Worst Days on the Job – Part II
(A three-part series)
February 15, 2003

This is part II of our "worst days on the job" stories. If you haven't read part I, I'd highly recommend it before proceeding. Click here for part I.

There are bad days, and then there are shitty days. Part II finds two of our writers in predicaments that may have simply been avoided by calling in sick that day. Key takeaways from these stories are – always keep your driver's license up-to-date, and don't forget your work boots. Enjoy.

Road Rules
by Mike Webb

I've been extremely lucky on the job front. Good days, bad days, but no real horrible jobs. However, there was one job where I experienced some of the best working days and some of the worst working days of my life. Actually, looking back, it should've been a really cool gig – traveling the country, playing different clubs, meeting hot chicks – but many of the days kind of sucked because something never failed to go wrong, and whether it was my fault or not, the finger was always pointing at me. Anyway, the job was road managing Jane Jensen, an electronic/industrial/pop band signed to Interscope.

Though it's a city where anything can and will happen, New Orleans turned out to be the all time rock bottom point on the tour. We pulled into Nawlins just before noon, dropped our luggage in our hotel room, and split up to do our thing. My thing at that moment was to go get our money. See, Jane's accountant didn't have his shit together enough to get me a credit card before we left. So I had to go to Western Union every 4 days or so and get roughly $2,500. After a while you get used to calling the Western Union and making sure they had the cash and getting directions. So I called a Nawlins WU about an hour before we hit town and was assured they had enough cash (for some reason I needed $4K this time). And then I called again when we settled into the hotel to get directions and double check. It was all good.

All good – until the owner saw me. I had to take a cab over to this WU because it was a pain in the ass to drive the 15 passenger van and 20 foot trailer around town. So I got there, and the guy looks me up and down and he doesn't like my vibe (whatever vibe that was. I can't really explain it, but let's just say it was a black thing. The look on the Western Union guy's face said everything). So I showed him my ID, and he tells me my driver's license had expired. He was right, it had. But I had a temporary permit while I was waiting for my new one to be mailed to my home in NYC – which didn't do me a lot of good across America, but every other Western Union got it once I explained it. But this guy didn't want to get it, and I just handed him his reason for refusing to give me the cash.

Now on the inside, I was in a panic because we were dead broke and didn't have enough cash to pay for the hotel. And though it sounds easy, it was a huge pain in the ass to get the stars lined up to get money out of Western Unions. So I closed my eyes and couldn't believe this was happening to me. I started to plead my case, but he just walked away. So I walked outside and called the Western Union headquarters from a pay phone (I had the number memorized – it was like that). If I may say so, I pleaded my case excellently and eloquently. I went through each problem step by step, but basically, they weren't going to order one of their operators to pay me. I held my ground for about 25 minutes before realizing this was going nowhere, so I asked if they could refer me to another local WU. They wouldn't – because the ID that had worked for me the previous 5 weeks was suddenly bad because one bigoted operator said so.

So now I was really stuck. I had just enough cash to pay for a taxi back to the hotel, but no cab in sight. After a half hour, a cabbie passing by took pity on me and gave me a ride. And then I had some more luck. Just as we were going through what looked like the worst neighborhood in New Orleans, I saw a Western Union out of the corner of my eye. Whafuck! – I had nothing to lose, so I asked the driver to turn around, drop me off, and wait for me. Well 2 out of 3 weren't bad, as I paid him and watched him drive away.

When I walked into this black owned WU, it was empty – which was good because I had to talk loudly through inch thick glass to explain my situation. To my surprise, he actually had $4000 on him. To my further surprise, he took my ID And to my final surprise and horror, I watched him count out $4000 in front of the 3 other roughneck looking customers now waiting in line behind my dumb ass. I wanted to ask the guy to call me a cab, but I didn't want everyone to know that I had 4 grand on me and no way to get out of there. So I walked out, looked around, and decided the gas station next door was a safe bet.

I walked over, got a phone number for a cab and was again told it would take about an hour to get picked up. I didn't get upset, because I figured God was watching out for me when I spotted the WU, so I was in karmic deficit and just had to wait it out. I know I must have looked suspicious walking around that gas station, but what could I do?

Anyway, I finally got back to the hotel thinking how great it was that I got the job done. Of course, the first person I ran into was Jane who was freaking out because she had to be at the venue right at that very moment because she had a television interview (you see, we were a poor tour with no cell phones – so I was unreachable while I was away). I had completely forgotten about the itinerary because, as you can tell, I had other, more pressing things on my mind. But Jane was emotional (i.e., pissed off and crying) and I didn't have time to explain. I rounded the band up, got stuck in traffic because there was some kind of celebration going on (which explains why it was taking so long to get cabs), and got there about an hour late.

Now, the one thing I'm good at is fixing bad situations. Somewhere along the line I learned how to do the 'aw shucks, I'm sorry, it's all my fault, please do what I need you to do anyway' dance, and it had been working for most of the tour. But before I could get into the club to find the TV crew, Jane came walking out with them (giving me the evil eye the entire time), and said they had to go. They were still there, so I know I could've worked things out. But Jane went in determined that it was the end of the world, and I think she unconsciously, deliberately sent them away.

So now I felt incompetent. And no one wanted to hear about the day I'd been having. No – it was just – "our stupid fucking road manager sucks". I'd never felt so low. And for some reason, I never told anyone what happened. I think they would have thought I was making an excuse, so I had to suck it up and let it go.

When the tour ended, I had planned on writing a nasty, nasty letter to Western Union. And though I was still furious after I got back to NYC, it just didn't seem to matter anymore. But I ask everyone who reads this, please don't ever let those bastards fuck you over with your own money. MoneyGram works just as well.

Under Construction
by Michael Walls

I can't say working for my father was the worst job I ever had. I spent many a summer digging ditches, building fences, bailing hay, shoveling manure, mowing acres of rock-filled fields and painting clapboard. No, I didn't grow up in a juvenile labor camp. I grew up in rural New Hampshire, and those were the summer jobs available to high school kids. So, when your father is an electrician, and offers you $8/hour (twice as much as Farmer Brown down the road) you jump at the chance.

But working for your father definitely has it's downsides. For one, you can't quit. And two, you're the boss' son. My father is more than an electrician, he's an electrical contractor. That particular summer he had a dozen or so electricians and apprentices working for him, and I was just a 16-year old apprentice. But to everyone else, I was the boss' kid.

I rarely ever worked with my father that summer, which was kind of good, because when dad showed up on a job, everyone groaned a bit. You see, my father can work circles around anybody, including all of the redneck electricians that worked for him.

Mornings were hell. I had recently converted my father's old office above the garage into a high school stud apartment, where I could blast my music, rehearse with my band, or just hide from my annoying sisters. That summer, my father would open up the garage doors around 5:00am, which shook my entire room and sounded like a pair of freight trains coming through. That's was my first wake up call. At 5:10am, he would take a pipe wrench to the metal garage door frame for a couple of good raps. That was wake-up call number two. Number three would be a personal visit for a kick-in-the-ass, so usually I'd force myself out of bed, manage to dress, then stumble across the driveway to the barn, which was actually a giant electrical warehouse and office.

One particular morning I got teamed up with Willie Nelson and Abraham Lincoln. I don't actually remember their names, but that's exactly what they looked like. We were doing a house job in northern New Hampshire, which was good, because it meant an extra hour snooze in the van ride there. Back then, seatbelts were optional, and it was perfectly legal to stick a 16-year old kid in the back of a windowless, seatless van full of power tools and heavy pipe-treading equipment. So with Willie Nelson driving, I settled down in the back, between some tool boxes, listening to rattling pipes and ladders on the roof, and tried to sleep. Willie and Abe didn't talk much, and preferred to just drink their coffees and smoked their cigarettes.

Most construction sites are the same as far as the people go. Regardless of the type of job, whether it be a residential, commercial or industrial – it's the same blue-collar crowd, with most of the trades represented. At this particular house job, the construction was reaching a point were there was a lot of overlapping going on. Everyone is trying to complete their portion of the job in less time then estimated, therefore, making more money for less work. So today, it seemed like everyone was there. The builders, plumbers, masons, insulators, sheetrockers, and us – the electricians. As usual, the insulators and sheetrockers were there prematurely, trying to get a jump on the work. But as you can imagine, it's pretty tough to wire or plumb a house when there's insulation or sheetrock on the walls.

As an apprentice, my typical day sounded like this: unload the van, get coffee, drill a thousand holes through a thousand studs, get more coffee, do the most boring and repetitive tasks, get lunch, eat lunch, run wire in the most difficult places, get coffee, sweep up, load up the van.

Today was a typical day. By noon, I had pissed off just about every other tradesman by just being a kid and being in the way. So, by 2 in the afternoon, I didn't mind being told to run wire in the attic. It was hot and filled with insulation, but there was no one up there. Most of the holes had been drilled earlier, so I all I had to do was pull some Romex wire from one end of the house to the other, through a thousand holes. So, walking on a narrow plank that ran down the length of the attic, on top of the ceiling joists, I pulled the thick, white, Romex wire from hole to hole to hole, leaving plenty of extra wire dangling near a junction box, or outlet, or light fixture, or whatever needed to be wired up.

By the fourth or fifth run, I was getting a bit tired and very hot, and even a bit light headed. I decided that I should probably take a break and go down to the second floor for some air. As I turned to walk back to the opening with the ladder beneath it, I took a bad step and stepped off the plank, putting my foot clear though some pink insulation and ceiling sheetrock. Down below, the sheetrockers started hollering, as they watched a leg dangle from the hole in the ceiling. As I struggled to gain my balance and pull my leg out, I lost the battle and lurched forward as my leg sunk deeper into the hole, now up to my thigh. I grabbed onto the two joists I had slipped between, but that just put me more off balance and I went ass first through the sheetrock ceiling, landing hard on the floor below, in a shower of sheetrock dust and insulation.

Someone helped me up, as a crowd formed, mostly just to look at the hole in the ceiling. Needless to say, the sheetrockers were not happy.

I shuffled off in the direction of the main floor, brushing myself off, and checking for any broken bones or lacerations. When I got to the main floor, I walked out the front door of the house to get some air. Unfortunately, as with most house jobs, the front porch or stoop is usually the last item to be built. So, like most house jobs, where make shift steps or a long plank is used to enter the building, this place had no formal steps. They were using a long plank to bridge the 4 or 5 foot drop from the doorway to the ground. A drop, that I quickly learned, is far, especially when you're not looking where you're going.

The good news is, I landed on my feet. The bad news is, I landed on a pile of scrap wood. And the worse news is, one of those pieces of scrap wood had a nail sticking out of it. So, as I hobbled across the construction site, towards the van, with a piece of wood stuck to the bottom my foot by a nail, the only thing I could think of was what my father was going to say. I was pretty sure he was going to berate me for wearing sneakers on the job site, rather then the prescribed steel-toed work boots.

Fortunately for me, I had already received a tetanus shot the previous week for nearly slicing my finger off while skinning wire.