“Give me the most expensive, sugar-saturated, caffeine-stuffed jug of delicious garbage you have.” Okay, I didn’t actually say that when I got to the head of the line at Starbucks, but that was my intention when I ordered the venti quadruple mocha frappawhatever. I regularly take stock of my life, to see where I can …
“If you keep making jokes, people will think you are a joke.” My trainer rolled her eyes and continued… “… Leave the joking to the 10-year-olds.” “If I don’t laugh, I’m going to cry,” I muttered In less than a week, the woman in charge of my training declared she was done helping. She broke …
On Sunday, I got a text that caused a cold wave of dread to ripple through my gut. It was from Ted, confirming to show up Monday at 5AM for my new position. Huh. Why on earth would that freak me out? It was the exact thing I’d been clawing for… … but with the …
“If you don’t start finishing on time, we’ll find someone who will.” The entire load team sat in a meeting room facing Ted. For weeks, we’d been dragging ass. Never mind that we were already understaffed and trailing further behind as the company grew. We’d never once finished a shift in under 10 hours. The …
“These are the towels they wipe baby’s asses with!” Jesus said, with an impish smile on his face. I perched atop the lift gate of a truck, grabbing little, wet towels by hand from a giant basket and tossing them into a bag a few feet below. They stunk of hospital disinfectant. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” …
As soon as I saw the audio files manifest in my DropBox folder, I saved them to my MP3 player. Then I drove to work. Just the day before, I’d reached out to my friend Jason for some help (same guy I got the business loan from). For years, he’d made a living by building …
Saturday morning. I slept in, soaking up the little taste of luxury… and then got out of bed for my meditations. Something felt off. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it… until I got online, checked my bank balance… … and saw something that made my stomach turn into an aching stone A charge …
As I prepared for bed after my first day (and night) of work, I took a single melatonin pill… … and then lay in my bed, wired almost to the point of shaking. As if I’d just awoken in the morning and drank a pot of coffee. Even though it was past 2AM. So I …
One week after I was officially hired, I returned to the same warehouse at 2PM, ready to take on my new career. Two in the afternoon was my new workday’s “morning.” And unlike a typical 9-5, there wasn’t an official end to a day’s shift. The load team stopped only for one reason: We loaded …