The Shredder

So, last week I went without work for four days and ended up wallowing in a well of my own self pity (all the while writing throughout this self pity). I got work on Friday, which, while a piddly check is better than no check at all, will almost seem not worth it once I confirm that what I made on that Friday was spent on the gas driving to and from the job. Joy.

This week I've had two days of work and an industry meeting that only served to remind me of how badly I want to get back into the entertainment game. So no self pity. Well, for the most part no self pity. You see, this week I'm working for a bank that is in desperate need due to it's short staff. What are they in desperate need for? A shredder. More specifically, someone to stuff old checks into their industrial sized shredder. Because everyone else is to busy to do this, with all the other check stuff going on.

And because this is a bank, but not the bank, merely one of the offices of the bank, there are old people working there. And old people like to get up early and go to work early, so that means I have to get up early and go to work early. No 9a.m. start for me, nuh-uh. I gotta be on the job by 7:30a.m. Seven. Fucking. Thirty. For those of you who have to be to work as, or even earlier, and are going, "So?" 'cuse the shit out of me but that fucking sucks. God's not even up by 7:30a.m. and even though I was behind the wheel of what can be considered heavy machinery I'm not either. It's pretty much autopilot down Olympic Blvd and then somehow I become aware there's a valet asking me to please get out of my car so he can park it.

Then it's on to the bank where I've been put into a little cubicle with said shredder and I grab a box of old checks down from the shelf and go to town, feeding the checks into the shredder on an endless loop of monotony and boredom. Not only that, but the old people at the bank were ill prepared for my duties, as, on the first day, we ran out of shredder lube (yes, there's a lube for shredders) and proper sized disposal bags. That meant that ever so often, say, about every twenty to thirty minutes, when the light for lube would illuminate I had to shove these weird sponge papers into the mouth of the shredder, to keep the teeth from grinding against each other and possibly exploding (I was not told what exactly would happen if the shredder teeth didn't get lube but it was implied that it would be bad and there may be smoke involved). Add to that, the indignity of having to transfer shredded paper by hand from the square bin of the shredder to a regular trash bag, because they were out of the shredder bin bags. I'm sure the cleaning people hate me by now because there's always a big mess when I leave, no matter how I try to scrape up bits and pieces of paper from the carpet.

The trash bags aren't big enough to fit over the mouth of the bin so I have to just shovel the paper from one place to the next by hand. This would seem easy enough but if you've never tried shoveling shredded paper then you have no idea what it really entails. You can't grab too much because then it will just spill out every where and the cleaning people will hate you because now they've got to actually vacuum the carpet. You can use smaller handfuls, but then you'll be bent over the trash bin and that means you'll have to inhale god-knows-what kind of ink chemicals as you do it. I had to do the latter and driving home today my throat was sore and now I'm sure there's a cancer growing in my lungs. I realized today that if I wear my shades while cleaning the bin that minimizes the amount of paper particles that can make a break for my eyes (and thus blind me by cutting into my contacts) and tomorrow I'm taking a head bandanna to cover my nose and mouth.

"Tomorrow?" you say, "You're going back tomorrow?"

Yes, yes I am. Why am I going back tomorrow? Because I need the work. And god knows this job is making me hate how much I need the work. Or how much I need to money so that I can feed myself and pay bills. Not only am I going back tomorrow, but I'm trying to extend my stay till the end of the week to ensure I have a full week's paycheck. Unlike last week where I lounged around like a lazy bum, reading books and writing and making no money to pay my bills. I discovered today that if I stretch it out right, I can make one full box of old checks last five hours, and if I put the paper in the bins right it actually looks like I've done a lot of work, as one non-old bank employee commented today. Later on in the day I speed things up, and by the time I leave at 4p.m. I've got three boxes done (when, I probably could do the entire shelf in a day if I applied myself) and with all the regular trash bags I've used up it looks like I've done a helluva lot of shredding.

The problem is first thing in the morning from 7:30a.m. till 10:30p.m., which seems like the longest span of time ever. Pretty much after lunch I'm free to stuff the hell out of the shredder and go as fast as I please, but not too fast, so that I can have a reason to come back another day. But it's terrible work, and almost disheartening. And yet, I persist in doing it. Not because I want to, but because I have to. *sigh*