Lisa the EJ
From WWR
Life after WWR
Lisa the EJ steps out of the cabin. She pauses and sets her suitcase down for a moment. "So that was that, I suppose. My final moment ejaying on WWR." She looks around, the Alaskan landscape something she did not care about much yet. Certainly beautiful, why didn't she ever take time off to hike or something? Well, that was that, too. "All in all, it wasn't too bad a career, I liked this job a lot", she thinks, "although they could have done a little more concerning a pension scheme, and compensation wasn't all that bounteous either..." She shakes her little bag of wheatberries. Lisa the EJ picks up her suitcase and takes two bold steps away from the cabin. She'd left a good-bye message for Jimbob on his computer earlier on, because she knew he would be sleeping by the time she'd leave. Stifling a sob, she walked briskly forward. She'd painted a big bright red heart on a post-it and stuck it to Esther's teacup. She'd miss her friends so much.
Some hours later, on the flight to Seattle, she was finally able to think about what she would do now. Retiring? Why had that ever occurred to her? She was still young, no age for retiring, she thought angrily. But what could she do? All she had ever done was ejaying. Would she find another radio station that would hire her? Hey, she cheered herself up. I'm a media person. I'm good at what I do. Plus, I'm blonde.
A fresh wind blew in with her, when she opened the door to Seattle's No. 1 radio station, ruffling her hair and blowing some sheets of paper from the information desk girl's neat piles. Lisa smoothes her hair. "May I talk to Mr. Wayward, please? I heard he's in charge of hiring new EJs?" she gasps out of breath and tries unsuccessfully to create the impression of being totally cool and serene. The girl looks dubiously at her for a moment. "Do you have an appointment with Mr. Wayward?", she asks. "No-o, I don't but maybe he'll just spare 2 minu...", Lisa tries. "No. Absolutely not. He won't see you now. But I can call him for you, see if he's got time for you later." "OK, thank you very much, that would be great." The girl waves her to a stylish black leather couch in a waiting area behind her and gets on the phone. Lisa wanders slowly over and sits down. Uncomfortable. Her legs poke into all kinds of directions, because this couch was obviously not designed to sit on it. Nervously she picks at her skirt, trying to straighten it some. "What was your name, Miss?", the girl calls to her loudly across the room. "Lisa", Lisa shouts back. "Just Lisa? Is this a stage name or what?" "Just Lisa. What's a stage name?" The girl eyes her again. After some more talking to the phone and some scribbling, she waves Lisa back. "Oookayy, Mr. Wayward will see you tonight at 7 pm. That all right with you?" Lisa looks to her watch, it is 8 am. "Fine, thanks, I'll just wait, then..." "You... what?" The girl looks taken aback. "Well, OK, suit yourself, the coffee vending machine is over there, if you want some magazines..." "No thanks, I'll practise my routine."
Lisa walks proudly to the dismal sofa and takes out her laptop. Then she begins by choosing a music block.
Several hours later, her backside aching, still sitting on the designthingy called a couch in some distant area of space where the shortlegged, spike-backed, elastomere limbed aliens live, the girl on the counter (twice changed since the morning, now a short blackhaired one with a glittering stubby piercing in her nose) calls to her. "Miss Lisa? Mr. Wayward is ready to see you know."
Lisa walks into a tiny office, walled in by glas panes which do decidedly not convey the impression of a bright, friendly office space. Mr. Wayward sits behind an ugly see-through glas desk on a black leather 'chef' office chair, much to big for the small room. He smiles at her, an irritated look on his face. "You wanna be an EJ with us?" He comes to the heart of the matter directly. "What can you do? What's your specialty?"
Lisa unpacks her laptop. "Now, mainly I've had to pick the music from the database. See that no song repeats to many times over the day, line them up. I made the shows, you see. Presented them, too, like this, see?" She shows him her routine. "I always considered my specialty to be the horoscopes. Our listeners responded to mine really very pleased. Very." Mr. Wayward's eyebrows shoot to the sky. Then he knits them so that they suddenly remind Lisa of the sofa outside. "Miss Lisa..." he starts and takes a deep breath. "What we need today is somebody who'll sweep the listeners off their seats." he says. "Knock them about, hit them over the head, wring their necks. Totally exhaust them. Get them to notice the promo bits, ya know?" He leans back in his chair, smirking. "Can you do this?" He points over to another glass box, this one has only one window, the rest is plastered with some kind of foamed plastic stuff. In there, a middle-aged guy jumps up and down. He's wearing one of those rapper nylon headgear thingies, looking as if he rummaged his wife's stocking-drawer for it. Plastic gold chains are dangling from his neck (all the hype now) and his shirt looks really flammable - extremely hazardous to him if he were a smoker. He's seemingly shouting something into the microphones at the top of his lung. You can only guess that, Lisa thinks, by his red face. Now he's mimicking a monkey. Now he's acting as if he's got to puke, now he's wringing somebodys neck. Strange, Lisa thinks. What on earth does this have to to with her job? Ain't this radio?
"Ahem, Sir, Mr. Wayward, there must be some kind of a misunderstanding, I'm an EJ, you know, I don't know what this guy's doing there?" "He's selling our music, babe. That's what he does. He tells one peer-group to stay away from the other. That the others are bad shits, you know? That stuff sells." "Sorry Sir, I... do I really have to hit our listeners over the head, wouldn't that be extremely unhealthy to them?" "You wanna make fun of me? Get the hell outta here!" He jumps up and beckons her violently to the door.
State after state, city after city. Lisa has been all over the US of A. She's been visiting all the stations. She's been asking everybody. Showing her routine to every single employer in radio business. To one of them, twice. No luck. Now she's back up north again, hiking up Washington State, finally arriving at the Spokane Falls. Her mood is dark. Mood... that strikes some memory from her ejaying days. She sobs. She'd always thought, she'd been good at what she did. She's no use to anybody any more. She is just not cut out for corporate world. Jimbob, Esther... she thinks. I'm sorry. She climbs onto the railing of the bridge. This will have been my first and only hike, she thinks bitterly. The railing is slippery, as she tries to stand up, she slips... oh my god, there goes her laptop... oh christ, doesn't matter anyway... her little bag of wheatberries falls to the ground behind her. This hits her like lightning. Her wheatberries... She desperately grabs hold of the railing. Careful now... not one false step.... Lisa slowly descends from the railing and falls to the floor, exhausted. She scrapes up all her precious wheatberries. Why didn't she think of them, why had she forgotten all about them?
Today, Lisa the EJ lives happily on a tiny, ecologically managed farm in Kansas. She grows organic wheat and delivers the wheatberries to WWR exclusively.
Found out after a long and careful recherche by Anna
Disclaimer or stuff: The persons and events in this story are fictitious (except Lisa, of course) - any similarity to real persons, entities, or events is totally out of question, unintended, not to be dreamt of, nope, never, no way, impossible. The person who thought this stuff up has no clue whatsoever, anyway. Signed: The Author
