Hashtag Twinning

I’m not a good person. I can do a fairly good impression of one. I do honestly care about people, I return shopping carts to their proper places, I let people pull in front of me if they use a turn signal, I get people jobs when there’s no benefit to me. But if there is a hell, which there is not, I am most assuredly going there. For at least a little bit. Maybe it’ll be a little afterlife sublet. If someone ever doubts this, I tell them this story and they promptly agree.

Back in college, while busy with school and extracurriculars, I still managed to work full-time in order to do things like live and eat. I had numerous telemarketing jobs, but also filled in the time being a server. I would work as a server until something would happen, a manager would be a jerk, a table would stiff me, or I couldn’t get a night of for a special event, and then I would find another job. There is no shortage of places that will hire you out for three bucks an hour, with the rest of your salary supplemented by the always-rational general public, in order to do tasks that are beneath you for people that are rude and or condescending. This particular time I got a job at a restaurant chain. I don’t want to say the name, but let me just say they served breadsticks and had a very giving policy for those that wanted them.

I hated this job. Sure, all serving jobs suck in their own way, but throw on top the forced performances of less-than-interesting birthday songs and a clientele that wouldn’t give over 15 percent tips unless you brought them to orgasm, and I knew I was not long for the world of treating people like family, you know, when they were there.

I didn’t want to just quit. I wanted to make sure I had another job before I gave up completely. But when you’re going to school full-time, have extracurriculars that also command a bunch of hours and work more than thirty hours a week, there’s no time left to actually look for a job. So, I did the next best thing. I called my manager and told her I broke my leg. This lie worked for a couple reasons, one, you can’t serve with a broken leg. And two, I had broken my leg a few months before and could speak accurately about symptoms, pain, treatment and the like. Sure enough, they took me off the schedule for a few weeks. I went about my job search in the time I usually reserved for asking people how they felt about the word “unlimited.”

I found another job in telemarketing. I tended to bounce back and forth between telemarketing and waiting tables because they each crushed your soul in different ways. While you could take home more cash with waiting, you were generally presented with the worst humanity had to offer up close and personal. And you began to develop an aroma of Italian soup that wouldn’t come out with any number of showers. For telemarketing you had that separation between client and consumer that your headset afforded, but your hours were spent in a cage-like space, pasting on a plastic voice and fake demeanor, and facing more aggressive ire from those you’ve disrupted. This particular job I got took the identity squashing a step further in that they wanted every telemarketer in their employ to have a unique name so the consumer would have no trouble following up with whomever they spoke. Thus, not only could you not have a Frank and a Hank, but you couldn’t have a John and a Jonathan. If you’re given name was taken, you had to choose a fake name. This is fine, I suppose, and I got the concept. I was then dubbed Damien because it was the only name on my list of options that I felt I could go by. The weird part was that my supervisor would call me Damien, even outside of being on the phone. This was especially silly when they called my house looking for me and my parents told them a Damien didn’t live there. Because one didn’t.

I had already started working at the telemarketing place and had been there a couple weeks when I got the call from the restaurant. How stupid, I thought. I don’t even work there anymore and here they were hitting me up. Did they have a shift they wanted me to cover? I couldn’t figure out why they were persistently ringing me and then it hit me: I forgot to quit. I answered the phone and my manager asked how I was. I told her my leg was still bothering me but I was managing. She asked if I could drive, since I mentioned going to school, and I said it was my left leg so I was fine driving, even though I had a stick shift and doubt I would’ve been able to manage down a limb. She told me there was an all staff meeting and I needed to go. I hemmed and hawed, trying to get out of it, referencing my injury and she pressed on that it was of the utmost importance I was there. It was the following night. I said I would do my best.

Honestly, I was going to skip it entirely. I had another job, which I should’ve just told her about, but I was curious. What was so all-fired important that required the attendance of someone who in their view was on the injured list? I decided to sack it up and find out, but this required a little more detail on my prior fib about being laid up. Part of me thought it could be an attempt to smoke me out, prove that I was faking. So, I doubled down. I got out my leg brace that I had from my previous injury and the crutches I kept on standby from the more than four times I had broken or sprained an ankle. I suited up in this clever ruse and hopped in my car.

I didn’t park up front because I couldn’t actually drive with my brace on, so I had to leave space to put it on where no one would catch me. I did wonder if there was some thrill I got out of always feeling like I was just about to get caught for something but I brushed that thought aside while tightening the brace and maneuvering my way out of the car. The downside of parking so far away was that I had to crutch a lot more than intended and I lacked the practice and upper-body strength to make that trip easy. By the time I hobbled up to the front door and scrambled to the side room where the meeting was taking place I had started to sweat. But that was only the fifth awkward thing about me at that moment.

Co-workers I hadn’t seen in weeks offered their support and sympathy. I felt guilty, but I had to maintain the lie. Once all the troops had successfully gathered I noticed that the district manager was there as was another manager I knew from the restaurants other location across town. This obviously had something to do with besides me and my fake injury. But my tell-tale knee started to throb anyway, mostly from my strapping the brace too tightly.

The district manager, this short Italian woman in a brown turtleneck and plaid pants who would’ve made more sense in front of a classroom than a bunch of waiters, quieted everyone and began to speak. She ripped the band-aid off fairly quickly. After a quick note thanking everyone for their (mandatory) attendance, she said that they were closing our restaurant. There were gasps from some, fearful of what the lost paycheck would mean. I tried to act surprised or even like I cared, but I had already made peace with no longer working there so anything beyond a shrug was only adding my elaborate subterfuge, and really I could only manage so much.

The district manager offered condolences and talked about how great everyone was and yada yada yada while I counted the seconds until I could leave. But she droned on.

“Some of you will be offered employment at the other branch, but we can’t afford to take everyone. If you’d elect to be laid off we do have a severance check we can offer you.”

What’s that now?

Suddenly, this got very interesting. Here was a job I didn’t think I had anymore that a) wanted to give me money and 2) would allow me to collect unemployment, which may or may not be as good as the stupid telemarketing job. I went from apathy to one single-focused goal: I was going to leave with a check.

I waited until she was done and then hobbled over to the line that had formed. I made small talk with whomever was near me, honestly it could’ve been Julia Roberts (the biggest celebrity in the world at the time) next to me because I never let my eyes waver from where the district manager was signing checks. When I made my way up to the table I found myself stammering in a combination of excitement (for the money) and nervousness (at getting caught, and not getting money).

“I should probably just take the severance,” I said. “I mean, with my leg, I might have to have surgery, I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t want to take a job from someone else that can work when I can’t really work because of my leg you see…”

The district manager cut me off and asked if she was spelling my name correctly. Clearly she was devoid of any more fucks to give after delivering supposedly horrible news to a large number of the staff. She signed the fifteen hundred dollar check (a gold mine at that point, that was like five months’ rent) and I signed whatever paperwork required of me.

Our store manager was nearby. She was in her late twenties, only seven years or so older than I was at the time, but practically ancient in my college-aged eyes. She had naturally red hair, which was actually closer to orange and it draped over her pale-white skin. We mostly got along, but I didn’t really know her that well. She asked about my leg and all I could muster was an easy “hanging in there.” Then her tone shifted and took on a more accusatory nature.

“Have you been on crutches the whole time?”

“Yeah,” I responded. “It’s been rough.”

“Huh. I could’ve sworn I saw you at the mall the other day. You know, walking around.”

I hobbled closer to her. No need for the district manager, the one who just signed my check that was already starting to burn in pocket, to overhear such horrible falsehoods perpetuated from the lying mouth of this lying bitch. My mission, leaving the building with this check, was ever more clear. I mean, sure, I had been walking around the mall the other day. But I had a check in my pocket.

“I’ve been pretty laid up,” I said. “Mainly just going to school and sitting at home.”

“I could’ve sworn it was you.”

What’s a step beyond doubling down?

“It was probably my brother,” I threw out there.

“Your brother?”

“You know I’m a twin, right?”

Oh, it was a simpler time, back before social media could’ve caught this secondary lie in a matter of seconds.

“Yeah,” I kept going. “He’s been in here before. I’m surprised you never met him. Jason? We’re identical but he’s like half an inch taller.”

It was a split-second choice, but I named my non-existent twin Jason, because I know a lot of parents do that thing where they give twins, especially identical ones, names that begin with the same initial. I thought about saying Jeff, my actual brother’s name, but a) actually existed and 2) wasn’t identical to me. I thought I was better off with a third brother, should the need ever arise to keep track of this newly created family.

“Oh my god, I had no idea.”

I couldn’t tell if she was buying this or not, so I kept going.

“Yeah, he’s older by like six minutes. Our friends can usually tell us apart, but in high school we did switch classes to take each other’s tests every so often. I was always better at English and History and he could school me in Math and Science.”

“That’s so crazy.”

“Was he in a blue hoodie? He always wears that?” Because I always wore that, just not at the restaurant where we had a uniform.

“I think so,” she said. “Oh this makes perfect sense.”

Doesn’t it, though.

“I should probably get going,” I said. Any more lies and I was sure to lose track of something.

The manager nodded and waved me off. Success. I had to say goodbye to a few more people before finally getting back to my car, sweaty, nervous, but rich.

I quickly deposited the check first thing in the morning and then promptly quit my other job before filing for unemployment. Between the severance and the state-provided funds, I could at least spend a little more time finding another job where I could actually go by my own name.

I wondered if the manager actually believed me or just went along with it because I was obviously so committed to it. But once the check cleared, it was not something with which I concerned myself. I told a few friends about my con, and some of them were surprised. I don’t know, I had been in school plays, and for the last few years had pulled off a surprisingly good impression of a decent human being. This was college and my friends were all too supportive of bad behavior. It helped that there wasn’t a lot of overlap between my friends at the restaurant job and my friends in real life, despite the seemingly small town I lived in.

A few months later my social calendar consisted mostly of sand volleyball. I had teams three nights a week and on one particular night I was subbing for my friend on a fourth, a Wednesday, not my usual jam. I was at the bar, getting a pitcher, because this was mostly an excuse to drink while getting sweaty and covered in sand, when I heard an unfamiliar voice.

“Jonathan?” I heard from the other side of me. I didn’t turn right away, but from a mirror above the bar, I could see that was my old manager from the restaurant, her orange-red hair tucked into a ponytail.

I didn’t respond.

“Hey,” she said, now close enough to tap me on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I responded quizzically. “Do I know you?”

“Oh my god, are you…”

“I’m Jason.”

“Oh wow, yeah, I used to work with your brother. Is he here?”

“No,” I responded. “He plays on Tuesdays and Thursdays.” Sundays too, but what was the point in laying out my whole schedule?

“We used to work at [REDACTED]. What’s he up to now?”

“Oh, he got a job at [some other restaurant] after his surgery.”

“Surgery?”

“Yeah, he had surgery on his leg. Oh, right, I think he left before that. But he’s doing great.”

Neither of those things were true. I didn’t have surgery, obviously, because I hadn’t even hurt my leg in the first place. And I didn’t work at that restaurant, but I wanted her to think I got a job at a restaurant because it somehow supported the lie that I was only temporarily not waiting tables while I was quote unquote recovering. Although, if you want to talk about putting stuff out in the universe, I did eventually get a job at the restaurant I lied about. And about ten years later, I would get surgery on my leg. I never did, however, see that manager again. I don’t know that I would even recognize her if I did and if I would find the courage to be me or if I would resurrect Jason for another appearance just because he’s been a non-entity for a long time now, what with him never existing in the first place. Still, I kind of miss the guy,

I left my old manager at the bar, assuring her that I would tell myself hi from her. I returned to my friends and made them promise to call me Jason that night. I’d explain later.

I’m nothing if not committed.