I looked around for stuff to report on for my first post but realised that I was missing the obvious topic, the personal over the political if you will. Yesterday, after three days of dawdling and sleeping in, I finally got my shit together and made it to the Labor Ready office in Allentown at 9 to ask for a job. I figured that it was a Friday and at worst, I would have two days to recover from the physical damage of day labor, since I have not worked in a while. I had heard about these Labor Ready hustlers from a friend and their website confirmed the general picture he gave me of the place - they would take all and any comers looking for work. They hire on the spot on a first come first served basis for the day, simplify the messy legal stuff like forms, don't bother with drug testing and extensive background checking and pay in cash at the end of a day's labor. I showed up without a second photo id so I returned an hour later, properly armed and sat down to take a survey that the lady at the counter said I had to 'pass' in order to work for them.
Questions were multiple choice and printed on a booklet and I had to type answers on a keypad of some sort which looked like a swipe card machine at a grocery store. They mostly consisted of two types of questions that kept repeating in a weak attempt to catch you out in a lie. The first type queried you on your drug use -the 'How often do you use drugs other than the ones prescribed by your doctor' type of questions. The answers ranged through all possible permutations of recreational dope use known to western man, with some special pains taken to make you feel comfortable about marijuana use in the early rounds so that you would slip up on questions regarding them later.
I denied everything like 'Ol Bill Clinton and picked answers like a young christian at an abstinence rally would. The other type of questions called you out on your martial abilities, your prison experiences etc. For example a typical question would ask when you last fought, how well you could defend yourself, if you preferred a gun to a knife, etc. I started to think to myself - " What would Steven Segal do?" but quickly buried my emotions deep within myself by reminding myself that I needed the 35 bucks I was going to make that day. Despite feelings of emasculation and disgust at having to admit that I am a total wimp, I picked my answers like George Bush Jr would at a conscription tent. These questions were designed so that they did not have to bother with drug testing you or doing a criminal background check. They must have figured, if the guy can hop and skip through their (admittedly weak) linguistic trickery and village constable interrogation methods, then he can't be too high or drunk. Maybe they also figured that no wife beating, bar fight instigating, Ole Grandad chugging, blue collar hump would lie about his or her switchblade or shotgun ability. I passed with flying colors and was asked to quickly fill out some paper work and rushed out to the job site pronto.
Since I was dressed in shorts I had to buy pants on the way to the construction site from a store with the suitably military industrial name - Dollar General. Once at the site, I was taken to the construction office, at the end of a row of pretty looking apartments, whose cousins I believed I would soon be helping to build. At the office I was confronted by the most formidably ugly looking woman I have ever seen in my life. Now I must confess I have been in a dreadful dry spell for a while now and at times I have said to myself 'I am so desperate that I will sleep with anything with a maw downstairs, regardless of appearance.' I realised in that office that this was a lie. Donna, as this helmeted Medusa was known, was very nice to me however and wrote me down as arriving at 11, though I was late thanks to my pants finding expedition . The guy who brought me to her took me to my work spot. He let me know that I would make 7.50 an hour
I did not have any illusions about my work but I expected at least to be doing something with buildings or foundations or drywalls. I expected to be taught some little skill that I could use later. I had hoped to be handed a sledge hammer and asked to tear down some mangled section of wall. Swinging at something can be very cathartic when you are making this little money. Maybe it was my less than manly replies at the job centre that resulted in me being handed a broom and asked to sweep the road between the buildings being constructed. This road was covered in mud and caked in parts with clay. Every time a car or pick up truck, filled with mostly Hispanic day laborers went by, it raised and scattered the fine dust and made a hash of thirty minutes of work. I happened to pick the hottest day of the year so far and was covered in sweat and dust within an hour. I quickly sized up the situation and tried to pace myself so that I would make it to 4pm.
It was a good thing I started late that day because I was in no shape to pull off 8 hours of that type of work yet. I will be more ready on Monday I think. However I put some back into it, creating some rhythm with my broom strokes and raising columns of dust. If you want a clearer picture, go watch the scene where they lay tar in Cool Hand Luke. Substitute Paul Newman's pretty face and defiant, exultant energy for my ugly, frowning mug, hunched over a slightly fat body, clearly not getting any pleasure out of my performance. I kept at it till the roach truck came along at 1 and opened it back and sides to me, displaying arrays of cheap, greasy food and sodas. This has to be the best part of a laborer's day. That truck pulls up looking like a chariot that a benevolent king or God has sent just for you when you have worked all morning. I disappeared a chilly dog and a reheated burrito like a mob henchman does a union dissenter or a plate of pasta. The coke I used to wash it down felt like a rare ambrosia. For the first time that day, capitalism was working for me - total bill 3.25.
I returned to work quickly, feeling as optimistic as a troop surge. This can't be so bad I thought to myself - "No IED's on this road at least. And look, its just three more hours and I can go home to a shower, a bunch of internet porn and a book." I swept away like a camel's eyelid in a sandstorm. I cheerfully whistled snippets of music but stopped when I caught a gust of dirt in my throat. Then a little while later, I dared to look at the time - A scant 30 minutes had passed since lunch, it was getting hotter by the minute and my head had started to swim a little. Slowly my enthusiasm flagged and my spirits started a fresh insurgency. I started to look around furiously at all the other people on the site - They had shade, they could talk to each other and sit around every now and then, they could waste time if they wanted and they did not have to push a bloody broom. That familiar feeling of petty resentment and martyrdom that is the lot of every wage worker overcame me. Surely everyone else had it better than me. That guy who was carrying down broken bits of masonry looked mighty comfortable to me right now (though he had climb a storey of steps each time he carried away a load) . The heat and the dust were starting to affect my sense of balance and logic. I felt like I had taken up smoking again.
I realised that it was just a waiting game now that I had to play with my brain in order to sustain my will power and started to resort to the psychological tricks that helped me in similar situations in the past. Every small thing helps one stay put and work till the end of the day - guilt, a fear of breaking commitments, hollow taunts of one's lack of strength, a desire for money - however little. Every redeeming factor of the job and of life has to be savored and utilised to give one strength to keep going - the fact that there was no boss ordering me around, the fact that it was a Friday, the hope of seeing a beautiful woman on the ride back home, dinner, any little thing.
Eventually 4 O clock came along and I swept the sweat off my brow onto my strategically chosen black t-shirt ( I never said I was a smart one!)one last time before heading to the construction office. On the way there I saw a vision of beautiful womanhood -tall, sweet smiling and accompanied by the most excellent greyhound I have ever seen. She was the exact opposite of my browned and drained looking figure and if I was half a man I would have carried her away as my prize for the day's work. The evening boss gave me my signed slip, commiserated with me about the shitty terms of my job and asked me if I wanted to return on Monday. I should have said no and run for my life but I said yes. It is a mystery to me that, on several important ocassions in my life I have bullheadedly defied authority but seem to lose all my spine when a boss asks me to work OT or return to a gig I don't care for. I entered the job willingly, didn't I? What happens after is of no concern of mine, I just want to be led around and let myself everytime. What good is a labor job if you have to think about your next move? If there is anything I like about this type of work it's ceding myself to a higher, more indifferent will. Anyway, I need the money.
Walking back up the street towards the spot I was supposed to wait for my dad another guy from the company offered me a ride to the office to pick up our wages. I was pleased with this unexpected piece of kindness (as I often am when I go to work) and jumped into his truck. This guy was a Brooklyn transplant who had settled here a year ago and was ready to return to the faster life of the city. We bantered about the boring nature of our rural PA surroundings, about the difference between NY girls and the local variety, how the local girls seemed to dress in fashions that came out of a NY time capsule and how they weren't as easy, how much less you got paid here etc. Then he told me about his day. He said that he had simply locked himself in an empty room and napped the day away.
