Coffee and Peaches
The employment agency placed me at a factory to work as a welder the summer after my college graduation. Why they placed me there is still a mystery, but I wanted to show that I was willing to take whatever position they assigned me and work my way up. I arrived at the factory promptly at 2pm for my second-shift position. I carried a large coffee from Starbucks and a brown sack filled with generic potato chips, baloney sandwiches and a notebook for recording writing ideas.
I walked through the front entrance of the factory, and a security guard buzzed in a supervisor. The supervisor greeted me with: ‘I thought we told that employment agency to stop sending us dipshits from the city college. You guys never last a week.’ He shook his head while he handed me a security pass. ‘Well, hell,’ he muttered, ‘we might as well go through the motions. Nothing personal, my boy, but – oh, Judas Priest! They didn’t even tell you to bring gloves, now did they?’
I followed the supervisor into a large room filled with welding machines. Stacked to the ceiling were bundles of cheap metal fences that lower-middle-class citizens use to edge their gardens. The supervisor pointed to a morbidly obese man whose neck and arms were covered with tattoos of spider webs. ‘This is Peaches. Peaches, this is your new co-worker.’ The supervisor walked away.
Peaches nodded to me and said, ‘Don’t worry, not everyone here is an asshole like that guy.’
Relieved I said, ‘That’s good. Why do they call you Peaches?’
‘I ate a can of peaches on my break one time and Sly decided that was my new name. Sly is the manager and he’ll be around later. Let’s get to work.’
Peaches demonstrated to me how to weld fence. The operator drops three rods into a vertical chute, four rods into a horizontal chute, and uses his or her left hand to hold the rods in place while using his or her right hand to weld the rods together. ‘You need gloves for this,’ Peaches said. I explained to him I’d bring some next time. ‘Well, be real careful,’ he said.
The first few sets of fence were awkward and slow for me to weld. I stacked each completed fence on top of the previous fence next to my welding station. I glanced over at Peaches’s pile of fences and felt chagrined to see his stack was several times higher than mine was. An hour into the shift I asked, ‘Where is the bathroom?’
Peaches shook his head and said, ‘You can only use the bathroom on your break.’
‘Aw, come on, Peaches,’ I said. ‘Who is going to know?’
Peaches pointed above and on the walls were security cameras. Each welding station had a security camera above it. ‘Sly watches us,’ Peaches said.
‘I can’t wait three more hours,’ I said.
‘Go in your coffee cup. That’s what I do. They should have told you to bring gloves and two cups. One for drinking and one for peeing.’
‘You gotta be kidding me,’ I said.
Peaches growled, ‘Do I look like the type who kids?’
I let out a yelp of pain, and Peaches chuckled, ‘Welded your hand, huh? Nobody ever does it twice though.’
I had welded a finger and the pains were -incredible. I had stabbing pains extending from said finger, up my arm, and into the left side of my chest. I shook off the pain and looked over at Peaches -urinating into a cup. I debated walking out on the job or urinating into my coffee cup. What the hell, I thought. I filled the cup up with my own special blend and blundered onward with the welding.
After what felt like six more hours, a whistle blew indicating the shift was half-over and we were on break. I followed Peaches into a break room and ate my chips and sandwiches. I looked at my ideas notebook and wondered what to write about while watching Peaches and the other workers eating their food. I marvelled at authors who write while working full-time jobs. How did they have the energy to do it? I worked half of one shift and felt exhausted. I closed my eyes and listened to the laconic conversations between the other workers. The whistle blew and I awoke dazed and alone in the break room.
I hustled back to my welding machine, and Peaches had already begun his sixth stack of fences while I was still on my first. I tried to speed up my pace and dreamed of how good some more coffee would taste. I took a swig from my cup, wondered about the acid taste, then gagged and spewed out the urine. Peaches looked at me with distrust as I vomited into a trashcan. I wished for a breath mint while I continued welding. Soon, I welded my hand again and fought the urge to walk out of the factory. After what felt like twelve more hours, the whistle blew and the shift was over.
I stepped away from my welder and Peaches muttered, ‘Gotta stay by your machine ‘til the supervisor come by. Can’t leave before then.’
‘Do we get paid to wait for him? I thought our shift was over,’ I said.
Peaches shook his head no and said, ‘Still got to wait so you can get paid.’
The supervisor came by and counted the fences in Peaches’s stacks. He nodded curtly and Peaches strode away. The supervisor looked at my stack and shook his head.
‘This won’t do. You are going to have to come with me and see Sly.’
I followed him up the stairs into a room with numerous black and white screens monitoring employees. A wisp of a man sat behind a desk. He said to me, ‘You must be Dodge. I’m Sly, the manager of this operation.’ He smiled and extended a hand. I shook it. Cold and wet. Sly continued, ‘We have a quota for all welders in this factory. Do you have any idea what percentage of the quota you met this evening?’ Sly’s smile disappeared and his eyes narrowed as he studied a spreadsheet before him.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘Eighteen percent. I’m going to have to ask for your security pass.’
Sly extended a hand out to me and I passed it to him confused. I thought this was a terrible job and felt glad to be free of it, but if he thought he was going to fire me that easy he was mistaken.
‘I’ll write you a cheque,’ Sly said.
‘What time do I come in tomorrow?’ I smiled.
‘Oh, no. This is your last day. You did not meet your quota.’
‘But this was my first day,’ I said. ‘Just give me a couple of days to get my welding technique down.’
‘You failed to meet your quota and in so doing you voluntarily resigned from your position,’ Sly said.
‘Are you firing me?’ I asked.
‘No, no, no!’ Sly’s voice rose. ‘We don’t fire people here! You fired yourself.’
‘Now why would I fire myself? I’ve got a nine-year-old boy to feed.’
It was a lie but Sly’s human resource methods sickened me, and I wanted him to feel an inkling of what it is like to have a conscience.
‘Oh, what’s your boy’s name?’
‘Kilgore Trout,’ I said. It was the best name I could come up with. I stole it from a Kurt Vonnegut novel I was reading.
‘That’s great. What grade is little Kilgore in?’ Sly’s smile returned.
I couldn’t think off the top of my head what grade a nine-year-old boy would be in and hesitated too long. ‘Fifth?’ I blurted.
Sly frowned and said, ‘Company policy dictates that any employee meeting less than sixty percent of his or her quota voluntarily resigns and …’ The phone on Sly’s desk rang and he said to me, ‘Just a moment.’ He answered the phone and swivelled his chair. I began to imagine a short story about a character based on Sly who dressed as a woman while he robbed gas stations. He would set off fires on one side of a city and, while the police and other emergency crews responded to the fire alarms, Sly’s character would drive to the opposite side of the city to rob gas stations while dressed in stylish women’s clothes he purchased online.
He continued to set fires and rob gas stations across the country while wearing more and more fashionable outfits. The press romanticised his crimes and fashion experts commented on his outfits. I later wrote and entitled this short story Drag Queen Pyromaniac and sold it for $5 to a magazine in Finland. My stories have done quite well there for some reason.
Sly ended the phone call, wrote a cheque, handed it to me and said, ‘I wish you good evening.’
I looked at the cheque: $27. Minimum wage was $4 an hour then, and $27 would buy two weeks’ worth of canned food and a ream of typing paper. I drove to the all-night cheque-cashing store where a Chinaman behind the counter held a fawn pug on his lap. The Chinaman counted out the cash while I looked at the time on the wall: 11.30pm. The night was still young and not entirely wasted.
