The Startup Beatdown

Chapter 2: The Next Jeffrey Dahmer

 

I came in for my first day of work, not know­ing what I would be doing, or even where I would be sit­ting. All I knew was that, for the time being, I was to be report­ing to Flo, the com­pa­ny’s office man­ag­er. The prob­lem was that Flo was­n’t in. I did­n’t see Sean Etin either, which was strange, con­sid­er­ing we were all work­ing out of his house. I was lost – I did­n’t know what to do, where to go, or who to ask.

There were about 10 work­ers stuffed into the crevices and strewn about the hall­ways of the “office area” of Sean’s house, but none of these peo­ple were exact­ly rush­ing to my aid. Nobody intro­duced them­selves to me. Nobody asked who I was or why I was stand­ing around aim­less­ly. All I got was a few furtive glances and a cold ret­i­cence that made me think I was not want­ed. There was some­thing else. Some­thing in the air. I tried to attune my lit­tle-used empath­ic sens­es. Did these peo­ple … hate me?

I final­ly saw a famil­iar face walk­ing down the hall­way – Rita, the HR Direc­tor, who I met dur­ing my marathon inter­view a week ear­li­er. She was a blond, mid­dle-aged, some­what heavy-set woman with gobs of blue mas­cara sur­round­ing her steely eyes. I lat­er found out she was Sean’s lit­tle sis­ter. I wished her a good morn­ing, hop­ing my minor pleas­antry could expand into more seri­ous busi­ness – such as which desk I can sit at so I could at least pre­tend to do work. My greet­ing, how­ev­er, was met with a look of unmasked repug­nance and sheer hos­til­i­ty that I imag­ine would nor­mal­ly be reserved for a butch­er of chil­dren and fans of cer­tain real­i­ty TV shows. She walked on, eye­ing me as if I was a piece of shit under her shoes.

I guessed she would not be the one to go to for questions.

I had decid­ed to set­tle myself at what I hoped to be an unclaimed desk in the hall­way, just so it would look like I was­n’t milling around on my first day (– that would come lat­er). I opened up ‘Indi­go Chil­dren,’ a hip­pie-dip­py book about the auras of mod­ern chil­dren (they’re indi­go!) that Mr. Etin gave me dur­ing my inter­view (and was lat­er para­phrased for me by a fel­low employ­ee as “chil­dren are more spoiled now, and should be reward­ed”), and put on my “I’m-doing-impor­tant-work-here” face, hop­ing to fool any­one who looked my way.

After a few min­utes I heard, “You’re not doing any­thing now, are you?”

The ques­tion was asked by Per­ry, a lanky guy, about my age, who was one of the pro­gram­mers for Seashel’s web­sites. He asked me to do some sim­ple inter­net research on chil­dren’s web­sites for him, and hap­py to have some­thing to do, I quick­ly oblig­ed. This hour of research would be the last time I did any work that involved me using an iota of brain pow­er for the next sev­er­al months.

Flo arrived at around noon, and start­ed show­ing me my dai­ly tasks. They included:

• Print­ing out Sean’s dai­ly horo­scope and adding them to his horo­scope folder.
• Feed­ing the com­pa­ny’s pet chameleon crickets.
• Feed­ing the crick­ets yel­low, booger-like crys­tals because (FUN FACT!) chameleons only eat crea­tures that are alive.
• Any bitch work nobody else want­ed to do.

She then hand­ed me two tall stacks of glossy papers and a can of aerosol spray glue and brought me into the kitchen, where I was to spray one sheet onto the oth­er. Nobody spoke to me for the rest of the day and I left work with sticky hands and a mas­sive aerosol-induced headache.

*******************************

After two days of “work,” I still was­n’t one-hun­dred per­cent cer­tain if every­body hat­ed me in par­tic­u­lar, or if the place was just unfriend­ly in gen­er­al. All I knew was that, as a for­mer intern and some­one who had over­saw interns at my pre­vi­ous job, I was doing intern’s work. The fact that I was get­ting paid for this strange­ly did­n’t make me feel any bet­ter. I was will­ing to do this sort of work for a lim­it­ed amount of time, but only because I was promised by Mr. Etin before I was hired, the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove myself cre­ative­ly. I did­n’t see Mr. Etin at all until the end of my third day, when he bus­tled in as every­one was get­ting ready to leave. He kept every­one there and began going on about how the “pen­du­lum was swing­ing” and impor­tant lit­i­ga­tion news that he could­n’t talk about, spit­tle pop­ping out of his mouth. Nobody looked impressed, and I got the feel­ing they had all heard this sort of speech count­less times before. In fact, I had heard this same speech dur­ing the course of my inter­view. An hour lat­er, when he final­ly ran out of steam and let peo­ple go home, he pulled me and Joel, the head of Mar­ket­ing aside and told us to stick around.

“Joel, you’ve met Dan­ny, right?” Sean asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Dan­ny here is a film genius and he’ll be doing cre­ative work for us.”

Before I had time to feel good about that state­ment, Joel exclaimed, “What?!? No, Sean, you can’t just put peo­ple in my depart­ment with­out telling me.”

I felt uncom­fort­able. Sean obvi­ous­ly did­n’t tell Joel what­ev­er ill-defined plans he held for me, which I guess was fair, since I did­n’t know them either. I was wit­ness­ing the begin­ning of a pow­er strug­gle. For­tu­nate­ly, before they got into it, I was excused and ran off.

The next day, I got called into the kitchen by Joel. Rita was sit­ting next to him, and my resume was on the table. They had me close the door and sit down.

“I don’t know what Sean told you,” Joel began, “but you’re not going to work in my depart­ment with­out my okay.”

“All right,” I said, not sure what was going on.

Joel, only slight­ly short­er and slight­ly less stocky than Sean, began going down my resume, line by line. “What does it mean to ‘pro­vide cov­er­age for new sub­mis­sions?’ ” he would ask, want­i­ng an expla­na­tion of every job task, degree, skill and hob­by on my resume. I sat there and answered him.

“It says here, that you list­ed ‘draw­ing’ under hob­bies. Are you any good?”

“No,” I answered truth­ful­ly. “I like to draw, but I’m real­ly only a doodler.”

I pulled a few sketch­es that I hap­pened to have in my back­pack and showed him.

He took a quick look at them and said, “Yeah. You should have put doo­dling on your resume. Not draw­ing.” He then took out his pen and crossed “draw­ing” off my resume, and wrote in “doo­dling.”

Hap­py that he found some­thing to embar­rass me with, he con­tin­ued. “Now, you do real­ize this is a chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment com­pa­ny, right?” That was the one aspect of the com­pa­ny that I was sure of, hav­ing read about their cre­ative prop­er­ty, the Googles, dur­ing my inter­view — though I was con­fused on how they were going to enter­tain chil­dren if they would rather busy them­selves with prefer­able activ­i­ties such as rub­bing their faces against the side­walk, and eat­ing paste. “I ask,” he con­tin­ued, “because the movies you made were very dark.”

Things were final­ly begin­ning to make sense.

“You saw my movies?” I asked.

“Every­body here did. Now, I’m not say­ing they’re bad­ly made, or insult­ing your artis­tic tal­ents, but we thought your movies were extreme­ly dis­turb­ing and not appro­pri­ate for chil­dren. I just want to make sure we’re not hir­ing the next Jef­frey Dahmer.”

Now I got angry. I may be a mass-mur­der­er and I may keep the bod­ies stored in my fridge, but I do NOT eat them! Per­haps I was over­re­act­ing. Maybe Jef­frey Dah­mer made some movies that I was unaware of, and the com­par­i­son was apt. Nev­er­the­less, I tried to defend myself. “Those films and videos were meant to show­case my expe­ri­ence in direct­ing and edit­ing, and not meant to show­case what I’d be bring­ing to the com­pa­ny con­tent-wise. Those movies are not meant for chil­dren and I only sent them to Sean because he express­ly asked for my reel.”

My reel con­sist­ed of about 10 short films and videos I made either dur­ing or short­ly after col­lege. Every movie was a com­e­dy (usu­al­ly involv­ing me mak­ing an ass of myself), and I nev­er had to defend their “dark­ness” before (though they have been accused of being sex­ist …). In fact, com­pared to most of the stu­dent films I saw and worked on in col­lege, my movies were marsh­mal­low fluff. Out of curios­i­ty, I asked what every­one was offend­ed by.

“Where to begin,” Joel said, seem­ing­ly shocked that I would ask such a ques­tion. “There’s that movie about sock pup­pets being murdered.”

It took me a moment to real­ize that I was sup­posed to defend myself at this junc­ture. “It’s a slash­er movie star­ring sock pup­pets,” I said, think­ing that was all that need­ed to be said. It obvi­ous­ly was­n’t, since Joel and Rita kept look­ing at me. “It’s a comedy.”

“Okay. Then there was a film about a ser­i­al killer.”

This one I real­ly did need to explain. “A ser­i­al killer brings a date home and has to fran­ti­cal­ly hide all the bod­ies he left scat­tered around his apart­ment. I unfor­tu­nate­ly ran out of film while shoot­ing, and I nev­er shot an end­ing. But it was sup­posed to be a dark comedy.”

“Well, it just came off as dark,” Joel said, and to his cred­it, I could agree with him on that one.

“What about the movie about rape?” Rita asked. This was appar­ent­ly the big issue, which I thought bizarre since I had no idea what they were talk­ing about.

“I did­n’t make a movie about rape.”

“Yes you did,” Joel said. “The movie about some woman being pulled over a bed and pound­ed from behind. This movie was so graph­ic that all of the women in the office had to leave the room.”

I still had no idea what they were talk­ing about. I searched my mem­o­ry and final­ly remem­bered. There was movie of mine with a rape scene. “You mean my doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of some­one else’s movie?” I asked.

In col­lege, I taped behind-the-scenes footage of the mak­ing of a friend of mine’s film. His film was a drama­ti­za­tion on how women in abu­sive rela­tion­ships usu­al­ly don’t leave the men that mis­treat them.

There was a moment of preg­nant silence. “How were we sup­posed to know it was a doc­u­men­tary?” Rita final­ly asked.

My answer came quick­ly, with mild exas­per­a­tion in my voice. “Because it said so in the begin­ning of the doc and was filled with talk­ing heads who talked about the mak­ing of the movie.” Any­one who watched it for more than a few sec­onds would be able to see this. Then it came to me.

“Did you guys even watch it?” I asked.

There was more silence.

“Well,” Joel said sheep­ish­ly, “some of it.”

*******************************

Per­ry and the oth­er young co-work­ers that I even­tu­al­ly befriend­ed lat­er filled me in on what hap­pened. As it turned out, the Fri­day before my first day of work, Sean called every­one in to his office to watch my reel. As is his cus­tom, he called every­one in as they were get­ting ready to leave for the week­end, and prompt­ly left them alone to watch the movies, with no expla­na­tion why, or an apol­o­gy for mak­ing them stay late. My reel is made up of about an hour’s worth of mate­r­i­al, and for many months I believed they did what I would have done in that sit­u­a­tion – skim it and leave as soon as pos­si­ble. I had assumed that they had it on fast-for­ward and pushed play on the most visu­al­ly jar­ring images – the sock pup­pets being mur­dered, the ser­i­al killer, the rape – which helped enforce in them a belief in my sick, twist­ed lust for vio­lence and rough sex.

As it turned out, though, the events of that night played off a lot more sin­is­ter. I found out weeks before I left the com­pa­ny that Mar­cus, the (then) Vice-Pres­i­dent of the Seashel, had seen my reel before the pub­lic view­ing and for rea­sons that had noth­ing to do with me, did not want me hired. Mar­cus was in charge of the remote the night my reel was shown, and cher­ry-picked only the scenes that made me out to be a mon­ster (or, if one were to think about it ratio­nal­ly, a guy that made ‘rat­ed R’ movies). In fact, I heard he showed the rape scene three or four times, rewind­ing it before ask­ing the gath­ered staff if they want­ed to work with a rapist (con­fus­ing the author with the speak­er and the speak­er with the actor and the actor with the char­ac­ter – but what­ev­er). One woman who worked there did not, and actu­al­ly quit because I was being hired – though dur­ing the time she worked with me dur­ing her two-weeks notice, she was very nice to my face. Mar­cus, mean­while, went on to show the share­hold­ers my reel, try­ing his hard­est to get me fired behind the scenes. Again, to my face he was very nice.

I knew now why every­one hat­ed me. I was an igno­rant pari­ah, unaware that the scar­let “A” was on my chest and the mark of Cain was on my fore­head. I spent the rest of the week try­ing to repair my image. The first thing I did was write Sean Etin an email. I tried to word it in a way that explains the sit­u­a­tion, address­es the con­cerns of my co-work­ers and clear my name. This is what it said:

“Mr. Etin,

I’ve been work­ing here for a week now, and I’m get­ting the idea that per­haps I did not make a great first impres­sion on my co-work­ers. Appar­ent­ly, your staff saw my film/video reel before they met me, and because of this, I feel that a few things need to be clar­i­fied. The first, and most impor­tant thing is this: I am very much aware that this is a chil­dren’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to edu­cat­ing, enter­tain­ing and safe­guard­ing chil­dren, and I am also aware that these tasks take good judg­ment and matu­ri­ty. I feel that my good judg­ment and matu­ri­ty was tak­en into ques­tion by the peo­ple that (unknow­ing­ly by me) saw my reel. I can under­stand why, con­sid­er­ing many of these films are the­mat­i­cal­ly inap­pro­pri­ate for a chil­dren’s pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny. If you remem­ber dur­ing our inter­view, I nev­er once men­tioned my videos, nor did I have them list­ed on the orig­i­nal resume I gave to you. I pur­pose­ful­ly did this because I knew they had noth­ing to do with the com­pa­ny and the job I applied for. I used good judg­ment. It was­n’t until I acci­den­tal­ly pulled out anoth­er ver­sion of my resume (which I use when I apply for film/video pro­duc­tion jobs) when I met with She­lia that I let it be known I make videos.

Sean, when you asked for my reel, I hon­est­ly thought it was out of cre­ative curios­i­ty. I am glad that you seem to enjoy my work, and am hon­ored that you would like to see me take more of a cre­ative role in the com­pa­ny, but I need to make sure you and the staff under­stand that my films/videos was made for either school or my own edi­fi­ca­tion and are in no way reflec­tive of my pro­fes­sion­al demeanor or the work I plan to do here.

Best Regards,

Dan­ny”

 

I got a quick, one-sen­tence reply from Mr. Etin, promis­ing he would take care of it. I was expect­ing a staff-wide meet­ing (he seemed to love those), offi­cial­ly intro­duc­ing me to every­one and explain­ing that he had made a mis­take in show­ing them my reel. Or at least an email attest­ing to this idea. As far as I know, he did noth­ing. So, I dealt with the issue myself – by buy­ing snack food for the office. It actu­al­ly worked pret­ty well, and my co-work­ers, regard­less of whether or not they liked me, would at least talk to me for pret­zels and cook­ies. That was enough. Beyond the inter­view with Joel and Rita, nobody ever brought up my movies again, but I could tell that in the back of many of their minds, I would always be “the Rapist.”

Sad­ly, this is not the worst thing I was called dur­ing my time work­ing at Seashel Pro­duc­tions. Not even close.