During winter breaks in college, I sometimes signed on with the local temp agency to pick up some extra cash for school. I hoped with all my powers that the temp agency would place me in a cool, creative job, something in line with drawing cartoons or designing moustache combs. Then the next day, I’d learn that they had assigned me to the frontlines of an assembly line at one of the dozen warehouses in town.

Most of the time, I worked first shift, which was ideal. Sometimes, though, the only openings available were second-shifts. Second shift isn’t too bad. Yeah, the hours are odd: you work through dinner and get off right when most people are considering brushing their teeth for bed. And scheduling a time to hang out with friends can be a hassle. But these cons are largely offset by the fact that you get to sleep in every morning. Plus, there’s little traffic to contend with coming home.

But twice, I got stuck with third shift. My friends were always gearing up for a fun night just as I was grabbing my steel-toed boots to take to the deserted, dark streets toward my gloomy destination. I drove through the cold nights listening to odd late-night-radio talk shows and thinking about how sleepy I already was until the flat, smoky tops of the warehouse buildings, Nos. 1 through 12, emerged in the distance. Often at this moment, I was overcome by an eerie sensation that if I released the steering wheel and let off the gas, a tractor beam would continue to pull me along to my parking space. I never tried it, though, for fear it might actually happen.

A dim, jaundiced light lit every warehouse I’ve ever worked in. It always took a minute for my eyes to adjust before I could clock in and hide the snack I had brought behind the expired creamer and Tupperware of mystery meat in the back of the break room fridge. Once inside the belly of the building, I walked with caution, for fear I might get struck by a fast-moving forklift or a skid of shrink wrap.  However, there were no known defenses against the dry warehouse air. By the end of the week, my lips would be chapped so badly they’d look as though I’d kissed a cactus. 

For this particular job, I worked as a package sorter on an assembly line. From my perch, I could see people being busy throughout the building. Interestingly, I was even able to uncover a few guys in my old high school class who I thought had been missing since my junior year. Occasionally, one would break free from his work, come up, open his wallet, and show me a mini photo of his baby.

But, overall, the racket of the machines and conveyor belts made it difficult to hear yourself think, much less talk to anyone. Some conversation would have been nice, too, but after I’d learned the gist of the job, they had banished me to a platform all alone.

Occasionally, my supervisor would tap me on the shoulder and tell me to take 15. Break time at 3 a.m., amounted to little more than my sitting in the break room with perhaps one or two other lone souls fighting to keep my eyes open until it was time to clock back in. Sometimes I’d stare at the plastic ashtray on my table until everything turned blurry. Other times, I’d pick up an ancient issue of Sports Illustrated that someone had left behind and read about the controversy surrounding the Brooklyn Dodgers’ decision to move to the West Coast.

I was put in charge of sorting little packages; that is, packages weighing less than 10 lbs (?). These packages held a variety of things, but most were green-tinted transparent bags containing biopsies being sent from hospitals to labs for testing. Each biopsy bag contained a sealed stubby cup of liquid, a vile of blood, or another transparent pouch containing a hunk of something, and they bumped down a conveyor belt from an unseen source. 

I can’t remember the exact details of the job. But whatever I did required my handling and separating these packages with latex gloves that waterlogged the skin on my hands so badly that it took nearly a half hour for my fingers to regain color and feeling. When it was finally time to go home, I’d pop the gloves off and wonder if my hands were ever going to turn back to normal.

Then I’d drive home just as the morning sun was poking through the trees. As I faded in and out of consciousness behind the wheel from lack of sleep, I’d wonder if any of those biopsies I’d sorted belonged to someone who draws cartoons for a living.

Categories: Odd Jobs
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