Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [38]
“Well, I’da thought so. But then my boy went down there and they hired him on the spot. He ain’t have no experience. They just said here you go, and they gave him a shirt and sent him out on a crew.”
Eight dollars an hour? No experience necessary? It’s exactly what I was looking for!
“And the tips,” he continued. “Some days them boys bring home more in tips than they make by the hour on the move. They move all them rich people and shit.”
I asked him why he hadn’t gone down there to check it out.
“What’r you, nuts? You think I’m gonna move furniture all day? Ha! Hell no! That shit’ll tear your body up. I got me a good job down at the paper factory. Don’t hardly gotta work at all. Just gotta put up with that God-awful smell.”
By that time, we’d both nearly consumed our weight in pork chops and chicken legs, and I didn’t feel like going anywhere that required walking. But I was too excited to sit around and let my food digest. This was the break I had been waiting for.
Southeastern summers are the worst. Hot and humid, sunup to sundown, every day. And rarely does the shade of the swaying palm trees peppered throughout the city provide much relief. I had spent the day merely walking around doing a few errands, and I was sweating my teats off. I could only imagine what it was like for the people that had to work outdoors on that Tuesday. By early afternoon, it was 103 degrees. Not “feels like 103 degrees” or “Hmmm, must be sum’m like 103 degrees out here today.” No, 103 degrees. Thermostat says 103. “Feels like” 130.
It was a good thing that I got an early afternoon start on my quest to locate Fast Company, because their office was set off the beaten path. Even if I had known where I was going, I couldn’t have found it without difficulty. And since I wasn’t really familiar with any of Charleston, let alone the area around the airport, it took me two and a half hours by bus and foot to get there through bushes and over fences. I was in Vietnam, attempting to attack the enemy’s headquarters all by myself. I was trying to find a shortcut, but it only prolonged my expedition. Exhausted when I arrived, I asked to speak to a manager.
“He’ll be back in a bit,” Amy, one of the receptionists, told me. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“I’m tryin’ to get a job. As a mover.”
She looked my slender frame up and down, as if to say, “What exactly do you plan on moving? Lamps? What are you gonna do when you have to lift something heavy?” But she was polite, keeping her personal feelings to herself.
“Oh, well, you can fill out one of these applications, and Curtis will get back to you as soon as he can,” she said.
Super. Another application. Just what I needed. The odyssey to find Fast Company had been far from an easy stroll uptown, and now I was left filling out yet another application. I always hoped to speak with the manager firsthand, but my options at Fast Company were limited.
I filled out the application. Critical information, work history, education history, military history, references.
Do they ever even look at these things? When it comes down to it, aren’t our willingness to work and the fact that we walk upright simply matched with job vacancies?
Curtis didn’t arrive back at the office before I left. Amy tossed my application on a stack of what appeared to be sixty of the same application packets and announced that Curtis would call me as soon as he had the opportunity to look over my information. Ugh. Riiiiight.
’Kay, thanks. ’Preciate it. I’ll just go home and wait by the phone. Tonight? You think he’ll call tonight? Or should I stay home and keep the phone by my ear tomorrow, too?
I felt frustrated and unfulfilled. Another application. Another afternoon chalked up to the job search.
I did a little back street exploring and found a shortcut