We, the grunts.
For almost as long as I can remember,
ever since I was a teenager I have had to work for a living.
And the world these days seems to have a growing paranoia of
people working by themselves. (They're probably afraid that
too many of us will get depressed and kill ourselves,
raising insurance rates.) Teamwork has been initiated. With
few exceptions, all of the jobs that I have had over the
past years have outfitted me with a crew. The kick-ass crew.
Almost every workplace has one. If it does, you'll find
somebody like me there. My first mission: Detasseling.
Detasseling almost doesn't count as a kick-ass crew, but
more of an ass-kicking job. Some fifty or so kids pile onto
a big yellow oven on wheels (that's a bus) with the hopes of
some hard-earned cash, and drive out to the middle of a
cornfield to work in the fields. Once you start, you have to
persist through to the end of the day, or you will be forced
to walk 50 miles home. If your work is perfect, they'll let
you have a drink of water, and continue through the rest of
the day. I really don't consider this a tough job, but
rather boot camp for the status of being one of the tough
guys later on. Consequently, every season, 90% of the crew
would have deminished before they graduated to their first
paycheck, making the job harder and bigger for everyone
else. I did this job for 6 consecutive summers. I then got a job at Toys 'R' Us in
Illinois. This was probably the most subtle group of tough
guys in existence. Here, I was trained to move through acres
of cardboard boxes on giant metal shelving units,
undetectably. And you know how you can see all the boxes in
the back of the store through the salesfloor of stores like
Toys 'R' Us? We lurk throughout those boxes waiting to
strike violently down upon some unwitting customer who got
lost trying to find the bathroom, or some fan-boy in
forbidden search of a new kung fu grip Darth Maul action
figure. And you have much more to worry about than some dude
in a blue apron jumping around when that happens. Upon hire,
the stock-boys at Toys 'R' Us are issued standard
razor-sharp lethal weapons for slicing the jugulars of our
prey. If you ask one of them, it's just used for "opening
boxes", but trust me, you don't want them to demonstrate.
Not to mention they check your background when you work at
Toys 'R' Us. (My work as a hard-ass detasseler must have
gotten me the job) During my season with this crew, I was in
rank with a championship kick-boxer, a tournament blackbelt
karate expert, a professional female body builder, and one
guy who I think was an assassin. And when we weren't killin
a misguided customer, or practicing our monkey style on the
cardboard boxes, we were in the breakroom smoking!
Personally i never participated, since they had outlawed
hazing for employees, but it was a favorite past time of
everyone else there. Later on, I worked for a snowboard
manufacturing company in Colorado. I worked in the woodshop.
When you told people that you worked in the woodshop, people
generally took a step or two back from you then rethink
their words so that they wouldn't say anything to you that
they would regret later. The woodshop was full of a bunch of
grizzled old psychos, who continued to work through a work
day even after two guys died due to accidents on the job
that day. My boss was some doped up punk-rocker named Troy,
who had a giant ring in his nose, long blonde dreadlocks,
and a body covered with tattoos varying from punk-rock group
names to an image of Jerry Garcia. Troy liked Johnny Cash.
You didn't screw with the radio when Johnny Cash was on,
because Troy always carried a gun with him, and he had
already shot one guy who said that Hank Williams was the
all-time best country singer. Once I met Troy's dad. Then I
knew why he liked Johnny Cash so much. His dad looked and
sounded just like him. Have you ever worked in Georgia? If
you ever get the chance, don't. One time, I got this
warehouse job. It was temporary work, I had been working
through a temp service while I was looking for a higher
paying job. I was surrounded by the weirdest people in the
world there. One guy was a big, black african, who I suspect
hated white bread americans like myself. I thought he was
cool. He wore a stocking cap that was too small for his head
all the time, and he never talked. He just pointed at things
and smoked cigarettes. Everyone except for me at the job
smoked cigarettes. Then there was an overly friendly black
guy who thought I was cool and wanted to start a band like
"Hootie" or something. I had to repeatedly tell him that I
didn't know or want to know how to play any instruments. It
didn't seem to phase him. Then there was the white-trash,
redneck, who thought I was his friend and still referred to
my pigmentally gifted friends as "niggers". He spent several
hours telling me stories about getting laid by some other
dude's wife or beating his old lady into submission. I had a
hard time understanding him because he was a Georgia native.
Once they start talking Georgia-style, you have to act like
an idiot to understand them. (don't ask me how it works, it
just does) At this job, They would give us a big warehouse
full of 50 lb. boxes, and tell us to move them to the other
side of the room. Once we did that, they would have us move
them back. I never asked why. All I cared about was paying
my steadily rising bills. If you weren't tough at this job,
they would shrink-wrap you and send you to Chicago.
I learned an important lesson at this
job: If you don't know what you're doing on the job, just
grab a cup of coffee, lean against something, and pretend
that you are the boss. Generally, people will start to treat
you like the boss, because they don't know you. Then you
watch them work. Once you've figured out what they are
doing, then say with a deep voice, "allright, boys! Let's
get to work!" and then join in. My last job was a somewhat hard one to
look tough at. It was a desk job. I worked at a newspaper as
a graphic artist making advertisements for the paper. But
even there, I was one of the tough guys. My department boss
was a 8'4" 250 lb. gorrilla named Mike. He had a pet dog
named Jack. He was a really cool guy. He would beat up
virtually anyone I told him to. I also (to the other people
there) was a computer genius. We worked on Macintosh
computers. I was the only one there who knew how to use
Macintosh computers. (I own 4 of them myself) They loved and
feared me for this. I was always getting accused of planting
viruses on our workgroup server. Whenever the general manager was
showing one of our clients around the building, she would
gasp at the sight of our department, and scream to the
client, "Shield yourself! Don't look at their eyes! They'll
absorb your brain!" Just don't forget, teamwork. It's
making us all crazy, but it certainly makes for an
interesting workplace. Toys 'R' Us issue death
tools Troy . . . . . Troy's dad white-bread hatin' African Coffee
