Chapter 34; Blame It On The Economy

The thing about Santa Barbara is that the weather never seems to change. It was August, that was a fact, but I wasn’t sure if it was summer or spring or autumn. I know, I should have memorized this stuff in school but I decided to skip the class. Besides, the procrastinator inside of me had a feeling none of this shit will ever actually help me accomplish anything in life. Probably. The only important issue that needed my attention was the green, lustrous dollars I was selling my ass for while working at Staples full-time. Everything was fine and dandy for a month, but one day, as sudden as a Californian earthquake, a piece of bad news landed on my lap.

“Hours are tight, morro,” Juan told me one morning as I came into work. I felt better, a bit more optimistic, and ready to seize the day; carpe diem, as the old, Latin phrase says. I was even smiling, something I didn’t do often. It had been over a month since I worked at the gas station and my internal clock had adjusted to a certain sleep schedule.

“What do you mean by ‘tight’?” I asked. At that time I wasn’t familiar with many slangs, and Juan seemed to have many of those under his extra large sleeve.

He was standing next to Arturo’s office, looking at the board where the schedule was posted. “They’re cutting hours, ese,” he said.

I looked at the schedule. The smile on my face disappeared as fast as it came. It was true, I had gone back to having the meager amount of hours I was having before, while the managers and higher-ups seemed to be doing just fine. The little, whiny voice inside of me was beginning to complain, saying, “Not fair! Not fair!” but I had a feeling complaining wasn’t going to take me anywhere. “I see,” I said. Juan was surprised with my reaction (or the lack of it) and went back to doing whatever it was that he was doing before I got there.

I walked further into the break-room. There was a new, white, rectangular table in the middle, and six plastic chairs surrounded it. Arturo sat on one of those chairs, alone, eating cold pizza, and looking at a bunch of papers he had on the table. He looked at me, briefly, stopped chewing, and went right back to it after realizing it was me, the undocumented employee, standing right there. “I supposed you already saw the schedule,” he said, and a bit of tomato sauce adorned the left side of his mouth.

“I did,” I replied while walking behind him, toward my locker. I opened it, took out my work shirt, and saw the book I was reading at the moment: Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, courtesy of my highly-motivated friends at Amway.

“You did?” he asked, but the tone of his voice suggested surprise. “Is that all you have to say?”

I got it now, he was also surprised by my lack of surprise. “Yeah, what else do you expect me to say?”

He turned back, while I was putting on my red, polo shirt. “All day, I’ve been getting shit from everybody because they have fewer hours. Even the managers! And lemme tell you about the managers: they don’t even get that many hours cut from their schedule.”

I came closer to him, pull out a chair and sat down. I leaned closer and smelled him. “Yeah, you smell like shit, boss.”

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