...and it's the same kind of Logic that makes the Big Corporate Slogan of the company I work for the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Some executive at some high level, or maybe at a public relations/advertising firm made big bucks for coming up with that one, and it makes no sense. It even functions as a double-negative. "Rethink Possible" Mr Long would say that "Possible" means "It CAN be done." There is only one way to rethink that--that it CAN'T be done! They have used the slogan for years, so apparently it just goes over most people's heads unless you think about it. And who gives much thought to a stupid Corporate slogan? I bring it up because lately there has been some movement in the company that truly corroborates the double-negative. That's all I'll say about it now because I'm really here today to talk about the last two weeks of my last trip to the Detroit area...
I told the story in my last post about how I had been assigned (it seemed) to work in the nice rural and waterside areas north of Metro Detroit that I had become so enchanted with during my time there back in March. Reynard, Ryan, BigDave and I were assigned there, while the rest of the guys were in other areas, which meant that they were mostly right there in Detroit, below Eight Mile, every day. We all agreed that it would be fair and Humane for it to be mixed up some, so that we could all have some good, some bad. But we knew also that seeing as we were all Mercenaries, any complaints or suggestions about our assignments would be given little consideration. That Sunday of the first week I bumped into Reynard up in Croswell and we talked about how great it was to be where we were, and about feeling for the guys stuck in Detroit every day. Monday afternoon I bumped into Reynard again-- he was parked under a shade tree next to two scuzzed-out empty houses and across from an old industrial building with no doors and covered with grafitti. "We've gotta stop meeting like this!" I said when I went over to his van. "Yeah, I was wondering about this. " he said. "Dave and Ryan are in Detroit today too." So here we were thinking maybe they switched us and that we'd be working in Detroit, maybe for the rest of the time. Of course I was always fully aware it could happen, and was prepared for it, but my high hopes for more ecstatic experiences out in the Thumb seemed to be going up in flames like a squatter house...
That day in Detroit was pretty interesting, and I never felt in harm's way. I did a job at a city community center installing a line for a job referral service. It was cool because I felt like I was contributing to the City, doing my part for Motor City on it's way up again. I was totally safe there, parked in the lot with five or six police cruisers. That day in Detroit was also the only really hot day for the entire Summer. I was sitting in the lot cranking the air conditioner when I got the email saying one of the local techs had been held up at gunpoint not far from where I was. Here we go. Next was a daycare center out of service in semi-industrial area that wasn't anything worse than I've seen in Bridgeport, then an Islamic auto parts salvage garage to the South near Dearborn. I went into Dearborn, which seems almost to be bi-lingual, for a falafel sandwich, then went to a pretty wrecked residential neighborhood, still not feeling unsafe, just cautious. After that was when I saw Reynard-- we were both planning on heading in relatively early, regrouping for what was going to be coming down the pike. That, and not wanting to end up in the Hood after nightfall.
Here I suppose is a good spot to tell a story about my brother-in-law, Welby, who came out to Michigan other times when I did not. He was working in a bad neighborhood and a local power company truck pulled up to him. The driver was black and said "What are you doing here?" " We'll I have this repair job..." Welby answered. " No, I mean what are YOU doing here? You're white. You should not be here." the lineman said. "You're in danger here. I'm in danger! I hope you have a gun, do you?" "Well no, I'm not allowed to have one." "Man, all of us down here are packin'. You better get yourself one if you're gonna be here." He hung out for a while to back Welby up, then gave him a list of really bad areas that he should never go to alone. Tribal kindredship transcends Race among Utility workers. The guys started questioning the assignment locations and doubling up for safety though they were not really directed to by Management. You gotta do what you gotta do, and no job is worth losing your life over. Like I said, I really had no reason to complain or fret, just accept...
Given all this I was bracing myself, thinking about how much less money I would be making since I would not be working late every day, thinking of the process of calling other guys for back-up, thinking of setting up a dummy wallet to give a thief if need be, but that day was the only day I ever worked in Detroit. Monday I found myself in the suburbs again, though this time they were northwest of Detroit. Royal Oak, West Bloomfield, Pontiac and Farmington Hills. This area was kind of like Connecticut. There were some lakes that made for curvy roads rather than that grid I drove to the East. There were some hills, too, so that a town named Farmington Hills actually had some real hills, unlike Sterling Heights.
And that was where I stayed for the rest of my time in Michigan. Every day I would dispatch and head out to West Bloomfield. It seemed a bit more upscale than the Eastern suburbs. There were even some affluent neighborhoods that I saw. This was a relief, I guess, not having to deal with Detroit, but it took the adventure factor down a couple of notches. Every day up and down the same roads past strip malls and professional office buildings--a dreamland for American Consumerism, but a drag for me. It got very boring, just like back home. Out that way the ninety degree grid was much less apparent, so the GPS driving directions always had me hopping on the highway to get from town to town. Right there, that cuts down on the level of Novelty. It was just easier to follow along than to try to outsmart the GPS with roads less travelled. I saw very little of interest to take pictures of.
The other big difference with this trip compared to my Winter trip was the amount of drinking. It was nice weather, and the hotel had a roofed patio area that had picnic tables and chairs and two gas grills. This became the party spot. Any given night if you didn't go across Van Dyke to Malone's, there was a group of guys from Connecticut hanging out, cooking Polish Sausage from Hamtramck or burgers, and drinking. There was lots of beer, and some Bourbon, and some Tequila, and some maple-flavored Moonshine. I was of course on a beer Quest, trying as many Michigan-made India Pale Ales as I could. Working late, and the draw of the party made me less productive than I like to try to be when I'm away with no distractions, but it was fun. The telephone worker Tribe loves to tell stories about jobs they've done, and I heard many personal stories about that city that was all over the National news all the time. It could get loud. The politics of who was and wasn't working in Detroit came up from time to time. It was apparent that any of the people at our company that we wanted to give a shit, did not. It would have been easy, and smart, for them to mix up our work locations, but it never happened. I would sit there and say little. How could I complain about being bored when other guys complained about getting stiff necks from always looking over their shoulders? Strip malls? Much less devastating than burned-out neighborhoods and giant holes in the road and the danger of electrocution because of people stealing power by hooking up jumper cables up the poles.
When in Connecticut, our dispatchers are located in Michigan, right in the area I was working in, and it had become customary each trip for some of them to meet up with us at Malone's. When I got there that night I was a little earlier than most. There were only a few people of both groups there yet, and it was awkward. I didn't feel well--I think it was the grocery store Sushi I had for lunch--and the people there were ones I didn't know well. Two Connecticut guys who had been keeping to themselves started asking me if I was working in the nice areas. They were really pissed about being stuck in Detroit. As the crew started showing up and the drinks started going down, the topic was broached several times. A weird scene--comradery laced with contentiousness. Our dispatchers, of course, were peons just like us, and had no control over where they turfed us. TJ got a bit hot under the collar. People were getting drunk, laughing, complaining, rationalizing. I couldn't say much. I sat there feeling kind of disconnected and left early to a bad night's sleep, getting up a few times overnight with diarrhea. Nothing changed of course, and we all kept on keeping on where we were.
Four days before our slated departure date I was working in Bloomfield Hills, went to dispatch, and nothing came up. Weird, if they were so swamped with work here that they needed help from Connecticut mercenaries, why this was happening. I looked at the dispatch chat site and found nobody available. Even weirder. I called Ryan to see if he knew anything about it. "Oh, you didn't hear? They're sending us home. Tomorrow." I was looking through emails, texts, and there was nothing about it. "I don't have any word about that. Did you get an email?" "No, I head it from Dave." "So is it just a rumor or what? They should let us know. Somebody pranking us?" The rest of that afternoon and evening turned into a bizarre event. This was pretty big news for us, but there was very little word, officially, from anybody at the company in either state. I was able to pick up one more job that day, and since I was now in a vengeful mood, the job I got was perfect--an hour away up North, and the GPS was stumped by road construction and could not find my job location for a long while. It is a rare thing in the work world where the peon has the power to enact (at least financially) revenge against the Company.
When I got back to the hotel there was an inevitable group hanging out at the patio. Drinks were going down as we tried to figure out if this situation was real or not. All we knew was that one of the guys had gotten a call from a local manager, who up until then had had no contact with us, saying that we were being sent home the next day. Nobody had heard any news from their organizations back home. Some guys had called their bosses and they had not heard anything either. This was now not just a party, but a business meeting with booze. We decided that in the morning we would all show up to the patio, but not dispatch until we heard what we were doing. Like other times we were expected to work half a day, then drive to a mid-way hotel in Ohio, but we figured if we didn't dispatch, it would raise some flags and maybe we would get some confirmation. Also we would use this company time to pack up our belongings rather than our own time this night. There was drinking to be done, grill food to be gotten rid of. The edginess caused by the lack of information made for some wild conversations and behavior. The guy we called Tipsy McStaggers drove in by the patio, already cocked. Ryan came in from one of the bars and told us that BigDave had met up with three women and was bringing them back to the hotel to party with us. A little later I could see BigDave staggering across the parking lot toward us, by himself, and I figured that he had struck out in his endeavor, but soon after, three cars drove in and parked near us, and these three young women got out and came on over. What followed was a pretty comical scene of drinking, twerking, and a big sandwich lap dance kind of thing that one of the guys somehow got in the middle of. You had to be there. These women were like something you'd see in a movie, like you wouldn't expect to see in real Life. They were drinking anything that was there, whooping it up, and you could sense that this was nothing out or the ordinary for them. Most of us by this time had gotten through the business aspect of this meeting and were starting to think about the long drive the next day, and at about One A.M. we all bailed on the scene, leaving Dave with the women. I don't think he ended up working the next day, but he did make it to the hotel in Ohio.
It came out that there had been declared a Nation-wide capping of Overtime in the Company. This was due to the end of the Fiscal that was coming up and they wanted to make the Bottom Line look spiffy for it. Somebody must have realized that "Holy Shit, we've got twenty techs out there in Michigan raking in the hours--and look at this--they're scheduled to be driving home on a Saturday, which would be all Double-Time!! Holy Shit, we've got to pull them back early!" So this was the reason for the cluster-fuck we had going on. Typical Corporate Dickishness. There is nothing sweeter in this work than to do nothing but drive a vehicle for double what you normally earn, all day long for twelve hours, and they took that sweet Mercenary opportunity away from us to save Face for themselves. The upper level executive, a special breed of lizard-like businessman whose concerns are laser-focused on cheapening the whole experience for the peons. It's hard to blame them too much, though. They grew up in a sick Money culture, idolizing fathers who were probably the biggest Swine you could imagine--if only they had seen it and learned from the bad example. But you don't see these things when you get to go to Vail every Winter, maybe study abroad in Europe, or Thailand...You don't see the Death Toll that come with those Christmas bonuses.
Sometime in the mid-morning the next day I received an email with the address of my hotel in Ohio. This was the ONLY official communication I got from the company about returning home. That's it. I finished work and headed out, outsmarting GPS routes that would require tolls, and taking my time getting back homeward. Yup. Rethink Possible...
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