Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [11]
The lone clerk at the front desk, Angela, was announcing that she needed one more person to go to James Island to work for the waste disposal department. I happened to be near the desk, so I asked her how much the job was paying. Aggravated by the question, she looked through her paperwork and said, “Five ninety-five. You want to go or not?”
It hit me that nobody ever really asks how much a job is paying. Some workers are picky about going on certain jobs (one lady had told Angela, “I ain’t doin’ nuh-in’ that got anything to do wih’ fish”), but few really care how much the job is paying. After all, the unskilled jobs through the agency all pay around the same.
“Do you think any better-paying jobs are gonna come up?” I asked, equally as persistent as I was annoying. She would have ignored me except that I was breathing down her neck. I was a gnat at her picnic.
“Maybe, maybe not. You can hang around if you want.”
Since it was my first day, and I didn’t yet understand how the system worked, I decided it would be best for me to go ahead and be a garbage man for the day. How bad could it be? Sure, simple tasks like taking out my own trash had always proved challenging, but this would be better than doing nothing, and any money I could net on my first day would be significant for shopping for essential goods that night. Likewise, a day off would keep me a day away from attaining my goal.
“Nah, I’ll take it,” I told her, and off I went with two other guys who had been working on the same ticket for a week.
The EasyLabor van breezed through the cross-town connector and over the picturesque view of the Ashley River, dodging car after car of caffeine-injected commuters noticeably blasé with the morning herd. We made three other stops before ours, and by 7:30 A.M., I found myself standing in front of an unmarked metal building watching men in orange jumpsuits glide feverishly in and out, hollering orders left and right, as they stocked their garbage trucks with water coolers and other vital components.
The other two guys and I approached the supervisor, and I introduced myself. He was blunt. “I only need two people. I told Angela just to send me two people.”
No elaboration. No apology. No, “But I’ll see if I can send you somewhere else.” To his credit, though, he could have sent me along as an extra worker (on the taxpayer’s dime) just because I happened to be there, but he didn’t. Somewhere along the line there had been a miscommunication, and I was the one that was going to suffer as a result.
The supervisor called back over to Angela who said she would send the van back momentarily. I waited for the next thirty minutes by the bushes in front of the waste disposal warehouse. I was beginning to get antsy when a car pulled up and a younger woman who appeared to be in her twenties like me asked if I was Adam Shepard.
“We got another job to get to. And we’re already late. Hop in.”
Conveniently, EasyLabor was short one worker on a construction job that happened to also be on James Island. Cicely, my partner for the day, and I had trouble finding the place in the backwoods of a hidden residential community, but I didn’t care. I was happy just to be working.
We arrived at a construction site where ten or so workers were already busy laying foundation on one building and putting up drywall on another. For a residential community, I couldn’t believe the size of the buildings they were constructing. In later conversation with fellow workers, I learned that one was the main house and the other was the pool house, parts of an estate that were being built for a big-shot attorney from New England who had won a large settlement in a case with a tobacco company. Behind the layout sat a scenic inlet, which later turned out to be off limits for swimming during lunchtime.
“Big Bob”—whose name I learned from the tattoo etched on his right bicep—was the foreman of the project, and he didn’t hesitate