The Wilderness Years - Lucky Breaks

 And so the days rolled on... and they were good fucking days, let me tell you... having seen the Disco Dave fiasco recede into the bar lights, finagled my way into a three day work week so i could spend my mornings frolicking away across town with a buxom stripper, with money flowing in like a glistening mountain stream rolling downhill, it was all fucking good in the kingdom of North Oakland... or more correctly the East End hoods i traversed... but as usual there were some things i'd have to get sorted, the most pressing being that three day work week... the truth was i couldn't keep it up for much longer and i felt a bit guilty putting my chiropractor friend in a tough spot as it wasn't exactly on the up and up, my excuses were somewhat fabricated and i didn't want my boy to catch any heat for helping out a ranking hood... what heat? i'm not sure but there were rules to this shit, writing excuses from work, and i was pretty sure that sooner or later i'd get the sack or i'd be told if i wanted to keep my three day week i'd have to see the company doctor and i knew that i wouldn't pass that test, they'd see i was okay... 

So it came to pass that i went back to work full-time, the gig was getting strange as there were rumblings of a merger and a move and i felt a bit of sympathy for some of these guys... there was a guy in shipping who had three kids and was fretting that he might lose his job and what not, granted i don't know how he supported his family with what this place paid but the fact was i was the only guy here with a college degree (other than the manager) and some of these cats hadn't even gotten a GED... Shipping Guy had been at the place for a few years but my guess was he may have been pulling in $12-13 an hour, barely enough for one person to survive on let alone a whole family... meanwhile i had three guys working for me at this place, Metal Jerry being the key, with Buzzo grabbing a half pound or a pound at a time, and Hank getting a quarter pound, the best part was that Hank was Ginger Mark's father, it's how i met Ginger Mark cuz Hank had discovered i had taken all his business in the warehouse, once he saw what i had he asked if he could introduce me to his kid who moved a lot more than he did, in fact Hank explained that's where he was getting his weed but once he started getting it from me Ginger was both curious and miffed... even funnier, even after Ginger got on the team Hank would still get his grass from me cuz i didn't charge him as much as his kid... gotta love family... 

Then one fine day it happened... it was always nerve wracking for those not raking in a shit ton of cash in the weed business when the manager called a meeting in the break room, we all filed in while the fidgety and coke-loving manager paced the front of the room and announced there would be a special guest today, not that we didn't already know cuz the shithead had been sitting out front all day while every now and then strolling through the warehouse, the District Dickhead as he was know to us, or his proper title of district general manager, the corporate lackey who actually cared... or at least pretended to care cuz it was his job, one that apparently paid well as our own manager was often mentioned as taking over for the DD when the DD was promoted to some even "more important" position in the corporate hierarchy, what a fucking laugh, it gives me a better understanding as to why the suicide rate is so high among men in their 40s and 50s, the fucking meaninglessness of it all, the banality of existence pushing plumbing supplies or outerwear or car insurance, hell there weren't many jobs that provided one with some sort of purpose or meaning, most were merely there to keep us busy, to chase the various carrots dangled in front of us, a lifestyle sold to us through adverts, telling us the meaning of success... the car, the clothing, the hobbies a man needed to attract and keep female attention... it was the one valid point in Fight Club, we were sold shit we didn't need or want to keep us preoccupied with the fact that our existences really had no tangible meaning other than stockpiling shit so that we'd look hip or successful... 

I had never bought this line of thinking, it's why my old advertising professor and other people couldn't comprehend why i had turned down three jobs in the creative departments of ad agencies in order to go down to the beach to, and i quote, "surf and write poetry", yes one could say i was a top notch fucking wanker, a pretentious and young fool who didn't understand the world, yet hindsight being what it is it was one of the best and most important decisions i'd ever made... i remember certain family members not understanding this decision at all, the only one who really got it was my father, who after doing everything "right", was downsized and mergered out of his job, working 60 hour weeks to implement a new accounting system and once it was finished given his walking papers, a severance check and nice little pat on the back... i watched it all and decided early that it wasn't for me, that there would never be an employer i'd be fucking loyal to or go above and beyond for cuz ultimately when the cards were laid on the table that employer didn't give a fuck about you, me or anyone other than the shareholders and the executives (usually one and the same), it's why they called us resources instead of personnel, it sounded better and made it easier to dispense with the human capital... 

So there we all sat, a collective of lumpen-proles, all staring intently at the master of ceremonies District Dickhead, all maybe except for one, i was non-plussed by the meeting, in fact the only real question i had was did this count as our break? cuz if it did i'd rather go back to work and take my break later when i didn't have to listen to this corporate mouthpiece spout shite!  and so began the DD soliloquy...he started off by telling us the obvious, that the company had been involved in a merger and we'd be getting a new name and what not while also stating that he wanted us all to know that none of us had to worry about losing our jobs... while this was good news for 99% of the people in the room in my head i was thinking, motherfucker... can't you just lay me off? but no that was not to happen, you see we were a top outfit here, mainly due to our coked-up managers attention to detail, we were at the top in sales and efficiency and a whole lot of other shit i could give a flying fuck about, yes we were a veritable team of all-stars and we would all be retained... then came the little tidbit that the warehouse would be moving, about 15-20 miles up the road, to a new space, bigger and better and boy aren't we all thrilled with this development... no, Mr. Asshat, we or more correctly i, was not... 

The current warehouse was located on the North Side, roughly a fifteen minute drive from my apartment in the mornings and 25 minutes on the way back, it was located in a strip of industrial wasteland that bordered some of the, let's say, less gentrified areas of the city, it was a never ending clatter of large trucks, exhaust fumes, clanging, banging and yelling, there were a few bars about ten minutes away and restaurants that would actually deliver lunch to the area... the new place up the road meant my morning commute would double to closer to 30 minutes while the ride home would start pushing the hour mark... didn't these fucking nitwits know i had shit to do? the real job started the moment i clocked out and now these clowns wanted to cut into it... for guys like Metal Jerry and Buzzo, who already drove further for peanuts than i ever would, it meant an hour plus easily both ways, probably more like 90 minutes on the way home, for what this place was paying? you fucking kidding me? 

And there we sat, attentively listening like school children as the headmaster pontificated upon the gloriousness of capitalism and how we, as little cogs in a big machine, were the backbone of the investor class... not actually... mainly he blew sunshine up our asses so that he could keep us all on the team while the place moved, at some point he said we'd have to make our own decision about going up to the new place but as far as he was concerned our jobs were safe and he couldn't wait for the next chapter in this bore me to fucking tears with this corporate bullshit fairytale... in my head i was wondering just how this would all go down and what would happen when the move finally came cuz there was no way i was going that far up the road, fuck that fuck him fuck the company... until then i'd keep showing up and punching the clock and see how it all unfolded, in the end it didn't matter to me anyway, i made more in a month slinging (a lot more) than i did in a year working at this place... 

Back on the floor after the meeting there was a lot of talk, the concerned faces of the lumpen-proles, what the DD didn't take into consideration was that most of these guys, sans the guys on my payroll and the management, were living paycheck to paycheck and barely making it if they were making it at all.. there was gas money, travel time, childcare for some of them, listening to them i understood, i also understood i was the cat with a delicious canary in my back pocket, it wasn't a well kept secret at this point and some of the guys even mentioned as much in passing, the "what are you worried about? you don't need this gig" type of comment, they were right, but some of these guys were alright in my book and i was concerned for those cats, i may have been a right bastard but it didn't mean i was devoid of empathy... except for Kenny, that fucking clown could get fucked... in the meantime i had a business to run...