It had seemed like such a sweet deal. There has to be something salvageable, right? It can’t all go down the crapper. I’ve done so much work here. I look around the place; it looks like I haven’t done a thing.

The place is still a mess.

When I read the ad last year, my first thought was “Too good to be true”. I was right but it wasn’t like I had many options at that point. Unemployed for over two years, no more unemployment benefits, a lousy hundred dollars a month in food stamps and a gig cleaning up vomit at the local punch palace for drinks and ten bucks an hour.

What’s that? That’s no way for a man to live.

I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. I’d have done any kind of work; I’m not proud that way. Who’s gonna hire a 48 year old white guy with a plate in his head? Right, right. I don’t have to tell every prospective employer about the plate but somehow it always works its way into the conversation. Not just job interviews. Sometimes I think the plate wants everyone I meet to know its there; it’s like I’m talking about my experience with front end loaders and then here comes this whole line of crap about the accident and how it was all such a freak thing and the crazy ordeal with the hospital and how the first plate they tried didn’t work.

What’s that? What’s this fabulous job I signed on for?

Look around you! See all those stacks of coiled wire? That wall of boxed circuit breakers? Over there. Look at all those itemized, alphabetized and correlated, cross referenced card files. You think I’m not earning that damned two hundred a week? You try to do better and on all of maybe six hours of sleep a night on the good nights. I’m not gonna talk about the dreams right now. The doc says they aren’t related to the plate. Fine. Whatever.

I can’t be standing around like this. I got work to do.

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