I Am Prepared To Quit

I think that I may have made a mistake today.

Last Thursday a woman from Edmonton called me (that should have put me on my guard) and asked if I wanted to work for a couple of weeks at the post office. I said sure, because, generally, the jobs at the Post Office are pretty easy. I was saying a euphoric goodbye when she said as an afterthought, “You do have steel toed shoes don’t you?” I said yes I did and wished her a good day.

It wasn’t until a little later that the steel toed shoe thing resurfaced in my brain. Hmmm...People that actually work wear shoes with steel toes. You don’t think...Nahhh! I went about my business with hardly a thought about work, and had a very good Labour Day weekend.

Today I went to sign the work agreement and about seven or eight other pages of personal information that the post office has had for the last thirty years. Every time I am hired to do a little work I need to go through this rig-a-ma-roll. Each time I ask them why they can’t use the information from the last time and they just shrug their shoulders and say “its policy.”  You know, I can appreciate that, except she is the one that makes the policy. It is stupid, but it is what I have come to expect from the post office.

Now, I was leaving today and she again asked if I had steel toed boots and said to wear long pants, to which I said yes to the shoes and pants. She then said that I shouldn’t worry because they will provide the hard hat. WTF?  Hard hat? This is beginning to sound like it might actually be work!

I tried to think about the last job that I needed to wear steel toes and a hard hat, and I have never needed both at the same time. I drove truck at the Post Office and they insisted on steel toes, which is why I have not one but two pair. I guess they figured a rogue pallet or parcel might fall from the sky and crush me to the point where the only way I could be identified was to show Louise my uninjured toes. I’m not sure that I could recognize my toes if they weren’t firmly attached to my foot, which was attached to my leg, which was attached to my body. It seemed odd at the time, but it was much easier to get the shoes than to argue.

I did wear a hard had when I worked in construction, but back in those days I guess they didn’t care if I lost my toes, just so long as my head was pristine. When you think about it, your face is on your head and it is pretty easy to ID someone from their face. They didn’t really seem to care much about you as long as you put in your days work.

I once worked at a place that manufactured doors which required no safety equipment at all, and of all the places I have been, that place needed safety equipment! I unloaded boxcars lying on my stomach and pulled and wrestled these huge planks out of the car one at a time during those hot Ontario summers. They did give us gloves, but the slivers just ripped right through them. I complained and they said that my hands will toughen up in a week or two. I think they meant scab up. I also “tailed” the thirty foot band saw. There was this old Italian guy that would give me shit if small pieces of wood or knots would fall near the blade. I would grab a stick and try to knock them away, but the old Italian guy said to use my hands. You know how Italians talk with their hands, as he was giving me shit and waving his hands all around, I noticed that he was missing four fingers on each hand. They should have given him steel toed gloves.

I am going prepared for anything tomorrow. I will have my boots with the steel toes, my lunch, I will have a hard hat, I will have long pants, and I am prepared to quit within the first ten minutes if it looks like real work.