The Sniper
A new temp, shown up now for 3 consecutive shifts and so is engaged in conversation by the staff.
He used to be in the Army ... so and so of x division company C. I'm a bit skeptical, there are a few things that fit and a few others that seem a little out of place....like the jumpsuit that he wears, baby blue with racing stripes, that make him look like Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights...then there's the purely ornamental fancy cane that he carries, walking around the pit fine, but using the cane to make both his entrance and exit from the trailer.
I ask him what he did..."Sniper...23 Visual Kills..." he tells me, he's served overseas in Afghanistan.
Lunches the trailer is full of staff and temps, he spends his lunch loudly on the phone with what I presume to be his significant other, telling her what she should wear before they go out that night, what to cook for dinner, how to cook it, what to buy and how to tell if it's fresh. He affects a jolly English accent, talks even louder to be heard over the din of the men eating in the trailer...
I find myself doubting if there's even anyone on the other end of the phone...
And in the pit he finds ways of helping that aren't particularly helpful, like standing on plywood so you can kick it in, or holding ladders or waiting for you to fill and bring him wheelbarrows of snow to tip off the deck...he's oddly afraid of the heavy machinery.
The foremen, they're interested in him, 3 consecutive shifts and ex-military, they offer him the chance to work Saturday, "Yes Sir" he says, then gets on the phone with imaginary relatives and immediately discovers other pressing commitments that won't allow him to work.
I'm skeptical, like most of the temps there I'm pretty sure he'll end up in jail or will just fail to show for a shift, I'm skeptical of the advertised military service, but until I know otherwise I'll have to give him the benefit of the doubt and call him "The Sniper".
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- Category: People
'Lil Joe
Young, English, with an accent that forever makes it sound like he's speaking with a mouthful of marbles. He's the one on the site holding the ladder, or watching you dig.
But he's entertaining in his own right, He juggled hammers for us while we all watched, until one struck him squarely in the hardhat.
And there was the time he tried to pull a piece of red-hot tie wire out of a chuck of ice he was melting with his tiger torch...
Now you're watching as he straddles a piece of rebar, feet planted firmly on a concrete form, 20 feet in the air, rebar jutting into his ass while he mimes some offensive tomfoolery for us.
And I find myself thinking "What could possibly go wrong now...?"
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- Category: People
Wandering around construction site, aimless
(Overtired, day off today. 8 hours broken up by repetitions of the same dream...not quite a nightmare, but not a pleasure either)
Awoke several times in the night, always the same dream, wandering around the construction site, always dark, evening or early morning, beneath the scaffolding, stepping over two by fours, rebar, countless obstacles and hazards, wandering the site, lost, in the dead of night. Awake, try and shake dream, fall asleep, it repeats...
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- Category: Dreams
the competition of fools
Wherein the roommates ask about my day and I tell them, much as expected, outside all day, 12 hours, blizzard, sprain my wrist, broke my toe, lost my nose to frostbite, they feign interest but it's really just a sedgeway into how their days went.
"Brutal. 67 emails, had to watch 6 hours of video on the computer, all fascinating stuff but there isn't enough time, I only got through 18..."
I know this. Is the competition of fools, they're so long retired they don't remember what misery is. And, to be sure, I'm always pushing the boundaries, but it's a little like listening to the 16 year old princess tell her friends how her parents must hate her because they bought her the wrong color of Porsche for her birthday...
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- Category: Miscellany
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