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North 40

It was a dirty job Upward and onward in summer-job hell

Alex Dering

I'VE HAD A LOT OF bad jobs. Eighteen months (which I won’t be getting back at the end of my life) at a Dairy Mart. The year of waiting tables. Let’s not forget the sentence I served at Barnes & Noble, dealing with people who think Oprah should be handing out the Nobel Prize for Literature. The worst job, however, was the summer student laborer position I had at UMass Amherst, sometime around 1990.* Ever wonder how the windowshades got back on the windows? Do you think all that black paint you sprayed on your dorm walls during your Goth period just melted away like Nazi faces in a Spielberg movie? No. About 200 students stayed on campus during the summer, doing the grunt work. In the incident that made this “my worst job ever” the boss sent four of us to a dorm one day – I can’t remember which dorm** – with instructions to report to the plumber on the ground-floor men’s room. That bathroom was being renovated. Bits of tile and hunks of pipe were scattered around. Four urinals, yanked from the wall, wrapped in black trash bags and taped closed, were lined up on the floor. They looked like King Tut’s attempt at abstract art. The instructions were clear. And awful. Remove the urinals. To the attic. Until the discard paperwork comes through, they can’t be thrown away. Sorry, no elevator in this dorm. This wasn’t a job; this was a fraternity initiation. The urinals we were hiding from the roving fetishists of western Massachusetts weighed about 80 pounds each. Two to a urinal, we horsed them up five flights of stairs. On the second trip, around the third flight of stairs, with my legs going rubbery, I had a minor epiphany: This is what’s probably waiting if I don’t finish my degree. Now and forever, world without end, a series of degrading, low-pay, no-benefit jobs. Now, there’s motivation! The stairs into the attic were angled somewhere between a San Francisco hill and the Eiger’s north face. Mike, who, last I heard, was on his way to becoming a lawyer (and I wonder how many lawyers have dragged urinals into attics) was pulling. I was pushing for all I was worth. My motivation? The fantasy of my half-formed scream as I’m mashed into the floor by a urinal in free-fall when Mike’s hand slips. The 911 dispatcher laughing uncontrollably at what she believes is someone phoning in a hallucination. The ensuing Collegian article and terrible photo. We got the urinals into the attic without anyone dying. The attic was unfinished and almost empty. Off to one side were several beer cans coated in dust. Pull tab cans. Extinct since the 1970’s. I looked at them and felt a funny thrill. Was this – a little – how Carter and Carnarvon felt just before they became the best known grave-robbers in history? More than 10 years later, at dull moments, I wonder if those cans are still up there, tucked into a UMass attic, safer than houses and spooking the hell out of the few people who see them. I’ve tried to imagine the scene in which those cans were emptied, probably by students or workers long gone from the university. Perhaps long gone from the universe. Did they do anything else that endured? Will I? An unintentional hail and farewell – and challenge – from a bygone day. You find motivation in the damnedest places. * As Shakespeare (or was it an episode of “Star Trek”? William Shakespeare, William Shatner, they’re so similar I get easily confused) said, one is eventually grateful for a failing memory. ** See boldly above.

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It was a dirty job