Summer Jobs

There are times, usually when waiting on five or six very impatient people, when I begin to miss my old job. That was a marvelous line of work - driving around lower Minnesota for twelve hours a day delivering construction materials, and getting paid obscene amounts of money. I would probably have stayed on with the company had I not been overjoyed - marvelously overjoyed! - when I was told I'd been let go. It was on my birthday, actually, and I couldn't have asked for a better present.

This is a good story. Stick with it.

I had decided to spend the summer at a friend's house in lower Minnesota (state motto: Like Fargo, but No Wood-Chippers) before heading south to Texas (motto: Other States are Sissies). My friend and I had recently graduated from a small liberal arts college in lower Michigan (motto: At Least We're Not Upper Michigan); and, like most graduates of the liberal arts, quickly found a job doing manual labor. At that point, though, manual labor was exactly what I wanted - given that I didn't know what else I wanted to do with myself, I figured that a year or so of working with my body might give me the opportunity to think about it.

We were both hired as laborers for a company that did reconstruction work for insurance claims. Initially, the job was fantastic - I got to drive a rickety diesel truck with high metal seats and no air conditioning for hours at a time, sipping bad black coffee down long stretches of highway. Had my working conditions remained that way, I'd probably still be working there today. My downfall, however, was the phone.

The company phones were on a network - push someone's number and they would instantly be paged, walkie-talkie style, for quick and easy communication. In theory, the phones were a very good idea, given that at any time the company had a network of twenty or more people working with laborers in the field. In practice, I would gladly have killed the manufacturer, perhaps running him over with my diesel truck.

The following is, as best as I can remember it, one of the more egregious examples of the sadistic ease in communication these phones gave my scatterbrained boss:

5:45 AM - Arise with B.j. and consume two bowls of a delightfully scrumptous whole-grain cereal, in anticipation of a few hours of moving drywall later on that morning.

6:15 - Cross the state line into Wisconsin (Motto: Go Away). B.j. wonders aloud if the drywall truck we quickly pass is the one we are meant to unload.

6:30 - Arrive at construction site, right on time, to find the site utterly deserted.

6:45 - TheBoss shows up. Wonders aloud about the location of the drywall truck. I try to stay awake in the bitter cold.

7:00 - Drywall truck arrives, right on time, at 7:00. They have their own unloading crew. Realizing we were never actually necessary, we depart for St. Paul.

7:11 - B.j. wonders aloud how much money is wasted on excursions like these. We decide it doesn't matter, since our pay remains constant no matter what we do.

7:21 - TheBoss rings me up on the network phone, asking if I locked the office as I closed it down the night before. I respond in the affirmative, and he patiently explains that some seven to ten people are waiting to get into the office, which he never locks.

7:22 - I ask why they do not have a key. TheBoss tells me that he is the only one with a key. I wonder at the irony of a security measure that surprises everyone when it is actually implemented, and even more at the futility of having a security measure that is never used.

7:24 - I wonder aloud to B.j. if I can expect a pay cut in proportion to the time and effort of the people I have kept out of the office as TheBoss and the key hurry back to St. Paul. He tells me not to worry.

7:25 - TheBoss rings me up again, this time to sing one of his favorite country songs.

8:49 - TheBoss tells B.j. to drop me off at another construction site, where he presumes I will be of use.

8:55 - After carefully ascertaining that the site, which doesn't actually exist, is abandoned, I call B.j. and ask him to pick me up, verbally asserting my strong disapproval of TheBoss' organizational skills.

9:01 - B.j. arrives, and begins to drive me to a site that actually exists, just a few blocks down the road. We both assume this is the site meant, since it is the only construction site on the street in question.

9:03 - TheBoss calls us up and tells us that, in fact, the site we are heading to is not the site in question. My thoughts release several vicious curses into the air.

9:04 - TheBoss gives us directions to the new site. He gives them one turn at a time.

9:05 - TheBoss calls us and asks where we are. Ascertaining that we have, indeed, taken a right, he tells us to take another right a few blocks down.

9:05 - Cursing, at TheBoss and the phone.

9:06 - TheBoss tells us to take a left when we arrive at the street he mentioned just a minute before.

9:07 - Cursing. We wonder aloud why either of us went to college.

9:09 to 9:17 - Repeat steps 9:05 (both 9:05.1 and .2, and then .2 again) to 9:07.

9:18 - TheBoss, after verifying that we are exactly where he has directed us, tells us to continue on the same street until we get to the construction site. I remark sarcastically to B.j. that I'm quite glad he didn't give us all those directions at once, because we'd surely be lost.

9:19 - I realize that I have on numerous occasions gotten lost in the company trucks, many times with directions simpler than the ones given, and decide not to assert my directional intelligence beyond its feeble means.

9:19 - TheBoss calls us back, asking how far along we are. We respond, "two blocks away."

9:20 - TheBoss, after a long pause, tells us to turn around and return to the office. B.j. accurately predicts what will happen, as it has happened before: we will return, TheBoss will collect his thoughts while we are all in the same room, and he will send me to the very same site upon which we now descend, keeping B.j. in the office.

9:21 - Call to pagan gods to rain down curses upon our nemesis.

9:21 - I call TheBoss, asking him if he is sure he wants me to return, as I am two blocks away from a construction site that actually exists, where I can do actual, real, honest-to-God work, work that may be empirically demonstrated in the physical universe, as opposed to that done in TheBoss' brain. I refrain from putting the matter so starkly out loud.

9:22 - TheBoss decides that it is a good idea to let me work at the construction site we have been spending over a half hour driving to. I find it odd that, for the first time, an appeal to pagan gods has been somewhat effective.

9:25 - I begin work. I have already earned some 39 dollars doing absolutely nothing. I wonder why this does not make me happy.

9:31 - My newfound co-workers discover that I was the fool who locked the office with the only key. I am relieved when they wonder aloud if this incident will finally convince TheBoss to make a copy of the coveted key. (No.)

Thus did my initial hesitation about the job grow to a secure dislike to a strong disappointment, then steadily into a heavy loathing, then to an utter hatred.

I should mention that it was not my boss per se that made me loathe the job; it was only the fact that he could communicate with me at any time, a feature of the phones that no doubt was at one time thought quite useful, probably by its inventor, Satan, who doubtless wished to communicate quickly with his horde of unholy angels, or bring an otherwise peaceful race of men to spilling the blood of their brothers all over the nonexistent drywall of abandoned construction sites.

That was really the only problem. Without the phones, that company would have operated more efficiently, in much the same way that ants, while foraging, work together for the good of the colony. With the phones, however, all directions were able to be routed through one central processing unit - TheBoss' brain, which, though quite impressive in comparison to the ants currently being used in this analogy, was far too inadequate to give helpful directions to everyone at once. Unhelpful directions were often substituted when the problem became overwhelming, usually between the hours of 6:00 AM and 11:30 PM.

The downside of the Information Age. Indeed.