When I got hired at the new Plant Nursery Job, I was asked if I had any problem answering to somebody who was quite a bit younger than I am. I said I wasn't.
Peggy Plants said that was great, because the guy who would be training me was very young, but very good at his job.
"I just love him," she said enthusiastically. "He's one of my best employees."
"Great- no problem," I said.
"Now keep in mind that I don't expect you to actually keep up with Scooter. He's like a rocket. He's always like go go go- a mile a minute. I'm just having him train you because he knows his way around both stores. I don't expect you to be able to maintain that pace."
I got up at 8:30 in the morning on Monday, which was quite a feat since I usually go to bed between five and six and I hadn't seen eight in longer than I can remember. The coffee maker had failed to go off even though the b.h. had set it so that in theory there would be coffee waiting for me when I dragged myself downstairs, and since I had hit the snooze button I didn't have time to wait for a whole pot to brew. Instead I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and ran out the door.
It was about forty five degrees outside. I had a five minute drive to work (no, I can't walk. There are no sidewalks between here and there, and not enough shoulder to protect me from the trucks and SUVs on the highway). I got there early and walked in to the department where Scooter should have been. He wasn't there. The girl who was there had her makeup done in a style that suggested her trailer must have been very dark when she woke up. She did not know where Scooter was. I walked around to several different departments, and though everyone had seen Scooter already, nobody seemed to know where he was. I could not clock in to the computer (yes, I actually clock in now) because I didn't know how. I finally sat down near the computer and waited. Scooter came back at 9:07. I know this because that is the exact moment when I clocked in (See how that works? Minute by minute. Ah yes, corporate life again).
Scooter was, in fact, as spastic as I expected. He talked a mile a minute in a loud and yet mumbly way, mostly with his back to me, so that I caught only half of what he said. Immediately after I clocked in, he took me over to the indoor green house.
"the first thing you need to do is just come through here and see what's out of place. See this right here?" he asked, pulling a six pack of spinach from a shelf full of cacti. "Obviously this doesn't belong here. These go outside." He placed the spinach on the floor in the aisle and continued. He wound up pulling several small plants as well as a couple of decorated pots, a hanging basket, and a pair of garden shears. Each of these things was placed on the floor in the aisle in front of the shelf he had pulled them from.
"Is there a specific place where we put stuff that is out of place, or do we just go put it back where it belongs?"
"We'll get to that," he said, and walked away, leaving all of the items on the floor in the aisle.
Next was outside. He told me without much of an explanation that we were going to move "these roses onto that table" and then started moving them. I followed suit, and then a cashier asked him to go get something for her from the break room. When he got back, I was mostly finished, but then had to move a lot of them around because he hadn't really explained that there was a particular method. This was the theme for much of the day.
The heavy lifting started with metal signs and display racks, many of which were rusty and rather forlorn looking. When we tried to fit the top piece onto the bottom piece by way of a particularly dodgy pole, I mentioned that it looked rusty and that perhaps a bit of WD-4o would help.
"Nah, that'd take too long."
He walked off and came back several minutes later with a sledge hammer, with which he proceeded to pound the ever living hell out of the metal. A lovely sound, I assure you. I only wish I could be there at the end of the season when he has to take that thing apart.
I was not told anything about breaks until he decided he needed a cigarette. Then he told me to take "twenty minutes or so" and disappeared. I called the b.h. and tried to laugh off my general frustration.
When Scooter returned ten minutes later, he decided we were going to build another display rack for the plants. This involved me following him around while he measured and remeasured the distance between two other display tables, then placing cinder blocks on the ground at regular intervals. Or rather, he measured and I placed the cinder blocks. Then after I had stacked one row of them several high he mentioned that they should be uniform, pointing to the different patterns on one side of the row I had made.
" 'Should be' doesn't mean the same as 'have to be', right?" I said. I wasn't asking.
"Well, no. It's not really that big a deal. That's just how they like it."
When I ran out of cinder blocks, he asked a guy in another department to bring us more. We went onto another task.
"Should we move these pallets out of the way?", I asked as we went back into the greenhouse, gesturing at the empty pallets that were laying in the middle of the aisle, where an unwary customer might-
"Nah, we'll get to those later. We're just gonna be using more."
We wasted a few more minutes setting a cactus display. Then we went back outside to find two full pallets of cinder blocks, about five feet tall, waiting. Again I did most of the lifting while Scooter did most of the measuring. And again I had to stack and re-stack the blocks when Scooter had fouled up the measurement. At this point I was checking the time every seven or eight minutes.
Finally, we finished the table.
"Now that's how a display table should look," Scooter said proudly, surveying the fruits of my labor.
"Okay, what's next? Are we going to use that other pallet of cinder blocks?"
"Nah, we'll get to those later. Technically, this isn't even our job."
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