The Crew

Charlie Gardner
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Pictured above: Jose and Kenny.

I’ve been putting this post off for a while now, which sucks because I have barely posted in the past week. To make up for this I’m going to post almost every day for a stretch. If you don’t believe me I suggest you have a look at my to do list:

Alright time to get serious. Let me introduce you to my crew.

Andy: Andy is the processing foreman. He’s a short Filipino in his mid to late 60s. Andy is crazy. Whenever a guy shows up late he will whack his knife on a metal surface to get everyones attention and then stick his leg up on a tote and mime doing something that teenage boys do a lot of. I could go into more detail but I’m going to do a full Andy post later this week.

Waldemar: Waldemar is the head of the racking crew, meaning he’s my boss. Walde can be serious and is usually all business, because he has to be. He has to communicate with Andy, Ben (case up foreman), Dale (plant manager), the guys running the freezers and anyone else important.

Jose: Along with Walde, Jose is the only returnee on the racking crew. A former 12th round MLB draft pick, Jose is a younger version of Andy, meaning he is crazy and lude. Jose likes to crouch behind the racks when we have to stack them in the hall and yell people’s names and watch them look around confused. Another trademark Jose move is to hump the pallet jack when a song with a good bass line starts playing.

Diego: I don’t know much about Diego except that he lives in Orlando and was a top ten chess player in Puerto Rico. Seriously that’s all.

Jesus: Jesus is a chain-smoking nursing student who is known by his surname Pesante. Like Jose, Pesante has an unusual attraction to Pallet jacks. He’s also arguably the best racker on the crew. (We’ve gone head to head twice and split). Jesus has a loud laugh that he will unleash whether you insulted him or he insulted you.

Fernando: Fernando is an accounting student who I’ve gotten close to since he is big hoops fan and he speaks English really well (Looking back, I severely overestimated the development of my Spanish, it has mostly consisted of different ways to insult people and talk smack)

Kenny: Kenny is one of my closest friends here. He’s really chill and doesn’t engage in the weird machismo and uncomfortable grab ass that some of the other guys do. Kenny has also helped explain so much about Puerto Rican music and just the stuff in general that the other guys on the crew talk about.

That was my crew.

They’re really great.

See ya.

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