I was coming out of the Alamo Drafthouse one Saturday in mid August. Some of the movie workers were gathered round in the parking lot talking. I caught a good deal of the discussion as I wandered past. Some of them were quitting and headed back to school. Whether to high school or college I couldn’t make out.
They were glad to be leaving work and to start the new school year but also dreading the monotony of constant schoolwork.
This brought back some memories of working during the summers in college. Particularly a summer that I worked construction out at NASA. My then brother-in-law got me a job as a day laborer for the company he was working with. He was a shift foreman for an electrical contractor and needed some muscle to move parts and supplies for a new office building at the NASA complex in clear lake.
I started out by going to the early 1990s Heights neighborhood, which at the time was much scarier than the now fashionable Heights neighborhood. I arrived around 6AM and was lost. I stopped at a convenience store to get directions and a guy in a long green coat sidled up and offered to sell me “new tires” out of the trunk of his car. I’m surprised he didn’t kosh me over the head with a lead pipe.
Anyways I found the main office which turned out to be a part office and part warehouse where I and 3 others watched a safety video and got a lecture from a middle management type about being very careful since we didn’t have health insurance and that was all there was to it. I was now a day laborer.
So I spent the Summer driving out before dawn with my brother-in-law and working 14 hour days for 5 days a week and 10 hour Saturdays. The double pay really added up over the Summer, specially since I was too tired to spend any of it. On top of everything I signed up for a community college course to finish off an elective course in college. So between that and work I was pretty much exhausted the entire Summer.
Work itself was tedious. The electricians were all journeymen and were a motley crew of individualists here for the duration of the contract. Once it finished they would all go their separate ways and get whatever jobs they could. Union seniority was really the only distinction. The shop steward made sure that we didn’t work a second after quitting time and reminded me often and loudly that as a non-union day laborer that I wasn’t covered by the Union in case of accident so I should join up and pay dues. I explained to him several times that Summer that I wasn’t interested in making construction my life and that I was in fact in school. Didn’t seem to matter to him.
I expected to be ostracized due to the fact that I was in school but the opposite seemed to take place. Most of the electricians were interested and asked questions about modern college life.
I can’t say that I made the best laborer. Most of these guys had been working hard since high school and were fairly muscular and large. By comparison I was small but apparently they appreciated that I tried to do my job as best as possible. Apparently day laborer isn’t a very well thought of position. They apparently are often late to work or don’t show up at all and spend an inordinate amount of time hiding in the supply shed trying to avoid working. Being naive as I was I didn’t know enough to hide from work and as a result I was being requested by various teams of electricians on different floors for whatever they needed.
Eventually this got me in trouble. One of the older electricians had a son who was a day laborer. This laborer was a snappy dresser and was not fond of getting his clothes dirty. He was as lazy as some of the other laborers. The older electrician took me aside one day and threatened me. He said “Do you want to live longer? Then stop working so hard!” At least I think it was a threat. Hard to tell.
The threat didn’t matter to me. It was mid August and my time was coming to an end. Community College was long over and I needed to get back to school and get my stuff out of storage and move back to College Station. I walked up to the foreman’s trailer and gave my week’s notice to the site foreman. All of the foremen there got really quiet.
“Can’t you wait for one more month, we’re almost done” I couldn’t and truthfully I didn’t want to either. Construction was a good experience for me but it wasn’t what I wanted to do for my life.
My last Friday came and I checked out. The site foreman announced it on the walkie-talkie and all the electricians wished me good luck at school. It was oddly touching. As I was leaving one of the junior electricians came up and took me into the supply shed. He looked left and right and behind him and handed me a scrap of paper. “Just in case you’re interested” Then he was off again.
It was a notice to some Christian revival meeting out in some small town I had never heard of. Unexpected but very kind of him and I could see why he would be nervous. The company would probably frown on this sort of thing.
I drove home that night and by Monday I was back in College Station setting up my apartment. I had my working summer and was glad to be out of the hard world of construction work but I was also dreading the monotony of school life once again.
Recent Comments