When Hawking Uggs, Try to Remain Incognito

There are times when the element of surprise is a good thing. Other times, not so much. I found this to be the case when I ran into my former agent at my new job. My new, non-Hollywood job. To her credit, she was just as uncomfortable as I was to see me while shopping at a Beverly Hills boutique.

After her, “Hi, how are you?”

My, “Great and you?”

Her, “Busy. So how’s the writing going?”

My, “Great.”

Her, “Glad to hear it. Well, good to see you.”

My, “You too.”

That’s when I took the tank top from her hands.

“Do you want me to put this in a room for you?” I offered.

“No, that’s OK,” she said. She tried to mask her horror with, “I have a meeting.” Then she ran out the door. Which was too bad. I really could have used the commission.

It had been more than 18 months since she’d dumped me, and more than two staffing seasons since I had worked the insane hours of a sitcom writer’s room. “You should get a job outside of the industry,” advised the executive producer of the show I had written for. He knew I needed a paycheck, and said the only way I could get paid to write again was if people in Hollywood perceived me as writer--only a writer--meaning I shouldn’t take a job as an assistant, writer’s assistant, development executive or production assistant.

OK. But what do real people do for a living?

Well, I soon learned that some of them wear black pants, a white shirt and a nametag and work for $13 an hour. They hawk Pinot Noir in a warehouse club store to stars of prime-time network television shows--in my case, the same star whose marriage episode I had written for the series. She behaved as if my selling her wine was a perfectly acceptable job for a former sitcom writer to be doing. Which after that day, it no longer was.

Since then, I’ve spent countless hours helping high-profile Hollywood types in a boutique, all without a nametag. One of them was a former network executive who, upon realizing that I was carrying a pile of clothes not to purchase but to hang up, chirped: “It must be nice to be surrounded by such pretty things all day.” I agreed, even though I desperately wanted to admit just how much I’d rather be sitting around a stale room filled with junk food and sarcastic men.

Sure, there were some fleeting yet priceless moments--like the time the wife of one of the partners in my old agency sent him in for Ugg boots in every size and color. I watched him take them out one by one to her while she waited in the car. The whole process lasted at least an hour. And in the end, she selected the very first ones she tried on.

All of these moments were sitcom-worthy, and I soothed myself with the knowledge that I still recognized them as such. Until one day at Whole Foods, when I ran into one of the costars of the sitcom I had written for. He was with his wife and baby. He looked happy, yet he talked about how impossible it was to get cast for a show nowadays.

That’s when I realized that everyone has trouble getting jobs in Hollywood. I wasn’t alone. But everything is relative. I later turned on the TV and found my Whole Foods-shopping-sitcom-costar featured in a national cellphone commercial. That residual check could feed a family of four for a year. Or at least me. That’s when I saw that what they said was true. Down and out really is all perception.