Out of Work? Role Call at Job Factory

It is perhaps the world’s strangest job agency and almost certainly the only place a person can find gainful employment posing in Calvin Klein underwear while sitting in a cage and reading from Donald Trump’s autobiography--a job that was part of a local performance artist’s work a few weeks ago.

Last Christmas, a pianist able to render the extremely difficult “Carnaval” by Schumann picked up $1,000 for 32 minutes of work. The fee was paid by a man who wanted a friend to hear a live rendition of his favorite classical piece.

Fairly Weird

While such job opportunities are not daily fare at the Job Factory, an employment agency situated on Westwood Boulevard between the Sisterhood Bookstore and Junior’s Deli, there’s usually something fairly weird available every day.

Tending hot tubs, dressing up as Easter bunnies, milking cows, sorting dead tropical fish from live ones, donating sperm, decorating cookies, distributing cigarettes and inspecting caskets are all jobs that have been filled through this company specializing in offbeat as well as traditional assignments.

While most employment agencies charge employers to list their jobs and offer applicants free access to the postings, the Job Factory charges employers nothing and job hunters $50 for three months’ worth of referrals. “To the best of my knowledge, we’re the only employment agency in the whole country that does what we do,” said co-owner Nancy Marks, noting her small agency fields about 300 inquiries about available jobs each week.

Lately, she added, striking writers have been turning to her service for help.

“We usually get the writers work writing for PR firms, proofreading or doing legal research,” explained Kelly Edwards, who works regularly for the Job Factory when he’s not on an acting assignment.

But not all writers limit themselves according to their experience. Los Angeles-based writer Paul Ross, who’s produced scripts for “The Twilight Zone” and “Amazing Stories,” has worked as a clown at children’s parties, handed out samples in stores and worked in a law office during the strike.

One job he investigated, however, proved too adventuresome even for him. “I went on an interview for driving strippers to parties, but it got a little too weird for me,” he recalled. “At first I thought, ‘I’m going to have a bunch of beautiful women practically naked and sitting on my lap in the car.’ But then I realized I would be endangering my life in direct proportion to the amount of excitement I’d be getting. (The problem is) if anyone makes a move on these girls, you have to be able to defend them. I figured some drunken, sex-crazed construction worker might bend me into a pretzel and I’m 6 feet tall and 148 pounds.”

The agency also is well versed in finding work for actors who need flexible hours in order to attend auditions.

But Job Factory clients include all sorts of folks who have trouble with the standard structures of employment. Some merely get bored by repetitive assignments. Others have problems with the 9-to-5 grind, no matter how varied the work.

And, of course, there are the clients who think every job should be an adventure: PBX operator today, tap-dancing cupcake tomorrow.

Part-Time Projects Preferred

“I like to work on short-term or part-time projects. I don’t like to be limited to one place, 9 to 5,” said Lois Earl of Mar Vista, who doesn’t take tap-dancing gigs but described herself as a “free-lance Mary Poppins--I just come into peoples’ lives. They tell me what they need. I clear up their problems, move on and spread a little fairy dust around.

“The regular employment agencies are really boring. They’re very limited to clerical positions for the most part. Somebody turned me on to the Job Factory about a year ago. I was very skeptical. It sounded too good to be true. I was a little hesitant about paying money up front. But I thought, ‘What the hell, I’ll do it.’ And it turned out great.”

In the last year, Earl has landed “four or five on-going jobs” through the Job Factory, including editing the memoirs of a prominent literary agent, helping a physician organize his books and assisting the director of a charity.

The trick to using the Job Factory’s resources most effectively, she said, is to negotiate higher salaries. (“Employers) say they want to pay $8 an hour, but when I sit down with them and they see who I am and what I can do and I say, ‘I really want $12 or $15 an hour,’ they usually pay it, which is really nice.”

How It Started

When owner Marks and her New Jersey-based partner Ava Minsky Foxman bought the company eight years ago, it was a traditional job agency that had been in business for 10 years. An employee for nine of those years, Marks recalled that she conceived the notion of unusual job offerings as a public relations gimmick, but it proved to be so much fun that she and her partner decided to expanded upon it.

Traditional jobs are also available. In fact, 70% of the offerings are in that category, though Marks said she is careful to screen out opportunities she considers too mundane such as telephone magazine sales, straight commission sales work and multilevel marketing enterprises. “We have to protect our customers and not just run anything,” she said.

Even so, not all jobs are easily filled. Marks recalled a husband who needed a motorcycle driver to follow his wife around for $10 an hour--for several months. “A bunch of guys quit that job,” Marks said. “They were all bored out of their minds.”

Other hard-to-fill jobs include secretary, receptionist, delivery person and counter helper, she added. “Secretarial work is becoming less and less popular as far as I’m concerned. And jobs that pay under $5 are very hard to fill.”

She has little difficulty filling requests for party helpers, personal assistants, writing-related assignments and tennis partners.

Eager for Almost Anything

And some workers are eager to try almost anything.

“I’ll take any job,” enthused Mar Vista-based writer Duke Weiss. “Wherever I go, I get a story.”

But there have been assignments Weiss would just as soon forget.

“For seven hours once,” he remembered, “I stuffed posters into mailing tubes.”