Labors of Love: 5 Odd Jobs That Beat the Grind (Cont.)
 

Pawning It Off

People have a lot of misconceptions about pawn shops. As the manager of Crown City Pawn Shop for the past 11 years, Mike Robinson has heard them all.

"People always think that everything we carry is stolen or fell off the back of a truck," laughs Robinson. "They don't realize that we report every item that comes in here to the authorities so it can be tracked and ensured that there's nothing fishy about it."

People also seem to think that pawn shops only offer jewelry, the sad residue of relationships gone sour. While such items do make up a lot of its stock, the walls of Crown City are filled with musical instruments of every description, bikes line the windows, and computers rest atop glass cases filled with VHS tapes and DVDs.

One can easily overlook the truly strange artifacts that are stored in the back recesses of the store or, worse yet, are turned down flatly by Robinson and his staff. Pawn shop rules decree that a customer has four months to pay up on a loan and its interest in order to get their pawned item back. During that waiting period, each pawned item is stored safely in the back of the store, away from the floor, so that no one else can bid on it.

As the four-month period comes to an end, each customer is given a 10-day warning that their time is running out. For some customers, even those levels of precautions aren't enough.

"Someone called in here a few days ago asking if he could pay off a loan that expired back in 1995," laughs Robinson. "You also get the smart ones who ask if they can get an extension on their loan. You ask 'em how long they need, and they'll say 'Til the 1st or the 3rd, whichever comes first.'"

But are there any items he flat-out won't touch?

"One time an old dude came into the store, popped his fake eyeball right out of his socket and slapped it down on the counter," says Robinson. "I said 'I'm not touching that,' and he got upset. He said, 'What? You don't think I'm gonna come back for that?!' I still had to politely say 'no.'"

Paws-Down Deals

People in California love their pets more than owners in most of the country. After all, it doesn't seem likely that cat owners in North Dakota are going to spring for a pet psychic or chiropractor to take care of Fluffy's mental and physical needs.

But we have those professions here, along with pet bakeries, pet resorts and even pet acupuncturists and aromatherapy. And according to Karen Cuomo, who has worked as a receptionist at the Cat's Pajamas "pet hotel" in East Pasadena since July 2003, those businesses are only scratching the surface of what owners will do for their canine and feline companions.

"I don't know about aromatherapy, but the best one I've heard is that there's a pet resort near Burbank where a friend of mine was paid minimum wage to actually sleep with the dogs in a bed all night," says Cuomo. "Sure, you could say 'it's only minimum wage,' but think about it -- their entire job consists of sleeping next to dogs so they don't get lonely! Shaquillle O'Neal took his dogs there before he moved, so I guess they're doing something right."

The pets at Cat's Pajamas are treated under more normal conditions, with each staying in its own "apartment" or "suite" (depending on size) throughout its stay. They also have a cleaning crew that takes care of the feline foul-ups each morning at 3 a.m. and a caged play area where several cats can play at a time. It's a combination that's made the business a successful local institution for 17 years and counting, and it's also a good environment for cat-lover Cuomo, who brings some or all of her own five cats to work each day.

"People do some weird stuff for their pets, like demanding raw food only for them. That was the worst, because I had to dig through raw chicken guts to feed the cats. I have five cats of my own, but that's a lot to ask," she says.

However disgusted she may have been from that experience, Cuomo keeps a healthy and humorous attitude towards her job in order to maintain her sanity.

"Some people bring in their own bottled water for their cats," she notes incredulously. "One person insisted their cat wouldn't drink regular water, but would rather pee in it first. Then, once the owner was gone they drank through their water and started drinking the other cats' water anyway."

'Stuck' in the Daily Grind

At first glance, Rob Dalberto doesn't seem like the kind of guy who can be wistfully sentimental -- about his job or, well, much of anything. After all, he's got 15 earrings in his left ear alone and a string of spiky piercings that surround the edge of his mouth.

Even those eye-catching details are only the beginning of the 80 piercings that cover his body, including a few that are located in his particularly private areas. But the 37-year-old piercer, who has spent 17 years perfecting his craft and currently works 7 days a week for the Old Pasadena Tattooing Company, does lament one aspect of how his job has changed.

"When I started out, you had a lot of older clientele, people in their 50s and 60s who were retired and had money to play with and knew exactly what they wanted when they asked for a nipple or genital piercing. I mean, they worked for 40 years, now it's time to have fun and get freaky with their partner," he recalls. "Nowadays, most of our clients are young people walking by who see our signs and say, 'Hey let's go get one' without really thinking it through. It used to be about sex and turning your partner on, and now it's just a fashion statement."

As he speaks dreamily about the granny-flesh of his past, Dalberto explained a few tricks of his trade. For one, despite the garish nature of his appearance, he wants everyone to know that he is always strictly professional in the office.

"Sure, you might have this totally hot chick come in who wants her genitals pierced, but you have to take it in stride like a gynecologist," he explains. "And if a lady is not so attractive but wants the same piercing, you have to act just as happy and friendly to help."

A Florida native, Dalberto got turned onto piercing as a teenager when he and some buddies visited a tattoo shop where the owner was 65 years old and had been piercing people since the 1940s. Dalberto still loves to think of spontaneous ways to decorate himself, as he described "getting bored" at a party one night and deciding to go into the bathroom for a while.

By the time he came out, he had put in the curved spikes around his lips "and my friends totally freaked out that I did it to myself." Yet he assures visitors that they have nothing to get freaked out about, as he casually notes that he's seen people with up to 1,000 piercings in their bodies.

"The dude [with 1,000 piercings] has got shit all over his face. I saw him on TV, and he lives in Cuba," Dalberto chuckles. "Man, even I was sitting there shaking my head, 'cause I've got enough problems with the ones I've got."

Amazingly, those problems don't include difficulties with airport security. One might think that a guy with 80 piercings might set off an alarm or two, but Dalberto says he flies the nation's airways with aplomb because his piercings are made of titanium. Titanium is too light to register in a metal detector.

"People always stare at me in airports, [certain] there's gonna be trouble," says Dalberto. But the only time I had an issue was a few years ago, before people knew that genital piercings were common, and a lady with a metal wand heard my pants start ringing and totally freaked out thinking I had a gun or a bomb in there. Thankfully there was a 22-year-old kid working security there and he believed me when I said I just had a bunch of piercings, but they still made me head off to the bathroom with him and show him personally."

Lest you think that Dalberto doesn't know where to draw the line in his work, he does indeed have some standards. Don't ask him to cut your penis in half, for one thing (yes, this is apparently a cutting-edge trend, no pun intended). Don't ask him to slice off your fingers or toes (again, a trend). And by the laws of the state of California, he can't implant ball-bearings under your skin to make you look like you have horns unless he gets a medical license for surgery.

But Dalberto, like the rest of the odd-jobbers, loves his labors.

"I should also let you know that this work really helps some people," he adds. "I can't tell you how many plus-size women come in with their model-thin friends, saying they're just there to watch while their friend gets a belly piercing, and then walk out the door with their own navels pierced. Within a couple weeks, they'll come back in with their navel showing, totally feeling good about themselves when they never felt they could show off or be confident before. That's the really cool part of this job."

Carl Kozlowski is a regular Arriviste contributor and the co-author of the satirical self-help guide Life: The Final Frontier. (Pick this up!) He has also performed standup coast to coast and written for the Chicago Tribune, New City Weekly in Chicago, Chicago Reader and Pasadena Weekly.