The City Directory

I have not seen Sheri, Max or Todd face to face in half a year. We have worked together for over 20 years, so it has me off balance a bit. There are no hand signals, no faces to read. It is difficult to do a radio show by mostly listening to disembodied voices. It is sometimes hard to summon energy when your studio is a small bedroom stuffed with four bunk beds, holdovers from the previous owners who evidently had between 50 and 100 grandchildren.

The equipment I use is a microphone plugged into a laptop. That’s it. Max has the real gear, for what it is.

And yet I am grateful. I still have the show, and I know my workday could be way worse.

I left home at seventeen and moved into a tiny apartment above my girlfriend’s divorced father’s house on the edge of a slum in East Providence, Rhode Island.

I was broke, and wanted to go to college, but first I had to find a way to pay rent and eat. So I answered an ad to work for something called The City Directory. They published a thick book that detailed who lived at what house or apartment. I got two days of training which comprised my learning symbols that corresponded to people and products. I was to ask “Does Manny Cabral still live here? “ If the answer was yes I was to fill in a small circle in my book of names and address’s. If Manny did not live there anymore I would leave the circle open, and try to find out who lived there now.

There were also symbols for wives, children, pets ,roommates and I guess lovers.

I also was to inquire about how many TV’s were in the house, what kind of car the family had and how old it was, plus questions about education and employment. CAN YOU IMAGINE THIS SHIT GOING DOWN TODAY? You’d be shot by a QANON supporter the first day.

I soon realized what the scam was. It was called The City Directory because it sounded official. Like the city of Providence was just trying to help it’s citizens by knowing more about us, like….the Census. In reality it was to get info on who to send junk mail to or who to call to sell something. Did Manny drive a Chevy? Well, then sell the local Chevrolet dealer his address and phone number and see if old Manny would consider a new Malibu with no cash down and payments spread over 97 years. Looking back on this, it sounds like a blueprint for Facebook.

What I liked about the job was that I was left alone. I would pick up my book for the day, figure out what neighborhood I was to work, and off I went.

It didn’t take long to become disillusioned with The City Directory.

Some people would be a little intimidated by the name and tell everything. Who lived there, how many TV’s, if their daughter was still a virgin, but other’s saw the grift, this was after all the capitol of the New England mafia. A lot of people had street smarts.

I had one old woman hold up a rolled up newspaper and threaten to hit me. Sometimes doors were just slammed in my face for waking some poor working stiff from a nap after pulling the overnight shift. And, this being the North East quite a few suggestions of what I could do to myself.

After about two weeks I’d had it, but I needed that minimum wage paycheck to stay alive.
So I devised a plan. I would pick up my book at the office in the morning, and go sit on a park bench and, well, estimate what was what.
“I’ll bet Teresa DeVito is still single, and still driving that shitbox Oldsmobile.” Fill in the symbols.

“I’ll bet the Reilly family now has six kids! That ol’ dog just won’t leave that poor woman alone!

It took about four days for the City Directory to figure out MY scam, and fire me. It was the only time in my life I’ve been fired, and I work in radio, where everyone gets fired.

After that I worked in a plastics factory, cleaned toilets, and picked up dead rats for an extermination company.

So when the link to the show drops me, or someone is talking over one of my fascinating observations of life in America today, I just remember the humiliation, self-loathing and embarrassment of working for The City Directory. And I think of that one old Portuguese emigrant who looked at me and said, “Get a real job, asshole.”

I understand his annoyance, but I could not take his advice. I never got a real job, I spent my whole life in radio.

P.S. I did get into college on a student loan from The Industrial National Bank of Rhode Island. I paid it off in four years. I don’t think I could do that today, and it’s a damn shame.

Ashleigh Fiorino