Scratch Beginnings_ Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream - Adam W. Shepard [76]
But my relationship with Derrick was different. It was very real. Neither one of us needed the other, and we certainly hadn’t gone looking for each other. Indeed, I was content on small moves with whomever they stuck me with, and Derrick was fully capable of doing most of the moves by himself. But then we met and worked together, and everything changed. The chemistry between us—which, I discovered, was so utterly important in the moving business—was established from the beginning. He knew that I was going to work hard and keep my mouth shut, and I knew that he was going to show me how it was really supposed to be done, in turn exploiting my full potential as a professional mover.
With Derrick on my team, or vice versa, there was no more time for child’s play. Just as I was getting used to cruising down I-26 in truck No. 2, I was moved to truck No. 4—still a stick shift, but bigger, with a twenty-six foot storage van. Ninety percent of our moves were three bedrooms or better, with an occasional two bedroom thrown in the mix when Mike had to take a day off. My moving experience was jumping to the next level. No more twenty to twenty-five hour workweeks. All of our moves lasted at least six hours, with quite a few going eight hours or longer. It made for an exhausting day, no doubt, but that is what I had asked for when I came to Charleston—the full blue-collar experience. And there was no question I was getting it.
TWELVE
WORKERS’ CONSTERNATION
Thursday, October 26
Bigger moves meant more hours and bigger tips. I was cashing in. I was glad that Phil Coleman had deterred me away from the car wash. I still would have been doing well there, with an hourly wage plus tips, but I would have been doing the same thing day in and day out: wax on, wax off, fifty times a day, all week long. Of course, I would have done it, and I would have done it with a smile on my face, but I wouldn’t have had the same experience that I had moving furniture.
Working as a mover was great. It offered me the escape from reality that I needed. Even though moving was probably one of the more stressful jobs I could have chosen, it was fun to be out and about doing a different job every day. Every day was different than the next. Different moves, different personalities.
Some of our moves were downtown, in the heart of Charleston, where the (perhaps widening) gap between economic classes appeared more evident on every trip; others were in country towns like Eutawville or Pinopolis, where it might take residents twenty minutes to ride into town just for gas and groceries.
Some customers were bright and cheery; some were all business.
Some were completely disorganized, while others had every box and each piece of furniture coded by number or color corresponding to where it was supposed to be placed at their new house.
Some bought us lunch and offered us beverages throughout the day; others wouldn’t have cared if we passed out from dehydration on their front lawn.
And I loved meeting new people. For most of the day, I wasn’t “Adam Shepard, the loner” or “Adam Shepard, the guy who recently moved out of the homeless shelter.” I was “Adam Shepard, Mover Extraordinaire.” My crew and I would sweat and socialize at the same time, all the while making one-day friends in the process. After all, our customers—every one of our customers—were more privileged than we were. While many of the guys at Fast Company lived pretty exciting lives, our experiences were much different from those of the people that we moved. They didn’t have to break the bank for weekend trips to Myrtle Beach or to go out to dinner at elegant restaurants downtown. They traveled to Europe and Australia and Southeast Asia. They had sailed to the Bahamas or