Screamo

Today, I am going to write about another co-worker of mine. I could have included him along with all of my other . . . interesting . . . yeah, let's go with interesting co-workers in Co-Worker Freak Show, but I figured he was a big enough character to have his own blog entry. I should apologize in advance, but I am going to vicariously introduce you to a person whose code name shall be Screamo.

I call him Screamo, because, despite being only five feet tall, he is the loudest person I have ever met and he usually makes me want to scream.  It's a good thing he wasn't in hiding with Anne Frank because there is no way he would have been able to stay quiet all day, every day for so long. He always talks as loud as he possible can, usually stretching the names of people and other words out into long grunting/groaning noises. So, instead of saying, "George, how are you doing today?" he says "GEEEEOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRGE, HOW  YOOOOOOU DOOOOOOOOOOOIN'?" (George is a random name. No one I know, neither myself, is named George.) And a lot of the time, he doesn't even use discernable words. He just looks at someone and smiles and makes his trademark three-second groan. I have a serious suspicion that he is at least partially insane.

Luckily, this annoying man is on a different sanitation team than me, but I have had a multitude of run-ins with him, three of which I will share with you.

Run-In #1 : One day, my team was called to help Screamo's team clean one of their machines. As I rarely clean that particular machine, I wasn't too familiar with what to do. At one point, Screamo approached me and started grunting and pointing at something. I looked at him blankly. He saw that I didn't understand. And then he pointed and groaned again. I shifted my blank stare into a glare and responded, "I don't understand grunts." He then used his loud, loud words to explain how I could more efficiently clean the machine, leaving me confused why groaning was his first choice for methods of communication.

Run-In #2 : Once again, my team was called to help Screamo's team on one of their machines (because they're lazy and slow). When I got to their machine, they were in the middle of cleaning it, and as I didn't know what needed to still be cleaned, I had to ask someone. Well, guess who the first person I ran into was. Yes. Screamo. He had a brush in his hands and was scrubbing something, and when I asked him what to do, he handed me his brush and said he was going home for the day. I shoved the brush back into his hands and told him that I was willing help him clean his machine but that I wasn't going to do his job for him. He looked me up and down as if he was disgusted and I walked off to find something else to do. A few minutes later, I saw Screamo leaving the production floor and leaving my team to do the work he refused to do.

Run-In #3 : One day, some sanitation employees were planning to take a long lunch and go to a restaurant. I was invited and went along. At the restaurant, the employees trickled in, filling up a couple of tables. Screamo was the last to arrive and found that the tables we were sitting at were full. He sat down at a different table by himself and tried to call some people over to with him. No one moved. He tried to coax some of us over again, this time calling us by name. He called to me, but I ignored him. He ended up eating by himself and I felt kind of bad, but the last thing I wanted to do was eat lunch with him. I avoid him the best I can, so there was no way I was going to willingly subject myself to him more than what is unavoidable. I might have stabbed him after the fifteenth groan. No. I take that back. I most definitely would have stabbed him after the fifteenth groan. So, maybe I shouldn't feel bad about ignoring him. I was just saving his life. From me.

Daily Ice-Cream Intake :
1/4 Gallon - Rocky Road Ice-Cream, 2 Ice-Cream Candy Bars, 1 Orange/Vanilla Treat, 1 Vanilla Waffle Cone

(see also The Summer of Free Ice-Cream (A Running Tally))

The Most Pathetic Claw

When I began my job at the ice-cream factory and found out that I would be squeezing hose nozzles all day long, I thought to myself "This is going to be a great! I'm going to get to workout my forearms all the time!" I was, however, sorely mistaken. Instead of growing bigger, stronger forearms, I have been plagued by horrendous hand pain.

The pain wasn't too bad at the beginning. Sure, my hand was sore, but I figured that should be expected since it was being subjected to this new torture I call 8 to 10 hours work days. But over the past several weeks, the pain has only gotten worse.

The odd thing is that the pain is not where I would have expected it to be--either the palm of my hand or my forearm--but is in my fingers. I'm sure there must be muscles inside of my fingers, but I never thought about them until they became painfully aware--in the most literal manner. The pain is more of a dull tightness and pressure running from my knuckles to the first joints of my pinky, ring, and middle fingers throughout the day, but it is much worse in the morning right when I wake up. Since I haven't been moving my fingers for the several hours I have slept, the muscles have become very tight and I can't open them at all for several minutes. Try as I might to straighten those three fingers, they remain throbbing and curled up in the most pathetic claw you have ever seen until I have massaged them and gradually worked them open with my good hand.

When the pain first got bad, I asked a few of my co-workers about it. Assuming it just took a certain amount of time for my hand and fingers to get used to the work, I asked them how long it would take for my hand to stop hurting. The response I received, "When you quit", was not encouraging.

As it turns out, all of the sanitation department suffers from the same hand/finger pain. One fellow employee, a middle-aged Guatemalan woman, said "Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night, and, oh, my God, my hand is on fire. It hurts so bad. I have to rub and rub it and ice it. But what else am I supposed to do? The supervisor's don't like to hear about the pain. When you tell them, they make mad." There was even one employee, who still works there in sanitation, who had to have wrist surgery because of how badly the constant hose squeezing screwed him up. Yikes!

Of course, I have been worried about my hand's well-being, but I figured that if I could tough it out for only a couple of months that there shouldn't be any permanent damage, right? I only have two more days inside of The Ice-Cream Hell Tunnel, and then I will have to just wait and see how well my poor, poor dominant hose-wielding hand springs back from the abuse it has been put through.

Daily Ice-Cream Intake :
1/4 Gallon - Neapolitan Ice-Cream, 1/4 Gallon - Tin Roof Sundae Ice-Cream, 1 Turtle Sundae Bar, 1 Ice-Cream Candy Bar

(see also The Summer of Free Ice-Cream (A Running Tally))

The Fool, I Am!

In a pathetic attempt to appear more grateful for their employees than they actually are, the company supplied everyone with a free lunch today. When I don't know the owner of the company or even most of the managers or supervisors and I get a "thank you" delivered in the form of free food, I feel like I am being tricked into feeling appreciated, especially when I know that I am nothing more than a nameless worker tossed to and fro in a sea of nameless workers. I don't mean to be all pessimistic and sassy, but it just seems like they're trying to distract us from the misery that is factory work by throwing some food at us. Maybe it's just me. Or maybe I'm just too smart for this game.

Anyway, the morals of that story are 1) I don't trust bosses when they give us free food because it feels like they're trying to trick us into forgetting how much we hate our jobs, and 2) I ate way too much of the free food.

I ate so much free food, in fact, that I didn't have much room left for ice-cream! Darn that pulled-pork! Send that beef brisket to Hell! And shoot the delicious array of barbecue sauces in the kneecaps! I may not trust free food, but I sure as Hell will eat as much of it as I can (can you tell I was recently and will soon again be a college student?).  I only have four days of access to free ice-cream remaining and I was wasting my appetite on "thank-you for all you do" food? I can have mediocre meat sandwiches anytime I want, but my frugal nature rarely allows me to loosen the purse strings enough to buy quality ice-cream! What was I thinking?! Well, isn't it obvious? I, clearly, wasn't thinking at all!

Now that it's coming down to my last few days at the ice-cream factory, nostalgia has started to kick in. I have such wonderful memories . . . of eating ice-cream right from the cartons . . . of roaming the factory to find what delicious treats I would be consuming that day . . . of co-workers gawking at my voracious ice-cream appetite . . . of mounds of wrappers laying empty and dead on the table before me in the wake of my gluttony . . .

The memories of the glory of free ice-cream will have to suffice. But, I assure you, I will be strong. I will not cry. Or, at least, I will never admit that I will number the tears and long for the olden times.

Daily Ice-Cream Intake
1 Vanilla and Brownie Waffle Cone, 1 Banana Split Waffle Cone, 1 Vanilla and Caramel Waffle Cone, 1 Rainbow Push-Up

(see alsoThe Summer of Free Ice-Cream (A Running Tally))