Whistle While You Work #2
those temp jobs weren’t really so bad
they didn’t offer health insurance so
I didn’t have to worry about losing
my health insurance and if I stopped
showing up I’d get a text from
the temp agency saying “your work period
has ended, would you like us to find you
new employment?” and I’d just ignore that text
until I was out of money again
the work didn’t really matter there was
the packaging line the shoe warehouse
the bookstore the lumberyard
the work basically the same everywhere
easy and pointless and I never had to learn
the supervisor’s name cause he’d never
learn my name and they all looked the same
but the other temp workers
were varied and curious
Rico worked across from me slapping
labels onto boxes that I had put a soap bottle into
I liked the treble clef retouched tattoo under his eye
he’d tell stories of his gangbanging days
when he rolled up on houses with an
automatic rifle usually just to scare someone
but often doing more than that and one day
he was going off about the unpredictability
of crackheads and this allegedly former
crackhead behind him started mumbling
something and Rico didn’t like it and said
you better shut the fuck up but the mumbler
continued until Rico tore off his own shirt
and punched the mumbler in the face
continuing to label boxes without
missing a beat and there was Sarah who
let Rico crash on her couch the last few months
she didn’t do much of anything workwise
asked me on my first day if I knew where
to get some coke and I thought about telling her
the truth but decided to tell her no
and keep my distance from her
Lisa was into Christian rock and crystal
meth and she had no teeth she was always
licking her gums like she was up to something
mischievous but I don’t think she was
up to much at all and when she looked
at me she told me I may look sweet but my eyes
tell a different story and I don’t know
if she was right or not
she said she had been sober for a month now
and drives deliveries for Ming Palace
in the evenings and if I ordered food from there
she’d bring it to my place and stay a while
and I made sure to order Chinese from
other parts of town
a question I got asked at pretty much all of these
jobs was how a nice white boy like me
fucked up his life so bad I had to work
with them and I continually asked myself
the same question and never had a good answer
but Paulina never asked me anything
she died her hair blonde and painted on a decent face
wore tight black pants and low cut shirts
and leaned way over the conveyor belt
when placing her bottles into boxes
she was always surrounded by a murder
of crows I don’t know how she could breathe
the men hovered and leered and pecked and tried
to make her laugh and she laughed and
laughed and the men smiled and thought they
had something until the bell rang and she
was the first out the door and into the car
and on the road away from it all
Daniella wore Disney pajama pants and a hoodie
and her black hair curled around the hood
over her shoulders the guys left her pretty much alone so
I said como esta? and she said aha tienes
un poquito español I said si estuando en el
pasado and we talked with my tiny Spanish
and she smiled until Manuel came up and asked
if I like chicas and I said who doesn’t? well
Daniella is my sister he said pointing to her
and she stopped talking to me when she saw
Orlando showed me a pistol he carried every day
Mike got fired for drinking Modelo in his car
wouldn’t have gotten caught but he would
leave the bottles in his parking space
Saul was 18 and just graduated high school
6 and a half feet tall and as naïve as a little child
he listened to Rico’s stories and dreamed
of being a gangster but he was soft
scared of the supervisors
working his hardest but working the slowest
really no chance for this one
Sebastian put in earbuds and covered them
with his dreads and risked being fired but like me
wasn’t worried about it because it would be
a blessing really he said he was quitting soon anyway
to go work at UNFY where I had once interviewed
and when the interviewer described the job
and asked if it was something I’d be interested in
I said God no and walked out
they sent me an email later that day stating
they wanted to thank me for considering them
but were moving on to other candidates
I liked working at a bookstore
the major bookstore in the US
hired for 2 months over the holidays
my coworkers were uncommonly average but
the Christmas shoppers of course
were insane with gifts and raving mad for love
they never got at home and took it out on me
and my minimum wage they raged at
any inconvenience and Christ almighty
when we were sold out of something popular
on Christmas Eve they could not understand
how we could be such a disappointment
which is not far off from how pretty much
everyone in their lives felt
about them.
Peter J. Kahn is from Wisconsin. He is a better fisherman than writer but generally gets skunked doing either.
