently they missed the talking-up the secretary tip). I begin chatting lightly with Georgia, who is by miraculous coincidence from the city of Atlanta. I joke with her, “Did people ever call you Atlanta and think they were funny?” She laughs and says no. I smile and relate several elementary school horror stories surrounding the name Pierce, of which there are many.

The young professionals and I are taken into a room one by one to meet the “account executive” we’ll be “shadowing” that day. I am the last one to go in, and Daniel tells me “Alright Pierce, saved the best for last and I mean that. This is Chris, one of our top account executives, and you’ll be out working his territory with him today.” Chris and I shake hands and exchange greetings. “At the end of the day,” Daniel continues, “if Chris gives you his recommendation, and you are excited about the position, I want to give you a place on our team.” I smile and agree, and Chris and I walk out, saying goodbye to Georgia as we leave.

In the elevator, Chris tells me he graduated from Rhodes, and I start to become even more positive about this job, “Great, he went to Rhodes, this is a reputable place with reputable people.” I could not have been more wrong.

Another guy actually rode with us to what I assumed was our first meeting, Larry. Larry was sarcastic, in his late 20’s and a little overweight. As we drove, Chris said, “Well, the territory we’re going to work today is down by Graceland, have you ever been there?” I replied that I had and continued chatting it up with the two guys, but my mind fixed on the word territory. I realized Daniel had said it too, and I wondered what it really meant, but I think at this point, driving in Chris’s beat-up old Subaru to Graceland, I started to be afraid of what kind of answers Chris might give me. As I kept talking with them, I discovered that we were actually going to drop Larry off somewhere (At the time, I assumed another meeting that must have been close to ours) and that Chris and I would be doing the rest of the day solo. As we drove around looking for the place to drop Larry off, Larry says, “This is all kind of a ‘deadwalk,’ man, this is no good.” It did not quite strike me then that place we were dropping off Larry wasn’t exactly definite, but instead depended on how many businesses it was close to.

In fact, none of this really became clear until Chris and I parked his 1985 Subaru in the empty parking lot of a Sears and walked in. Now I know it may seem like I should have realized something was wrong at this point, but I didn’t. As we walked in, Chris spotted a cashier and began walking towards her. I was sure he was going to ask her directions to the manager’s office, since clearly this was going to be our first meeting. However, Chris did not ask directions to the manager’s office. What he said instead was, “Hey there, do you think you’d have time to make it to a movie between now and November 30^th?” The look on the old lady’s face and the look on mine must have been about the same—utter disbelief. Chris kept talking while pulling out a sheet with coupons printed on it: 4 free movies, 8 buy one get one free tickets, two free drinks, and two free popcorns. Now I know this deal sounds incredible. But, believe it or not, the old lady Chris had just accosted was not interested in his movie deal. However, she informed us that we could walk around and see if anyone else was interested. This was, of course, the last thing I wanted to do, but as the faculty of speech had not returned to me yet, I was forced to plod along behind Chris, who began explaining to me what had gone wrong with his first pitch: “Sorry about that man, normally the strategy in a department store is a little bit different. We’re supposed to start in the back left corner of the department store and work our way out, that way when they call security on us, we can keep making sales as we go out, if they don’t follow us.”

My mind kicked into gear as Chris went through this explanation, and I made a few observations:

1. There’s a “strategy” to this. He does this often.

2. “Department stores are a little different.” I’m going to have to do this same thing in other public places today.

3. He said, “WHEN they call security,” not “IF.” What we’re doing is illegal in most of the places we’re doing it.

4. “If they don’t follow us.” This guy has been fully escorted out of most likely several businesses.

5. I AM STUCK DOOR TO DOOR SOLICITING FOR AN ENTIRE DAY IN A SUIT AND TIE IN JULY IN WHITE HAVEN, TN.

Well, what could I do but blindly follow? We walked across the parking lot to Sears Auto Center where Chris attempted to sell to a mechanic while he was still UNDERNEATH a car. From there, we walked to a church down the road, and when we couldn’t find any one there (as it was a Friday), we barged straight into the church office where Chris attempted to make a sale to the groundskeeper. Not only are we violating the sanctity of a church, and the privacy of these people’s workspace, Chris is trying to make a sale to a church janitor in the middle of one of the most impoverished areas of Memphis.

As I continued to follow Chris through the blazing heat like a high-fashion Jehovah’s Witness on crack, we received a call from Larry. You remember Larry, right? The guy I thought we were dropping off at a meeting close to ours? Well, it turns out Larry was trying to sell to tellers at a bank down the road, when the bank was held up. And by held up, I don’t mean things were moving slowly. I mean that the bank was robbed at gunpoint, and by the time Larry was able to get a call out, we could here several police sirens in the background of the call. Just think, if only Larry had gotten to the robber first, he might have walked away with just a movie ticket package rather than a bag full of money.

At this point, I would like to refer you to the beginning of this post, which clearly states that none of this has been fabricated.

After Chris had calmed Larry down over the phone, we decided to have lunch (Not making a sale for half a day and having to talk your partner down from post-traumatic stress really works up an appetite). As we ate at Lenny’s Sub Shop, Chris explained to me “The System,” which he had mentioned to me throughout the morning when I asked him questions like, “So why did you get into this?” “Why do you keep doing it?” and “How do you keep going when you don’t make a sale?” “The System,” as you’ve probably guessed, was a pyramid scheme carefully laid out in six horizontal blocks on a sheet of paper that Chris handed to me. All one would have to do to see the pyramid is stack the blocks into a 3-2-1 formation. The pyramid started with “Field Representatives” went up to “Senior Leader” (i.e. Chris) and then at the very top was “manager” (i.e. Daniel).

After finishing lunch and telling Chris that the system was “interesting,” we walked out to sell some more. Now I know some of are you still wondering how I didn’t just walk to the nearest bus stop, or tell him that this was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen and just walk off, but something strange happened as I walked around with Chris. Maybe it was the heat, but I started thinking, “I at least have to get the offer,” “I can’t be turned down by a door to door sales company.”

So I stayed and plodded right along behind my own personal door to door Obi-Wan. It turns out after we left Lenny’s, we didn’t have too far to go. In fact, all we did was walk to the end of the strip center that Lenny’s was in and work the whole strip center, including Lenny’s. That’s right. We walked back into the place we had just eaten 15 minutes before and tried to make a sale to the guy who cut our lunchmeat. Needless to say, it didn’t go over well.

Most of the rest of the day was spent taking rejections, but Chris did manage to make a few sales, and I even chimed in on a few pitches, feeling bad for all the rejection Chris was taking. One shining rejection, though, was at Loretta’s Beauty Port. Chris almost had a sale made to a woman who was in the process of getting a weave, but just as the woman began to pull out her wallet, she saw which movie theater the coupons were for (the most run-down theater in town), and said to Chris, “ Awh Nah, I don’ go ’der, dey don’ got dem fat polish saw-sages.” And that’s as good a reason as any I’ve heard not to by a movie package not being sold door to door.

Epilogue: R. Kelly

On returning to the office, Chris did in fact give me his recommendation for the job, and the offer alone was enough to put the cherry on top of my most awkward professional experience ever.

Before I was brought in to talk to Daniel, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire, and the last part was a line where I was supposed to write a question for Daniel to answer. So, still intrigued as to how reputable people got involved in something like this, I wrote, “How did you get involved in this?” When I walked in Daniel answered the question before he did anything else: “Well, I used to live in Nashville where I was working on an R&B recording contract.” Stop. This is a 5’6 white guy, who looks like he missed out on being one of the Backstreet Boys because he didn’t make the height cut, an R&B recording contract? Yeah, maybe if Mariah Carey wanted to put a leprechaun in one of her music videos. But it gets better. Daniel continued, “Yeah, I was supposed to have a deal with R. Kelly, but then he went and peed on a girl.” No comment, please refer to the first line of this post.

After recovering from Daniel’s answer, I turned down the job, said goodbye to Georgia and walked out--still unemployed, but grateful.