Chief Executive Assistant Asshole

The job was called "breakage." Breakage was where they brought damaged bottles and cans to be salvaged and repackaged at a beverage warehouse in Passaic, NJ. The job's details were many, the responsibilities enormous. For starters, I cleaned shards of broken glass off bottles. I also made new cardboard containers for saved beer cans. Finally, I burned myself with a glue gun. This last part wasn't actually a job responsibility, just a working condition.

To get things started, factory hands forklifted in a pallet of beers, juices and sodas that had been mangled during transit. The first second I saw that heaping, lopsided jalopy of a pallet I could tell it had waited a long, long time. The top of the pallet rose to an uneven pyramid of moldy sixpack containers and cardboard beercases. It looked sad yet menacing.

I worked under a lazy black man named Chuck. He was 26 years old, about 5-foot-5, and would probably be at the warehouse for the rest of his life. He hadn't graduated high school, lived in Elizabeth, NJ, and had a handful of kids. The thing I remember most about him is how he explained the job in five minutes: "Shit's easy," he said, and sat down on a crate, where he stayed. Yeah, shit was easy, for him.

The second day of work I turned around and saw Chuck place his hands over his eyes. He looked like he was about to cry. For a second I felt bad for him. He was going nowhere.

We worked in a windowless cement square in the warehouse, lit by fluorescent light and juiced by one small radio Chuck always tuned to Hot 97. My coworker was an oafish, lumbering white guy named George. Like me, George was fresh out of college. He had gone to Glassboro State in NJ?the same Glassboro State I had laughed at when they mailed me their pathetic little brochure back in high school. Well, here we were. Brothers in breakage.

George and I were instructed to sift through the breakage and salvage the good bottles and cans, which we were to bring to a slop sink and wash off. When we had enough of a particular brand, like, say, 12 usable cans of Coors Silver Bullets, we would make cardboard sixpack or 12-pack holders for them. If there weren't enough beers for a full holder we'd place the remainders on a shelf, useless as bowling trophies.

Making the holders proved to be an adventure, because we had to use the glue gun. We had to hoist it up, open the chamber where the glue stick went, put in the glue stick and squeeze the trigger. It was simple enough with the glue gun that worked. However, the other glue gun didn't have a mechanism to automatically push down the stick and you'd have to press it down manually. Nothing would happen for a few moments and then, voila, the whole stick would melt at once. You had to move quick to keep your finger from getting burned by the heater inside. Sometimes the molten glue would all spew out the other end in a rush, get on everything and burn the fuck out of my hand.

There were many other ways to get injured in breakage. Sometimes small shards of broken glass would lodge in my fingers while I was washing bottles, and I'd start to bleed. The first time this happened I told Chuck, and he told me to put on the gloves so that wouldn't happen. I'd already seen the gloves, and had avoided them, even though I knew I could get cut. The gloves were just the most wretched, moldy, used pair of gardening gloves I'd ever seen. They had a kind of ripe, dank smell, even when dry. They were once white, or whitish, and now were a kind of pus color. But not wanting to get cut again, I put them on. They quickly got wet, smelled even worse, and I imagined someone else's sweat on my skin.

The owners of the warehouse were a father-and-son team named George and George Jr. George Jr. must've liked what he saw in me because when I asked him what I should say for a job title on my timecard?on my fourth, and last, day?he said: "How about Chief Executive Assistant Asshole?" That was the first time he'd ever said anything to me.

The lunchroom was plastered with cheesy posters of the Coors "Silver & Gold" girls?multiracial modeling teams of large-breasted women aggressively pushing forward cans of Coors beer. The models smiled either with extreme fakeness or a kind of wild, demented enthusiasm. Conversation in the lunchroom ran to very little, mostly New York-area sports. Fishing was also discussed. I was a temp and no one cared about what I had to say, so I sat alone.

The bathroom was located just off the lunchroom, was done in pastel tile and came equipped with a shower?for safety's sake, a sign explained, although I don't know what could be that toxic in a beer warehouse, besides the beer. The stalls were lined with derogatory graffiti about George Jr. that told in great detail what an asshole he was, what a goddamn little pussy and daddy's boy he was. What amazed me was how George Jr. actually took the time to respond to these taunts with his own graffiti: "If you've got something to say be a man about it and say it to my face."

After lunch I'd open the warehouse door to go outside. This was how much I hated the job: I was overjoyed simply to see the sun, while standing in a parking lot. The warehouse was located right off a highway, and although the putrid air made me gag, it was sweeter than glue gun fumes.

Why did I even take this job? It only paid $6 an hour. I think it was something about not wanting to seem like a lazy, soft rich kid after college. I was intent on showing my parents, and myself, that I had a strong streak of self-reliance and wasn't spoiled by four cushy years at school. So I literally took the first job the temp agency offered. My parents neither understood nor cared for my job. Certainly neither of them congratulated me for my great work ethic.

One of the best parts of the day was when we could pop beer cans. I loved popping the tallboy cans; they felt really good in my fist. There was an upright shovel in the same corner as the slop sink. We smashed partially damaged or bloated cans directly against the shovel blade. The pressure in the can caused it to burst open like a ripe, seed-bearing fruit and white foam would spray everywhere. It got all over me, but I didn't care. I imagined I had just split a skull.

Another memorable time involved two cases of "Elliot's Amazing" fruit juice. They just sat there. No one would touch them, because they were so old and moldy. But eventually we worked our way through all the other refuse and there was nothing left.

They sat for a while; no one wanted to commit to it.

"Ah, well, I guess I'll do it," I sighed, praying this would elicit help from the other guys. But of course it didn't. I tried to pick up the first case, but it handled like a soaking, loaded cardboard diaper. It started to rupture and collapse from the get-go. Better yet, it was filled with swarming gnats, or shit flies, or maggots or whatever insects live in old fruit juice. They swarmed about my glove-covered hands as I raced the sodden diaper to the sink before it exploded. The cardboard bottom of the case started to give out about seven feet before I made it there. Wet, broken glass?that I would have to clean up?started to fall to the cement floor. I barely made it. The were only eight good bottles in the case, the rest shattered.

As I washed the entire case, one bottle at a time, the gnats started to run down the drain. I fantasized the tap water was napalm and the gnats were rustic villagers of some sort.

"Goodbye, you fuckers, you disgusting little pieces of shit," I said. "I hope you die painfully, you drowned pieces of black crap." After that purging I steeled myself, gathered my strength and repeated it all for the second case.

But the clincher had to have been on my last day on the job. My division superior?also named George, by the way?walked into breakage and asked George the Oaf and me if we wanted to re-up through the temp agency.

"I don't know," I lied.

"Yeah, I probably will," said the Oaf.

"Yeah, a lot of guys started like you, temp," said George the Supervisor. "And then they just stayed. Money's pretty good. Steady work. You'll probably come back. Everyone comes back."

I looked at Chuck. He'd come back. I looked at George the Supervisor. He'd come back every day for decades. I looked at the Oaf. He'd probably come back, and thereby deny himself his lifelong dream of becoming a highway cop.

I looked at me. I'd probably come back, too. Packed with dynamite, smoking a cigarette.