Work

Doug gave me a call and told me to meet him in the Red Lion for a beer at half six. He knew this probably meant buying me one, but then Doug has quite a good job. He's never really explained what he does exactly. I think talking about it would bore him just as much as it would me. It's up in the city centre anyway.

The Red Lion is on a corner by the entrance to the station. Every quarter of an hour in the evening a train arrives from the city centre and a big gang of commuters file out of the station and rush past it.

I waited outside. A train came in and Doug came striding out of the station at the head of the crowd. He gave me a wave. He was wearing a suit and he had the evening newspaper in his hand.

'hello mate' he said and shook my hand. The crowd followed behind him and a girl with a classic secretary look passed us. Doug watched her pass, puckered his face up and looked at me while taking a short intake of breath. Then he clapped me on the arm.

'come on then' he said 'I'm thirsty' and darted off into the pub.

We went and stood at the bar, Doug slapped his newspaper down on it, got his wallet out and ordered two pints. When we got them he took a long sip from his beer, said 'ahh yeah', then took another one.

'So what've you been up to today?' he said

In reality I'd only been up since about 1pm and had been in my dressing gown until about half an hour before, but I didn't feel like telling Doug that so I just said 'the usual' and took a swig of my beer.

'That means sitting around doing fuck all' he said loudly.

I was mid-swig as he said this, so he just carried on.

'mate, you've gotta sort it out' he said 'have you even looked this week?'

Doug often went off on a parental nag, which, true to form, was justified but pissed me off all the same. I told him that I'd been looking on the internet, which I hadn't, and that there was nothing.

'Go to an agency' He said 'just put your suit on, go up town and register. They'll find you something right away. It's in their interest to help you. That's how it works.'

'Yeah ok' I said.

Doug looked at me and shook his head.

'You lazy fuck' he said.

Doug carried on talking for a while. He told me some reasonably amusing anecdotes about some of his colleagues and about a girl he fancies who works on the floor below.
I noticed that Doug had a lot to say, and I didn't. You would never describe Doug as dynamic, but I must admit he had more life in him than I did. I suppose even a boring job puts a bit of life into you. Strange. So I decided to go to an agency the next day.

-

It took me a few days to get organised. Things move slowly for the unemployed. I found out there was an employment agency in the high street so I didn't even have to bother going up town. I went in with a CV and had a chat with a very friendly, and quite attractive woman who could handle small talk like a hairdresser. She told me they'd be in touch and I came out 30 minutes later feeling very productive. I stopped off at the off licence to buy some beer and then went home.

I sat on the sofa and cracked open a beer, feeling very good about myself. After watching TV for an hour or so the phone rang. I picked up and it was the woman. She told me that there was a day's work in a goods yard starting at 8.30am the next morning.

This was a bit of a shock to be honest, but she was pretty persuasive so I agreed and she gave me the details.

-

It was still dark when I got up but I didn't feel too bad.

The goods yard is basically a big warehouse near the motorway where the trucks stop,load and unload. I took a bus. It's not really that far. There's an industrial area down the road, near where the sinking shopping mall was. I walked right in through the gate and found the office over at the side of the yard. The boss was sitting behind a metal desk and he got up and shook my hand. He told me that I was to help with an early delivery but he was going to be out of the office all day. He said the boys would show me what to do and pointed me over to two guys standing out in the yard.

I walked towards them and noticed them grinning at me.

'Hello here's our bitch for the day' one of them said. 'you gonna make us a cup of tea then?'

'two sugars' the other one said.

I could tell they were joking but I didn't really know what to say. The first one that spoke was muscular but fat, and had long hair in a pony tail. The other one was younger, lanky and cocky looking. They both wore navy blue polo shirts with GL Depot written on them.

'only joking, what's your name mate?' said Ponytail and held out his hand. I noticed he was wearing quite a few rings. I introduced myself and he told me that we had to wait for the trucks to arrive and I might as well have a cigarette or something.

The boss left and after a while some trucks came in. Ponytail told me to take the boxes off the back and load them onto a space on the floor that was marked out with blue lines. We did this for about an hour but then it turned out that the delivery wasn't as big as expected so by 10am we'd finished.

The lanky one, who told me his name was Mike, said there would be another delivery after lunch but until then we could just sit about because the boss wasn't there. Ponytail said I could make some tea, which I did, and then we all sat around smoking at a table covered in old newspapers.

Mike turned out to be quite chatty. He told me that he found his job boring but he couldn't get much else because he'd been in prison. He even laughed a bit when he told me that. He said it was just for a few months.

'When I first started the boss thought I was gonna steal everything' he said as if it were common sense. 'but he's alright'

'I'll tell him you did a good job this morning' he added.

I quite liked Mike. He said warehousing was better than building work because it was easier.

'you ever worked on a building site?' he asked, I shook my head, 'fuck me'

After a while he suggested a game of darts. He got up and went to find them and then called us into the warehouse. The dart board was on the far wall and seeing as the warehouse was massive, the boys thought it was more fun to fling the darts from halfway across the depot. Ponytail was first and he took a run up before flinging the dart overhead like a throwing knife. It made a big arc under the depot ceiling before lodging itself into the side of a wooden crate. Mike had a go and his bounced on the floor and slapped into the back wall. We carried on like this for a while but then got bored so Ponytail told me to knock up some more tea.

We smoked a bit more and Ponytail went off to the toilet. Mike said that Ponytail had a stash of porn hidden in a hole in the toilet ceiling and laughed.

'I'll show you later' he said and took a gulp of tea.

When Ponytail came back he said that we might as well go to lunch and that he was going up the pub.

'There's fuck all else around here' he said to me 'so you might as well come.'

-

The King's Arms is a rough looking place on the edge of the industrial estate. The front is nearly black from decades of traffic fumes and behind it is all wasteland. We went in, ordered some sandwiches and beer, then found a table near the back. Ponytail went straight over to the fruit machine and stayed there until his sandwich came, ate it, then went back again. Mike and me just sat around reading some old newspapers. After a while we decided to get a second pint in.

-

Back at the depot we waited around for the afternoon delivery. I went and made some tea and Mike said he knew where the boss kept a stash of chocolate biscuits and went off to his office to get some. Once we'd finished off the biscuits, smoked some more and I'd made another round of tea, a phone started ringing in the warehouse. Ponytail jumped up and went over to the far wall near the dart board. When he came back he said that the afternoon delivery had been cancelled and the boss said I could go home.

'Lucky boy' he said picking up his tea and blowing on it.

'We don't need you tomorrow' he said' but the boss said he'll let you know when we have another big delivery.'

So there it was. I'd finished early and I had a whole day off the next day. I waved goodbye to the boys and walked off back to the bus stop. It was just after 3pm.

It was only Tuesday but it had that Friday night feeling as I sat on the bus going back home. I gave Doug a call to see if he wanted to meet up for a beer later, on me naturally.