Popination Traffic Citation
a series of unhinged personal essays disguised as pub reviews. Today: Darcy’s Irish Pub.
Also, DriveSafe driving schools. Kinda.
What am I doing at this oddly authentic Irish pub, inexplicably tucked into a strip mall-ish bit of office park-y DTC (Denver Tech Center)? Because I quit a job. Well, not really—I quit before I technically got the job, but. It was for a very good reason. And after bitterly disappointing some very nice office ladies, I needed a drink. Darcy’s was nearby, and my partner had mentioned it was a favorite of his in his dusty corporate consultation past, and as I’m always hep to an Irish pub, I thought I’d try it out.
Drive Safe with DriveSafe
When it came time for me to finally, at the age of 50, get my driver’s license, I used the services of a nearby driving school to take a few lessons and undergo the test. So I did their 3-lesson/test package. I regret to report that I failed my first test attempt (I accidentally cut a guy off in the last stretch of the test. My bad), but then was allowed to come back for one more try the next day, as part of the package. And so my wait times there in the tiny little office in Greenwood Village, near the high school and near the Tech Center, were occupied with soothing my nerves by chatting with the very amiable and friendly office ladies. I saw a young woman nervously go into the classroom area and was informed that she was ‘auditioning’ to be a classroom teacher for the teen permit driver’s ed program. Huh, I thought, and asked, “You guys need more classroom teachers?”
”We ALWAYS need more teachers!”
So I began the application process. I thought it’d be a fun little side gig; a part time thing that would be a gas and could help pay a Popination tab or two. Little did I know what a long, complex, involved process I was about to engage in.
There was an interview, where the managers asked me my teaching experience and desire for working there, what my goals were, and to get the background check done. That’s not a red flag—anyone who’s hired on to work with minors gets a background check: even when I choreographed the fights for CC High school’s production of Man of La Mancha, I had to undergo the teacherly hiring process. It’s normal. Makes sense, too, if you think about it (though private schools have fewer requirements of this kind, for what it’s worth). Then I had a demo-type phone interview where I was to teach something to my interviewers (any subject I choose), so they can see what my teaching style is like and how I handle delivery of potentially dry information to a group of squirrelly teens. I chose to teach them my Magic 3 Rules for writing argument essays, a topic that I thought would be boring enough, and that I’d taught to groups of bored young people before. They loved my presentation and moved me forward in the application process.
I received a large binder full of the DriveSafe curriculum, and was to study it well enough to be able to teach classes 1-4 for one ‘audition,’ and 5-8 for a second one that had been scheduled for only the week after. They were desperate for teachers to fill in for the busy summer courses, and, after a couple weeks of burying myself in the binder, I began to see why.
For 22 dollars an hour, they were asking for way too much.
Why did it take me that long to realize this? Well, just look at my history as an adjunct faculty—I began in 2001 just out of grad school, and it took getting severely dicked over more than once, all the way till 2015, that I realized I was being taken advantage of. I didn’t quit that position, either, till 2022. It takes me, these days, way way less time to decide to not be a welcome mat for administrative boots to wipe themselves on. I told my partner I was not wanting to waste any more time on this process, and his reaction? “I’m surprised you didn’t quit two weeks ago.” Welp. Okay maybe I am still learning.
And so I withdrew my application, without over-explaining myself and with only a tiny whisper of guilt, latent from my lifetime as an exploited teacher. I was instructed to return the giant curriculum binder to my local DriveSafe center. So I found myself back at that little office where I first took my lessons and tests.
I was just going to pop in and out (I had an uber waiting for me, ironically enough), but the head friendly office lady stopped me, a sharp hand gesture from her eyes to mine, and demanded to know why I was quitting the application process. She had been so excited to have me around and to work with me, she said, chidingly. I replied, slightly abashed, with the truth: the schedule would have been too demanding on top of my existing work; I had thought it would be a fun lark of a summer part time job, but the demands of it just don’t match the pay. She was nodding with me before I had gotten three words out, and admitted she didn’t know why I’d bothered in the first place, what with my position as a college professor, and Gee I wonder why we’re always needing more instructors…
I hastily agreed when she again demanded that I come by and visit them sometimes, and hastened out to the waiting uber. When I explained my delay, the driver volunteered that she used to be a teacher herself, an art teacher for K-8, and that she makes far more money driving for Uber, and gets a lot more respect. I believe her. And so we commiserated further as she took me to the pub for my post-quit Popination.
This whole experience of mine (and my pre-employment quitting, tbh) epitomizes teaching positions as a whole in this country: we have no respect for teachers. This is, of course, why teachers of all levels are quitting in droves. Teaching jobs of any type require the highest credentials, including background checks, and expensive advanced degrees for the college-level. Experience is also usually required—an entry level teaching position does not have any training period: you’re assumed to have either been a student teacher or a TA or something in order to be hired for your first teaching job. And evaluations are more frequent than once a year, let alone all the unwritten expectations rolled up in extracurricular duties and professional development (as though your difficult degrees didn’t educate you enough). And for what? 22 bucks an hour before taxes? 2,000 bucks a semester (that’s 4 months, kids)?
Teaching is a professional job, requiring high level skills and expensive advanced degrees. You wouldn’t think so, looking at what teachers get, and don’t get. And get blamed for. And. Even this DriveSafe job, though it wasn’t a school teaching job, required a bunch of this stuff, including background checks and two demonstration-centered presentations after the interview. The only notable difference was that they actually paid for our training time.
So I quit before I was hired. Now I needed a drink.
But DriveSafe is not a pub!
Darcy’s Irish Pub looks completely different inside than you would ever imagine from its bland strip mall-ish exterior. I wondered if this could possibly be the right place, when the Uber dropped me off and I climbed the shallow white metal steps to get to the balconied entrance. Once I stepped inside, I felt like a new companion to The Doctor in an episode of Doctor Who: what was an unobtrusive little phone box was vast, ornate, dim, strange, and full of wonders inside.
I sat at the burnished bar, and contemplated the taps. A surly bartender growled at me in a real Irish accent to ask what I wanted, then amiably mocked me for needing a moment with the menu. I strongly feel that it’s always a good sign when an Irish bar has a surly Irish bartender, and when the pint he poured me came perfect, and he nodded approval of my order, and when the regulars showed up and proceeded to gloriously shit-talk, I knew I was in a good 3rd place, and a true.
It was so big inside, true, but so empty. The vast kitchens looked so bored, and the barely couple of patrons at a high table and at the bar were obviously those that were there often—everyone seemed to know them well. It’s worrying—this place is great, and it would be heartbreaking if it didn’t last. Should I worry, though? Or just go there again? It’s not walking distance, but. And there we have it: this is the same problem I had with Dionysus—remember when I wrote about how me and my partner were going to go there, but found it was shut down? We were all sad, but then stopped and thought about it: when was the last time we were there? And how populated was it then? This is why—nobody’s coming. Darcy’s is a bit different, though—it was a staple for the office workers in the busy Denver Tech Center in the Before Times, and remained through and after the plague. I wonder, though, if because the work-from-home thing is now permanent, how much less the work happy hour crowd will come to Darcy’s to keep it afloat. I guess we’ll find out. I loved it there, but we’ll have to see if the short uber trip is actually worth it for me. Especially now I have my own 3rd place right across the street.
And so I’m continuing the difficult transition from schmuck who lets education administrators walk all over her, squeezing even more blood from the stone that is me, into someone who knows my worth. To be fair, I’m in a position now where doing that is financially possible. Up until 2022 when I quit [UNIVERSITY NAME REDACTED], it wasn’t that I wanted to be taken advantage of, or that I didn’t notice the exploitation of my self and my expertise (maybe before, like, 2015 that might have been true but not now). It’s that the paltry and insulting amount of money disdainfully thrown at my feet to scrabble for was vital. As much as it didn’t make ends meet, to go without it would have been impossible. But I’ve worked hard on that, too—on my relationship with my partner and my role in this household, which has led to my life situation right now which lends itself to making this quitting (and, obliquely, this Substack) possible.
I talk quite a bit more about these education exploitation topics (oo, Popination Exploitation?) in my memoir, Next Time. Tune in to the branch of Zuko’s Musings called Saturday Morning Serial for more on my journey through and out of the adjuncting plight.
The internet usually remembers.