Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [62]
“What’r you doing?” he asked.
“Look man, check this out. I gotta put my foot down here, bro. If you’re gonna be my ‘homeboy,’ ‘my patna,’ we’re gonna get a few things straight here.”
He looked around as if he was on a hidden camera TV show. He wasn’t angry, but he was noticeably confused.
“From now on,” I continued, “while you’re on my truck, there will be no more littering. Every time you throw something out the window, I don’t care where we are, I’m gonna pull over, and you’re going to go pick it up. And while I’m in the business of making demands, you’re gonna start buckling your seat belt, too. If you don’t like it, well, then it’s been nice workin’ with ya.”
He laughed. He was loving my sudden bossiness. We sat there on the side of the road for a very long ten seconds before he realized that I was not joking around.
“Wait. Are you serious? Are you friggin’ kiddin’ me? Who the hell are you? My mom?”
Nope. I was his driver. And I wanted to keep it that way. I didn’t ask for much. Just two, simple, easy-to-follow demands. And he loved it. He knew that I wasn’t an obsessive environmentalist, but that there were four things that I believed in wholeheartedly: love, hard work, Carolina basketball, and putting your trash in a garbage can.
As he got out of the truck to pick up his can off the ground, murmuring four-letter words my way with a smile on his face the whole time, I knew he was questioning what he had gotten himself into by working with me. Nonetheless, that man stopped littering, and he buckled his seatbelt whenever my truck was moving. It was great. I listened to and respected him, and he did the same in return. We both knew our place. I knew to keep my mouth shut and my ears open when it came to moving furniture, and he knew to bring a bag with him for all of his trash. We learned so much from each other, and we were making good money moving furniture in the process. It was turning out to be a great partnership, Shaun Caldwell and I.
I was hitting a groove and really starting to see the light. I opened a bank account where I deposited my entire paycheck, which ranged from $160 to $250 a week during my first couple of months at Fast Company, depending upon how many hours Shaun and I worked. I also saved all of the money from working with George on Sundays and my tips from the moves as well. Occasionally I slipped by the Goodwill to buy extra shorts for work or Family Dollar to stock up on luxury items like shower slippers and Q-tips and dental floss. But I did my best to conserve my money. Cheap? Definitely. But that’s how I had to be. Every $5 and $10 I could save might not matter so much for that one day, but it would be so valuable in the long run.
I also continued to donate plasma, since I wasn’t afraid of needles, and it was such easy money. I could sit there for an hour and read the paper (which was free in the mornings on the bus!) or a book I had checked out from the library and collect $30 in the meantime.
My eating habits, at least during the day, did suffer quite a bit, though. Lacking the resources to prepare a healthy lunch, I was left snacking throughout the day on what had become my staple diet of peanut butter crackers and canned Vienna Sausage, which was just as appetizing as it sounds. Other days, when I hadn’t gone grocery shopping at Family Dollar or I simply needed a break from munching on the same food, I would spring for lunch at McDonald’s or Wendy’s or any other fast food joint that was convenient for Shaun and me, both in accessibility and price. For $5, I could fill up on the dollar value menu, but it didn’t do much to perk up my energy level or balance out my diet. At times, I felt like I could have been starring in Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me. Luckily, Shaun and I had already completed most of our moves by the time we stopped for lunch in the afternoon.
After two weeks working at Fast Company, I took my paycheck