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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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Back from Prospecting, broke, a car but no gas, a room in an insane asylum, and whatever I do I'm not going back to that damned restaurant. (Not yet, anyways...).
I get on at Temps.
Temps is the short term solution to your companies immediate labour needs. You need a project, you need to throw men at it, brainless work that needs be done? Temps is your answer. "Cash Paid Daily" is their main recruiting slogan. All you need to work there is your own steel toed boots, they'll sell or rent you the hard-hat and safety vest. Show up, do your WHMIS, you're set to go...if you can wield a hammer and you have your own toolbelt you'll earn an extra $2.00 per hour.
First job is in Airdrie, a week or so digging holes in a basement, some contractor has built an entire development on a poorly built up flood plain, all the houses are getting foundation cracks, my job to dig the post-holes for the jacks that will lift the house up while they re-level the foundations and fill the cracks. Dirty, filthy work, head to toe crusted with mud by the end of the day.
The foreman likes me, wonders why I'm a temp, he can get me on full time, $20.00 an hour to start, I tell him of the prospecting.
A lot of people would think I was nuts, maybe he does too. But I've stirred something in him, I can see it burning inside, and finally when he's bursting and can hold it inside no more he tells me:
"My Brother" he begins, and then the conversation turns to aliens, realizing that I'm not adverse the conversation becomes first person, no longer his brother but himself, there are definitely aliens, they appear in the Bible, the burning bush? Aliens, the Pyramids? Aliens, they track each other via LED displays, they've got a TV screen on which they can watch each other, his brother and him, they're going to Mexico to look for treasure, you have to be careful, usually Mexican treasures are guarded by curses, Bears or Giant Snakes that have magical shape-shifting powers, the breaks aren't long enough for him to share his plans, but I'm catching the enthusiasm...
There's another employee, Philip, a Hutterite AWOL from his colony in Manitoba, he's a bit lazy, he's digging 2 holes to my 5, he's the hired help, not a temp, but he's a whiz with a bobcat, a bit simple, touched in the head, wants to get back to the colony, settle down, when there's bobcat work to be done he shows up to work, when it's hand-to-shovel he contrives illness, a bad cold, a flu, ... and there's Francis, forever off looking for local cafes in which to take a dump, bowel problems, as soon as the foreman looks the other way he's off, our lack of porta-potties means he can take an hour, two, to attend the call of nature.
I dig the holes.
We're working in unclosed pits, 4 to 6 feet deep, knee deep in water seeping in from Nose Hill Creek, the power tools give off electric shocks before throwing the breakers, this is the routine: Wake - 4:00 AM, Temps office at 5:00, be on the jobsite at 8:00, finish at 4:30, home, change, shower, sleep, repeat....