I had to work this past Saturday, at 6 a.m., and once again… it was a fiasco. I work at night; I’m wired to be awake after midnight, performing my duties on company time. But every once in a while they deal us a wild card, and it screws me up, big-time. Six in the morning is a time of day I never see. It’s deep within my blind spot.
I live 40 miles away from work, so I set my cell phone alarm for 4 a.m. And I went to bed at 9:30, which felt like mid-afternoon. Couldn’t sleep… I started reading, hoping that would do the trick, and got caught up in a mystery novel — completely awake.
I remember 1 a.m., but must’ve drifted off shortly afterward. Then I was up at 4, feeling like I was having an out-of-body experience. I left the house, partially reanimated by coffee, around 5. And promptly got a flat tire.
It was dark, freezing cold, and I was in no mood for nonsense. I changed a tire on Toney’s car a few months ago, and it was a pain in the ass. The jack is junk, and kept tipping over. I have the same kind of dollar store jack in my car, so funk dat. I drove to Sheetz, which was only a block away, planning to put air in the tire. Then I’d continue to Monro Muffler, and let those guys change it.
However, someone had sliced off the end of the air hose. There was no nozzle, just a hose. Bastards! …I hope it wasn’t one of my kids that did it. Anyway, this infuriated me further. By this time I was shouting profanity into the dark of night. I checked out the tire, and there was a giant spike embedded in it, almost on the side. What the hell, man?
There was no saving the tire, so I just went to Monro. It wasn’t 100% flat yet, but getting close. It was only a quarter-mile journey, but excruciating. I got there, and checked their hours on the door. They opened at 7:30. Shit. Should I just change this bastard? I stood there contemplating it, and a sac-shriveling wind howled. Then my phone rang. It was Toney, and that tipped the scales.
“Can you come pick me up?” I asked her.
I called work and left a message: “Yeah, this Jeff. I’m having a shit morning already. I’ll try to be there later, but might not make it. …Yeah, that’s it. Bye.”
We went home, and I continued hammering mugs of coffee, getting all whipped-up. We watched the local news, and they repeated the same five stories, over and over and over. One was about a peacock that had inexplicably shown up in some neighborhood around here. It walks around, eats dog food on porches, and makes itself at home. This was a news story!
Finally 7:30 arrived, and we returned to Monro. The guy started to give me a lecture about driving on a flat tire, but I cut him off. “Man, I don’t want to hear it,” I said, and he dropped it.
I asked him to put the (brand new, full-sized) spare on. He told me it would be about 15 minutes, so I flopped down in a chair. There was a TV in there, and I immediately heard a reporter say, “The male peacock arrived without notice, and made himself quite comfortable…”
“Jesus Christ!” I shouted, and the Monro guy looked up from his clipboard, with a disapproving look on his face.
I stopped twice on my way to work. I bought two sausage, egg, and cheese croissants from Burger King, and used my $25 convenience store gift card for gas. I finally arrived at my job around 8:30.
There was an email that said we’d be receiving a UPS shipment sometime between 6 a.m. and 11 p.m. Some kind of super-hot merchandise, which required immediate attention… I didn’t think too much about it. I figured it would be a couple of boxes, no big deal.
And around 12:30 a full tractor trailer backed up to our receiving dock… “That’s not all for us, is it?” I asked the driver. “Yep, the whole thing,” he answered. WTF??
We had a skeleton crew in there, but I tracked someone down and asked him to unload the thing. But when they rolled open the door, we saw that there were no pallets underneath the product. The entire trailer was packed-out with cartons, and no pallets.
So, we unloaded it by hand. It was me, the driver, and another guy, and it took more than an hour. The boxes were heavy, and it sucked so bad it almost created a black hole. “Why are there no pallets??” I kept screaming at the guy. “I didn’t load this truck,” he repeated.
I don’t do much of that kind of work anymore, and it about killed me. I was huffing and puffing like a fat boy in lead shoes (obscure DEVO reference), and I’m still sore, four days later. The next morning I felt like I’d been run over by a street sweeper, and dragged a couple of blocks. It was bullshit.
Eventually I left that place, and struggled to stay awake while driving home. Toney was cooking when I got there, and the TV was on in the living room: “…the peacock flew over several miles of forest to wind up in this part of suburbia…”
“I hope we have plenty of beer!” I announced. But I was konked out, fifteen minutes after dinner. One Yuengling, getting warm on the table beside my sleepin’ chair…
And I hate to be a Nostrils-type fancy-lad, but my recovery time from those awful Saturdays is a full two days at this point. I didn’t feel halfway normal until Tuesday. They kick my ass, with gusto.
I’ll update again, as soon as possible. I’ll shoot for tomorrow, but it might not happen. I’ll try though, I always try.
Have a great day, my friends!
Now playing in the bunker
Check out Dropbox! It’s WVSR endorsed.
Wow – First?
Only because it posted there ten hours before it posted here,
Your referencing of the peacock story made me laugh out loud Jeff! That peacock story was on ALL weekend!
What’s the difference between drinking and driving and being sleep deprived and driving?
About ->||<- that much.
Knock that crap off before you kill someone or their peacock.
That news reporter referred to “the male peacock” — I suspect she’s not a graduate from the Columbia University School of Journalism.
Do you know the old joke:
What do they call a female peacock?
A peahen. No, really.
.
I like the joke better, peacunt.
Jeff – you probably already knew about this, but in case you hadn’t heard:
http://www.vita.mn/crawl/186091751.html
I wonder what peacock tastes like…..
It tastes like chicken.
My day today is a little like that. Barely slept 3 hrs. because of latent anger. Woke up and screamed “FUCK” because of it. Didn’t get my workout in because I woke up to my CRM not working which puts me out of business for the day. Then had to wait another 2-3 hours through lunch for a tech to bring it halfway up to snuff, with the possibility of fixing the thing I use most by tomorrow. At least it’s 70 degrees here and I can work with my hand on my nuts if I want. Might be a good idea to take some rare time off and go adrinkin’ where there’s a cute bartender and bothering the ever loving shit out of her.
I live in Central Illinois, and last summer we had a frickin peacock running around some neighborhood here. And just like your experience, all the news folks were running around with hard-ons trying to come up with cute stories about it. WTF is it with peacocks?
Huh huh, I said cocks.
If it’s any consolation, I just had my yearly review. Got the typical 99.9% score everyone else did. Which means no bonus and no raise. Muthafuckas.
If I were you, I would make sure that you apply a hot water bottle to your vagina as soon as you get home from these sort of work days. Might bring the recovery time down a little bit.
But seriously, quit that stoopid job of yours and find yourself a good street corner on which to hold a cardboard sign. Those dudes are probably making more money per day than most us working slobs.
Do you live by Mayflower Park?
My boyfriend can lay on the couch and watch the news all day. I’m always amazed that he bitches about me watching the same movies over and over yet he will watch the same 3 news stories for hours on end. It makes me crazy.
The best paying but suckiest job I ever had in nursing was a weekender special. You worked 34 hours–10 on Friday and 12 on Saturday and Sunday–and you got paid for 40 with full time benefits. Problem was, it was rotating between days one weekend and nights the next. No matter what. Furthermore, it was an hour and half drive from my home. I either crashed with friends or drove it, every weekend. They made us all do the rotating shifts. I finally figured out that life was passing me by, as it took me until Tuesday to come to full awareness of my surroundings when I worked the day turn, and clear till Thursday when I had night duty. Which I guess explains why some of the more “successful” workers among us had a serious nose candy problem. I eventually figured things out, though, and moved on. Some things are just not worth it.
They did away with Baylor schedules at our hospital because nurses were “abusing” it by daring to work weekday shifts as extras and thus getting overtime. How dare they! Unless a nurse clocks in and then hides in the linen chute, it is not abuse. Hospital administrators are about as dumb as it gets. Night shift killed me. I was a zombie all the time. I cannot imagine having to rotate. Now I’ve made the leap out of the hospital to “the real world” and life is sure different. Respect, reasonable hours, no ridiculous patient satisfaction surveys, and no weekends. I often wonder when I’m going to wake up and realize it was all a dream.
I forgot – on Sunday, I drove up to East Hartford, CT to go to a huge Cabela’s store. We ahd to return some shirts and Beloved just likes walking around in there. I find it a ho-hum experience.
Anyway, we had to pass through Newtown, CT – the Sandy Hook tragedy. I wasn’t expecting it, but I got an honest to God lump in my throat and felt my eyes welling up. That made my day shit the bed.
?? Let me see your peacock! ??
Wow…change the tire. Or at least step up and get AAA. Having AAA is the only excuse for a man to not change his own tire.
Where do I turn in my man card? Fuck changing a tire when it’s cold and nasty.
Not changing a tire….2.5points
No foul weather gear.1 point
Not checking your oil..1.5
It’s definitely fowl weather with a peacock in town!
Well done.
I love that “the male peacock arrived without notice” – what was he supposed to do, send a text before he came over? TV news is just full of brilliant insight like that.
.
An old Indian puts his ear to a train track and say me hear peacock. Male. Stealthy. Peacock.
I did the Family Dollar account for a month. Take a loaded trailer out of Odessa, TX that usually held three or four stops at different stores. Sometimes it was a load for a new store opening and you pretty much spent all day there unloading. Once empty, head back to Odessa for a loaded trailer and do it again to wherever they send you. No pallets. Everything, EVERYTHING off-loaded by hand. My hands. Bag after bag of dog food, cat, food, kitty litter. Package after package of water. Box after box of Tide, Downey, Hawaiian Punch. Mops, candles, air freshener…etc,etc,etc.
No one is permitted in the trailer but me. A series of 7ft rollers would hook together as I worked my way from the back to the front of the trailer. As I added a section I also had to find something to support that section while increasing the angle so gravity would take over and the stuff would glide down the rollers. Waiting at the other end was two (sometimes one, sometimes three) employees to take the stuff off their roller contraption, put in on a cart and go park it somewhere. I’m in there humping my ass to get this shit off my truck and on to my next stop. Sweating my ass off in the hot box in Auguest in southeast Texas, or out in Arizoina. The roller/ramp is getting backed up because the $8.00 an hour labor force chum are dragging their feet. They’d rather drag out their time outside than in the store on the floor. And then someone yells, “Smoke Break”. “FUUUUUCK!!!!!”. Add to the fact the trailer was loaded with no rhyme or reason. All willy-nilly from floor to ceiling. Shit on top of shit so when you went to get something you needed to be prepared to get out of the way so something doesn’t fall off the top and break your neck. All the crap just thrown in there with some visqueen seperating your stops/stores.
OK….rants over but yeah…unloading those bastards by hand eats it from the inside out AND on a slant. I got away from that (decent money all in all except for the hell) and went back to drop and hook or Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target distribution centers where I’d back into an assigned dock (one of hundreds) and sit and wait while fork trucks worked their magic. Sometimes I might sit there for 3-4-5 hours. Take a nap, make a sandwich, catch up on the box scores on my laptop. I don’t do it anymore (so far). I miss it but I absolutly hate it. How is that possible? So next time you see that Family Dollar truck backed up to that little door at the back of the store…he or she could really use a fucking beer.
Need to make sure the help wanted ad has a line in it that reads “hands free freight”!
When I signed on I knew I’d be doing the off load. Just didn’t realize how bad it sucked and no matter how hard I worked I was subject to the slackers I’d run into sometimes at the end of my rollers. Great exercise though.
I went sledding tonight with my girls rug rat. I busted my foot and ass. It was fun.
It pains me and causes me a certain amount of internal hemorrhaging to be the first one to point out the obvious fact that none of this would have happened had you been driving on Blizzaks.
John
LMAO!
Well said, sir! Thank you.
Folks–if the biggest news story in your town is a free-ranging peacock, be thankful. I’d rather hear that than the horrible news we hear most of the time!
Peacocks are a sign of pestilence and feathery ass eyeballs.
Peacocks are mean as hell. Family friends had about five of them, four female and one male. Mike was sweeping the back yard with a metal detector when the male came up and flogged the back of his head and neck with it’s claws for no reason.
That was the last thing that peacock ever did.