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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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He's a bit shorter than me, a bit stockier, twenty-something, quiet, broken-English, Filipino.
He started a few days after me, but not as a temp, full time with the company, and at first he hung out with Joe, them both being around the same age and new hires and all.
But Joe proved a little useless, and Wyatt didn't like the way that Joe tried to boss him around (even though they were peers) and so after I became an employee he started chumming with me. I have a little more of a sense of purpose, and it's best to look busy, he understands.
So he's pretty much my team mate, only he doesn't say much, only once in a while bums a fag (he's trying to quit smoking), sometimes he looks around to see what his old buddy Joe is doing, usually it's not much, and he laughs and points and makes fun of him, or if we're high in a tower talks about how he'd kill him in the Philippines, only here it's different....
He's good to work with. He figures out what needs to be done, doesn't need to be told, he's a good partner. These are things you'd take for granted anywhere else, but in this work environment they make you a bit of a genius.
For the first month he said nothing, then I asked him if he liked Karaoke. "Most Filipinos like Karaoke" I tell him. He denies it adamantly, then begins to sing. And from a nasal, broken voice come the most perfect sung melodies...now we can't shut him up, one song after another as we work, classic American music, from contemporary pop to the Everly Brothers and Elvis.
So we're up late at night, perhaps 8:30, rolling out the tarps on the stairwell, a big job, late pour, that's keeping us late. He takes a break and a drag off his electric cigarette. The moon is full, just rising, low on the horizon, in the west the lights of the city are twinkling, below, a snow covered lake, coyote trotting across, only us to see, he imitates the howl of the coyote, the coyote pauses, returns the salute, then continues.
It's a perfect moment and I wonder what he's thinking. So much hinges on language, and I wonder how many thoughts he has, brilliant, poetic even, that go unarticulated...Everything so quiet, the site empty of workers, cold but still, only us up top working upon the tarps, maybe a missed girlfriend back in the Philippines...?
I don't need to wonder for long. He puts away his cigarette and begins..."Joseph...what a fucking idiot...."
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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It began with Temps.
That's a separate and lengthy post on it's own.
But as a Temp I was frequently asked to drive other temps to the job site.
Which was fine, as long as the job was temporary the company would be temporary.
But this job has become permanent, and still I'm inveigled to give rides. A legacy agreement.
This time it's John.
When I was with Temps they promised me an extra 50 cents per hour to give a ride to so and so to the job. Not worth the effort or the money, really, but I did it to be a sport.
And when he lost the contract another filled in, and so I find myself giving him a ride instead. Picking him up, dropping him off, only now I'm not working for Temps and there's no (ridiculously inadequate) compensation offered.
I still pick him up. It's about 45 minutes out of my way each day, given the length of the workdays (12 hours plus), this is cutting into my "free" time substantially, and as time passes I'm begrudging it more and more.
He's pretty happy with the deal, I pick him up, drop him off, he sleeps in, gets home before me, all this in exchange for a single slice of baloney on stale white bread.
He's not the sort of person you'd take a sandwich from. He looks a little like the bum you imagine sleeping beneath the Salvation Army collection bin, white beard and hair, slim figure, lopsided features, he lopes rather than walks...
It's a bad deal for me.
The sandwich, I eat it once in a while to honor his side of the deal, make him feel he's providing value for my time and gas. But I look at him and realize that if I walked into a restaurant and saw him eating there I'd walk out. He's that decrepit. I'd rather be drinking cow's blood with African Tribes people, or eating seals-eyeballs with the Eskimos or bugs with the Chinese...
On the job he's to be seen wandering around, checking his pumps, a stream of frozen green snot embedded into his mustache.
And eating his own sandwich a fly is spotted wandering the bread, "free protein" he remarks...
In the car, suffering a bad cold he hacks for a few minutes and then coughs up a proper toad and spits it out the window. And I find myself thanking God that he rolled down the window first. "At least he remembered to roll down the window...." I say to myself.
He feels obliged to entertain me with his wit, regale me with his fine sense of humor, first thing in the morning, this the price he must pay for the free ride. I don't want it, really want just the silence and my coffee, but what do you say?
"Here's a joke for you.... a poor family... I forget it exactly....eating a rabbit the father shot...first child goes "I peed a lead pellet"...Mom goes "ah, its' from the rabbit......."I was wanking and I shot the cat""
It's murder, and I grimace, smile thinly, not sure he gets my utter disinterest in his witticisms.
And now he's taken to smoking my cigarettes.
In the beginning he'd offer me one of his cigarettes, and then use this to smoke mine for the rest of the day. His roommate had smoked all of his.
But as of late he's grown lazy, gets in the car, spots my pack of fags upon the dashboard, helps himself, tracks me down at lunch or on break for another, finishes the day with yet another, 3-5 cigarettes per day, I'm paying now time, gas and cigarettes to get him to work.
This has to end. My time is my own, and even were he paying for the other 2 this is something I don't want to put a price upon, I have to end it, and it's difficult seeing how intertwined they imagine us to be at work...
I'm furious with him, such a fucking leech and mooch, yet I'll still give him until the end of this week, to payday, to cough up some small remuneration for my time and effort, after that I'm just done...
And in this frame of mind I return home, only to find that one of my roommates had helped themselves to a half-bottle of my Scotch, leaving me but a finger, this despite me having bought him 2 bottles of his own brandy...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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A new temp, shown up now for 3 consecutive shifts and so is engaged in conversation by the staff.
He used to be in the Army ... so and so of x division company C. I'm a bit skeptical, there are a few things that fit and a few others that seem a little out of place....like the jumpsuit that he wears, baby blue with racing stripes, that make him look like Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights...then there's the purely ornamental fancy cane that he carries, walking around the pit fine, but using the cane to make both his entrance and exit from the trailer.
I ask him what he did..."Sniper...23 Visual Kills..." he tells me, he's served overseas in Afghanistan.
Lunches the trailer is full of staff and temps, he spends his lunch loudly on the phone with what I presume to be his significant other, telling her what she should wear before they go out that night, what to cook for dinner, how to cook it, what to buy and how to tell if it's fresh. He affects a jolly English accent, talks even louder to be heard over the din of the men eating in the trailer...
I find myself doubting if there's even anyone on the other end of the phone...
And in the pit he finds ways of helping that aren't particularly helpful, like standing on plywood so you can kick it in, or holding ladders or waiting for you to fill and bring him wheelbarrows of snow to tip off the deck...he's oddly afraid of the heavy machinery.
The foremen, they're interested in him, 3 consecutive shifts and ex-military, they offer him the chance to work Saturday, "Yes Sir" he says, then gets on the phone with imaginary relatives and immediately discovers other pressing commitments that won't allow him to work.
I'm skeptical, like most of the temps there I'm pretty sure he'll end up in jail or will just fail to show for a shift, I'm skeptical of the advertised military service, but until I know otherwise I'll have to give him the benefit of the doubt and call him "The Sniper".
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Young, English, with an accent that forever makes it sound like he's speaking with a mouthful of marbles. He's the one on the site holding the ladder, or watching you dig.
But he's entertaining in his own right, He juggled hammers for us while we all watched, until one struck him squarely in the hardhat.
And there was the time he tried to pull a piece of red-hot tie wire out of a chuck of ice he was melting with his tiger torch...
Now you're watching as he straddles a piece of rebar, feet planted firmly on a concrete form, 20 feet in the air, rebar jutting into his ass while he mimes some offensive tomfoolery for us.
And I find myself thinking "What could possibly go wrong now...?"
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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If I had to do it over and choose a career it would be somehow related to oil and gas.
Seriously.
Our customers, all of them, every one, the regulars at least, the respected regulars, a millionaire, several times over due to the Oil and Gas industry.
Vague companies they own, royalties from leasing land, drilling, service companies, none of them (to overhear their conversations) even remotely intelligent, few enough well mannered, merely the social fluency of rednecks and hillbillies, Millionaires.
"So and So" the owner tells me..."owns .... Petroleum, worth 45 Million dollars....".
"What exactly do they do?" I ask, curious, all these Petroleum companies, where's the money, "Petroleum" is rather vague...
He doesn't know, names to look up, research to do, I'm not sure the Owner's the most reliable source, most of our customer's are wealthy, to be sure, but the scale seems ridiculous.
Some of them own Private Jets. Guess Ten Million Dollars for the jet, 100, 150K a year for the Pilot (forever on hold, 24/7, waiting for the call), airport, maintenance fees, ridiculous squandering of extravagant wealth. How many times would you need to take a 10 Million Dollar Jet a year, with added maintenance and expenses, for it to pay for itself? But it's all Status, the "I'm better than you, I have a private jet..." . This is good, it reminds me that I'm a simple man.
We have one, the owner knows him, retired at 45, good looking in that way that I might be if I never smoked, never worked in restaurants, never had a financial care in the world and worked out for 3 hours a day might be, likeable, retired with 45 Million (Give or Take) in the bank...
He's the poor one, his brothers are far better off. A billion, 100 million, companies and employees that somehow exceed my imagination
And the best dreams of my excursion up North, even with the new and improved price of gold factored in, have me paying a few bills, buying a cheap jeep, paying rent for a year. Order's of Magnitude, gold vs petroleum. Still I'm going.