“Whadda ya mean?”
“I mean a man came along and painted that 23 on there with a can of paint.”
“No, no, this is time-tested over the years and rechecked.” What was the use? I didn’t answer. “I’m going to have to write you up, Chinaski. You will be counseled on this.” I went back and sat down. 11 years! I didn’t have a dime more in my pocket than when I had first walked in. 11 years. Although each night had been long, the years had gone fast. Perhaps it was the night work. Or doing the same thing over and over and over again. At least with The Stone I had never known what to expect. Here there weren’t any surprises. II years shot through the head. I had seen the job eat men up. They seemed to melt. There was Jimmy Potts of Dorsey Station. When I first came in, Jimmy had been a well-built guy in a white T shirt. Now he was gone. He put his seat as close to the floor as possible and braced himself from falling over with his feet. He was too tired to get a haircut and had worn the same pair of pants for 3 years. He changed shirts twice a week and he walked very slow. They had murdered him. He was 55. He had 7 years to go until retirement.
“I’ll never make it,” he told me.
They either melted or they got fat, huge, especially around the ass and the belly. It was the stool and the same motion and the same talk. And there I was, dizzy spells and pains in the arms, neck, chest, everywhere. I slept all day resting up for the job. On weekends I had to drink in order to forget it. I had come in weighing 185 pounds. Now I weighed 223 pounds. All you moved was your right arm.
2
I walked into the counselor’s office. It was Eddie Beaver sitting behind the desk. The clerks called him “Skinny Beaver.” He had a pointed head, pointed nose, pointed chin. He was all points. And out for them too.
“Sit down, Chinaski.”
Beaver had some papers in his hand. He read them.
“Chinaski, it took you 28 minutes to throw a 23 minute tray.”
“Oh, knock off the bullshit. I’m tired.”
“What?”
“I said, knock off the bullshit! Let me sign the paper and go back. I don’t want to hear it all.”
“I’m here to counsel you, Chinaski!”
I sighed. “O.K., go ahead. Let’s hear it.”
“We have a production schedule to meet, Chinaski.”
“Yeh.”
“And when you fall behind on production that means that somebody else is going to stick your mail for you. That means overtime.”
“You mean
“Look, you took 28 minutes on a 23 minute tray. That’s all there is to it.”
“You know better. Each tray is 2 feet long. Some trays have 3, even 4 times as many letters than others. The clerks grab iwhat they call the ‘fat’ trays. I don’t bother. Somebody has to stick with the tough mail. Yet all you guys know is that each tray is two feet long and that it must be stuck in 23 minutes. But we’re not sticking trays in those cases, we’re sticking letters.”
“No, no, this thing has been time-tested!”
“Maybe it has. I doubt it. But if you’re going to time a man, don’t judge him on
“All right, you’ve had your say, Chinaski. Now, I’m telling YOU: you stuck a 28 minute tray.
“All right, just let me ask you one question?”
“All right.”
“Suppose I get an easy tray. Once in a while I do. Sometimes I finish a tray in 5 minutes or in 8 minutes. Let’s say I stick a tray in 8 minutes. According to the time-tested standard I have saved the post office 15 minutes. Now can I take these 15 minutes and go down to the cafeteria, have a slice of pie with ice cream, watch t.v. and come back?”
“NO! YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO GRAB A TRAY IMMEDIATELY AND START STICKING MAIL!”
I signed a paper saying that I had been counseled. Then Skinny
Beaver signed my travel form, wrote the time on it and sent me back to my stool to stick more mail.
3
But, there were still bits of action. One guy was caught on the same stairway that I had been trapped on. He was caught there with his head under some girl’s skirt. Then one of the girls who worked in the cafeteria complained that she hadn’t been paid, as promised, for a bit of oral copulation she had supplied to a general foreman and 3 mailhandlers. They fired the girl and the 3 mailhandlers and busted the general foreman down to supervisor.
Then, I set the post office on fire.
I had been sent to fourth class papers and was smoking a cigar, working a stack of mail off of a hand truck when some guy came by and said, “HEY, YOUR MAIL IS ON FIRE!”
I looked around. There it was. A small flame was starting to stand up like a dancing snake. Evidently part of a burning cigar ash had fallen in there earlier.
“Oh shit!”
The flame grew rapidly. I took a catalogue and, holding it flat, I beat the shit out of it. Sparks flew. It was hot. As soon as I put out one section, another caught up.
I heard a voice:
“Hey! I smell fire!”
“YOU DON’T SMELL FIRE,” I yelled, “YOU SMELL SMOKE!”
“I think I’m going to get out of here!”
“God damn you, then,” I screamed, “GET OUT!” The flames were burning my hands. I
Finally, I got it under control. I took my foot and pushed the whole pile of papers onto the floor and stepped on the last bit of red ash.
The supervisor walked up to say something to me. I stood there with the burned catalogue in my hand and waited. He looked at me and walked off.
Then I resumed casing the 4th class junkmail. Anything burned, I put to one side.
My cigar had gone out. I didn’t light it again.
My hands began to hurt and I walked over to the water fountain, put them under water. It didn’t help.
I found the supervisor and asked him for a travel slip to the nurse’s office.
It was the same one who used to come to my door and ask me, “Now what’s the matter, Mr. Chinaski?”
When I walked in, she said the same thing again.
“You remember me, eh?” I asked.
“Oh yes, I know you’ve had some real sick nights.”
“Yeh,” I said.
“Do you still have women up at your apartment?” she asked.
“Yeh. Do you still have men up at yours?”
