Working

Working 2.
Guys called it “Catching Out”. It meant that you were going to work that day. At Labor Ready you might work and you might not. You showed up around 5am and sat around till someone came in needing a hand. Or the Labor Ready clerk would get a call, or an “order” for help and she would send a few guys out to the job. Day labor jobs are almost always about the worst possible jobs you could get. If you catch out from Labor Ready you almost never get paid more than whatever the minimum wage is at the time. It usually involved something dirty and dangerous.

About the worst job I ever had was throwing trash on the back of a trash truck. It was probably the most physically exhausting thing I have ever done. Hopping on and off the truck, hooking the garbage cans to the mechanism that dumped them in the truck, picking up trash bags and slinging the into the truck, it was all heavy and nasty. On quite a few occasions the bag would break, or come untied, and the shit would get on me. Going to the dump was another horror. You can’t stop smelling it after you leave. The stench sticks to your skin and cloths. It gets into the back of your nose.

But going to the landfill in the back of a trash truck to dump a load is not half as bad as working in it. Another terrible job I picked up once was pulling all the shit out of a large goose neck trailer for a guy at the dump. It was full of old garbage, cloths, furniture, and various house wares he’d got out of a dilapidated rent house of his. He paid me 7 dollars an hour. He rented the house for 600 a month and it was falling apart. It took about three hours. I had a handkerchief tied over my mouth and nose but it did little good. It kept falling off and the guy would get pissed if I stopped too long to adjust it. Finally I just took it off. The particulate in the air at a dump is so thick that you can taste it. It gets all in your hair, sticks to the sweat on your body, in your throat, everywhere. You can’t imagine the stench. You have to go there to know what it’s like. Just like hard labor, you have to do it to know what it is. After the job the guy had the big heart to take me to McDonallds and pay for my meal. I couldn’t taste the burger, all I could taste was the terrible rot of the dump. I kept blowing my nose at the table and my snot was black. He kept telling me about his kids and how fucked up they were, he told me they were afraid of hard work. Young buck like myself had a good future ahead of me if I just worked hard.

Guys a Labor Ready were half-way crazy bout’ half the time. Often they would come around in various states of inebriation. If the boss caught wind of them he would run them off. Even at 5am dudes would sneak a pint into the place and take a pull here and there to keep em’ going. Boss man saw he’d bitch loudly and black list you. Early in the morning no on talked much, but after the rot gut coffee (a quarter a cup)or enough pulls from the bottle they get to talkin. One dudes name was Bible. I saw him smash a guy with a thick plastic coffee cup once. The guy was sitting down in the day room with his back turned, and Bible ran up and clocked him on the side of the head. The dude just fell of his stool. The guy I was eating with didn’t even look up. We were sitting next to him. I looked up at him and he said “leave it alone Crash, but mind how some of these dudes act, stay clear of them”.

Bible saw me and started to strut up. He had a blue tooth in his ear and was talking loudly, like he was planning something. The first thing he said to me was “wig splitter”. I don’t know why he said that. I guess he was trying to bring to mind what he did to that guy he smashed with the coffee cup. He sat down next to me and started talking loudly, like he knew me, like we were old palls.

“Crash, shit, look here, I got this lick, bouta come up. Shit, Fuck this here shit. Come outside,, say you gotta square?

We walked outside and I bummed him a cigarette.

“Look here, my bitch holdin an ounze of that kill for me, she say she gonna meet me up at Peterbuilt. You know them dudes all smoke, you somke huh? Yea, well, whatever, listen, ill give you a little to see if we get on the same ticket. Tell ol’ girl at the desk to send you out with me. Shit we gonna get paid on this shit…."


At Peterbuilt most the full time guys was white, redneck types. You could tell they had worked in production or construction or something of the like. Guys who do a lot of manual labor, esp. guys with full time jobs like that carry themselves a certain way. Most or all of the temp guys from labor ready was Mexican or black. And then me. Bible kept hanging around me talking non-stop some garbage. Showing out, strutting around, acting cool.

“Man I told that trick like my boy Jay-Z I got 99 problems but a bitch ant one, comin at me like that, say, you gotta notha square, yea, that an’t my muthafuckin kid, fuck that bitch, the little nigger ant mine, that little nigga ant getting my money, fuck that….say, look that white dude, go up to that dude and akst him he wanna by some kill”

I kept trying to shake him but he wouldn’t let me be. I think he just wanted to show off for me, I don’t know, like he was someplace else, like we was something else, like he had something, anything that mattered in his life. You ever been in someplace where you had to talk to someone you thought was either completely ignorant or disgusting or both, and you couldn’t get away? I guess youd have to be there to know. So said I would talk to the white guy and I walked up him. I talked low so Bible wouldn’t hear.

“Hey, where’s the boss? I’m almost finished with my job, I want to ask what he wants me to do next?”

He looked up from the machine he was running and spit “He’s round yonder” and pointed. I started to walk off.

I walked up to the bosses office he was sitting at his desk. He had a lot of what looked to be blue prints on his desk. He saw me coming and looked at me straight in the eye. He was smoking. I asked “Me adn Bible are finished, what you got for us next?” I smiled.

He leaned back in his swivel chair and put his arms behind his head, in a gesture of supreme relaxation. He yawned.

“Well, you working with Bible?" He looked at me for a few seconds and remained silent,"You looking for a job or you wanna be like them and work at the Temp agency so you an’t gotta work all the time. You know most of them don’t want to work”. His voice got low. “There as lazy as the day is long, and you tell Bible to pull up his Godamn pants, we don’t go for that n….” he stopped him-self , “that bull shit round’ here” He winked. “Whats your name boy?”

“Adam Duhhoon”

He looked up at the celling thoughtfully, "Duhhoon huh, Duhhoon, you kin to Fabian?"

"Yea that’s my uncle."

He smiled and slapped his desk, "No shit"!

"Yep."

"Yea. I guess you kinnda favor him a little."

"Iv been told."

"Your Granpaw is Leo then?"

"Yep."

"Well, now, he owns Exxel don’t he?"

"Yea."

"Self-made man Leo, just like my-self, didn’t nobody give us nothin, why arnt you workin for him?"


"I might start next week, I just got into town and he’s been out of town." I lied, I hated the bastard.

"Well, If you don’t talk to him call me, here’s my card, I know you arnt afraid of working hard. I worked with your grandpaw, we worked 13 hours a day at the ship yard, weldin, hes a good man, worked hard, drank hard too, just like Fabin"

"Yea he’s nuts", I hated him too,

"I know, Fabian is prone to get wild, but he’s a hard worker too, is he still working at EXXEL?"

"Yea."

"Tell him to call me next time you see him."

"OK"

"Listen, you and that Bible guy just sweep up, look busy. Tell your Grandpaw and Fabian you talked with me, Names Bill by the way, he shook my hand. "You don’t mind working 5 12’s do ya? We pay overtime after 40 but ya gotta keep up, production gets a little hectic round’ here, but you seem like a good boy who don't mind working hard"

"OK, yea, I don’t mind." I lied, I wanted to work when I wanted, when it came to hard labor. Part-time suited me fine. I was living with my parents and at that time in my life i didn't care.

I walked out and wen’t back to Bible.

"you talk to em?"

"Yea."

"What he say?"

"He told me to go ask some other dude, so I did, he didn’t want none either."

"Shit."

"Oh well."

"Shit, I gotta come up some how, shit maybe they hiring?"

"They might be, but don’t talk to the boss, come back and talk to HR, dress nice too, you might want to buy a belt"

"Shit I’d work in this bitch, full time, time anda half, it don’t even matter,THat time and a half, shit id work whatever, anyway, I told that bitch…"