Hello and welcome to more evidence of my stupidity. Not long after I quit my job at the video store my mom was out pounding the pavement trying to find a job for me. I know how that sounds but it's also the truth. My mom was very dedicated to getting her stupid son a job and she did not discriminate. If there was a salt mine nearby, my mom would have talked the foreman into giving her son whatever crap job was available. Basically she knew I was lazy and she wanted me off her couch. Can't say I blame her.
She came home one afternoon and told me that I was going to be applying for a job at this company that makes toy trains near our apartment. "Oh. Uh, ok Mom, " I responded thinking all the while that who knew there was a company that made toy trains in Malden? Not me that's fer shu-ah. I took the application form that she gave me, filled it out and the next day went to the place to lay on the ol' O'Malley charm. This place was just behind a car dealership in a pretty new and sizable building. It was not only a manufacturing plant but it also had a huge warehouse and a little retail shop at the front. I figured they'd want me to work in the little shop and snarl at their customers (since being forced to interact with the public had been the bulk of my work experience up to this point) but when I met with the guy who owned the place he had other plans for me. "You'll work in the warehouse," he proclaimed and so I did for a whopping $6 an hour.
What I hadn't expected was that he would put me to work immediately. I had come dressed for an interview not understanding that he would want me to start moving boxes around that day. I had on what in my world constituted a nice shirt, decent pants and my one and only pair of dress shoes. He took me to the back of the enormous warehouse and pointed to this bay that had piles of crushed boxes in it. "Clean that out and then come find me. I'll give you something else to do." And then he stormed off. The owner dude was this guy who was an ex-Marine and he would walk around looking like a puffed up bird with his chest pushed way out and his arms splayed out at a comical angle. I think he was trying to create the illusion that his chest was still larger than his enormous beer gut. Yea, that would be a fail.
That first day was a little microcosm of what my employment at this company was going to be like. After cleaning out the bay (which took a lot longer than I had anticipated and I got a bunch of cardboard paper cuts on my delicate lil' hands) I was told to help this guy Karl unload a 50' truck that had just pulled up. Karl was this doofus with a big ol' belly and the shortest legs I have ever seen on an adult (and no, he was not a little person. He was just freakishly dis-proportioned). He fucking LOVED trains. He was already inside the truck when I got there and he was in the process of opening one of the boxes so that he'd be the first one to see the new train engine or some nonsense. He ripped open the top of the box, grabbed one of the trains inside and sniffed it. Go ahead and let that sink in for a sec. He fucking SNIFFED the toy train engine. This is a fetish I did not want to explore any further thank you very much. He let out a huge "Aaaaaaaaah!" and said that he just loved that smell (I did not ask him to elaborate) and we got down to the business of unloading this truck.
Did you know there are several different scales of toy train and each has it's own track made specifically for it? No, of course you didn't know that because you are not a spaz. The front of the truck had a couple pallets of the new, allegedly fantastic smelling train engines and behind those was a number of pallets of train track. That shit is freakin' heavy. We had one of those pallet jacks to haul the stacked pallets out of the truck but of course one of them had shifted and we couldn't get it to budge. We then had to unload that mofo box by box and re-stack it in the warehouse on another pallet. So Karl, some other guy who's name escapes me and myself formed a chain and started shifting the stock out of the truck. Karl (who had a habit of dousing himself in cologne rather than say, bathing) stayed in the truck, I was next in line and then the Other Guy Who's Name Escapes Me was last (inside the warehouse and doing the actual re-stacking bit).
These boxes were I think about 15 pounds apiece and Karl was tossing them from the truck to me and then I would toss them to OGWNEM. We had a nice rhythm going until there was a hang-up at the re-stacking end of things and I had to wait for that guy to get ready again. Of course Karl being a moron did not wait and hucked another box to me just as I was turning to say "HOLD UP KARL!". I got as far as "Hold up Ka–" and then the box of train track nailed me in my left shoulder hard. It spun me around and I almost fell off the loading dock. I dropped the box I was already holding and it just missed my foot by inches. Please keep in mind that not only is this my FIRST DAY but it's not even lunch time yet. I saw red and charged at Karl to beat the living snot out of him. He was saying "Sorry man! I'm sorry! I didn't know! I'm sorry!" over and over and trying to scramble over the boxes to get away from me. Those tiny legs of his weren't much help on that front. I didn't hit him though. I thought about not only losing the job my mom got for me in record time but probably also getting arrested for assault and decided that calling Karl a fucking idiot was a better idea. I still regret that decision. It would have been so much better if I had ended up shoving that new train down his throat (or maybe he'd like that?). And yes, my nice shirt was all jacked up.
I worked there for probably 7 months or so and I even got my friend Shawn a job there in the warehouse with me (sorry about that Shawn). It was a mindless job and that hit to the shoulder hurt for months afterward (no, I never did go get it checked out) and the only joy I had was the weekends when I would go out to UMass Amherst to see my friends, hang out and drink way too much beer (I had already failed out of U/Mass the previous semester...another story for another time perhaps). But on the plus side I discovered an area in the back of the warehouse on the 2nd floor where I could take power naps. The best line still goes to Shawn when we were talking about the fun we were going to have that upcoming weekend because we were going to go to UMass. He said "Oh man, I can't wait to get there. I'm going to drink puddles of beer." He paused a second and said, "Wait, puddles? Puddles are SMALL!" Ah yes. Much simpler times indeed.
And now for some conversation whiplash: Check out this hilarious video.
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