This likely wasn’t my second job ever, I just can’t remember where it fit in. I think I was in high school when I had it. Now, for those who read of my adventures at Best Value Restaurant and recall I said it was my first job, and I was in college, you’ll have to accept a sad, weird truth. I dropped out of college to go to high school again. Don’t ask why, just trust that it made sense at the time and it was totally worth it as it lead to an incident in which I saw some boob.

Anyway, Starmail is a company that delivers flyers for grocery stores. The bundle you get in your mail box every week with your coupons for clam chowder and so on that are most likely delivered by some 11 year old who lives in your neighborhood. A step up (or down) from that 11 year old’s job was mine, working at the warehouse that bundles those flyers before the 11 year old gets them. The job had two parts. For the paper boys, we had to count out bundles of each kind of flyer and put them in garbage bags, then slap on an address label for little Billy or Susie or Carl or who the fuck ever. The other part was preparing bagged bundles for delivery to apartment buildings. Each little bag gets one of each kind of flyer folded and stuffed inside. Fun! Now repeat it 2,000 times.

To begin with, the work at Starmail was piece work. That’s a fun way for saying you get paid for how bad you suck. Suck large, get paid small. Suck small, get paid still small, but not as humiliatingly so. I sucked at a level that paid me roughly $7.50 an hour.

The warehouse was next to some train tracks and an open, uncut field. It was the sort of place where people get murdered in horror movies. Murdered then sodomized then partially eaten then resodomized. Inexplicably more noteworthy than the location were the coworkers. I worked with hobos. If you know anything about me, you know I’m not comfortable with hobos. Nonetheless, I was their peer. Life was really looking up for me.

Not everyone was a hobo, my friend Wizo worked there (who you may remember from my last hobo posting), some vaguely goth girl with a large rack worked there and then hobos. One man resembled Jason Statham if he were malnourished and perhaps had been a POW for some years. He wore the same pair of multi-color vomit Hammer pants on every shift, with a wife beater tucked into it and a fake leather fanny pack. Every day. I like to think the fanny pack held flavored tobacco, rolling papers and unwrapped butterscotch candies.

Another resembled a grizzled mountain-man trucker. His uniform was generally a t shirt and jeans, a trucker hat and a mangy, wild, grey and white beard the likes of which you’d expect to see creeping from the edges of Bea Arthur’s panties.

And finally, there was one man we’ll call Ned. Ned looked like he’d been kicked out of ZZ Top about three decades earlier for reasons of mental unwellness. His beard hung to mid chest and was snow white. Ned did not bathe and he talked to himself.

My work here was in the warmer months and the big bay doors were often open out onto the field to allow for air flow and so groundhogs and transients who didn’t work with me could bear witnesses to any of the aforementioned murder-sodomy. I was placed at a table next to Wizo to begin folding papers to be bagged for apartment buildings. Across from us was Ned. In the summery heat, Ned had been stewing pretty impressively that day. When I say Ned didn’t bathe, I really mean it. You could often smell him before you saw him. The infernal stench of old man BO preceded him like the town crier, bellowing out funk to alert all in the room.

So I’d stand there for hours at a time, folding my papers and stuffing them into plastic bags while Ned did the same across from me, his bouquet never quite settling enough for you to get used to it. And then, out of nowhere, the warehouse would get treated to “Go fuck yourself!” or “Fuckin cocksucker!” followed by some incoherent muttering. Ned and his invisible friend were apparently having a spat.

I appreciate the seriousness of mental illness and it’s not something to be made fun of. Unless it’s super hilarious. This, in a working environment, was completely ridiculous. Ned would speak at length with someone who wasn’t there and 9 times out of 10, whoever this mystery guest was would piss that man off no end. Ned would curse him like a trucker while the rest of the warehouse went about their work. If Ned got especially carried away, someone might tell him to keep it down. This happened if he managed to belt out the word “fuck” loud enough to be heard outside more than 10 times in a minute. Keep it down. An insane, virulent smelling man shouting obscenities at invisible entities just got “keep it down.” I couldn’t understand it at all. Until I noticed he hadn’t missed a beat in his work and, shamefully, he was beating me by a New York mile. This rabid, incoherent geriatric had time to yell at people who didn’t even exist and was still showing me up. Life was looking up for me, indeed.

Every day, hundreds and thousands of flyers got stuffed into bags. If you’ve never counted out a stack of 437 pizza ads and 437 grocery flyers and 437 coupons for control top panty hose and 437 of like 10 other things and jammed them into a trash bag and then did the same thing again and again and again while you’re serenaded by foul mouthed ranting, you’re missing one of life’s exquisite awkward and horrible situations.

On lunch break, Wizo and I would cross the tracks and go up a few blocks to a Taco Bell, as our desire to make our insides smell as fresh as the place in which we worked was strong. The locals would often brown bag it for lunch, which occasionally included little more than two warm cans of beer or a sandwich that I assume was macaroni and cheese loaf with relish or caulk or whatever was handy. Ned would eat and curse.

Unlike Best Value, I wasn’t put in my place by this job. Despite the vast number of employers I have had, I don’t get fired that often. This would be no exception. No, pride actually had to put an end to this job. Or the illusion of it. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t bring myself to return day after day to this little warehouse of newsprint and breathe through my mouth while Ned continued to get paid more than me by virtue of him being a better employee than me. Rather than quit outright, I decided my best course of action would be to simply make up a story of a better job I had just been hired for, to surely leave them reeling at my absence. I’ll show you, suckers, I’m moving on to something much more awesome while you stay here with your caulk and cock and whatnot.

I had no other job and I’m sure no one cared. I like to think, in the weeks and months that followed, maybe a little foul mouthed gremlin with my face showed up and had a curse war with Ned, though.