Welcome to the Working Week

Since I was a little kid, I always thought the world had something special in store for me. Like it was only a matter of time before I made my mark. I felt certain that I was cut out for Big Things. Notoriety, respect, achievement. Those words were all part of my future. Wherever I was at any moment was just a stepping stone on my way to greatness of some kind. I just knew it.

Well, yesterday at around 11:30am, about ten minutes into my first shift as a member of the University of Wisconsin Hospital's Patient Meal Service (PMS) division, I stopped feeling that way. I watched the conveyor belt go by, and I took a quick look around at the broken-down batch of losers and low-lifes who God had somehow swept into the exact same corner of the universe as He had swept me, and I stopped feeling that way forever.

That's right, I took the Hospital Job.

I rode my moped out to there yesterday in 19 degree weather. Maybe a fifteen minute ride. My rule for Winter moped use is that if the roads are clear, you can ride in just about any temperature. You just need to bundle up good.

I got there at 11:15 for my 11am "interview." I guess part of me was trying to blow the whole thing. I went into the administrative office and asked for Verna. The nice lady told me to wait, and that Lana would be out to talk to me in a minute. I guess Lana will do, I thought.

While I waited in the office I looked out onto the working floor. You know how sometimes your mind paints a picture of something, and then when you actually see it it looks nothing like what you had imagined? That wasn't the case here. The place was nearly exactly as I pictured it from hearing Max's stories about it. It was basically one big grey room full of people, food, and equipment. No style. No art. No Feng Shui. At the center of the room was a conveyor belt, maybe 35 feet long, adjoined on both sides by steel cases full of food, which were manned by workers in white outfits. They watched intently as the belt rolled past them. First would come a metal bracket with a piece of paper attached to it (I soon realized these were menus). Then came a cafeteria tray. Onto those trays the workers would slap the appropriate items: dollops of mashed potatoes were scooped into small ceramic bowls and loaded on, cubes of lasagna slapped into casserole dishes and spun into position. Plastic juice cups were haphazardly tossed onto the trays.

It looked like awful, menial, mindless work. With the added element of pressure. I almost got up and left. I didn't want to judge anybody, but to be honest, I was thinking, This job is beneath me. It's low. I don't know if I can do it.

But before I could explore that line of thinking any further, Lana entered the room. She was an immense woman -- maybe 300 pounds -- with a kind enough face, but an expression that seemed to indicate she'd long ago given up hope of ever finding another moment of happiness. Within five minutes of her arrival in the room, the following events had taken place:

1. She shook my hand and seemed totally fine with the fact that I was late and I hadn't even brought a résumé.

2. She offered me a job as an LTE, or Limited Term Employee. This meant that I could work there for up to 1000 hours, not a second more. It may have been that expiration date, a pre-imposed limit on this futureless job, that led me to...

3. ...accept the offer.

4. I was issued my very own paper hat and told to go observe the Trayline.

Holy shit. Joining the workforce is easy!

I put the hat on and walked out to the conveyor belt area, where I met up with Dennis, the day shift manager. Later on I overheard that the evening shift manager's name is also Dennis. In Fast Times, Brad's manager at All-American Burger was Dennis Taylor. I am not sure what exactly to do with this data, but I think I'm onto something.

Dennis the Day Shift Manager was a pale, skinny dude with a moustache who looked like a child molester but turned out to be pretty nice. He gave me the lowdown on what I'd be doing in my new job.

PMS is responsible for delivering food to every patient in the hospital, he said with what seemed to me a little too much pride. The food is cooked two thirds of the way through by the cooking crew (they work the overnight shift, under a third manager whose name I can only assume is Dennis), and then it's stored in walk-in fridges until it's time to serve it. At that point, it is microwaved for the final one third of the required cookage.

After the initial cook-through, the next step the food takes on the way to the patients is the Trayline, which starts every day at 11 am. That's what I had been watching from the office. Those steel workstations were each responsible for a specific meal component. One person mans the entree station, another the starch station, another does vegetables, and another does beverages and desserts. At the front of the line stands The Starter. He -- big surprise -- starts the Trayline. In his hands is the menu for each patient in the hospital, with their choices circled. The Starter's name is Ken -- he's about forty years old, bearded, and I'm pretty sure, gay. That's all I've observed about him so far. He takes the menus and attaches them to the little metal stand and sets it on the belt. Then he takes a tray, puts a paper placemat on it, puts the appropriate silverware and salt and pepper packet (there are about four different packets according to patients' needs: low salt, no sugar, no pepper for those with weakened immune systems, etc.), and sends it on down the line behind the corresponding menu.

The rest of the white hat crew who occupy the stations along the belt have to recognize what kind of a menu it is (again, low salt, low fat, low sugar, NFFV-No Fresh Fruit or Vegetables, low fat AND low salt, clear liquids, etc.) and serve up a helping of whatever menu choices the patient has circled. In the format which that menu requires. Meaning the starch guy was responsible for four different kinds of mashed potatoes and four different types of gravy, and he had to choose the right combination based on the patient's dietary needs.

This was a lot of information, and to be honest, I started thinking maybe I wasn't up to the job. Not that it was beneath me, but that it was too challenging for me. That belt was moving FAST. And all the dirtbags on the line were in constant motion trying to keep up.

Dennis told me to sit in behind Carmine on the entree station for a little while. Carmine didn't seem like a bad fellow, he didn't turn a cold shoulder to the new guy or anything. He knew Max and so I guess he figured if I was a friend of Max's I wasn't a complete jive turkey. He was from New Jersey and he had really long straight hair that he pulled into a pony tail. He was working the lasagna gracefully while explaining the job to me and still finding time to tell me stories about his motorcycle, his band, and his sex life. The first thing I noticed about him was that he had a beautiful speaking voice: low and intense, but with that unmistakable Jersey lilt that almost sounds Southern. Just a glorious voice that I'm sure he perfected through late nights of cigarette smoking. After I watched and listened to him him for about forty minutes, he threw me to the wolves.

"Alright, your turn," he said, switching places with me.

He had explained that if you fall behind, you're supposed to yell out "Hold the line!" and then the guy at the very end of the line (The Checker -- responsible for making sure each tray is correctly stocked) presses a button and the belt stops. Then you have to frantically catch up on whatever trays you missed. And I fell behind almost immediately. Trays zoomed past without entrees. I was whizzing lasagna down the line and asking people to put it on trays that were almost to the end of the line. I was hustling like crazy to keep up, or rather, hustling just to stay behind. I was a blur. An inefficient blur, but a blur nonetheless. It was completely reminiscent of "I Love Lucy." Since it was my first day, I would do anything to avoid saying "Hold the line!" It would be admitting defeat, and you don't admit defeat on Day One. Day Three, maybe.

The person across the line from me, the Starch Dude, was a guy named Mark, late 30's, long beard, glasses, deep voice, kinda scary looking. Like a hippie with a violent past. I've heard through Max that he's an underachieving intellectual type who's been working there for about ten years, just sticking around for the benefits. Sensing my struggle, he started grabbing trays to prevent them from getting past me. As he held them there with the belt running underneath them, and everyone staring at me, he'd read off the items I needed to put on: "Fat Free Lasagna, no sauce." "Next tray: Regular Lasagna, with sauce." "This one needs a chicken breast," etc. He was getting PISSED. I haven't mentioned the way it works: the sooner Trayline gets done, the sooner we all go on break, and the longer the break will be as a result. So teamwork is essential.

And I wasn't holding up my end. Even with his help, trays and menu holders were stacking up and clanging into each other.

Finally, Mark yelled out, "HOLD THE LINE!!!!!!!!!"

Then he ran back, grabbed the first tray that I had let slip by, and swept all the trays back to my station with one furious wave of his arm. Stuff was falling on the floor and getting all banged around, and the room went completely quiet. His face was bright red and the veins in his neck were beginning to bulge out. It looked like he might take a swing at me. He yelled at me about my hesitance to say "Hold the line." He read off all the items I was missing. Then the line started up again and we continued in silence.

It was at some point in there that I looked around and realized that I'm not destined for anything more in this world than $6.20 an hour and dirty white pants.

Never have I been happier than when I got back to my apartment around 7:30 that evening to find Vic watching TV.

"Darts?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I said. We grabbed a couple of Old Milwaukees out of the fridge and I didn't even care that he nearly shut me out in a game of cricket. At least I was home.

I'll tell you the rest of my day later, but suffice it to say that it was all grim. Today was more of the same. This is my life now. My schedule is going to work like this:

The hours are 10:30am-7pm exactly. We all gather in front of the time clock and we actually have to punch in and punch out, just like Fred Flintstone. I will get two days off every week, but usually not consecutively, and only once a month will they fall on the weekend.

I keep telling myself that this is a good life experience, that it'll teach me what the real world is all about, an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, all that bullshit. The truth is it's an awful job and I better be careful not to get used to it.

984 hours to go.