Roborant: entry

Episodic Post #1:(If you don’t know what that means, read the post below first)

So, here we are in Episodic Post number one, collecting the earliest storried tale that my readers have missed out on. This is the story of how Liam ended his career as an Erection Specialist and stewed in self-righteousness for a while:

So, the erection business often found me called out to strage locales. An Erection Specialist is like a Grisly bear: we’re near the top of the food chain, and we need a lot of territory in order to stay solvent. Or alive, if we were sticking with the bear metaphor. Also, it only takes a few seconds of though to realize that the sort of people who order erections like ours need to have a few thousand square feet lying around not being used. So, I spent a lot of time in the country.

Obviously, I didn’t just fly there or something. We had a large cube-van which transported tents in the back and folks in the front. Except that there were only 2 chairs. And a lawn chair wedged between those 2 chairs.

Now, this was not an issue until about halfway through August. Earlier, the boss had come with us on big jobs and his pickup held 2 passengers (if you didn’t mind the garbage). Also, there had been a lull of 2 or so weeks with only small to medium size tents going up, mostly in town.

Then we got a call for a job in Wellesley. 40 by 100 (our largest standard tent), 200 chairs, 30 tables, and a 12 by 24 foot dance floor. It takes us an hour alone just to load the truck, and obviously for a tent this big we need the whole crew (4 people at this point). So, two in the front and another in the overflow lawn chair, but that still leaves one person without a seat. That person (after rock-paper-scissors, 2 out of 3) was me.

I climbed into the back of the truck and made myself a little nest out of tarps. Now, let me make one thing clear: This was (marginally) safer than it seems. The truck was packed to the gills because of all the tables, chairs, etc. There was nowhere for the load to shift to because it was crammed in wall to wall, and I was on top of it all, with nothing around me that wasn’t tied down.

Anyway, what with the darkness and the monotone thrumming of the motor, I fell asleep, only waking up at my co-worker’s valiant attempts to reverse the truck down the country lane we’d arrived at.

It was all downhill from there:

FIrst of all, we couldn’t get closer than 100 feet from the tent-site. We normally prefer 20 or less.

The clients couldn’t decide where they wanted it. 20 feet of margin in the x and y axes, and they spent at least half an hour figuring it out. Note: The tent is always packed onto the truck last so that we can get it out and get it up first. Without a place to put the tent there was no way (and no point) to unpack the rest of the truck.

After they picked, we began laying the tent out. First come the tarps (my former nest). They’re big, ugly, dirty, and grey, and they keep the tent from getting muddy before it gets put up. People always think that the tarps are tents and start to piss their pants wondering if they can get their money back as we roll them out.

Anyway, once the tarps are down, the tent comes out in 20 by 40 foot sections. In a 100 by 40 tent that means 5 of those sections laid one after another. We’d gotten the first two sections laid out on the tarps when:

The clients decided to move the tent again.

And then it rained.

Twice.

…

I got home 9 hours later. Frustrated by a hard day made unnecessarily harder, and by the fact that I’d had to cancel a private swim client in town because the job had run 3 hours late. I ate dinner, told the story of the day to my folks, and went to bed. We had an almost identical job in Ingersoll the next day.

However, fate had other plans for me that morning. As I was checking my email and preparing for the day, my father let himself into my room (terrible habit by the way), with the words, “You can’t go to work today”.

We proceded to argue for half an hour about my job and how they were abusing my rights as a worker by making me ride in the backs of trucks. This was shortly after that incident out west, so my dad’s massive concern was understandable, but still totally unwarranted.

Yes it was touching. Yes, I would be sad if he hadn’t expressed his concern. But that really didn’t change things for me. I liked that job, and I was well aware of the things I would be doing when I joined up.

By this time I had 10 minutes to dress, eat, and bike to work. I tried to be diplomatic and shelve the argument for that day.

My dad went off the scale. He stormed out of my room, leaving me to get dressed quickly, yelling for my mom to stop him from whatever he was going to do.

When I got downstairs he had already called my boss. He’d gotten the answering machine and left a terse message regarding ‘worker safety’ and asking to be called back immediately.

As I stormed out the door and got on my bike, he was on the phone with the Ministry of Labour, who shunted him over to the WSIB.

I got to the shop where we keep out inventory just as the guys with the truck were pulling in. As I put my bike inside I explained that there could be some issues with my working that day. Likely I wouldn’t be able to go on the job, but I’d help them load the truck.

As expected, 10 seconds after I’d told them that, they got a text from the boss simply saying “Don’t take Liam on the job today”.

An hour later, truck loaded, he called back.

“Since you’re unable to get yourself to jobs [he knew I couldn't drive], we’re going to have to let you go.”

And that was it. I haven’t seen or heard from any of my old co-workers since.

So that’s part one (how Liam lost his job), but what about part two?

Well, left on my own with no employment, I really didn’t have too much to do. And, coincidentally enough, my parents had planned a major renovation of our garage for that time of the summer. Crazy, hunh? And they really needed a hand re-roofing the place.

Now, to top this off, the work is being done by a handyman. Not a contractor (Wolfgang belabours me on this point constantly), although I have been told that he has a PhD in archtecture. Or something. He’s a massive hippy. Anyway, the point is that he’s not exactly WSIB compliant himself. This is a point which almost never matters, because he works alone and always does a good job.

So if it was him up on the roof with the 40 degree slope, with no fall restraint, no resperator, no work clothes, and no gloves, I wouldn’t care. After all, the guy can take care of himself.

But no, it’s me.

And what really gets me is the flaming hypocrisy of the situation. I get fired, and my father almost takes down the entire business in the process, all because of one unsafe incident.

And 2 weeks later I’ve been pushed into working for my father, for free, in an environment which contains multiple risk factors 100% of the time. Cutting inslation with a bread knife.

While balancing on 2×4s.

On the aforementioned 40 degree slope.

Which turned out to be a piece of cake. I was really missing those 2×4s once we’d covered the entire roof in plywood and I could only stand (lying down or otherwise distributing my weight lowered friction and I began slowly sliding off the roof.

But yeah. I still did it. it was for my parents, and I was leaving soon enough.

Stay Tuned for Episodic Post #2!