THURSDAY AFTERNOON AT WORK. My boss peeped into my cube and saw my pair of dumbells sitting together at the edge of my desk, partially obstructing the view of jars and jars of diet supplements and diet powder (which actually feels like toothpaste without the mint and tastes like white cement when mixed with iced tea...I'm beginning to suspect that they actually work by cementing off one's gut). She curiously picked them up, and ask what they were doing there (aside from attempting some weird and awkward arm raises with my 2-lb weights...LOL --- I love you, Judy). I didn't know what to say, they have been sitting there for weeks now and all I really accomplished was to stare at them during my coffee breaks or use them as holders for my microwaved sausage biscuits. I intended to bring them on my walks by the ocean during my lunch breaks, but I keep forgetting. Yeah, yeah. I did not want to lose my "fitness-buff" facade (which desperately covers my couch-potato-I'd rather-be-sleeping-lazy-a$$-alter-ego) so I quickly said my future plan, in the present tense..."Oh, I use them when I go on walks...and during my breaks here when I have nothing to do" (Dear Lord, please forgive me for lying, and please don't punish me with more weight). I complained to my boss that I sit all day, and that I'm getting the deskjob hips, and that my favorite Seven jeans don't fit, and that I gained what seems to be like twenty pounds since I started working. I rattled on that I am perpetually cooped up in my cube and I never get to be on my feet anymore and that dimples are beginning to show up where they are not wanted.
FRIDAY MORNING. I arrived at work, people were loitering on the hallways. I found out that the phones conked out, the internet was not working, and we were seemingly detached from the rest of the world, ergo, we will be useless for the day, or until SBC finds out what was wrong with the cables a few blocks down. It was like a scene from the Twilight Zone. I overheard that we were going to be sent home (the possibility of going back to bed already sent my soul careening in a wreckless astral travel back to the house) until the managers had a "eureka!" moment...with lightbulbs still flashing on their heads, they said "We need help at the back", that meant the warehouse. Bam! There goes the bed...and the hot pink shawl I draped over my top that day, and the chandelier earrings that matched the shawl. We all marched into the warehouse.
I rolled up my sleeves, I mean, I took off the shawl and started manually labelling jars of nutritional supplements (we have machines, but we have two products that come in oversized jars that just don't fit), I did a lot...labelling, sealing, putting them back in boxes, carrying the boxes back to the palette, the whole shebang. I wanted to learn how to manuever the carts, but they didn't let me because I was wearing hot pink flipflops that matched my shawl...and chandelier earrings. I never had the chance to sit down, except for coffee breaks and lunch break. The mexican warehouse supervisor came up to me and said "if the job is too hard for your hands, just let me know, I can give you a lighter one". (Just because I wear chandelier earrings doesn't mean I am going to release my own version of Paris Hilton's The Simple Life!!!). I bravely declined his offer and soldiered on. I have always dreamed of doing some manual labor, some blue collared work that I never ever had.
This is it. Sure it was fun, but as seconds turned to minutes and minutes turned to hours, I was sore all over. I was stinking, I was dirty, I was tired, and I had a throbbing, itchy but ouchy papercut. A new kind of appreciation for these people is born. It made me want to autograph each bottle I labeled, knowing that in a few days, it will go to an end customer. It made me appreciate each invisible guy behind every tub of margarine, every bottle of shampoo, every jar of mayonnaise (especially back in those days when automation in the production line was still unheard of). It made me appreciate my husband even more, a tech at BMW, who proudly refers to himself as a grease monkey but manages to spoil me rotten with his pay, and give in to my every whim and fancy --I'm not really a spoiled abusive brat but I can be a pampered baby! (I won't attempt anymore to keep him awake or plot on keeping his eyes open by supporting them with toothpicks while he is dozing off after a hard day's work.)
I felt weird eating with my colleagues who thought of having pizza delivered as some kind of reward for working our butts off at the "back" (how come the mexicans don't have pizza everyday? they sweat it back there everyday).
I had a lot of fun though. And I surely wouldn't mind doing it over and over again. I was able to rest my brain and I was finally able to flex all those sleeping muscles. (No wonder the warehouse gals are bombshells...and we at Customer Support, are tanks and submarines). We had a little teambuilding synthesis of the whole experience...you'd hear words like, "We should do this more often....or....it was an awakening for us...or...this will make us tolerate warehouse mistakes more patiently..yada...yada...yada..." The best part was, when my boss, with nothing but sincerity in her tone said "Wow, you were standing all day, Clarisse. Wasn't that a good workout? You got what you wanted!"
'Nuff said.
