Gettin' By

I signed up with anticipation.
I arrived with a certain amount of trepidation.
After all. I'm used to a high-paced job with a certain amount of intellectual stimulation in a professional atmosphere. My expectation was that this would be none of those things. This, to me, was "gettin' by." One of America's recently laid off workers, I am now seeking out and discovering how to make ends meet through a series of freelance projects and odd jobs. This gig falls into the latter category, though I would soon learn that some make their living through a series of gigs like this.

I found it on Craig's List, an offer to make about $15 an hour, handing out fliers. As I am not a marketing professional, I had neither heard of this nor done it. Above all, I had not realized that people actually make a career out fliering, as it's called, as well as other types of hire-by-day promotional jobs. Think about who is the mascot for a product? Who hawks the tissue-brand products to snotty-nosed kids and their parents? Who touts the virtues of Shea butter at the kiosk in the mall? And who puts that paper brochure in between the screen door and the front door of your home?

Last week, it was me.

Via email, I had been hired and told what to wear and bring. We agreed to meet at a coffee house in the city. I arrived wearing black pants and comfortable shoes, hoping to distinguish my colleagues by their similar attire. That's how I spotted at least one of my would-be colleagues, a young man in black jeans, reading a newspaper. For me, in all my naivete, it was a reassuring sign that I would at least be working with someone who was interested in current events.

We were given logo T-shirts and hats to wear along with a bag for our fliers. We lined up for pictures with the products in our logo gear before setting out to 'flier' the first neighborhood. The client had already chosen and pre-mapped out two zip codes containing demographics thought to be favorable to its product. I learned how to be extremely efficient at sliding fliers in appropriate crevices - on door handles, on hand rails, and on the wrought-iron outer doors of these inner-city homes. But the best was when I found a row of homes with wrought iron gates encompassing their front yards, a ready-made tree for my ornament of choice - and a quicker way to finish the job. When you are working hourly, you are always looking for efficiencies to increase your per hour profit.

With fliering, it's not simply good enough to wallpaper a neighborhood or a street, you have to document the whole entire process to prove to the client that the work was in fact done, and you didn't just dump the fliers in the nearest landfill and claim to have blanketed a neighborhood with the benefits of a certain product. We were required to take 300 pictures and upload them to a website. In order to stay efficient, we worked out a system. The group leader charted our course on the map, wrote the required notes, verified addresses and took both still pictures and video of us out her car window. In this way, we were able to finish two day's work in one day - thereby increasing our hourly profit to $30 an hour, well worth the effort.

Along the way, I saw neighborhoods in DC, up-close; places I would never have dared tread otherwise. In part, because I didn't know anyone there. In part, because they are neighborhoods in decline or in the process of re gentrification, and thus, the concerns of bumping into a drug dealer or witnessing a shooting were real possibilities. I lost count at the number of homes I visited that had locked boxes on their doors. Some were foreclosed. Some were condemned. Then there were those that had been completely rehabilitated, and others that had clearly been torn down and redesigned. I saw in those neighborhoods, old, historic, parts of DC, and up-and-coming parts of DC. I saw there the impact of a poor economy, and the hope of rebirth. In these neighborhoods, the reception was always warm, always welcoming. These people actually wanted the piece of paper I was doling out - unlike the individualistic isolation of the suburbs.

As we walked, I began to learn about my new-found colleagues. All were attracted to the possibility of making money and staying in control of their own time. No one here, worked for 'the man' - at least for no longer than a day. One was a 20-year-old young woman with poorly died blond hair and too much eye makeup. She didn't seem well-suited for a desk job and had all the rebellious trappings of a girl trying to escape responsibility. Another, just couldn't decide what she wanted to do. She hadn't finished college, and she wanted to be available to visit her ailing grandmother. The third was a man who had just turned 30. He not only participated in promotions, but ran them. He earned enough income to buy a house!

These folks were my colleagues, my instructors of sorts, in a new profession. One that requires neither intellect nor ambition. But it was physical and sometimes hard work. We walked miles. We traversed many steps, and while the weather conditions were ideal for our fliering that day, I marvel at those willing to do it in tougher conditions. What was so refreshing? We accomplished something that day. And in a sort of back-to-basics, old-fashioned, way, it reminded me of the value of hard work. It reminded me too, that I should never think I am too good, to educated, too skilled to do a job that can still earn me some cash. As long as it's legal, why not, take a chance? I met four people I would never have met any other way. And I learned something about my city, and I learned some humility.

Plus, now, I have killer calf muscles.