Factotum opens with Henry being fired from his job driving an ice truck after he stops in a bar long enough for the ice to melt. He thusly finds work in various dirt-bottom levels, but none of the jobs mean more than a paycheck to drink up and carry on with his pathetic life. He gets job, loses it, drinks, writes, fucks, repeats.

There's not much story to speak of, just limp notions of the writer-as-drunk that evaporate as Henry gulps down the hooch and chases away loving but damaged women. When Chinaski falls for unemployed drifter Jan (Lili Taylor), it's a match made in dilapidated heaven. The two luckless losers making a soulful bond based on little more than down-and-dirty sex. A chance meeting at another bar gets him another adventure with dirty and greasy Laura (Marisa Tomei).

Alcoholic, dirty, lazy, crude and righteously ugly, Henry drifts through binges, lousy jobs, messed-up relationships with his sole want to be left in peace. Besides women and whiskey, all Chinaski cares about are his short stories, which he sends off to various magazines, and equally often receiving rejection notes.