Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [54]
Shannon O’Bannon also didn’t have a lot of stuff, which was another perk on my first job. She was moving out of the house and into her own one-bedroom apartment. She had moved all of the little things herself—a concept that some customers understood saved them time and money—so we just had to get the big items. We cleared the upstairs bedroom and then moved out all of the dining room and living room furniture from downstairs. Sammy and Bruno were shaking a leg. They were much less interested in teaching me how to move furniture than getting to Shannon’s third-floor apartment and getting the job over with.
“You gonna grab something heavy, lanky?” Bruno joked.
They had me loading nightstands and side tables onto the truck, while they “two-manned” the sofas and dressers. Which I didn’t mind. I would have plenty of time to pick up the tricks of the trade as time passed.
In an hour we had everything loaded up and we headed over to Shannon’s new place, twenty minutes away in West Ashley. As dramatic as I could make the unload sound, it wasn’t. Sure, it was the third floor, but we had three guys, and she didn’t even have that many pieces of furniture. Her bulky sleeper sofa was a chore to lug up the stairs and through her front door, but we got that out of the way early so everything else was rather simple. It took an hour to unload the truck and take care of the bill. She tipped us $25 for the three of us to split.
If there was one good thing that I discovered I had going for me as a mover, it was that I didn’t stop. Sure, I wasn’t terribly strong, and I didn’t really know how to use the dollies to my advantage when carting furniture to and fro, but that didn’t necessarily matter to Sammy and Bruno. I kept going and they loved me for that. Maybe it took me an extra moment or two to get the right grip on a dresser, but I could carry my end of it up the stairs, and as soon as we placed it in the apartment, I skipped back down to pick up another piece.
“Shoot, man, take a break every now and then,” Sammy would say.
But I couldn’t. It’s how I had always worked. Not that I was some tough kid with something to prove, showing that I had what it took. It wasn’t that at all. It was just that I knew that as soon as I took a break, it was all uphill from there. I would become lethargic. I would start dragging. I wouldn’t be able to get back to the same pace as before. Once I started, I had to keep going until the truck was empty or I would be no good.
So, in the end, I survived my first day of my new career as a professional mover. It was my last day with Sammy, though. Drivers worked together only on rare occasions when Fast Company was short on moves, but Sammy would be gone before we would have that opportunity. Curse of truck No. 2.
We arrived back at the shop around noon, and I told Curtis that we had a great day and that I was very grateful to have the opportunity to work for Fast Company.
“You got another one-bedroom tomorrow,” he told me. I was assigned to work with another guy who didn’t have a permanent crew.
While I would have to really prove myself before I could go to work on a big, three-or four-bedroom move, it was a great feeling to know that I could get into a routine. Wake up, hop on the bus, and go to work. Maybe I would work until 11 A.M. or maybe I wouldn’t be off until later in the afternoon if the job turned out to be bigger than the moving sheet said. Either way, it didn’t matter. I didn’t have a schedule to adhere to. As long as I was working and staying at the shelter, I could stay out of trouble and on course to complete my mission.
What was I going to do with the rest of my day, though? If some of my moves were going to be completed by noon, I was going have to figure out what to do with the balance of my time. The shelter didn’t open up until 7:30, and I refused to be a member of the gang of guys that sat in the shelter yard all day long waiting for check-in time.