We were led into a large conference room and given a sheet of paper with the meeting’s agenda. At the very end there was a bullet point that read “hours and pay.”
“Before we get started does anyone have any questions?” the man at the head of the room asked. He was in charge of HR, and his toned biceps and thick neck gave the impression he had spent time hauling packages before working his way up to a desk job. “You over there,” he said to a guy in the back.
“What’s the pay?”
“I’ll get to that,” he said. “My name is Ron. I’m going to tell you about the driver helper position, and then we’re going to do some one-on-one interviews.” He tugged on a Seahawks lanyard hanging from his neck that displayed his name badge.
“This job isn’t for everyone,” he said and sized up his new batch of potential laborers. I had spent plenty of summers pushing lawn mowers and packing heavy things into trucks, but this was the first time the label laborer seemed appropriate for me.
“Feel free to get up and leave if you hear something about the job you’re not comfortable with,” Ron said. “I won’t hold it against you. There’s no point in sitting here if you’re not right for the job.”
I looked around the room and considered who would be the first person to leave. There was a woman who couldn’t have been taller than five foot two and had thin wrists. Was she aware that all employees were required to be able to lift fifty pounds? Next to her was a man made of brick. His work boots and worn flannel shirt reminded me of the guys I used to see standing in front of Home Depot when I drove to the office. I imagined he’d be hired on the spot. I ranked somewhere between them. Fifty pounds wouldn’t be a struggle, but I’d be sore the next day. I hadn’t lifted much more than a coffee mug at my previous job.
“Don’t enter a fenced-in yard if there’s a barking dog,” Ron said. His tone was professional and friendly. “Maybe if it’s a little dog you can, but stay away from anything that looks like Cujo.” He paused and a few people laughed. “Dress warm and don’t distract the driver. And most importantly, handle packages with care. You never know when a camera is on you. I don’t want to see any of you ending up on YouTube throwing a flat screen. It’s not good for business.”
The job sounded easy enough. I would be paired with a driver working in my neighborhood that would pick me up and drop me off near my apartment. However, I did worry about running into someone I knew. Getting caught in a stop-and-chat situation while assisting a UPS driver seemed like a surefire way to destroy the image I’d been trying to create—as someone who had his shit together. I was sure I’d be met with an encouraging tone if I was spotted by an acquaintance while on the job, but I knew I’d be regarded with pity. I imagined someone saying “Oh, you don’t even get to drive the truck? You’re, like, just a UPS man’s assistant?” while I looked down. “Good for you.”
My second concern came when we were told there was no set schedule. Driver helpers were on call, and the driver decided every morning whether he needed help or not. Helpers were to expect a call early in the morning if help was needed.
“Does this mean we shouldn’t expect to work forty hours a week?” one of the suits asked.
“It all depends on how you and the driver click,” Ron said. “If you go out on your first day and you vibe with your driver and he wants to pick you up every day until Christmas Eve, then you’re all set. Other drivers won’t require help every day.”
“Full-time work isn’t guaranteed?” the man asked. He was playing with the pocket of his suit, trying to pry open the flap. He gave up when he realized it was sewn shut.
“No, but it’s a likely possibility. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t.”
The guy in the suit stood, pushed in his chair, and exited the room.
Had it been my first month of unemployment I would have followed him out, but I had nothing to go home to. If not for that meeting, I would have never gotten out of bed that day. I spent most of my time alone in my apartment browsing the internet for fight videos. Watching a couple shirtless guys pound on each other behind a liquor store was the only thing that stopped my brain from panicking—that and competitive cooking shows.
At night, the glowing numbers on my digital clock manically danced at my bedside as I stared at the ceiling. It seemed unfair that keeping the roof over my head required finding a job whether the work stimulated me or not.
I was aware society would collapse if everyone only pursued passion projects because a world with more ventriloquists than vegetable pickers was not a better one. I just couldn’t understand how a system based on majority rule could produce more unhappy people than happy people. It kept me up so late that it became early, and I heard my neighbors lock their doors as they left for work. I’m sure they agreed with me and probably had something they’d rather be doing instead of heading to their job, but the burden of debt caused them to believe that wasn’t an option.
When the emptiness of the building echoed into my room, I’d wonder why I couldn’t live like everyone else. Maybe I’m not cut out for all this and I should call it quits, I thought. I certainly wasn’t brave or desperate enough to do anything drastic, but I fantasized about being an innocent victim of a mass shooting. It seemed like an easy way to change the public perception of me—an image of me in a tie taken from my LinkedIn profile would show up on the news during a report on an isolated white male who snapped. Instead of unemployed loser I’d be looked at as heroic victim.
“Now,” Ron said tugging on his lanyard, “for the disappointing part.”
The guy across from me who seemed to have checked out raised his head off the back of his chair. A girl who’d been texting sighed and slipped her phone into her purse.
Ron held a nervous smile as he told us we’d earn a little more than eleven dollars per hour. The group shrugged in unison. I caught eyes with a guy in a University of Washington sweater. He smirked and walked straight out the door. No one spoke, but the room was loud with movement. The last time I made that kind of money was working in my college library over a decade ago.
The other guy in a suit left. Someone in the back wearing pressed Dockers with white sneakers followed him. I shifted in my chair but thought maybe I can still do this. Or maybe I had to do this. I wasn’t far from putting in a call to my dad to ask for a loan, something I hadn’t done since graduating college, and I feared requesting a handout more than running up my credit card debt. Accepting his money was an admission of failure. When I’d crossed the stage and received my diploma, I never expected that ten years later I’d need his help, let alone consider a job that barely paid over minimum wage.
Yet I hadn’t heard anything that was a deal breaker. I could work whenever I got called and continue my job search. If something better came along I’d stop answering my phone.
“Okay, you guys have all had enough of me,” Ron said. “I’m going to hand the floor over to Tammy, who is a union representative.”
Tammy was a stocky woman who looked like she had skin made of leather, which I assumed came from spending the last twenty years of her life in a boys’ club. “Who knows why it’s a good thing to join a union?” she asked.
Looking around the room and judging by the puzzled faces, I wasn’t the only one curious as to why a union rep was here for a job that was only one month long. When no one attempted to answer her question, she continued.
“A career at UPS can help you raise a family and provide you with benefits, and certain positions even help pay for college. Have you ever noticed when you’re at a party and someone says they work for UPS and everyone looks at them in awe, like, ‘Damn you work for UPS?’”
I’d heard about the great benefits, but I’d never been at a party where the UPS man was looked at in awe. I met a FedEx guy at a party once, and no one seemed to pay him much attention until he shared a story about having sex in his truck.
“If you accept this job you will have to join the union,” Tammy said. “Joining the union
requires a $250 initiation fee. A percent labeled ‘union fees’ will be deducted from your paycheck. Once you have paid that off, you’re in the union.”
I stood up from my chair and headed toward the exit. As I passed Ron I shook his hand and thanked him for the opportunity. I took a look at the group before closing the door behind me. This time their clothes weren’t what stood out to me. It was their faces. They looked worn out and sleep deprived, as if they had also spent the previous night wondering if they’d ever figure out how to fit into the system without compromising happiness. We were all there for the same reason. Yet, my circumstances were comfortable enough that I could walk out the door, which made my worries and moronic death fantasies seem less valid.
A few days later I noticed the UPS trucks driving around my neighborhood were carrying an extra person. On my way home from the bank where I’d just traded in a twenty-four-ounce cup of coins for forty-seven dollars in bills, I passed a helper on the sidewalk. I had to move out of his way since the box he was carrying was so large it obstructed his vision. When he got to the doorway, he lowered the package and tapped some numbers into the callbox. He glanced over his shoulder. His collar was wrinkled and sweat stained. I wasn’t sure if we’d been in orientation together, but the look of tired fear that had been plastered across everyone’s face in that room was not present on his, at least not then. He seemed almost to smile to himself as he waited for someone to answer the door.
“Here you go, sir,” he said as he handed off the package. He ran back to the truck and grabbed another box. He tucked it under his arm and rushed off down the street. He had purpose. Something I hadn’t had in months.
PART III
5:00 p.m.
At 4:40 you decide you’re going to take the 4:57 bus home. Usually you take the 5:10, but today has been one of those days. You haven’t done any work in the past twenty minutes and figure that, even if you stayed until the appropriate time, you would just flip through Reddit instead of working anyway. You shut down your computer and glance at the ring stain on your desk and make a mental note to clean it tomorrow.
Everyone has lined up along the sidewalk in single file. The bus hasn’t come yet, but that’s just what people do at this stop. You find the organization comforting. Today you’re the sixth person in line, which means you can probably squeeze into a seat, but you’re not much in the mood for sitting.
The bus pulls up to the curb. A biker in a DayGlo jacket loads his bike on the front of the bus, then cuts in front of you. You believe proper etiquette should be that he has to walk to the end of the line, but you don’t say anything.
You make your way to the back and stand next to the door. Unlike the morning, you’re not carrying your travel coffee mug, so you have a free hand. You pull your phone from your pocket and open up the Daily Solitaire challenge. You’ve been playing for a year, but have yet to complete a full month—you tend to forget to play on weekends—you complete the round in two minutes and forty-eight seconds. It’s an average time. Your best is a minute twenty-two. You spend the rest of the ride staring out the window thinking about what’s in your fridge and your options for dinner.
When the bus arrives at your stop, you’re the first one off and you power walk to your apartment. You jaywalk when the light takes too long and cut across the street when the woman walking a dog in front of you isn’t moving fast enough. You already have your bag off when you walk through the front door. It takes a matter of seconds to peel off your work clothes and change into your running gear.
You strap an iPod to your arm, raise the volume to the max level, and you’re back out the door. You’re unsure how far you’re going. That decision is made after you climb the set of eighty stairs at the one-mile mark. You’ve built up a lot of anxiety over the week and figure a long run is the only way to dispel it. Earlier in the day you found yourself on your ex’s Facebook page analyzing her likes and recent friend additions. You assume she’s moved on, and you’re curious whom she’s brought along for the ride. You’re disgusted by your jealousy and hate yourself because you can’t let go.
You reach the top of the stairs and feel calm for the first time all day as you exhale a silent scream. There’s a bounce in your step, and you feel like you could run for hours as pieces of the day fall off with every stride.
You complete eight miles with an uphill sprint. When you return to your apartment, you take off your shirt and move the coffee table to the side of the room so you can lie out on the carpet. You look at the ceiling while pulling your legs to your chest, one at a time, focusing on your breathing. Your head is light, and you can feel the absence of anxiety. You’re not quite content, but it’s the best you’re going to get.
You spend twice as long in the shower as you did in the morning and let the hot water wrap around your skin.
You throw on a pair of gym shorts and a hoodie and turn on the TV to a four-episode block of Seinfeld reruns. There’s a Tupperware in the fridge filled with a mix of beef, onions, rice, beans, and green peppers you prepared over the weekend. You throw it in the pan and stir it while it heats up. When it’s ready you spoon it into a flour tortilla with a heaping helping of lettuce that spills out the side when you roll it into a burrito. You eat it in front of the TV, where you pause every now and then to laugh at a joke you’re hearing for the fourteenth time. George’s parents are your favorite.
After washing the dishes, you bring your laptop to the couch. You check your email, then Twitter, then Reddit, then Facebook. It’s your turn in Scrabble. You’ve been playing a regular game with your folks since they both joined Facebook four years earlier. Whoever drops the last tile starts the next game. You’ve lost track of how many you’ve won and lost, but know your dad is the champion. You play your turn and scan your feed. Nothing interesting.
You type the first initial of your ex’s name in the search bar, and the rest auto-fills. Her relationship status hasn’t changed. You know you shouldn’t be doing this. You even ask yourself “what good can come of this?” before clicking on her pictures. Some guy has been throwing likes all over her albums, even commenting “cute” on a pic you took of her one night when you had dinner with her parents.
You prepare the following day’s coffee, then flip through Netflix, trying to decide if you’re going to watch a documentary about how all the food we eat is poison or an episode of Law & Order. You don’t really care since you know you will most likely fall asleep before the final credits.
It’s hard to say if you’ve seen this episode or not. You fall asleep to the show so often, it all feels familiar. It doesn’t matter anyway because you drift off before Ice-T gets a chance to interview the second suspect.
At 1:00 a.m. you wake. You open Facebook. No new status updates. You go to the bathroom and open the medicine cabinet. You take a melatonin pill with a tall glass of water. As you put the bottle back, you see yourself in the mirror and notice a hole in the shoulder of your T-shirt. You return to bed and set the alarm for 5:00 a.m.
American Temp
Six months of unemployment ended when I got a call from a recruiter offering an Amazon contract for a seller support agent. I negotiated the pay three dollars higher than the original offer and said, “I’ll take it” without bothering to ask “What is a seller support agent?”
Apparently it only takes three weeks of training to learn how to support Amazon sellers. If someone had a problem with a bad review, they called me. If they hadn’t received payment for a product they already shipped out, they called me. If their account had been blocked or suspended, they called me. If they weren’t happy with the amount they were charged in postage, they called me. Sometimes, if they were just kind of lonely and wanted to brag about how well they were selling on Amazon.com, they called me.
All my calls began with “Amazon seller support, this is Steven, can I please have the last four digits of your credit card or bank account?”
Most of the callers I spoke with had just spent ten minutes on t
he phone with a customer service agent located in one of Amazon’s international call centers, and by the time they got to me, they’d already spelled out their email address at least twice in military call letters and were dying to speak to an American human. The most common first question was “Do you know English? Were you born here?” I’d give them a confident “Yup,” to put them at ease.
Once the caller was confident English was my first language, they asked about their account. I’d put them on hold, telling them I “needed to do some research,” which really meant popping my head over my cubicle wall to ask the girl next to me the same question. Ninety-nine percent of the time she knew the answer, told me, then I took the seller off hold and answered the question in what was apparently thought of as an acceptable American accent.
The girl on the other side of my cubicle wall was Ratna, a shy woman with a nervous smile, who dressed in sweaters from the young adult section at Macy’s and had a thick Indian accent. We went through training together, and in a class of over twenty people, we were the only two who honestly expressed our anxieties at the thought of not being able to answer a customer’s question.
She fought her anxiety by doing the best in training, making sure to learn everything so she’d never find herself in a situation where she’d be forced to say, “I don’t know.” I tried taking a similar approach, but I couldn’t focus on the lessons. We were supposed to follow along in a training manual while everyone in the class took turns reading a paragraph. My already heightened anxiety was turned up to eleven because I was terrified of reading aloud. I’d never gotten over the time I read a chapter of Hatchet in fifth grade and pronounced “grimacing” as “garassing,” and Darrin Peterson called me dyslexic for the rest of the year.
Now for the Disappointing Part Page 11