So this is Work

It wasn’t a mistake.
I went for the interview. I got the job. (amazing, I know)
Took two buses to get there.
Showed up for work (most days)
Paid me twelve bucks an hour.
Said I was a “grocery picker.”
Learned to drive a “machine.” (that’s what warehouse folk call power-jacks)
Learned to use the machine to move "skids". (that’s what warehouse folk call pallets)
Got purdy damn good at it too.

Learned to read the bin numbers and load product onto the skids. Stacked hundreds of cases. Filled orders for hospitals, for halfway homes; for retirement communities filled with oldfolk’s tired bones.
Filled orders for the Chinese restaurant.
And the hotel on Belmont, where some kid-singer named Bieber once stayed, some kind of wunderkind debutant.
Filled orders for the cafeteria in Beaver Lodge Elementary.
Filled orders for Stony Mountain Penitentiary.

Told myself: “after four paychecks… I’m gone.”

I used to have hair growing out of my knuckles.
I used to have only calluses on my fingers from pick’in ma gee-tar.
Used to run my hand over a girl’s skin and she say “ummmm, I love your touch.”
Now they flinch and say something about sandpaper.

Loading those damn skids. Fifty cases of flour. Twenty of Coke-a-Cola. Forty cases of Gatorade, fifty more of Sunny D. Stack’em up. Higher, higher.
Kraft Dinner, sugar cubes, soda pop, jiffy lube.
Build that skid!
Fill that order!
All I’ma do’in is supporting people’s junk food habits!
Gotta build’em square else the shippers’ll get all up in your grill, say shit like: “that whole fuck’in load gonna fall outt-of-the truck you don’t build’em skids right.”

I start call’in in sick.
Make’in shit up really.
Only had a week or so to go. But I say, the hell with it.
And so I heads out, down to the honky-tonk on Main St. See great song writing heroes sing songs about quitting jobs and the hobo’in life and I get drink-drank-drunk and then with the stagger-and-jags I get frost-bite on ma nose while waiting for the bus in 36 below.
And when I get on home I draft this letter and send it off to the warehouse via email:

MGMT

Thursday last, after seeing my family GP for what was a bad flu, I was informed, following some tests, that my white blood cell count is normal and that no one really knows what comes after death.

Yesterday (Monday) my request to see an oncologist was denied and further testing was deemed ‘void of reason’.

Something outside though, something cold and beautiful (but unpleasant), continually reminds me of the warm blooded nature of my mammalian existence, and is certainly the source of my illness. And though I have grown a substantial beard as a ‘winter’s coat’ for this harsh Winnipeg climate, it is proving to be insufficient cause for me to remain.

I’m forced then, to depart for the Central American isthmus until such time that the wind ceases to carry with it, the knife edge of winter.

With regard to my employment at the warehouse, I know that hard work makes the man, however, the mind of this man, I feel, will be unable to focus on the tasks of grocery picking, as most days, it is elsewhere.

I hope you do not find this letter recalcitrant. It is simply one of resignation.

Thank you for the opportunity that you have given me, and for the valuable workplace training.


Yours, respectfully,

Sean C. Allingham