Night Shift Diary

A project coming down the pipeline.

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 16:51:13 -0400

“The only thing I ever saw that came close to Objective Journalism was a closed-circuit TV setup that watched shoplifters in the General Store at Woody Creek, Colorado. I always admired that machine, but I noticed that nobody paid much attention to it until one of those known, heavy, out-front shoplifters came into the place…but when that happened, everybody got so excited that the thief had to do something quick, like buy a green popsicle or a can of Coors and get out of the place immediately. So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t both to look for it here—not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction of terms.””

—

Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ‘72

File under: Songs to end something.

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:44:40 -0500

File under: Songs to end something.

Day 15 (12:32 AM)

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:44:17 -0500

It’s done. I called in on the scheduling hotline tonight, and a recording of Red Vest thanked me and all the other third shift employees for our work this season and then told us we were all laid off.

Unceremonious is a good way to put it.

Not that I expected any sort of farewell or that I wanted to say one to anyone in particular.

I slept until 6:30 this evening, recovering from what was my last night on third shift and this stupid head cold, which is no better or worse than it was yesterday.

Tonight, I went and saw a movie with some buddies. There were only two other people in the theater, and they didn’t find the movie nearly as funny as we did. So we all just laughed and enjoyed our special $2 Tuesday popcorn and then I dropped a cup of ice (“like a toilet flushing in the night; just the loudest noise,” one said) and we laughed some more.

My life is gonna go back to the way it was before I started this job. Sleeping normal hours, seeing movies with friends, not eating a full meal and 4AM. In a week or two, I’ll be back in class with other college students.

In Arabic, I’ll sit next to that overweight girl with the sides of her heads shaved and her hair dyed an unpleasant orange and think about how she must think that spending a week camped out on some green space on a college campus must maker her some sort of social rebel. And I’ll think about all this 99% noise and how corporations are people now.

And maybe, then, I’ll think about Sweetheart, or Horse Back, or Huntsman, or maybe I’ll even picture King Patchbeard, opening up the Mexican restaurant while he dreams of just going home, seeing his kids, and watching some Sportscenter.

I’m not saying protesting is bad; it’s important, just like speaking your mind always is. But if we really want to change something, it can’t just be a bunch of college students who got pepper sprayed with taco sauce complaining about paying off their loans. This is a democracy, and if there really are 99% of us, we need to find a way to get every one on board so we can make some real change.

So I guess that’s the who and the what. Once we figure out the how, the when and where might fall into place. But that how is the big question, and we can argue about why all we want, but until we find something we can all agree on, I don’t know what to do.

I guess I’ll just try to go to bed and hope I can fall asleep at a reasonable hour.

Day 14 (8:40 AM)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 08:58:51 -0500

They called the whole shift in at 4AM tonight, which was weird. I spent a few hours reading, and had my neck nice and stiff by the time I left for work. The roads were much emptier at 3:30 than they are at 11:30. Rain was falling in big drops.

The scratch in my throat turned into a cough. Five or so days ago, I spent the night in the truck with a coughing Huntsman. I wonder if that’s enough time to develop a head cold. It always escapes me if “head cold” is a medical or colloquial diagnosis. Either way, I’ve spent every winter I can remember suppressing sneezes and hacking into my shirt sleeves, the way my Grandpa taught me to cover my mouth.

I spent from 4-6 in the truck with Gauges. Do you remember The Used? Because he does. He wears the same ball-cap with their name on it, backwards, every night. He either bought it in 2006 at a Hot Topic or found it at a thrift store and wears it for the wordplay. But I doubt that. Nothing against the guy, he’s a hard worker and a good one, but if you rock two eyebrow piercings and six (hopefully) fake carpentry nails in your ears, I doubt you wear clothes for wordplay that even the most irony-idolizing hipster might miss.

The gremlin spent the night digging into my traps and arms. He’s still not breaking the skin, but he’s got a hell of a grip.

Horse Back told me before break that she and her cute friend (who gets cuter the farther away you get) wanted to switch me and Gauges spots so they could load the truck. I laughed and asked her if it was another joke (she tried that “Did you hear Cedar Point is closing?” one on me a few minutes before). She got mad, so I told her we could switch after the break.

I didn’t mean to insinuate that she couldn’t load the truck; I’m sure she could. But the only reason I do it is because I feel like a manly man picking up all those boxes and dropping them back down in neat little rows. It’s not fun or exciting. The time moves quick, but the biggest benefit is that I hope I sell more tickets to THE GUN SHOWNNNNGGGAAAAHHH.

But after White Bread came around saying this truck might blow out, she changed her tune and decided to go help with setting boxes on the line next to us. I got stuck on wipe-down, which was a nice break.

I think after last night’s poor attendance, they called in the whole shift expecting a bunch of no-shows again, but a lot of people showed up. After the 6AM break, Alleged Orgy Participant walked around, telling anyone that wanted to leave to let her know and they could go.

I thought about telling her I wanted to go, but instead I got to stick around until quarter of 8 packing the last of move than 5,000 boxes into our truck (a normal truck holds just over 4,000). After that, I spent a long time just sweeping the floor. I love sweeping with a broom. Something about it settles me. Sweep, shuffle, sweep, shuffle. A good wooden broom handle is just as good as a stress ball.

On the way out, I passed a bunch of first shifters on their way in for the day. A lot of them wouldn’t make eye contact with me. I wondered if they didn’t want to recognize that while they slept, I was here, working. But then I realized it was mostly the young ones that wouldn’t look at me, so I chalked it up to that weird invisible maturity level that makes older people willing to smile and nod at a total stranger while younger ones won’t even glance.

I passed my sister on her way in, and an old high school friend, too. They were both happy to see me.

Red Vest said they’re going to keep calling us in at 4, probably for the reason of the season. But it’s only a few more days, anyway. It might make the work feel harder, but I think if you don’t know what hard work feels like, how are you ever supposed to know if you’re doing it?

File under: Songs for after a satisfying meal.

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:41:40 -0500

File under: Songs for after a satisfying meal.

Day 13 (7:06 AM)

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 07:41:00 -0500

I was all long sighs and dragging feet as I left for work today.

I saw a deer crossing the road on the way to work, which is always a scary sight in Ohio because there’s never just one. And even a second is sometimes just a false sense of security.

On the way through the warehouse to the break-room, I passed Red Vest. We gave each other a nod and he said, “Mornin’,” even though it was 11:50 PM.

I wore my old paint-splattered paints today. They’re from the other manual labor job I had a couple summers ago: painting fire hydrants in an old-money suburb around Columbus, Ohio. It was the kind of place where everyone drives Tahoes, Yukons, and Suburbans (the only aptly named SUV). The people were nice, but nobody I worked with in Utilities Division lived in the city, even though they were the ones who kept the clean water running in and the literal shit water running out.

I imagine the people that live there are the type of people that order the luxury goods we ship out of the warehouse. This thought foils my mom’s attempts to cheer me up about my work (which she does when she’s not explaining to my close high school friends why my Jerry-Seinfeld-like standards prevent me from having a girl-friend or suggesting what a cute gay couple I’d make with Anderson Cooper). She tries to encourage me to think about all the people I’m making happy with my work. I can almost guarantee that nobody working the night shift with me is ordering this crap, and I can’t say I’m particularly invested in the happiness of people who think they need that much vehicle to take the kids to soccer practice.

We only had 20 people show up tonight of the 35 or so that were scheduled. No one from Team 6 showed, and two other teams only had two out of five people there. We were spread pretty thin.

I thought maybe that was why I moved so slow. That, plus the long sighs and dragging feet. And the gremlin on my back, who was poking one bony finger into a muscle on the left side of my spine, right in the middle. He was tearing at anything, but he definitely wanted me to know he was there.

At lunch, my suspicions were confirmed that the buns I use to make sandwiches are now stale. I also discovered that low blood sugar might’ve had a lot to do with my mindset for the first half of the shift. I felt a lot better after I got some food in me and realized that all I ate all day was a couple slices of pizza (square cut, so basically one triangular piece) and half a salad.

In the break-room at lunch, Tennies (a middle-aged women who wears a lot of matching grey-on-grey sweatpants/sweatshirt outfits and reportedly owns more than 300 pairs of tennis shoes), asked me, “What’re you always writing in that notebook?” She meant the little composition book I keep with me.

“Thoughts,” I told her.

“I thought you were writin’ some secret manifesto.”

“Nope.”

She only talked to me because there was no one else to talk to yet. She loves to talk. Today, she told Canadian Tuxedo and another one of the lift drivers about how killing and cleaning chickens was her first job as a kid.

The whole Kim Jong Il thing was all over the cable news all night, and at lunch they showed video of North Koreans passing American journalists in the street crying because the totalitarian dictator of their nation was dead. That alarmed me until some guy a few tables over said of the man’s death, “That’s good. Now they won’t be communists.” Then, I didn’t know what to be alarmed by.

They kept me past 5:30, partially thanks to Sweetheart, who told White Bread she wanted me there to close up the truck for her (wink). We were waiting for one box to put on the truck, and when we got it, the computer refused to scan it. Sweetheart had to make a call on the phone mounted on one of the giant pillars. While she did, King Patchbeard yelled, “Typical woman…yakkin’ on the phone while we’re tryin’ ta work!” Sweetheart just smiled.

King Patchbeard needed a ride to his second job at the Mexican place again, and on the way out to the car, we passed the night shift janitor mopping the main hallway. KP jokingly told me to step on the wet part of the floor to get me some of that slip ‘n’ fall money. Then, he told me the story of a food delivery run he made to a local high school one time where he went in a door he didn’t know he wasn’t apposed to go in, slipped, and fell with two armfuls of food. The school called him a week later to ask him if he would settle out of court, but he didn’t want anything from them. But he still had to go in and fill out some damn report anyway.

We rode to the Mexican place in silence, a nice change. Before he got out of the car, he stuck his hand out for me to shake, a first for us. I shook his hand, and all the muscles in my arm cried out in fatigue when I did. But it was a hell of a handshake.

Day 12 (5:58 AM)

Sun, 18 Dec 2011 06:31:08 -0500

On the way into the building today, I got to hold the door for one of the young ladies on our shift, an opportunity I don’t often get. I don’t enjoy it because I think that by opening some door I’m magically opening a gateway into a tight pair of jeans; I do it because I like the look on someone’s face when they don’t expect it. At school, it’s mostly shy Asians coming in and out of the library. Here, it was a girl with too much hairspray and woodland camouflage work boots. Either way, I like it.

I went into the break-room and sat down at a table with 800 and Hunstman before work started. 800 had her head down on a rolled up sweatshirt. Hunstman asked if she was tired, and she said she was because her dad came into her room while she was sleeping panicked because he had no Christmas gift for her mom yet. Hunstman said that every Christmas, he just gives his daughter his checkbook and lets her take care of that exact situation for that exact reason.

White Bread told us during the pre-shift meeting that the security desk was going to have cookies people could take during breaks. I was sitting near Brooklyn, the tall black guy (he has a patch on his store-bought varsity jacket that says “Brooklyn”; plus I’ve just always wanted to nickname someone Brooklyn because it makes me feel like a WWII soldier). He asked out loud, “Just one?”

Everyone laughed and White Bread said, “Yeah, just one.”

Then, Weasel tried to throw in a few lines to piggy back on the joke: “How ‘bout ya’ act like yer takin’ one and then take five?!”

White Bread: “Nope…”

Weasel: “Just take ‘em all!”

White Bread: “…So, we’ve got about 20,000 to move today.”

I started in the back of the truck again with a kid I call Death Eater because he had the hood up on his black sweatshirt and the truck was just a lot colder than usual. I also think that if he’s never read the Harry Potter series (and the faux-embroidered chains, battles axes, and warrior helmets on his jeans might suggest that he’s not an avid reader), I could recommend a band called Death Eater to him and he might try to look them up. Especially if I told him they played hardcore rap-rock.

He had no idea what he was doing, and I felt pretty sore (physically, that is) so I got Pokey to switch me spots and I took over on wipe-down. It is the easiest job in the warehouse. I stood there for hours with a wet rag in my hand, making sure the corners of shipping labels laid flat. Based on empirical observation, it seems like there’s some unspoken code that wipe-down is women’s work: every other line had a lady doing wipe-down except for the one where Weasel stood, rag in hand. But I’m not sure where I’d put him on a spectrum of manhood anyway.

I felt kind of bad about taking over the easy spot, but the only girl on our line was 800 and she was running the computer. And any fears I had about being emasculated dissolved as almost a half dozen people came up to ask me why I wasn’t in the truck, as per usual.

King Patchbeard was the first to notice from where he was picking up boxes and putting them on the line. He asked why I was doing wipe-down and I told him I was just tired. He understood.

White Bread was next. He asked me with a we-both-know-what-I-mean tone, “What the hell’er you doing up here?” I told him I just couldn’t train a new guy every night of the week, and that felt like the truth to both of us. Death Eater was the quiet type, like me, which I appreciated. But it didn’t make him easy to train.

Huntsman was on the line next to us, and he said something next. “What’er you doin’, Speedy?” he asked. He threatened to force me into their truck.

Eventually, Sweetheart came over and asked me if I was out of the truck because I thought I deserved a break. Because she thought I did.

800 kept having to stop the line because Pokey and Death Eater couldn’t keep up with her. At one point, while we stood there waiting for them to catch up, she asked, “How come we never have to stop the line when you’re in the truck?”

Alleged Orgy Participant was the last to say something. By the time she showed up, they had added a third guy in the truck to help keep pace with 800, who was moving upwards of a 1,000 boxes an hour. They were still falling behind. AOP said she was recommending me for retention, which meant that I might not get a full-time job, but they’d probably ask me back next year.

“C’mon, guys,” she said as she walked away, addressing the loaders. “Three guys in the truck. The line shouldn’t be stopped.”

The third guy I call Nature Boy after his self-described Ric-Flair-like wooing. He knew my name without us being introduced, which means either my reputation precedes me or that I need to more worried about the implications of his giving an unsolicited back-rub to 800 and his use of the word “bi-otch” as punctuation on exclamatory sentences.

The high watermark of my ego came tonight when everyone started getting worried that this would be the first “blow-out” truck on our shift this season, a term that means all the boxes slated for packing on it wouldn’t fit because the loaders fucked up. 800 said I packed almost twice as many boxes on a normal night in the same amount of space as the three guys back there.

After that, King Patchbeard approached me and said, “From now on, you know your role.” When Sweetheart asked him what he meant, he said, “In the truck.”

We tried to work through lunch in order to get out earlier, but we only made it until quarter after four when we ran out of boxes. Because all the drivers were at lunch, there was no one to retrieve what we needed to fill our shortages, so they let us go.

On the way out, Sweetheart asked me what I brought for lunch because she was hoping to snag something since I wouldn’t be needing it. I gave her a little snack bag of the fancy cashews my aunt sends in a big glass jar every year for Christmas. I told her I bet them come from a place just like this.

She opened them, but then hid them because we aren’t supposed to have open food containers in the warehouse, and there’s cameras everywhere.

I stopped in the cafeteria to see if King Patchbeard needed a ride. He didn’t, and his Mexican food never materialized, so he brought us in pizza. I grabbed a slice for the road.

File under: Songs for driving stick.

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:26:29 -0500

File under: Songs for driving stick.

Day 11 (6:52 AM)

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 07:23:15 -0500

We had last night off because 800 had a big test she had to study for/take. But tonight was a new biggest night, according to White Bread during the pre-shift meeting. In the same meeting, Red Vest (the supervisor of all supervisors, as far as I’ve seen), got some heat for winning one of the last drawings for a gift card, but he took himself out of the running for tonight. The gift cards are incentives for attendance. Red Vest is running through them; Wal-Mart, Target, Olive Garden, Buca di…beppah…Buca di betta…Buca di whatever.

“Buca di Becca’s,” Alleged Orgy Participant corrects him.

Igor and Horse Back missed today, so they gave us two young guys with longish hair that flipped at the ends. They looked like they just walked off the set of a made-for-TV Disney Channel original movie about skateboards where they played the part of the comic relief duo who called everyone “Dude!” and had to divert the principal while the hero skated to the rescue of some damsel in distress (probably she’s in the clutches of those villainous older skaters).

The guy in the truck with me I call Nosy. Not because of his nose, but because he felt compelled to try and read every “personal message” on the shipping labels of the boxes he handled. It’s not like he was getting any real dirt; you couldn’t fit more than 8 or 9 words on each one. Which sort of made it weirder that he kept reading them…for hours.

The kid’s a trooper, though. And if he has a nickname for me, it might be Gassy. I had the coffee burps something terrible tonight.

After my 2AM break, I decided for what feels like the dozenth time that there’s no worse feeling in the world than putting on a pair of gloves damp with sweat.

We’re moved slow tonight. 800 asks if I can tell we’re taking our time at lunch; we’re back under 1000 an hour. I’m glad to ease back into work because my arms and shoulders feel heavy. The pain in my back feel more superficial. Instead of staying burrowed underneath the muscles, it feels like there’s a little gremlin on my back like the one from that episode of the Simpsons where nobody believes Bart that it’s on the side of the bus. He’s just sitting there, scratching at this spot a little at a time, smirking.

King Patchbeard is ready to take full credit for keeping us slow tonight. He just wants the hours and I don’t blame him; I want them, too. I give him a ride to his second job again and he fills me in on everything he knows about how to get the most hours. Specifically, he’s figured out the exact minute when you can clock out and get paid for the full half hour instead of just 15 minutes. He says he’s worked it out so they can’t “jew” him out of any more money. I’m not unfamiliar with this verb, I just hoped I’d left it behind at my rural Ohio high school. I know there’s no point in trying to confront him about it; I always try to pick my battles, even with these sorts of things, and especially when it’s in a workplace.

He spent most of the night flirting with Sweetheart; as we got off he asked her for a back-rub and she said he’d only get one if she got one, too. He was happy to oblige.

She’s almost too friendly. I was carrying some load lock to our truck; they’re basically giant bars with a leaver on one side that lets you crank them into place across the back of all those stacks of boxes in the trailer. I had one resting on each shoulder, and with a caring smile she told me I shouldn’t carry them that way or I’d ruin my white shirt. I looked down at the front of it, with the sunglasses-wearing Santa smiling over the words “Christmas in July”. That whole thing was browned with cardboard shavings, so I said it might be a little late for that. She smiled again.

That’s why I wear shirts like that to work anyway. Same goes for the jeans that fit me better when I weighed 20-25 pounds more in January.

King Patchbeard promised me some food tomorrow for giving him all these rides, something Mexican I’ve never heard of before. He also fills me in on some more of the police drama in the town (in Ohio legal language, it’s a “village” since it’s not big enough to be a “city”).

After I drop him off, I get to enjoy the rest of the way home in my mom’s car (when KP saw it and I told him whose it was, he asked, “So I can smoke in this one right?” and then laughed). It’s got a manual transmission, which I love. Driving stick makes me feel like I’m driving some boss 1970s muscle car, a delusion that gets some help from the bandanna, boots, slight sneer, and classic rock station on the radio, which is best when it’s playing something with driving drums, a thump-thump-thump-thump bass-line, and a guitar part that sounds like a narrow-eyed swagger up to the bar of some seedy backwoods dive, where I’d lean as casually as the toothpick would hang from my lip.

The only things that can break this delusion are remembering I’m driving a 5-year-old hatchback the color of a blue raspberry Airhead or hearing the Beastie Boys on the “classic rock” station.

When I got home, my mom was outside with the dog, who has a fun new habit of latching onto a pant leg of my work jeans so I have to drag him around the kitchen while I pour myself a glass of egg nog (I’m trying to get more into the Christmas spirit). Mom told me how my sister woke up an hour ago to use the bathroom, and then went back to bed to get some more shut-eye before work, but laid back down in a pile of cat vomit that she had spent an undetermined amount of time in during the night.

I showered off, and when I was done I walked through the kitchen where my dad is cooking breakfast. I asked him what he was still doing home, as on a normal day he’d have left for work at least a half an hour ago.

“It’s Saturday,” he says.

“Oh my god, it is,” I realize.

He laughs. “You want some pancakes?”

“Sure.”

My alleged vocal celebrity doppelganger.

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:03:59 -0500

My alleged vocal celebrity doppelganger.

File under: Songs that I imagine would make Tim Tebow feel...

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 07:00:09 -0500

File under: Songs that I imagine would make Tim Tebow feel uncomfortable.

Day 10 (6:24 AM)

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 06:50:08 -0500

I wore clean gym shorts to bed last night. I mean fresh clean, like first time wear clean. I guess I should explain that this is significant because at school, wearing a new pair of gym shorts to bed without working out in the pair I wore last usually sends me on a guilt trip into running an extra couple miles the next day. But I don’t feel guilty about not working out with this job.

It was warm enough that I didn’t really need my coat tonight when I left for work, but I had it anyway. The ground was wet with what should’ve been snow. I yawned as I got into my car.

When I got out of my car in the parking lot, I heard the sound of long strips of tape being pulled off a roll. I saw Weasel taping over the hole where his driver’s-side front window should’ve been.

In the break-room before work, I noticed that one of the guys I’ve never talked to had a tattoo on the first knuckle of his left middle finger. It was a smiley face.

White Bread said this was going to be our biggest night so far this season. My team had to help pack 9500 boxes, which we split with Weasel’s team between two trucks. Hustler was over there with him, and so was the guy he carpools with to work everyday, Squirrelly (my roommate’s dad loves that word as an adjective). Squirrelly was the one who simultaneously addressed me and didn’t address me during my 2AM piss the other day when he observed that you have to, like, squat down to piss in the short urinal like I do. He sort of just said it the bathroom at large, but I was the one at the short urinal. And you don’t have to squat. Pissing in the short urinal just makes more sense to me because you can get a better angle for less splash-back (splash-back is real, even if you can’t see it).

Hunstman was with me in the truck. He calls me Speedy. I got to listen to him and Alleged Orgy Participant, who was our team lead, talk about their respective no-good, low-down brothers. His stole $5000 from him; hers beat up her son. Both still live at home, mooching off their parents. They agreed that once you get out of the house, you can never go back, which sucked because I’m not supposed to have to worry about the imminent reality of my impending adulthood on this job.

They also agreed that I know how to stack a truck. Hunstman said he wants to take me to the fair, give me $100, and see what I can do.

At the 2AM break, King Patchbeard filled me in on how he was gaming the lift drivers to give us the biggest boxes so our truck would fill up more quickly. Just as he was sharing how he kept sending fruit to Weasel’s line (it has the most rules about how you can pack it), he stopped almost mid-sentence to stare at Horse Back’s ass as she passed us.

During today’s 2AM piss, I discovered that I worked for 2 hours with my fly down. Some guy I don’t know was in there showing a flagrant disregard for the “Employees must wash hands” sign. When I walked into the break-room, I saw him getting a drink at the water fountain, so I had to use my blue flannel shirt to work the handle so I could fill up my water bottle.

We hit exactly 4600 units in the truck by lunch, and finished around 5100 on the night at about 5:00. Meaning 800 was moving about 1200/hour, about 50% above her nickname.

Right before lunch, Horse Back convinced 800 that I sound like Owen Wilson, although “convinced” isn’t the right word because all she had to do was say it and 800 realized it was the voice she had associated with me already.

My body is starting to show some damage now. I can feel the boot blisters on the insides of my big toes turning into the calluses I’m familiar with from wearing soccer cleats every night for months in high school. On the insides of my forearms are two bruises. The one on the left is about the size of a quarter and the one on the right is four times as big. They’re at the exact spots where the bottom corners of boxes dig into me when I pick them up by the bottom edge. Picking them up never hurts, but I guess after a few thousand a night, the pressure adds up. A couples times tonight, I felt my face making involuntary winces at a pop in my hand or a tug in my neck. The knot in the middle of my back feels bigger and tighter.

King Patchbeard needed a ride to his second job again. We swapped stories about our Italian families’ recipes and he told me about his willingness to fight anyone over a pork chop after it sits in his special Christmas spaghetti sauce for the three days it takes to make.

After I dropped him off, I was singing and drumming on the steering wheel through the rain on a country road when I say something little and wet and furry scurry out of the darkness right in front of my car. I didn’t feel a bump, so I might’ve gone right over it. But I’m not sure I’d feel it if I hit a chipmunk anyway; they’re so small.

I didn’t sing or drum on the steering wheel the rest of the ride home.

File under: Songs for rainy night driving.

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:12:18 -0500

File under: Songs for rainy night driving.

How I feel when a box fits perfectly into a spot I need to fill.

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:09:24 -0500

How I feel when a box fits perfectly into a spot I need to fill.

Day 9 (6:31 AM)

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 07:05:00 -0500

I hyped up this holiday break as the first time in a year I’d have more than a week off from school. No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s comments on my papers that my analysis of Virginia Woolf’s use and addressing of interruption as a part of the writing process feels some how incomplete.

Even though I’m enjoying it, I miss school a little bit. Mostly, I just miss there being books around to talk about. Yesterday, Horse Back came in and told me she had watched a movie based on a Stephen King novel. I asked her how it was and then said I’d just finished reading a book by him (it was half memoir, half craft essay on writing, and not half bad). She said she forgot I was the “writey” type.

I doubled up on boxer briefs tonight for warmth. Casually, I’m a boxers man, but when there’s work to be done, and especially when there’s work to be done in any kind of cold, I bust out some bb’s.

Meanwhile, the Great Bandanna Shortage of 2011 continues and tonight I had to wear one plastered a bunch of Denver Broncos logos. Thanks to Tebow, it’s the most Christian piece of clothing I own, which is a little ironic since the only reason I have it is because of my childhood idol worship of John Elway. White Bread was the only one who said anything to me about it, just to ask if I was jumping on the Tebow bandwagon. We agreed that we both wanted to see Tom Brady (the Ryan Gosling of professional football) and the rest of the Patriots lay an ass-beating on him this week.

I’m getting better at using my legs thanks to what Igor called my “hell yeah” stance. It’s just about not being afraid to squat down.

King Patchbeard wasn’t there tonight. I’m worried he didn’t have a ride. To fill in his spot, they brought us two guys to do set on and help me out in the truck when I needed it. Neither was much help.

The first, Pickler, earned his name the first time he came back to help, when he said, “Looks like you got yourself quite a pickle here,” as if he were an older lady working at and Elder-Beerman who just happened upon me trying to pick out earrings for the nice girlfriend I don’t have. It wasn’t at all the kind of thing a guy in his 20s with spiked earrings and a patchbeard should’ve said when he walked into a semi trailer filled with boxes that needed stacked.

Context aside, I don’t even think that’s the correct use of “pickle” in that sense. A pickle to me is how the same pears can come in a half-dozen different-sized boxes. I understand the length and width differences, but I can’t figure out why they come in different heights, and that’s what makes stacking them a pain in the ass sometimes.

The second guy, Hustler, could really move for a bigger guy. I was impressed until he picked up three boxes at once, lost his grip, and jammed the middle one corner first into my chest. I said ow not because it hurt very bad, but because it was the only way I could think of telling him to slow down. When you move so fast you start hurting your co-workers, you need to press on the brakes. And I don’t mean to be dramatic, but if he had lost it a few inches higher or the box had been a few inches taller, it would’ve hit me right in the throat, and that would’ve sucked pretty hard.

After that, he had a cell phone somewhere on him that was playing music out loud. This technology is used never for good and only for evil. He had the model I’ve seen before; the one designed to blast shitty 21st century arena rock guitar solos and make me question how much of a dirty white country boy I am for still liking Nirvana 7 months after I’ve stopped being a teenager.

800 and Horse Back were there tonight though, so I wasn’t totally stranded with those two. 800 was moving over 1000 an hour again. Her nickname stays regardless at this point.

At lunch, she stopped me to say, “That one kid (looks around to make sure he’s not standing nearby), the little guy,” she continued, talking about Pickler, “he asked me why you were so mean.” She was smiling, laughing, and I was, too. He had called me “a quiet one” in the truck, and I agreed with him with the “Yup” I use to shut people up when I’m working.

800 told me he claimed to ask if I needed help and that I told him I didn’t, which is bullshit. He asked if I wanted help every time he came back, and I didn’t say anything each time because I didn’t think I needed to ask him to do his damn job.

Horse Back came up to us and told me how she’d set a trap by calling me an ass-hole and Pickler had agreed. I told them I didn’t need to take shit from a kid in a black t-shirt with a winged Grim Reaper on it and we all laughed again. Later, when the three of us were closing up the trailer, my voice cracked and I said the same sentence over again in my lowest voice. We all laughed again.

Lunch was good. Mom bought more pears and on my first bite tonight, a stream of juice ran down my hand. I don’t think pepperoni and white cheddar cheese go well together. I heard Canadian Tuxedo telling stories about human trafficking over the crunch of my baby carrots. “Baby” might be a misleading word because if these carrots are babies, they’re the fat ones I imagine people outside of America rarely see.

We got done early again, and Horse Back and I were sweeping the floor when she said she thought I sounded like Owen Wilson because, as Jerry Seinfeld might say, I’m a slow-talker.

As we finished cleaning up, White Bread asked me if I was practicing this shit at home. I laughed the laugh I always laugh when someone makes a joke about me that’s also a compliment, the one that means, “Thanks, and that was a good one.” He’s the biggest boss I’ve talked to and he likes me because I’m good at my job. That’s a pretty good feeling. Or at least a better one than the soreness.

As I was leaving around 5:30, rain was coming down hard. It was the kind of rain that would’ve been pretty good snow with a little more nip in the air. I pulled my coat up over my head, dropped my key-chain in a puddle, picked it up, and walked to my car.

By the way, boycott Lowes.

This a reference I wish I could make every time I drop a box in...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:19:34 -0500

This a reference I wish I could make every time I drop a box in the truck, but I don’t think anyone I work with would get it.

File under: Songs that seem as glamorous as my life at school...

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:17:26 -0500

File under: Songs that seem as glamorous as my life at school when I think about either one while standing in the trailer of a semi at 3:30 in the morning.

Day 8 (7:36 AM)

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 08:15:00 -0500

In the break room before work started, I walked in on a couple guys trying to figure out how many snipers were on the roof of the White House. Their calculations were based on how many red dots showed up on one of them and a group of middle-schoolers he was chaperoning when a kid aimed a laser pointer (from a nearby souvenir stand) at the place. They concluded that it was approximately a shit-ton.

A table over from me, King Patchbeard sat down next to a guy I call Huntsman due to his impressive collection of camo clothing. KP told us that he called off last night because he’d basically pulled a 52-hour day between this and his other job and he just couldn’t stay awake to come in. And the vicodin didn’t help either, if you know what he’s sayin’. Then, he and Huntsman discussed in hushed tones how they thought that big girl, the one who was sweating in here the other day in just a t-shirt when it wasn’t even that warm, might’ve been on meth. Meth or suhm’um.

I spent the night in the truck again, and Igor was back there with me for most of it. I got to know him a little better when he gave me his review of Hot Tub Time Machine in two words: “Fucking hilarious!” I got to know him a little better than I wanted to when he gave me his opinion on the maniac who was shooting people on Sunset Boulevard in two more words: “Awesome. Inspiration.” Igor’s entire life crystallized in front of my eyes: this was the kid everyone thought would bring a gun to school. The cargo pants, the dorky glasses, the bad facial hair; it was all there. I’m not too worried, though. He seems to like me at least.

But this revelation (which followed a basic reenactment complete with “P-khew! P-khew!” sound effects) meant that now, not only was I in the back of a semi-truck at 3:30 in the morning, but I was there with a guy who, in his own words (as opposed to those of, say, a TV news reporter trying to explain the reasoning behind some tragic massacre), feels “inspired” by some one who went on a shooting spree in the middle of Los Angeles. And on top of that, my nose wouldn’t stop running. That may not sound bad, but if there was a hell, I’m convinced it would consist of doing something uncomfortable in front of a bunch of pretty girls with a runny nose, no tissues, and an itch somewhere improper to scratch. And probably a desperate need to fart.

We had a new guy running wipe-down for us. I call him Ashton because he has bad hair, sucks at the easiest job in the world, and probably thinks he looks pretty damn cool in that “Zoo York” t-shirt. He and Igor got a long pretty well though, so I was glad their conversation got me out of talking about hunting or hearing any more jokes after the one called “Voodoo Dick”.

During the 2AM break, they were interviewing Dick Cheney on TV. I wondered why a heartless reptile disguised as heartless reptilian American politician still gets more air time than Al Gore.

800 was making my nickname for her even more obsolete as she moved at about 1200 packages/hour for the first three hours of the night. Eventually, they put Horse Back in her spot to train her, and things slowed down enough for me to get so cold I put on my Smurf-blue crew neck sweatshirt. I’m not sure if Smurf blue coordinates well with a camo bandanna, but I think fashion is like 90% confidence anyway.

At lunch, I ate a yogurt-coated granola bar. I can’t decide if this combination is a miracle of modern consumer science or some chemically created Frankenstein’s food monster. Either way, it’s not very good. Everyone else in the break-room was too fascinated watching Parliament on the British news to give me any input. Somebody said that with all the wigs, it was like, “a real life play!”

After lunch, Igor asked me if I had any kids. I told him that I didn’t. He called me a smart man, and then told me he had three of his own, putting him into the race for warehouse night shift father of the year, firmly ahead of Weasel and Synthia, but still behind King Patchbeard.

They sent most of our team home around 5:30, but kept King Patchbeard, 800, and I to run shortages (the product needed for the shipment that wasn’t included in the original pick). We got through it pretty quick, and Sweetheart ran wipe-down for us.

KP asked me for a ride to his second job at a Mexican restaurant in one of the little Ohio towns just down a state route from the warehouse. He explained as we were leaving that he could pay $1300 to get his license back now, or just wait until March and pay $700 to get his car back then. He was still driving for a while, but last week after getting off around 4 one night, he got followed all the way home by a cop. It was just too close of a call, and he didn’t wanna drive anymore. On the ride, we swapped Honda stories and he gave me some insight on the police situation in his town.

He’s trying really hard to be a bad influence on me, especially when he does things like tell Sweetheart that she smells nice, but she doesn’t hear him, so he says to me, “Typical women…they don’t listen unless whatcher sayin’ is good fer them…you should know that!” As we were leaving the warehouse, he gave AOP a quick slap on the rear. When she didn’t say anything, he told me that must mean it’s alright, so I should go give one to 800 or Sweetheart who was just up ahead of us. They couldn’t hear him, and I said I’d pass. As they turned down a hall toward the smoking area, I told them to have a good night.

When I dropped KP off at the Mexican place, he said he was gonna go inside and watch Sportscenter until he passed out. I told him that sounded pretty good. And I meant it. Because even if he is a sexist with a suspended license, possibly unnecessary Vicodin habits, and bad blood with his local police force, it did sound pretty damn good to me.

Saw this on the cable news; I’m so confused by how the...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:38:55 -0500

Saw this on the cable news; I’m so confused by how the chalkboard works like a chalkboard the first two times he writes on it, but then the words start to magically appear.

File under: Songs that I can’t not make funny faces during...

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:37:23 -0500

File under: Songs that I can’t not make funny faces during while I sing along, especially if I’m driving at night.