Installing Appliances

I really shouldn’t be here, I thought to myself as I did my best to avoid the paths of crisscrossing forklifts and followed Jimmy across the warehouse floor. “You can come in tomorrow, if you want,” he told me ten hours earlier on the phone. After two weeks of fruitless Craigslist Job Posting inquiries and my bank account bleeding dry, such an offer seemed too good to pass up. “What about training? I’m not really experienced with this kind of work,” I asked. “You’re a smart kid right? You’ll pick it up no problem. So I’ll see you tomorrow?”

For the two weeks prior I hadn’t gotten out of bed before 10:30 a.m., so making my body get out of bed at 6 that morning left me in that fuzzy area between sleep and consciousness. After roaming Carteret for 15 minutes, I finally found the tiny PC Richard & Son sign that eluded me. I drove by the security gate without stopping and the guard waved at me as if I’d been driving in every day for the past four years. Tight security, I mused.

Jimmy met me outside and I followed him up a loading dock and into the warehouse. As a subcontractor, he had three trucks to call his own and his own five-man crew to run them. By his loading docks his guys rushed to load up their trucks, stopping quickly to shake my hand and then disappearing into the sea of workers hustling back and forth in their navy blue PC Richard’s shirts. “Hey Jimmy, is there any paper…” I started to ask when I realized he was nowhere in sight. I really shouldn’t be here, I thought again as everyone else’s uniform tees made my usually dull grey Villanova t-shirt glow like a firefly. I could feel the regular workers’ stares piercing through my feeble disguise as they strolled by. “Ha. Hey Bill, get a load of this little pretty boy. Hope he doesn’t break a nail today,” I imagined them saying to one another.

“Hey Tom, I’m pairing you up with Victor. He’ll teach you everything you need to know,” Jimmy said, reappearing suddenly behind me. “Uh… should I… don’t I have to sign some kind of paperwork?” I finally asked. “Na, we can take care of that later. There’s Victor.” Glancing at Victor in the distance as he emerged from the truck trailer, I started, “Hey, I’m not sure how I feel…” but by the time I turned back to Jimmy, he was gone again.

Left with no other choice, I walked over to my new coworker. “Hey, I’m Tom. Victor, right?” I said as I offered my hand. He reciprocated and his hand, dry and rough from constant use, engulfed mine. He was just taller than me, and he looked like a Hispanic Gary Sheffield. I later found out he was only 25, but his face was worn and aged and it made him look almost a decade older. “Do you have a box cutter?” “No. Should I?” I replied as panic set in. “I’ll grab you one.” As my new on-the-job trainer ran to his trailer, my mind began spiraling. A box cutter? I’m such a spaz. What if I cut myself? I really shouldn’t be here. What if I hurt myself? Or worse, him?

Saying that I had no experience with appliance installation was a gross understatement. Truth is I was not allowed to even mow the lawn until I was eighteen because my dad worried about me losing a foot. The only time I handled a pocketknife as a kid I cut myself within seconds of flipping the blade. I was always led to believe that I was much too inept to handle any type of tool; that even touching one could potentially leave me maimed for life. Now I’d have to install washers, dryers, AC units, electric ovens, and the like without as much as a safety video or at least signing a waiver. It was all too much to think about.

He must’ve forgotten about the box cutter along the way because he came back with a dolly and told me to load the washer, dryer, oven, and the ceiling units onto the truck. Spastic as I am, it took three tries to get the first box on the cart, and then two for the second one. I feigned confidence as I walked the units over to the truck and then panicked once again when there was no “Place washer here” sign. It turns out that the random spot on the trailer bed that I chose sufficed, and, after securing all our deliveries, we were good to go.

Climbing into the truck made me akin to an infant trying to climb on an insurmountable couch. As we left the warehouse lot and any chance I had of backing out, Victor made a quick call to his girlfriend as he handled the hula-hoop-sized steering wheel. I examined the contents of the cabin, our office for the day. A lone cigarette rolled off the dashboard and I snagged it from its descent and proudly returned it to its owner. I sat in the passenger seat thinking – a bit more optimistically this time – At least I’m not completely useless. I really shouldn’t be here, but maybe I’ll learn something new. For the rest of his phone conversation, I watched a mental montage of myself decked in a tool belt and heroically repairing anything from leaky pipes to a blown car transmission. Yeah, this’ll be good.

I’m not good with silence, so after Victor hung up I had to fill it. “So how long you been doing this for?” I said sheepishly. “Oh me, man, I been doin’ this for about three fawkin’ years now. Yeah, man, but I gotta tell people I’ve been doin’ it for five. They look at me and think I don’t know what I’m doin’.” Silence again. “So, uh, you from around here?” Stupid, Tom. “Yeah, I don’t live to far from here. But I’m from the Dominican Republic.” “Oh, cool. So when did you move to the States?” “Well, first we moved to Puerto Rico and then I came here when I was 16.” Then he explained that his stepfather was a total douche bag and he ran away for months at a time and lived with his aunt and uncle. He got a job as soon as he could to support himself independently and live on his own.

The conversation was going well. Wondering if I actually wanted to stick with this job, I asked Victor what he thought about the work. “You know man, sometimes it really sucks. You got some days, you get in the truck at seven and you don’t get back home until eleven at night.” For instance, our day was supposed to be a “light day” and we were on the road until 5:30 p.m. and only finished two jobs. He went on, “But then you got some days when you can make a hundred bucks in cash alone. On a bad day, maybe you get twenty bucks.” We made five apiece that day. Six days a week of anywhere between eight and fourteen hours of work a day hardly seemed worth the six hundred dollars I’d be making a week. He added, “Right now you’re just lucky to have a job. Used to be I could find a new job every two weeks if I wanted to. Not these days, man.”

I thought to myself, I can’t do this job. I’d have absolutely no life and then suddenly it all came colliding together in my brain. Why did I have this choice of taking this job or leaving it in a time when so many people would wipe your ass for you if you gave them a steady paycheck? Why was this job good enough for Victor but too much for me? I thought back to my childhood, growing up with parents could afford to sign me up for little league and send me to a private high school. How different would I be if I moved here from a different country as a teen and lived with a stepfather who I couldn’t bear to live with? Would I have done so well if I didn’t have parents who encouraged me to work harder than my hardest? Going to a school like Villanova made me very aware of where I stood in society, but never before had I realized what this privilege meant than I did at this moment. It meant that I could turn down an undesirable job and chalk it up to it simply “not being for me.” It meant that if I didn’t work now, I’d still have a comfortable bed to sleep in, food to eat, and even money to go out with. Why was I so fortunate? Was there really that much separating Victor and me?

These questions lingered in my head throughout the rest of the day. When we installed the washer and dryer, Victor sprawled out on the wet floor – the result of my inability to hold a washer hose upward – without hesitation while I fumbled with the power drill trying to attach the base of the dryer. I watched him worm his way into a ceiling crawlspace and navigate his way to above the kitchen, practically baking himself along the way. Three times he had to explain that a job would cost much more than was previously estimated, and three times I watched the homeowners’ eyes study him suspiciously. While they questioned him silently, they questioned me about my Villanova shirt and would look at me with sympathy and even admiration. “What a noble young man to take such a lowly job in such hard economic times,” they seemed to be thinking, yet all I was capable of was carrying an oven here or a dryer there and maybe handing Victor a wrench or screwdriver when he needed. Despite my ineptness, their eyes always focused on Victor and seemed to say, He really shouldn’t be here.