You don’t ever realize how much you learn from working in obscure jobs while in school. You don’t realize how much fun you are having while working in these capacities until you turn around and are all of a sudden thrust into the normal career oriented work force. I got into a debate last night with an old friend of mine (Bart), about tax codes and how billionaires are hoarding all of the money and dragging down the economy. I couldn’t help but find it funny how the two of us were able to have such a debate when 12 years ago we were working in a carpet warehouse in Ohio.
The Carpet Warehouse:
12 years ago, Bart and I were working together in a carpeting warehouse, cutting pieces of carpet for a bunch of asshole carpet installers who did nothing but complain and give us shit while doing so. They called me a hippy because I had long hair at the time. I tried to fight several of them on more than one occasion. To this day, every time I see a carpet installer on the road, I give them the finger. They are all cut from the same douche-bag cloth. I will always have hard wood floors throughout any house I own.
Although I do look back at that particular job and recognize it as the job that taught me about hard work. I think Bart would look at it in a similar light. Our boss at the time, Al, was the walking personification of a crotchety, racist, chain-smoking, hard working, ball busting, American old white man. I am convinced that Al didn’t even know what my name was as he always referred to me as “Lazy Cock”. Bart and the other help were also given their own names by Al.
We had a fork lift, with a massive metal boom on the front of it that everyone, including Al, referred to as “The Dick”. On more than one occasion, I managed to ram “The Dick” through the drywall that separated our carpet warehouse with the Paint warehouse next door. I am pretty sure we were supposed to have some sort of a license to operate that thing but it didn’t ever seem to come up.
Then of course were the circumstances where the entire dick would just fall off of the fork lift and smash into the ground. Mind you, this thing weighs 300+ pounds. And the only person who could properly reattach the Dick, were Al and some butch lesbian lady who would come out of the warehouse office like a professional wrestler walking into the ring whenever she would hear the dick smash into the pavement. This lady was not messing around. We were all absolutely terrified of her.
We were very young, so we often showed up to work, hung over or still drunk, often late. Bart would often show up for work, climb on top of the carpet padding and fall asleep, sometimes for hours. Horrific cuts on your hands were a daily occurrence. You wouldn’t believe how sharp a razor has to be in order to slice a straight line through a roll of carpeting. So that blade would need changing often and even the most minor slip while doing so, could lead to massive blood loss.
Al was always telling us to go buy him packs of cigarettes but we weren’t even old enough to buy them. So we were forced to drive around town until we could locate a gas station that would sell cigarettes to minors on behalf of our 72 year old boss.
Al, also never had any concept of what was available for order at any sort of a fast food restaurant. Once a day, one of us would go and get lunch for everyone in the warehouse. Everyone besides Al knew what they wanted from Burger King or McDonald’s or wherever. When it came time for Al to make his selection, he would always say something like, “Gimme one of those big sandwiches ya lazy cock!” And that was as specific as it got, just go get Al some sort of a “Big Sandwich”. And no matter what sort of crap you brought back, Al would eat the shit out if. He used to walk around the warehouse, while he ate his big sandwich and just stare at the rolls of carpeting on the racks as though he was at the louver looking at ancient works of art.
I remember the day that I had to leave the carpet warehouse in order to go back to college, I thanked Al for the opportunity he gave me and he walked me out to my truck and just before I left, he looked me straight in the eye and told me, “I got 10 to 1 odds you flunk out of that school you dumb fuck”. I never heard from Al again. He was and possibly still is, a great man.
Landscaping:
My best friend owned a landscaping company and still does. When you watch him do this job, it quickly becomes apparent that he was put on this Earth to landscape. What he manages to do with a few cubic yards of dirt and some trees can only be described as an art form. Me on the other hand, not so much.
It was fun and all working for my best friend over the summer while I was still in High School so we got to spend a lot of time together but the work was extraordinarily hard which lead to mistakes on my part.
There was one yard, in Newbury Ohio, which we referred to as “The Beast” where quite a few mishaps occurred. My friend Matt was always the one who would mow the lawns while I weed whacked. Earlier in the year, the muffler had broken off of our weed whacker, so this thing sounded like a 747 on takeoff. After a while using the thing, it would become so loud that it would begin to skew ones sense of reality and decision making.
At one point, Matt was on the mower and I was weed whacking as usual and I look up to see Matt in a full wind sprint towards me, he is yelling something and waving his arms in the air, but I could not hear anything. I then noticed that his mower was still running, about 30 yards behind him, but still I had no clue why he was running away from it. Finally, in a veritable panic at this point, I managed to locate the choke on the whacker and shut it down. Immediately, I heard Matt yelling, “BEES!!!! BEEES!!! GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!!!!”
I dropped the weed whacker and began running alongside of Matt through this person’s back yard. Apparently there was a hornets’ nest that Matt had run over and destroyed. You could see a formidable cloud of bees chasing us. This person basically lived on an undeveloped golf course so it was a good 200 yard sprint back to the safety of the truck. By the time we got into the truck, Matt had been stung at least 10 times; I managed to escape with none. We had to sit there for an hour before either of us became brave enough to go back out and get the equipment and finish the job.
We often mowed The Beast first, often around 7:30 am and I am not a morning person. On a separate morning from the bee incident, we arrived bright and early and got to work. I always grabbed my weed whacker and did the front yard and ditch first. I was completely out of it on this particular morning and was just kind of in a zone, not really paying attention.
I noticed for some reason that the lady who owned the place kept staring at me out her front window as I was trimming the weeds directly in front of the window. She had kind of a shocked and humored look on her face. I just smiled back at her as I remember thinking to myself, “See something you like lady?” Just as I was thinking this, I noticed that the air from the exhaust of the weed whacker seemed especially hot this morning below the waist. I looked down, thinking that there was something wrong with the weed whacker only to find out that my penis was hanging completely out of my shorts taking the full brunt of the exhaust as it was exposed to the world.
I immediately zipped up as the lady in the house gave me the thumbs up and began laughing her ass off. I remember wondering how long it had been like that. I had gone to the gas station that morning and bought iced tea and a Honey Bun, was I exposed that entire time? When we got back into the truck to leave, Matt informed me that the lady had included a 100 dollar tip, 50 for each of us. So that was nice of her.
One particularly sweltering morning, we arrived in University Heights to put in a new front lawn at a mansion. We both had F150 pickup trucks and in order to properly replace a lawn, you first have to remove the old one. So we began taking turns, loading the trucks and one would drive the load to the dump and we would rotate. While the other one was gone, at the dump, the other would stay back and grade out new top soil on top of where we had previously removed the old lawn.
When my time came to stay back while Matt drove a load to the dump, it was around 2 pm and about 92 degrees. And for some insane reason, all I had to drink were five cans of Coors Beer. I tried to avoid it, but I was so thirsty that I swear my tongue was stuck to the top of my mouth. So I drank one beer, then two, then 3. Eventually, I had pounded all five beers in these rich peoples driveway of their mansion. I went back to grading top soil. I got tired quickly and decided to sit up against a tree in the front yard and take a breather. Well I ended up passing out. For an hour, drunk in this person’s front yard, up against a tree. Finally Matt came back from the dump and I had heard his truck pull up. So I sprang to my feet and acted like I had been grading top soil the entire time. But there was no hiding it. I smelled like beer, I had left five empty beer cans on the drive way, no work had been done since he had left, and at that point, I was just kind of stumbling around the front yard with a rake, trying to remember what the hell I was supposed to be doing.
The Lumber Yard:
I worked in a lumber yard while in college in the winter time. Basically, contractors would show up, order the lumber they needed for whatever they were supposed to build, I would get a form from my boss with the order, then I had to drive around on a fork truck and put the load together, band it and eventually put it on a truck. This is fine in the summer but is a pain in the ass in the winter.
Believe it or not, most builders prefer to work in the winter to avoid heat so we were still busy as hell. And the store I worked at had just hired a new manager "Ernie" who would only let us come into the store to get our forms. Ernie was a huge asshole. But he needed us, just as much as the store needed him. Without us, he would have been forced to take all the orders and put all the loads together and load/unload all the trucks. So we got creative.
Whenever Ernie would answer the phone in his office, he would grab it hastily and jam it into his ear as though he was expecting a call from the President. So we, on more than one occasion would take black caulk which matched the color of his black phone and spray it onto his ear piece. We would then call him with our cell phones. He would then pick up the call and jam a glob of black caulk into his own ear. If you have any experience with caulk or caulking, you know how difficult it is to get that crap off of your skin. So dumbass Ernie, would have to walk around the rest of the day, talking to customers and working the register, with the caulk all over his ear and head.
He also backed his truck into every spot that he parked in all day. So at least once a day we would take an one of our Lumber Store Bumper Stickers that we were supposed to include in our loads and stick it to the back of his truck. It got to a point where he had about 28 of the same Lumber Store bumper stickers on the back of his truck. And he would have to drive all the way home to Eerie PA looking like an absolute moron.
One time we found a dead cat in the yard and placed it under his windshield wiper. Amazingly, Ernie had no problem with us starting fires out in the lumber yard in order to keep ourselves warm. That is basically how much he didn’t want us inside of the store. As my friend and fellow yard worker were standing around one of our fires out in the yard one afternoon, I noticed that he had his can of spray paint tucked into the front of his pants as we often did. Unfortunately, it was whistling, which is an abnormal thing for a can of spray paint to be doing. It was going to explode as it was too close to the heat. So he panics and pulls it out of his pants and drops it on the ground, directly into the fire. We had no time to get out of the way of the fireball that ensued. The explosion that a full can of spray paint creates when thrown into a fire is incredible. I dove out from behind the building like Howie Long in Firestorm with an absolute wall of flames curling up my back. My Carhart caught on fire, and my knit hat was smoldering, my jeans were hot to the touch. And just as this fiasco was taking place, we had our first drive in customer of the day; some guy looking for tomato stakes. “What the hell is going on here?!!” he yelled. I told him something like, “don’t worry, this happens all the time sir, nothing to worry about”. Unfortunately we didn’t sell tomato stakes. So we had to turn him away. Shockingly our store eventually closed.
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